“Wait, wait,” he whispered as he stepped in front of me and peeked through the peephole. Once again, I was annoyed to realize he was right.
“So?” I whispered when he remained staring there for what felt like a long time.
“Mr. Gonzales is out there,” he said as he shot me a look from the corner of his eye.
“The super?” I asked, my eyes widening in surprise. I don’t think I’d ever seen him up on the third floor. Hell, he was hard to find in his own office downstairs. “Do you think the old bastard is actually checking in on residents?”
Dave shook his head. “I doubt it. I can’t picture him giving a damn about anyone but himself. Still, he’s not stumbling around doing that herky jerky dance the zombies all seem to have down pat, so do you want to risk talking to him and see if he’s human? Or at least as human as he’s ever been.”
I nodded without hesitation. Just the thought of other living people was a good one. Even if it was that asshole.
“He might be able to help us,” I said. “Or even want to join up when we leave the city. If we’re going to get out of here, we might need more bodies. Um… you know, live ones. I don’t think dead ones are going to be a problem.”
Dave clearly agreed with my assessment because without further discussion he opened the door and called out, “Mr. Gonzales?”
The super turned to face us and seemed surprised to see us coming out of Jack and Amanda’s apartment. Of course we were carrying an arsenal of weapons, so I’m sure that didn’t help in the “shocker” department.
“What are you doing there?” he asked, his light Spanish accent sharp as he moved toward us.
He looked just as mean and obnoxious as ever and I found myself relaxing, even relieved to see the fucker. He was one little flash of normal in a world of chaos.
“Just getting some supplies,” Dave said as he shut the door behind us.
Mr. Gonzales glared as he looked from one of us to the other. “That isn’t your apartment.”
“No, but the tenant, Amanda, is in our apartment. She said it was okay for us to go get the guns,” Dave explained.
I expected the super to say something about the weapons, but instead he shook his head.
“Amanda?” Gonzales asked. “The little dumb one that lives with the big dumb one here?”
I nodded. Awesome. I wondered how he described us when we weren’t around.
“That’s her, but Jack…”
I stopped as I thought of poor dead Jack on my bathroom floor, just another victim of Dr. Phil.
Mr. Gonzales seemed to understand my silence. “He isn’t okay, eh?”
Dave must have sensed my discomfort with the topic because he changed it. “Hey, is anyone else left in the building? Maybe we survivors could all meet up and talk about some strategies to stay alive.”
Mr. Gonzales tilted his head and for a moment he just stared at Dave. I shifted the six guns I had, three on each shoulder and they were starting to get really heavy. Why couldn’t he just say something so we could go back to our apartment and I could put these damned things down before my shoulders exploded?
“Mr. Gonzales?” Dave asked, his brow wrinkling. “You have been watching television, haven’t you? You know that there has been an attack or something, right? People are getting sick and trying to… well, eat other people.”
Mr. Gonzales smiled. “Of course, I know that. Now why don’t you get little Amanda and come with me? We’ll find the others. I’m sure we can find others.”
I stared. There was something weird about how he was acting, not that Mr. Gonzales had ever been normal. He always stared at my tits when he talked to me. Today, though, he was staring at my head. Not my face. My head.
He tilted his chin and in the sickly yellow lights of the hallway I caught a reddish glint in his iris. Actually it was more orangey as the yellow and red met.
“Fuck, David!” I cried as the situation became clear. “He’s a zombie. He’s transitioning!”
Mr. Gonzales smiled and through his clenched teeth a thin version of the black zombie sludge seeped through. The guns on my back were heavy and I must have seemed like the easiest prey because the super lunged for me. I tried to dodge, but couldn’t quite get out of the way with my load of firearms slowing me down.
He hit my shoulder and I slammed into the fire extinguisher box. The sharp metal edge jammed against my skin and I couldn’t help but cry out in pain even as I continued struggling to get away.
