by Tony Urban
Aben had almost resigned himself to the fact that the third day would come and go with no relief when he heard a thud and footsteps outside the office.
“Get in here! Officer Dolan shot himself!” Aben waited. The footsteps came closer but slow, so damn slow. Why the hell were they taking their time?
“Hey! Hurry up!”
The same plodding steps followed his plea.
Aben banged his handcuff chain against the pipe which didn’t do anything to speed up the footsteps and only made his raw wrist sore all over again.
Finally, a shape appeared near the doorway but the hall outside the office was dark and Aben couldn’t make out any features.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?”
The figure stepped into the room and Aben saw that the man who had just strolled into the office was only marginally better off than the dead policeman on the floor.
The man wore blue mechanic’s overalls with a tag that read, “My name’s Steve. What’s yours?” but Steve didn’t look like he was interested in small talk. His flesh was lifeless and gray and he had matching eyes. Dried blood covered the lower part of his face and Aben swore he saw a hunk of skin - skin with human hair still attached to it - stuck between Steve’s buck teeth.
She came back. That’s what Dolan had said about his wife. She died, but came back. Was that actually true? How the hell could that be?
Steve staggered into the room, his arms dangling limp at his sides. He saw Dolan’s body on the floor, walked to it and crumpled to his knees. He leaned over Dolan’s lifeless corpse, grabbed an arm and started eating.
Son of a bitch, he was right. Steve’s a zombie and now he’s in here eating this rotten bastard right in front of me.
Now, the broken thumb trick sounded not only plausible but damned appealing. Aben grabbed the thumb on his cuffed left hand and tried squeezing it inward. He could feel the tendon stretch and the knuckle gave a resounding pop which sounded like a corkscrew blowing out of a champagne bottle in the small, quiet room.
Zombie Steve looked up at the sound of the knuckle cracking and he lost interest in the dead flesh before him. He rose to his feet and started toward fresh meat.
Aben’s thumb hadn’t broken and, as Steve got closer, he tried again. He gritted his teeth and jerked his thumb outward and again the finger cracked but this time it was the joint separating. Hot pain shot up Aben’s arm and he pushed the dislocated thumb into his palm and pulled like hell against the cuffs.
His hand still refused to come free. He jerked hard and the metal cuffs sliced further into his wrist. He could see the flesh gaping and blood ran steadily from the red bracelet he’d carved.
The zombie took another step but this time his foot came down on a chuck of Dolan’s maggot infested brains and Steve’s leg shot out from under him.
Aben watched the zombie pratfall with a mixture of amazement and horror. Steve flailed sideways but his slow, awkward movements gave him no chance at stopping the plunge. The zombie fell through the air and landed on Dolan’s distended midsection.
When the zombie fell on it, the skin covering Dolan’s guts exploded. Aben had earlier thought of it like a water balloon, but when it burst, it became the most vile, revolting piñata in the history of the world. Rotting intestines and tissue and black coagulated blood and maggots, my God, so many maggots, blew out like gory shrapnel. Aben only had a moment to take in the visual carnage before the smell hit him.
The aroma of the rotting corpse was fresh apple pie compared to the abomination that came from Dolan’s insides. Aben gagged and retched but after three days had no food to come up. Another wave of the stench hit him and this time when he gagged yellow bile rocketed up his throat and burst out his mouth and nose. The bile ran down his chin and seeped through his beard which only made him gag again.
His retching refocused the attention of Zombie Steve who flailed atop Dolan’s body like he was swimming in mid-air. His arms and legs smacked into the piles of rotten organs and maggots. Steve grabbed a handful of something black and full of worms and shoved it into his mouth. After he swallowed it down, the zombie escaped his sandbar and was back on the hunt.
Aben pulled again, and again his hand would not come free. He saw the top of his wrist was cut to the bone. Blood didn’t simply running from the wound, it gushed.
The zombie was closing in and Aben could see that his observation about the skin stuck on Steve’s mouth was indeed correct. Apparently Steve had recently dined on flesh a la blonde.
Aben could feel the zombie’s rancid breath on his face. He knew he was about to die but decided to give it one more try.
Aben threw himself sideways with his much force as possible so that all of his body weight would be acting against the cuffs. He expected to end up hanging from them like a side of beef on a hook, dangling there for the zombie to feast upon, but to his amazement, he fell the whole way to the floor.
He was free.
Despite being loosed from the cuffs, Steve was almost on top of him. Aben belly crawled through the gore that had been Dolan’s stomach, toward the cop’s right hand which still held his pistol. He could feel things squishing under his elbows and knees and didn’t know whether it was intestines or maggots and he didn’t want to find out.
Aben pulled the gun free from the dead man’s hand, rolled onto his back and looked up at Zombie Steve.
“My name’s Aben. And it definitely was not a pleasure meeting you.”
Aben squeezed the trigger and shot Steve in the face. The zombie fell first to his knees, then forward where he landed across Dolan’s legs.
They all laid there for a moment, Aben and the two dead men. Then Aben looked at his left hand which, only seconds earlier, had been cuffed.
