The Last: A Zombie Novel

by Grist, Michael John

  At the least, I learned something. Caving in their skulls doesn't kill them. Good to know.

  It's past two. I've got my bag and my USBs. It'll never be any easier or better a time than now. I survey my room a final time, then I move the chair beneath the skylight, push it wide open, and climb out onto the roof.

  It's chilly here but sunny. The roof is red slate and thankfully dry, so I'm not slipping on moss. The zombies start to breathe harder down below. From higher up they look like an ocean of grayish heads. To the south the skyline of Manhattan rises over the blocks of tenements. Still there are no jets or helicopters in the air.

  I have a loose plan, and for it this bit needs to be quiet, and fast. I slide awkwardly up to the roof's sloping crest, with my bag on my back. At the crest a line of stacked ceramic tiles runs like a monorail, which I hold onto as I pad along the roof, looking down into the square back yards behind each tenement house.

  Three houses over I see the first parked motorbike, a black and chrome beast which is surely more than I can handle on a first outing. I've never ridden a bike before, plus there's no skylight into the garret for easy access, so I slide on. Two buildings further on there's a pastel green moped on a kickstand, much more my style, and a skylight in the roof.

  I try to pry it open, and to my joy it's already unlocked. I peer in checking for zombies, but there are none. It's a rec room with a drum set in one corner and some workout weights in the other. I dangle in from the skylight frame, then drop to the carpeted floor with a soft thump.

  Breaking and entering.

  Remembering something from a movie I saw, I go to the weights. The dumbbell bars are just about right, and after I slide the weights off one, it fits in my hand perfectly as a club. I creep to the door and creak it open.

  The corridor beyond is mercifully empty. The house smells like toasted bagels, and there's a large poster of Bob Marley's face on the wall. I tread lightly to the stairs and start down. The inhabitants like pictures of Bob Marley, and flowery wallpaper. I pass by four bedrooms, two for kids with the names of the inhabitants written on hanging signs.

  Jemima

  Janiqua

  It's not a tenement then, but a single family. They must be rich. I hope they're all out. I pad down with my senses on high alert, straining for any sound. By the ground floor my heart is going crazy.

  I pad over the tiled corridor toward the back yard. I open it up, onto a classy kitchen with a polished granite breakfast bar, bright plastic stools, and a full-length glass door through which I can see the moped in the yard. I start toward it, then see someone standing off to the left by the sinks, with his back to me.

  "Uh," I say, involuntarily.

  It's a guy in a bathrobe, with long dreads. He turns, and I see he's wearing blue pajamas beneath the open robe. His skin is a gray tan and his eyes are ice-white.

  An awkward moment passes.

  "I'll just," I start, perhaps intending to finish with 'let myself out,' but he doesn't give me the chance. With his robe fluttering behind him he charges.

  "Shit," I mutter and try to get my dumbbell club up in the air. He hits me before I can bring it down and slams me back against the half-open door, which crashes shut with a juddery slam.

  I try to bounce away but his weight pins me and his outstretched fingers claw off my hoodie, his mouth is open and for a second his cheek hits my cheek and I freak out completely, spinning a frantic elbow into the side of his head.

  The force knocks him down to his knees, and I leap away and kick him in the head, the same way I'd kick out at a rat, not really wanting to touch it. I connect and his head whacks to the side but it does nothing but slow him briefly, and he keeps coming.

  "Goddamn shit," I curse, because now my foot hurts and I'm penned in and all I've got is this damn metal club.

  I bring it down on his shoulder, too squeamish to go for the head, and with a horrible crack his collarbone crumples in. He doesn't give a shit though, and rises to his feet smoothly, leaning in.

  I drop my weight low and shove him in the breastbone as hard as I can. It's enough to send him tumbling into the bright stools at the bar. There's another crack as his skull bounces off the sharp stone edge, then there's blood pouring down his back and spreading across the floor.

  My legs go weak. He's on his knees and I kick him in the chest, driving his head back into the marble again. He manages to snag my jeans leg with his hand, pulling me off balance. I bring the bar down on his forearm with all my strength. The heavy metal snaps through the bones like they were made of Graham crackers, and his arm distends like a marshmallow.

  I feel like I might puke. He barely notices. He tries to use his broken arm to get to his feet and instead bends the bones back the other way against the floor. I gag as his now-useless appendage flops like a fish. He looks at it, pushes off the stub of forearm bone so hard it pierces the skin and blood starts coming out there too, and gets onto his feet.

  He's like a Terminator. I kick him pathetically in the thigh and hit him again with the bar in the other shoulder. Another cracks rings out as his other collarbone snaps, and now both his arms sag uselessly at his sides. He gets to his feet with them dangling weirdly in front of him.

  Shit shit shit, this is too messed up. I want to go back to my room. I notice he's wearing fluffy red slippers with faces on. It's too much. I back up frantically and he follows. His blood is everywhere now, dribbling down his neck and spilling out past the white knob of bone sticking through his forearm, puddling across the dark floor tiles.

  I grab the kitchen door and plunge back through it, slamming it behind me.