Gonzales grabbed for my shirt and caught a handful of the stained white linen. It tore as I yanked against him, but that only made him grip harder, fisting the material as he pulled me back toward him. I smashed into his fat belly, pulled to his clammy chest. He was so close I could smell his breath and it smelled like cigarettes and death.
The transition was happening faster now. His skin was graying, his eyes fully red as his mouth snapped at me like some kind of rabid dog. I strained my neck to get away, to back up but I could only manage six or eight inches of space between my face and his.
There was a huge bang from behind me and suddenly the teeth and head were gone in an explosion of acrid gun powder and smoky blackness. Brains splattered on the wall, on our door; they seemed to fly everywhere. I felt the back spray of them on my face and made sure to keep my mouth shut as I turned my head in horror.
The smell of cordite and blood hung in the air as I turned toward my husband. David stood to my left, his smoking rifle still positioned on his shoulder. He was panting as he stared at the headless corpse of Mr. Gonzales. The dead super slumped over and ended up propped against the fire extinguisher box at a weird angle.
He still had my shirt in his hand and I tugged helplessly to get free, but his dead, clenched fingers wouldn’t open. Finally I tore the fabric, leaving a fluttering remnant of white caught in his hand. Like a flag of surrender.
“Are you bitten?” David asked, his voice weird and faraway to my ringing ears.
I looked at Gonzales again and shivered. The blood at his empty, gaping neck hole was black, not red.
Suddenly Dave grabbed me and pulled me away from the sight. He spun me around and shook me hard.
“Damn it, Sarah, did you get bitten?”
My haze cleared as I looked down at my arm. Our super had made finger-shaped bruises on my skin, but I didn’t see any broken flesh or black teeth marks to indicate my certain doom.
“N-No,” I stammered. “I wasn’t bitten.”
Dave grabbed me and pulled me against his chest in the hardest hug he’d ever given me. His heart was beating pretty fast. So was mine. Even though we’d been attacked before, this was different. I had been weighted down, too off-balance to really fight or escape. Without Dave there to save me, I would have been undead for sure.
He let me go and looked around. “There are probably more of them in the building,” he said.
I nodded as we walked away from what was left of Mr. Gonzales. “He was only just transitioning, so he would have been bitten ten or fifteen minutes ago, maybe.”
David didn’t respond, but opened our apartment door carefully. “Amanda?”
She popped out from our kitchen with a sunny smile of welcome. I stared. Once again, the former cheerleader looked terrific. In the time we’d been gone, she’d changed out of her bloody clothes into some of mine and washed herself up, I guessed in the kitchen sink since I couldn’t imagine her climbing over Jack in the bathroom.
She’d even found an apron some hopeful relative had gotten me when we got married. It said, “Cooking for two” with a little arrow that pointed at her belly.
Why hadn’t I thrown that thing away?
She was a regular fucking Donna Reed now.
“Oh lookie, you found his guns,” she said with all the excitement of a kid.
Dave stared at her, I think as stunned by her absolute obliviousness as I was. “Yeah. Didn’t you hear the shot in the hallway?”
“Hmmm?” Amanda said. “Oh, yeah. I
heard a bang. I thought it was a really loud car backfire. Did you have to fire the gun?”
Dave was gritting his teeth and I could tell that he was on the edge of a meltdown of biblical proportions. Honestly, so was I, but I thought he might not be able to control it, so I stepped in between them and placed a hand on his chest gently.
“Hey,” I said to him. “Why don’t you take all these guns and put them in our bedroom so we can figure out the weapons and ammo situation after dinner. Then maybe we could roll Jack into the hall or out the window or something so that we can each shower. I know I don’t want this disgusting shit on me anymore and I’m sure you feel the same way.”
Dave kept his eyes trained on Amanda for another minute before he looked at me.
“Fine,” he said, the word accentuated as he reached out to take some of the guns I had almost died for.
He left me with a shotgun and shells before he went into the bedroom. I loaded the gun carefully.
