The Way of All Flesh

by Tim Waggoner

Kate saw David attack the Dempsey woman, and her first impulse was to shoulder her rifle and put a bullet into her brother’s skull before he could harm her. It was a reflex action, born of months of patrolling Lockwood and picking off zombies. But this wasn’t any zombie; it was David. So she listened to the woman’s screams as David tore out her throat, but otherwise Kate did nothing. She felt nothing, either.

  Although she was just as guilty of the woman’s death as David—more so, because she was fully conscious of the choices she made—she simply didn’t care. Maybe everything she’d been through since Blacktide changed the world had messed her up to the point where her emotions no longer functioned properly. Which, she supposed, was a nice way of saying she was crazy. But then, what survivor wasn’t a little bit insane? Case in point—the Dempseys. Who in their right mind would come into town just to kill a few zombies—and at night yet? She might be crazy, but these assholes were certifiable!

  She reached the pickup in time to see the two Dempsey men—alerted by their woman’s screams—turn and attack David. The man with the axe shouted in rage and grief as he struck David in the shoulder. Kate assumed he was aiming for David’s head but, in his anger and sadness, misjudged the strike. The man with the machete stepped forward and while it was clear from his expression that he was equally upset by the woman’s death, he attacked silently, swinging the blade into the side of David’s neck.

  David’s response to these attacks was to look up at the men and spit the bloody hunk of flesh that he’d torn from the woman at them. The action struck Kate almost as an act of defiance, a grand and grisly “FUCK YOU” gesture.

  The men withdrew their weapons from David’s flesh and raised them to strike again. Neither of them had noticed Kate yet, so intent were they on avenging their woman’s death. She calmly raised her rifle, aimed and squeezed off two rounds. She shot them both in the head, more out of habit than anything else, and they fell to the ground before the echo of her twin gun blasts had died away.

  A half-dozen zombies remained alive—two adults and four children—although most had suffered injuries of one kind or another from the Dempseys’ attack. Their bodies were functional enough to allow them to walk, shuffle or crawl to the Dempseys’ corpses, however, and they tore into the fresh meat with sickening gusto. Kate kept her rifle leveled, but the zombies were too caught up in their feast to pay her any attention. Except David.

  He appeared completely uninterested in claiming a share of the meat for himself. He rose from the Dempsey woman’s body and turned toward Kate. Thick, black ichor oozed from his wounds, and his head now canted to the right, but otherwise he seemed none the worse for wear. She drew a bead on his forehead and wondered if she could pull the trigger if he tried to attack her.

  He didn’t come at her, though. He just stood there, motionless, staring at her with clouded eyes. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. A sudden wave of dizziness came over her, and her vision grayed out. When it cleared, she found herself looking at an inhuman creature dressed in her clothes and holding a strange weapon fashioned from lengths of bone lashed together with strips of flesh. The creature’s skin was white as bone, its eyes like burning coals, its teeth sharp as a shark’s. She also saw a teenage boy standing off to the side watching her, arms crossed, mouth drawn into a smirking grin. He reminded her of a mean kid who used to live in their neighborhood. Simon…something. He raised his hand to his lips, puckered and blew her an exaggerated kiss. Her vision grayed again, and this time when it cleared she was looking at David once more.

  What the fuck was that?

  The siblings—one alive, one something else—regarded one another for a couple more moments, both standing motionless. The wet sounds of zombies tearing flesh and moaning in ecstasy filled the air around them, blending with the noise of the pickup’s still-running engine and the hard rock issuing from the vehicle’s CD player.

  “I don’t think he’s going to hurt you.”

  Kate almost jumped when Marie’s voice sounded next to her.

  “Fuck me!” Kate said.

  Marie gave a small smile. “Maybe later.”

  Kate didn’t know what to say to that, so she returned her attention to David. He was looking at Marie, and although his facial features remained slack, she had the impression that he was sizing her up, trying to determine whether or not she was a threat. Then slowly, he raised his hand and extended his index finger toward the headless body of a child zombie lying on the ground near the pickup’s front wheel. At first, Kate didn’t understand what, if anything, he was trying to say, but then it hit her—the body was Steve’s.