  The hall beyond is lit by a half-light cast through the glass by the front door. I stand with my back to the door, panting and holding tight to the handle, waiting for him to try and force it open. Of course he doesn't. He thumps and shuffles against the door like a zombie. His blood leaks underneath. He hasn't got any functioning hands to open the door with. He hasn't got the brain for it either.

  Still, I don't let go of the handle, not even while I puke, not until one of his kids comes bounding down the stairs, Jemima or Janiqua or whatever, her ice-white eyes pinning me like a bug to the door.

  7 – RIDE

  I can't do this.

  I let go of the door handle and dart to the left as the little girl rounds the bottom of the stairs. I barrel through another door without a second to think and slam it hard behind me, shaking the walls with a loud bang.

  How many goddamn zombies?

  It's the living room, with two sofas facing each other, a big-screen TV at one end and a faux fireplace at the other, a coffee table, a big piece of Orwellian-looking art on the wall, and scrabbling around in the middle are two more of them.

  Shit. Jemima/Janiqua thumps at the door behind me, her dad thumps in the kitchen, and now I'm looking at the mom and the other kid, and it's horrible. I should have stayed in the goddamned kitchen.

  They've got crusty dark blood round their mouths, spattered with bits of purple and pink gut. The mess of it spreads to their throats, their hands, their forearms, dressed in pajamas both. The girl has a weird yellow cartoon character on hers, and there's a big splodge of quivery meat right on the creature's stupid yellow face. Their dark hair clings in ratty bands to their chins.

  "Oh God," I murmur.

  They look up at me. I crane my neck to see what they've been eating. On the floor, fouling the taupe carpet with its well-chewed red and black viscera, lies what looks like half a tortoiseshell cat.

  I puke a little in my mouth. Now I see the clumps of brown and black fur sticking to their cheeks. Oh lord. They rear up and come for me, and I start moving. I get one of the sofas between them and me, and they circle round after me, thankfully both coming the same way, and I go round ahead of them.

  Shitting ridiculous, is all I can think as we run round a second time, then a third, with them straining to reach me. I have to time it just right so they're both almost on me, or I risk having them
come round both sides at once and pincer me.

  I scour the room for a way out. The dumbbell bar hangs slackly in my hand, but I'm not doing that again. There's a dining room stretching out into a conservatory beyond the sofa, overlooking the yard, but I have just a few seconds lead time on them, not enough to open the door if it's locked.

  I go round the sofa and they follow.

  "Wait a second," I bark at them. It has no effect. "Jemima, Janiqua, mom, just wait a damn second!"

  Nothing. I get it in my head that maybe I can herd them, and start planning how I'm going to shove the coffee table here and the sofa there, like constructing a maze, but I was never good at Tetris and I can't figure it.

  We hit the fifth time round.

  "Arrgh!" I shout, and break for the dining room. They follow. I hit the door with time enough to try the handle, of course it's locked, then I'm back to circling, this time round the gorgeous redwood dining table. They clatter after me, and I pull a chair out and tip it over.

  The mom hits it hard in the shin and goes down, then the kid follows. It takes them a second to get back up. I use that time to throw another chair at them.

  "Sit down!" I shout at them. "Just take a goddamned seat!"

  The chair bounces off the mom's shoulder and she falls back, collapsing on her daughter. I throw another chair and another, shouting inane one-liners like, "Have a break, take a load off!" until all eight chairs are resting on them or either side of them.

  A brainwave strikes and I shove the table sideways over them, pressing hard against the chairs and locking them skewed against the thick mahogany dresser against the wall, with the mom and daughter tangled up in them.

  I stop and pant. I drop and look under the table. For now they're tangled in each other's limbs and the chairs, reaching out toward me still, but any second they'll break free.

  I run to the living room, snatch up the coffee table and carry it back. I slide it under the table and press it up against the chairs as well. I drag the green sofa over too, pressing it flush against the head of the table and bracing in the chairs. I get the TV and press it in tightly above the coffee table. I throw cushions from the sofa to cover them up.

  I stop and pant some more in the middle of the now-empty living room. I just made a zombie fort. The furry remnants of the cat stain the carpet by my feet. My dumbbell bar is there and I pick it up. The fort makes creaking sounds, but I don't think they can get free. Maybe they never will.

  I creep past them to the back door. It's made of glass, and there's no key apparent. I cover my eyes and hit the glass with the bar. It bounces off and sends a jarring reverberation up my arm, so I hit it harder with a stabbing motion like I've seen on TV. It smashes. I open my eyes and pound, crack, and kick the rest of the glass through.

  I step outside. Now I'm outside.

  I look into the kitchen, where the father zombie with the broken collarbones is pressing up against the back door. His face leaves bloody smears on the glass. I can see his snapped right collarbone jutting up underneath his robe. I turn to the side and throw up again, hot and acrid.

  To the moped. It's a beauty, sitting there on the brushed concrete, bright and limpid as a lily pad. Beside it there's a tiny work shed, a low bank of withered tomato plants, and a big plastic trunk spilling over with kid's toys. I go to the yard gate, slide open the bolts, and put my head out into the backstreet beyond.

  Empty. That is a delicious sight. The alley runs left and right in cracked tarmac, at one end meeting Willis and at the other turning onto 143rd.