“Better check the pizza,” Amanda said in a singsong voice.
She was still totally oblivious to the fact that she had just narrowly escaped getting killed, and this time not by a zombie.
I shook my head as I went to the phone. By now I was sure my parents were freaked out by the news of the problems in Seattle. In fact, as I stared at our machine, I was kind of surprised that they hadn’t called already.
When I picked up the phone, I realized why. Instead of a dial tone to greet me, there was only a repetitious beeping sound that indicated the line was dead. I stared at the receiver for probably a full minute before I replaced it and went for my cell.
My bloody purse was in its usual spot by the door, though I swear I don’t remember putting it there. I snatched my cell out of the side pocket, wiped a smudge of blood off the screen with my mangled sleeve and powered it on (I always turned it off in Dr. Kelly’s office). But when it lit up, there were no messages on it, either, and the “No Service” sign glowed on the screen.
I looked back and forth between both phones in my hand as a horrible realization hit me. Whether by government assistance or zombie, we no longer had a way to call for help.
And no way to let anyone know that we were alive.
Never go to bed angry. Terrified is okay.
Amanda was asleep on the couch by the time I finished logging the non-perishable foods and putting them into a couple of big boxes to take with us the next day.
Since I don’t cook very often, I’m sorry to say we didn’t have much of use in our cupboards. There was some old soup, a few Power Bars, a really sad box of store brand chocolate cereal. Oh, and Pop Tarts. Wonderful Pop Tarts in a variety pack I’d found on sale a couple of weeks before.
I hoped that Amanda and Jack’s apartment would give us a little more booty when we stopped there on our way out, but after seeing the sad state of it earlier in the day, I somehow doubted it. In fact, I was starting to think I wouldn’t want anything they had.
Another box and a backpack sat by the door as I entered the main room. Those contained our weapons cache which now consisted of the guns, ammo, a big butcher cleaver I didn’t even know we owned, Dave’s baseball bat and my heavy flashlight. Once again, I wished we had more. Where did people find their missile launchers in zombie movies anyway?
Still, it would get us going and I hoped we’d find provisions along the road, or even make it to someplace untouched by the outbreak where we could just go to a store and resupply while we waited for all of this to blow over.
I walked to the couch and looked down at Amanda. She was a couple of years younger than me and right now she looked even more than that. Like a teenager and in some twisted way I’d become a twenty-seven-year-old Mom to her. My only consolation was that she was out of the diaper phase.
I grabbed a blanket from the back of the other chair and spread it over her. She didn’t wake up, though she did snuggle down deeper into the couch cushions.
I shook my head as I moved away from her. I had no idea how she could do it. I doubted I’d be sleeping much tonight, that was for sure. Not with zombies still roaming around the apartment complex. But I guess she somehow trusted that Dave and I would take care of the situation… and her. Which was sweet in a really weird way.
I walked into our bedroom to find Dave already under the covers. The loaded rifle was propped up on his nightstand and I could see he had put some easily slipped on shoes at the ready, too. I did the same and put my shotgun within reach before I got in beside him.
The smaller television we kept on the dresser was on and he was watching some channel. This time it wasn’t CNN since we don’t get cable in the bedroom, but a local affiliate that had gone all news all the time in the crisis. You know, “Zombie Watch, 2010.”
A really freaked-out anchorwoman with no makeup was sitting at the desk.
“Let me repeat that information again. Yes, the phone systems in the Greater Seattle area are currently down. And we’ve had reports that most cell phones are also not getting service. State and local governments have denied any involvement in the loss of telephone communications, and it may have to do with an outbreak of the plague at a local tower facility earlier in the day.”
I moaned. “Maybe it’s just crappy reception.”
“Told you to upgrade to a better system,” Dave said as he leaned forward and continued watching the small, fuzzy screen. “Can you hear me now?”
“Right now we can update you with some shocking numbers,” the anchor continued. “The Centers for Disease Control is telling us that based on the aggressive spread of the outbreak, up to a million residents could already be stricken with what people on the streets are calling zombieism.”