What he saw first were the bones. He wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing and when he closed his hand, it was like looking at one of the skeletons in those Ray Harryhausen movies with stop motion animation. Only this was his hand.
The skin had been peeled away from his wrist all the way to his fingertips. He could see the tendons still attached to the white bone, but the flesh was gone. The pain was exquisite.
“Oh shit,” he said and his head felt like it would float away. As fast as he could manage he used his right hand to pull off his belt, then looped it around his left forearm and pulled it as tight as possible.
He was still holding on to the leather when he passed out.
30
The muscles in Emory’s legs burned like they were aflame. He’d been peddling the bike for miles with intentions of going to the police station but the further he rode into the city, the pointlessness of that plan became obvious. The horror he’d seen up close and personal inside the tunnel was not an isolated incident.
The first zombies he saw out here, in the light of day, were lone monsters staggering hither and yon like children lost in a foreign world. They wandered down the streets and sidewalks, bouncing off lampposts or street signs, then turned around to return in the direction from which they’d came. The ghouls would give a weak swipe as he rode by them but gave no chase.
They changed when he got further into the city, where the population was denser. Here, the zombies also increased in number and rather than the lone wolves he saw on the outskirts, these zombies hunted in packs.
Emory was closing in on a discount electronics outlet when he saw three men with bandannas covering the lower halves of their faces rush toward the store. One of them carried a cinder block which he hoisted over his head and pitched through the huge plate-glass window. It exploded in a thunderclap and the trio jumped through the void.
Two of them reemerged moments later. The first carried an armload of laptops and tablets. The second had claimed a variety of cell phones. Their block tossing companion remained inside.
“Hurry up, Rog!” one of the thieves yelled.
A few seconds later the other man hopped through the broken window carrying a flat screen TV with each arm and the men took of
f with their haul. They didn’t make it to the end of the block before a group of eight zombies emerged from an alleyway and blocked their path.
Emory slowed the bike and considered another route but his curiosity got the best of him and he watched as the thief with the cell phones tossed them aside and pulled a pistol from the front of his jeans.
Without warning the man fired four shots and every round connected with the torso of a middle-aged zombie in a tank top. The four bullet holes stood out dramatically against the pale fabric and bits of blood seeped out. The zombie looked down at the holes in its chest and stomach, curious. Then, its gaze turned to the shooter.
“What the fuck?” the thief who held the flat screens said.
And then the zombies attacked like a pack of hyenas. They got the shooter first and as he fell he squeezed off another round that went whizzing down the street a few feet away from Emory. The man screamed as the zombies ate him, taking ragged bites out of his arms, face and neck. There were too many zombies to all get in on the meal, so the others moved on to the two remaining thieves.
The man who had the computers dropped them and abandoned his friends, sprinting in the opposite direction. He was fast and within seconds he was closing in on Emory. Up close, Emory could see this was no teenage thug. This man was in his forties and old acne scars gave a lunar feel to his complexion.
“Can you believe this shit?” he asked Emory. “This is end of the world shit.”
Emory watched the action ahead where the other thief now held up a TV like a shield which he used to block and batter the zombies which were attacking him. One zombie got behind him and sunk its teeth into the man’s shoulder. He spun free and slammed the flat screen over the zombie’s head. The plastic frame hung around the monster’s throat like a necklace but it didn’t go down. Two more zombies grabbed the thief from behind and soon enough he was on the ground and being eaten alive.
“Hey! Gramps!” the last thief said to Emory and the man’s words drew his attention away from the carnage. He turned just in time to see a blurry fist flying at his face. He heard his nose break and the momentum of the blow carried his slender frame backwards where he tumbled off the bicycle and smacked into the pavement. Then the bike fell on top of him.
Through the stars that had sprung up before his eyes he saw the man who just assaulted him grab the bike and climb aboard. Emory reached out and grabbed the rear tire but as the thief jumped down on the pedal, the spokes whirled around and spun free of his weak grip.
Gramps, Emory thought as he laid on the hard macadam and stared up at the featureless, gray sky above him. Did that bastard have the audacity to call me Gramps?
As the stars faded and his senses returned, Emory realized the screaming had stopped. He rolled onto his side, then his knees, and as he knelt there on all fours like a dog in the street, he saw the zombies had finished dining on the electronics thieves and were coming for him.
His body still ached from the wreck and his legs were weak from riding the bike. Getting to his feet seemed as impossible as climbing Mount Everest, an adventure he’d often daydreamed about tackling when he was a young man and read Sir Edmund Hillary’s biography. But, like so many things, it had remained nothing more than a dream, one more unchecked box on his wish list of life.
Now, the only wish he had left was escaping the creatures which he could hear getting nearer, their lifeless feet scraping along the rough pavement. He got one foot under him and used all his strength to stand. When he did, the stars returned but now they were black pocks against the streetscape. A shrill bell went off inside his head and it squealed so loud that he couldn’t hear the zombies anymore. A vise embraced his chest and he struggled to suck in breath. He knew he was on the verge of losing consciousness and tried to blink away the coming darkness as his knees gave way.
That was when they grabbed him.