  “Oh God,” she said. “That little boy…”

  “It’s your nephew, right?”

  She nodded.

  David gave her one last look before turning and moving toward the feasting zombies gathered around the Dempsey corpses. One of the surviving zombies was a young girl who had sustained a shotgun wound to the upper chest. The front of her long-sleeved shirt had been torn apart, and the flesh beneath was ragged and covered with black gore. Rib bones were visible, cracked and splintered. A wound that severe would’ve been fatal for a human, but as it was, it barely seemed to slow the girl down. She was ripping chunks of meat from one of the corpses and shoving them into her mouth with the same single-minded intensity as the others.

  It was Lizzie.

  Dragging his broken foot, David walked toward her, reached down, grabbed hold of her and pulled her away from the corpse. She struggled in his arms, hissing like a wild animal, but he paid no attention. He carried her away from the bodies, heading toward the opposite end of the playground. He didn’t look back.

  Lizzie continued to fight him for several moments, clawing and biting, but then she finally settled down, nuzzling her father’s wounded neck as if she were an infant latching on to her mother’s breast.

  “Do you want to follow them?” Marie asked.

  She shook her head.

  Marie nodded toward the feeding zombies. “Should we kill them?”

  “Leave them. They’re just doing what they were made to do.”

  Kate left the pickup running so the noise would cover the sound of their departure, and the two women walked around the side of the school, heading for the street. Marie reached out to take her hand, and Kate was grateful for the contact. She didn’t feel the tears running down her cheeks.

  Joe woke to a terrible throbbing in his skull. He opened his eyes, and the moonlight streaming through the broken windows felt like twin spikes ramming into his brain, and he immediately clamped them shut. He wasn’t aware of making any sound or movement, but he heard Nicholas say, “Glad to see you’re back in the world of the living.” He spoke in a normal tone, but his words hit Joe’s ears like blows on a bass drum.

  “Sorry about the headache. An unfortunate side effect of getting hit in the head with a rifle butt, I’m afraid.”

  Joe had no idea where he was, and he had no memory of getting hit, but given that his head hurt like a motherfucker, he had no trouble believing it. He shifted his weight and realized he was lying on the ground. No, wait. The surface was slick, like wood or tile. A floor. He was lying on a floor. They were inside somewhere. But why? He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t move his arms or legs. They were bound, but not with rope. It felt more like plastic zip ties. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t open his mouth. It was sealed shut with duct tape.

  A surge of panic cleared away the last shreds of mental fog and brought him back to full awareness. He was outside the high school. Outside. With Them. Bound and gagged. Helpless. Easy prey.

  He opened his eyes and squirmed on the floor as he struggled against his bonds. He tried to shout for help, but the duct tape muffled his cries of distress.

  “I’d settle down if I were you,” Nicholas said. “If you make too much noise, you might attract unwanted attention, if you know what I mean.”

  Joe froze. He knew exactly what Nicholas meant.

  He tried to
force himself to breathe slowly in the hope it would calm him down. He turned his head from side to side to take in his surroundings. Moonlight streamed in through the broken windows, and he could make out reverse letters on what remained of the glass. IJ AVA. It took him a moment to figure it out. Java Jive. He used to come here to study back when he was a college student, although what he usually ended up doing was plugging in his laptop, logging on to the Net and playing Risen. Now he was back, and this time he was playing the game for real. Irony abounds, he thought, with more than a touch of hysteria.

  The interior of the coffee shop looked intact. The tables and chairs remained, although some had been overturned. There was a couch on the other side of the room, next to a cold and empty fireplace. The cushions were in disarray, the fabric torn and the stuffing pulled out. There were dark splotches on the material, and he didn’t want to think about what had caused them. The door was open, and held that way by one of the tables that someone had dragged outside for that very purpose.

  “I can see the wheels turning in your heard, Joe. The first step is to assess the situation: get the lay of the land and take stock of your assets, however meager they may be. Once a gamer, always a gamer, eh?”