“Ha,” Dave said in a flat tone and shot me a look. “Told you so. Did I call it or what?”
“I’m sure you thought of it first, dear,” I said as I patted his arm.
“I’d like to go now to Dr. Emmett Elias, a University of Washington professor who worked in the lab where the outbreak apparently started. Joining us in the studio is Dr. Elias. Thank you for braving the drive across town, sir.”
The camera panned back, and sitting next to the woman at the anchor desk was a fat, balding man in a really bad suit. Like beyond Men’s Warehouse. I did not like the way he looked.
“Thanks for having me, Karen,” he said with a smug smile.
She frowned at him. “Dr. Elias, can you tell us exactly what your lab was studying that could have caused such a terrible outcome as we’ve seen in our city today?”
The guy looked at her, his gaze sharp and his lips thin with anger. “No, I’m afraid I’m not authorized to discuss what we were specifically studying in the lab.”
The reporter stared at him and Dave laughed. “She’s ready to punch the guy, look how freaked out she is.”
“I hope she does,” I said as I glared at the doctor. “Asshole ruined my city and nearly got us all killed.”
“Sources have told us that there may have been some government grants associated with the research,” the reporter pressed. “Was this some kind of government program? What branch was it related to?”
The researcher’s beady eyes narrowed. “Well, it is a state school, Miss Finch. Federal and state funding helps us provide many programs.”
“And do most of those programs lead to everyday citizens turning to cannibals all around us?” the woman asked, her tone rising enough that it was clear she was as on edge as anybody. “Do you know that I saw a five-year-old child eating a cop on the way to the studio tonight, Dr. Elias?”
There was some hustle and bustle off-camera and the reporter blushed as she glanced at the screen. “I’m sorry. But you must see that people deserve to know more about what has caused this terrible outbreak that seems to be spreading at an outrageous rate.”
Dr. Elias looked at her, tilting his head. I frowned. The way he was moving reminded me of something.
“It’s quite all right, Miss Finch,” he said. “You have lovely hair.”
I nodded because the second the doctor complimented the reporter on her hair, I realized that his twitchy, weird movements reminded me of the super in the hallway. Mr. Gonzales had also turned his head all weird as he looked at me and so had Dr. Kelly before she attacked in her office. All zombies reminded me of a dog in an alley or the freaking alien in the Alien franchise.
I think the reporter realized what he was at the same moment because she let out a gut-curdling scream and pushed her rolling chair away from the desk. But she wasn’t fast enough. The doctor lunged across the space between them and grabbed her. He yanked her close and then his teeth sank deep into her neck.
Dave and I both lurched back with combined cries of, “Oh!”, like we were watching football or something. Red blood spurted around his black teeth from the wound, spraying across the desk. A few little specks even hit the camera lens so now we watched the rest of the horrifying scene through a slightly reddish haze of smeared blood.
A whole bunch of people came running from all directions. See, they still ran toward an attack in those days because we were all so shocked by what was happening around us. I guess we figured we could do something. We hadn’t fully realized that wasn’t any way to help someone who was bitten except to blow their head off before they turned into the living dead and lost all control of who and what they were.
A group of four men grabbed for the doctor, who was pulled off the bleeding, wailing reporter. She lifted her hand to her neck and when she saw blood coat her fingers, her screams grew even louder. The zombie doctor, both in that he created zombies and now was one himself, groaned and smashed his teeth at his captors. His higher brain function was clearly gone now and he thrashed about like a trapped animal.
Someone grabbed the boom mike from the stand above and starting hitting him until the doctor and the crew who held him slipped off frame behind the desk. The only thing we heard were growls and the only thing we saw for a minute or even more was the crewman’s hand as it lifted up and then slammed down behind the desk. With each smashing blow the mike came up more bloodied and gruesome.
Married with Zombies: Book 1 of Living with the Dead Page 6