31
The woman crouched on all fours and knelt over something, her head thrashing wildly back and forth. Solomon recognized her as one of the bints he’d heard gossiping about his wife. God rest her whoring soul. As he stepped closer, he saw exactly what was going on - she was chowing down on her own son. She had her head buried in the child’s stomach, her face obscured in the tot’s guts.
It reminded Solomon of a rabbit he’d had growing up - Daphne. She got pregnant, and he’d waited impatiently as her furry belly grew fatter, eager to see the coming kits. She went into early labor one morning and his mum allowed him to miss school so he could stay home for the event.
Daphne gave birth to five of the ugliest things he’d ever seen but the experience amazed him, nonetheless. He was even more amazed late that night when he poked his head into the hutch and saw mum rabbit eating her young.
Daphne’s tan fur was stained red with blood. Two of the kits were back in her belly, albeit in a wholly different way than they’d been the day prior. She’d devoured a third from the hindquarters up and its lifeless torso shimmied back and forth as its own mother dined on its organs.
An 8-year-old Solomon puked his supper onto his shoes and ran back into the house, crying as he told his mother of the horror. She looked at him blankly and replied only, “It happens, love. Part of nature.”
After that he’d had frequent nightmares in which his mum was eating him. He’d wake up in a cold sweat, crying and squalling and she’d rush in to the room to console him but with those visions so fresh in his mind he couldn’t stand to look at her.
He pushed the thoughts of the rabbit and his mother from his mind and returned his focus to the zombie on the lawn before him. She was oblivious to his presence as he strolled up to her, held the pistol a few inches from the back of her skull and squeezed the trigger. Her head snapped forward and she fell on top of the tot.
Solomon used his foot to push her off the lad and when she toppled away, he saw the boy’s stomach was a gaping cavern filled with half eaten organs and ropes of chewed on intestines. The aroma was nauseating and Solomon used his free hand to cover his mouth and try to block out the stench.
The tot squirmed to and fro on its back, a whiny squeal coming from its mouth. Solomon wasn’t sure if it was alive or undead, but what he needed to do was the same either way. He aimed the gun at the tiny body below him and —
“Put down the gun!”
He glanced to his side and saw two police officers standing in front of a police cruiser.
That’s about right. Always get here after the fact. Solomon turned toward them. “Don’t you coppers know what’s going on here?”
The half-eaten tot rolled onto his stomach and Solomon heard the guts slithering out of the gash in his belly as it moved toward him. Solomon moved his hand, the hand that held the gun, an inch if that.
“Drop it now!”
Solomon looked toward the cops, fury clouding his face. How stupid could these arses be?
He felt the tot’s little hand press against his foot and looked down on it. He raised the pistol.
“No!”
When the cop screamed Solomon turned his head toward the voice and the next thing he felt was a firecracker of pain explode in his head. Then everything went black.
I’m moving. My body isn’t, but I am.
He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t feel anything except an inferno in his head. He tried to move but couldn’t. But he was moving.
“Get him in the ambulance!”
“Fuck him. He can rot.”
“Jesus, Shawn, the guy got shot in the head.”
“He’s a fucking murderer. You see what he did to that woman and her kid?”
Between their voices came a metallic clang and a heavy bump that shook his body. Solomon realized he was on a stretcher. He tried to move again. Couldn’t. Tied down to a stretcher. Balls, did his head ache.
“We don’t know what happened. Guy had a gun and that kid… That didn’t happen with a gun.”
“I ain’t no detective but you got a bloody guy standing over a dead woman and a h
alf dead kid and I know a duck when I see one.”
Christ, these morons are my saviors?
The movement stopped. He heard a metal door opening. Felt the gurney bump against what he assumed was the ambulance but he still couldn’t see anything but black.
“What the?”
Someone screamed. A gunshot. Another.
“Hurry!”
He and the stretcher were thrown into the ambulance. He heard no one follow him into the back. Another door closed and the tires squealed as the vehicle sped away. The stretcher bounced back and forth as the ambulance rounded corners at wildly unsafe speeds.
Muffled voices - Angry? Scared? - Came from the front but between the pain in his head and the shrieking of the siren, he couldn’t make out any words. Soon enough, he lost consciousness anyway.
Light seeped in through the darkness. Not much, but enough to turn his world from a black hole into a dark room. A chorus of voices, some male, some female, shared this space with him.
“Where’s Micklson?”
“He was supposed to be in the OR when we got here.”
“Page him, now!”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Jesus, look at that hole. Is that his brain leaking out?”
“Where the fuck is Micklson? I’m not a god damned neurosurgeon.”
A muffled scream rang out. Then another. Then several more.
“What now?”
“See what’s going on out there. And tell someone to fucking get Micklson!”
A door opened, closed.
Solomon tried to open his eyes and a flat plane of white appeared. Dark blobs moved through it. He made an attempt at speaking but nothing came out.
More screams. His thoughts were cloudy and scattered, but he had an idea what was happening even if these fools were clueless. He forgot about trying to speak and focused on opening his eyes the rest of the way.
Something crashed. Glass broke.
His eyes came open and he saw he was in an operating suite. Five other people stood around. He may as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid him. They stared at the double doors at the edge of the room. Doors which were at the very edge of his peripheral vision.