  Joe couldn’t reply, but he rolled over so he could face Nicholas. The man was a shadow, sitting cross-legged on top of the serving counter, hands resting on his knees as if he were meditating. Joe couldn’t make out his features, but his tone was calm and relaxed, with an undercurrent of dark amusement.

  “Do you know what I did before the world changed? I processed claims for an insurance company. Not the most exciting work, but it paid the bills and, more importantly, it allowed me to blend in. Part of my sheep’s clothing, so to speak. I shared an office with a guy named Eric Layton. He was inoffensive enough, and like a good chameleon, I pretended to be interested and engaged whenever he spoke to me. We did have one thing in common. Each of us worked to live, instead of the other way around. I had my…pursuits, and Eric had video games. Every time a hot new game or system was released, he’d be standing in line outside the store to be among the first to buy it. He’d even travel to Los Angeles every year to attend a huge electronics trade show just to see what the Next Big Thing might be. It was like some kind of pilgrimage for him. But most of all, he loved playing online games, and he loved regaling me with tales of his virtual exploits the next day at the office. Can you guess what his favorite online game was?”

  Joe couldn’t answer, of course, but if he could’ve spoken, he would’ve said the next word that came out of Nicholas’s mouth.

  “Risen. He was obsessed with the game, and with the idea of a zombie apocalypse in general. He loved to talk about what he’d do if it actually occurred. He’d talk about gathering weapons, finding a defensible shelter…” Nicholas snorted. “Dumbass never talked about finding water or food. Once he said, ‘When the shit finally hits the fan, that’s when we’ll find out who has what it really takes to survive.’ The day Blacktide hit town, I plunged a pair of scissors into his eye when he tried to take a bite out of me at the office. I had no idea that destroying a zombie’s brain would kill it. It was a reflex more than anything. Lucky for me, right?

  “Do you know what pissed me off the most about Eric’s survival bullshit? The idea that he thought he was somehow special, that in a crisis he’d be smarter and tougher than the majority of humanity, that he’d deserve to survive when so many others didn’t. None of you are special. Human or zombie, you’re all just ambulatory meat to me.”

  The more Nicholas spoke, the more frightened Joe became. He’d always known there was something off about the man, but he’d attributed that to the post-traumatic stress that every survivor suffered from to one degree or another. But from what Nicholas was saying, he’d been full-on batshit crazy even before Blacktide rolled across the planet. And Joe was his prisoner.

  “You were the same kind of pathetic loser that Eric was: wasting your time living in a fantasy world, going on meaningless quests in order to achieve illusory goals. It must have been so satisfying to you when the other survivors in town looked to you to guide them through the early days of the crisis. And I have to admit, your knowledge and experience did come in handy, even if you acquired them by playing a child’s game. But the entire time you were giving advice on how to fortify the high school and scavenge for supplies, you were hiding how terrified you were to be living your beloved game in real life. Because in real life, you aren’t in control and there are no do-overs. You only get one life. And deep down, you don’t really believe that you’re smart enough to hold on to that life in the face of a world full of monsters that want nothing more than to take it from you. You’re afraid that you’re not special. Am I right?”

  Joe made no sound or movement, but the tears running down his face answered for him.

  “I’m here to help you conquer that fear, Joe. I clonked you on the head, dragged you in here and trussed you up to give you an opportunity to find out if you have what it takes to be a true survivor.” He picked up an object from the counter and tossed it toward Joe. It hit the floor with a metallic clatter and slid a few inches. Moonlight gleamed silver-blue off the knife blade.

  “So your scenario is set. You inhabit a world full of flesh-eating zombies. It’s night. You’re bound and gagged on the floor of a deserted coffee shop, and you have a butterfly knife lying a foot away from you. Can you cut yourself free before a horde of ravenous zombies arrive to chow down on your sweet-sweet meat?”

  Joe stared at the knife, its image blurry through his tears.

  “Oh, and I forgot one last thing—incentive.” Nicholas cupped his hands to his mouth, drew in a deep breath and bellowed, “Come and get it!”

  Nicholas watched as Joe desperately tried to free himself. He scooted over to the knife, managed to get hold of it and, lying on his side, knees bent and back arched to bring his feet close to his hands, he started sawing through the zip tie around his ankles. Working with controlled, economical motions, he managed to cut all the way through the plastic strip as the first of the zombies came through the open doorway. As the tie came loose, he rolled onto his knees, got his feet beneath him and stood.

  Despite himself, Nicholas was impressed. He hadn’t thought Joe would get this far.

  The zombie was female, and had been somewhere in her seventies when she’d changed, Nicholas guessed. She was short and thin, and garbed in satin pajamas which were badly soiled. Her feet were bare, most of the flesh worn away to reveal bone. Her hair was cut close to her scalp, and he figured she’d probably worn a wig when she’d been alive. He understood the reason when her pajama top, which was unbuttoned, shifted as she moved, revealing that she was missing her left breast.

  At least the cancer didn’t kill you, he thought.

  Although she had the same aspect as other zombies—milky-white eyes, yellowed skin—she appeared to have suffered relatively few injuries in the months since Blacktide. He didn’t see bite marks on her anywhere, which only made sense since the bitch didn’t have any meat on her bones. What zombie would want to take a bite out of her? Despite her outward age, she moved with the same swiftness of any zombie closing in on its prey, and she was on Joe before he could do more than take a couple panicked steps backward.

  She grabbed hold of his shoulders, hissed like a serpent and fastened her mouth on his neck. Joe shrieked behind the duct tape and twisted his body from side to side in an attempt to dislodge her, but he only succeeded in losing his already precarious balance, and the two of them fell to the floor. The woman rolled Joe onto his back, pinned his shoulders to the floor and straddled him. She then resumed gnawing at his neck, snarling with what sounded like frustration rather than satisfaction. Joe wiggled until he managed to draw his knees to his chest and get his feet under the woman. He kicked out with all his strength, sending the zombie flying. She hit the edge of a tabletop with an audible sound of bone snapping, bounced off and landed face first on the floor. The table slid backward a
couple inches, wobbled, but didn’t fall over.

  Joe struggled to his feet once more, and Nicholas saw he’d lost his grip on the butterfly knife. It lay on the floor, momentarily forgotten. He also saw that despite the elderly zombie’s best efforts, the skin on Joe’s neck was smooth and unbroken. He understood why an instant later when the woman raised her head and hissed, revealing a pair of toothless gums.

  Nicholas laughed. “You’re lucky she left her dentures at home today!”

  Nicholas had seen this before. When humans became zombies, their teeth hardened and fused with the jaw to make it easier to tear raw meat from their victims. But for whatever reason, they didn’t regrow any teeth they’d lost while alive. A biological quirk of the post-apocalyptic world that had saved Joe’s ass—for the moment.

  The woman’s hands scrabbled against the floor as she tried to crawl toward Joe, but her legs remained motionless. It appeared the collision with the table had broken her back.

  “Looks like you scored some points in that round,” Nicholas said. He glanced toward the doorway. “Good luck with round two.”

  The zombies rushed into Java Jive, a mix of men, women and children, and they fell upon Joe before he could do anything—not that there was anything he could do, with his hands still bound behind his back. And unlike the old woman, these zombies had all their teeth and weren’t reluctant to use them.

  Nicholas watched for a while from his perch on the counter, unmoving, scarcely breathing, trusting the shadows to conceal him from the feeding zombies. He waited to feel something—anything—as Joe met in real life the same fate that his video avatars had encountered in the virtual world. But he didn’t feel a thing. And, really, why should he? It wasn’t his hands ripping flesh from Joe’s skeleton, wasn’t his teeth biting into warm, wet meat. He’d told Joe that his job at the insurance company had been part of his disguise as a normal human, part of his “sheep’s clothing”. But he wasn’t a wolf…not anymore. If he was any animal, he was one of those tiny white birds that stood on the back of rhinos and cleaned ticks off their pebbly hide. In the days before Blacktide, in some of his more fanciful moments, he’d sometimes thought of himself as Death Incarnate. But in this new world he was nothing more than an insignificant creature, meaningless when measured against the true sons and daughters of the Reaper.