  I duck my head back in and close the gate as quietly as I can. Probably it's only a matter of time before they find me. I dart back to the moped and pat down its front, finding the ignition keyhole right at the top of the front wheel's upright axle, set within a classy walnut bevel.

  Of course there is no key. I don't have a clue how to hot-wire it.

  At the kitchen window I press my face up close and look for the key. I scan the walls for little hooks, the sideboards for little dishes. The zombie father's face thumps against the glass in front of me, obscuring my view. What an ass.

  I slide over and look, soon enough spotting the most likely candidate: a papier-mâché soap dish in the middle of the breakfast bar, within which a tangle of keys and chains lie.

  The idea comes easily.

  I tip up the yard toy box and carry it back into the living room. With one hand I open the door to the corridor beyond, and with the other I hold up the box. Little Jemima/Janiqua is standing there looking up.

  I put the box on her head like I'm cheating at a carney game; dropping hoops over spikes in the back of a cruddy stall, then press down. Her legs give out and she crumples to the floor. I set the box on top of her and weight it down with the TV stand. She thumps but she's trapped.

  I open the front door and look out. Hello, horde. They are crammed in to the right, still staring up at the roof of my building where they last spotted me. I look only long enough to see there's a bit of clear road between me and them, in front of the library, and maybe enough.

  I jog back inside, open the kitchen door, then run. The dad lumbers awkwardly after me, his arms swaying like pendulums. I dash out the front door and he follows, out into the street in full view of the horde, where I wait for him to catch up.

  Crazy. The horde notices me and members start to peel off at a sprint. Seconds remain before they hit me, and he's still barely clear of the door. I run at him then dart to the side, vaulting over the low green fence and cutting in behind him for the door.

  I make it with seconds to spare and slam the door. They hammer against it and I run on, I've probably got moments only, so finding the key is essential. In the kitchen I snatch up the papier-mâché tray and splay the keys out onto the breakfast bar.

  Smeared blood and crushed cornflake crumbs mingle on the counter top. I pick through the keys rapidly; house, house, shed, maybe car, another car, surely moped? It has a lime green fob the same color as the moped. I snatch it up, try the kitchen door and thank Buddha it opens. The thumping gets louder behind me and I sail through into the yard, closing the door behind me.

  I straddle the moped and fumble to turn and waddle it to the yard gate. I fumble to get the key into the handsome slot. I fumble to open the yard-gate, backing up the moped to let it swing inward. I turn the ignition key, and just as a resounding crack comes from the front of the house, the engine revs into life.

  It is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I squeeze the handle for gas hard and the moped takes out from under me like rocket, jetting off and throwing itself forward into the alley and me flat onto my back.

  "Ugh," I say, as the wind smacks out of me. Sprinkly stars flood across my eyes, black beckons, and I dimly make out a throng of zombies running through the kitchen, to hammer up against the door.

  The glass fractures like ice cracking. Dizzily I watch them, beating at the glass kitchen door just yards away.

  They look so sad. Their faces and eyes are just dead. I feel like crying, that so many of them have become like this and there's nothing I can do but run.

  "I'm sorry," I whisper, because I can't help them, and I'm going to leave the little girl in her box forever. The mom and daughter will stay in that fort until they rot and become trickles of mess on the carpet like their poor dead cat. The father will wander limp-armed around his own home with all his family lost, because of me.

  A shard of glass skitters out of the door and hits the ground next to my face. That gets me moving. The glass door cracks outward and the flood pour through, drawing bloody stripes down their faces on the jagged glass.

  I jerk to my feet and leap through the gate, slamming it behind me. The moped is thank god still revving on its side, and I pull it up, get on tentatively, and squeeze the handle just hard enough to sneak a squirt of gas into its firing chambers.

  It picks up. I stay on. Together we spurt off in an amateurish zigzag down the alley, followed by a crash and a tide of zombies sec
onds later.

  Jesus shitting Christ.

  I burst out onto Willis like a bat out of hell, a good half-block ahead of my zombie comet trail. Turning south I zip past the right turn onto 143rd in a blink, briefly glimpsing the mob still flowing away from my apartment, then I'm gone and flying down the silent road, pushing sixty in a thirty zone.

  I whizz through the intersection where the Chevy exploded; it's just a black and burnt-out skeleton now. The dark slug-trail of the guy I tore in half is still there but he's gone and so am I.

  Wind whips in my hair, and I weave in and out of standing traffic. Yesterday this much stimulation would have killed me. I blink dust out of my eyes and focus on the road, already past 140th and closing fast on the Harlem River. There are a few zombies straggling through the intersections limply, a big guy in a brown jogging suit and a young girl wearing bright red spectacles with her hair up in a 70's bob. I swerve to pass them by. They pick up running after me, falling into my wake like jet skiers behind a speedboat.

  I blast through intersection after intersection with no red lights to stop me, 139th, 138th past the gourmet deli where a food truck has knocked over a fire hydrant and there's a wide pond of brackish water.

  137th, 136th, the streets pass by like postcards. Jutting out from the gas station on the corner of 135th a white semi-trailer truck lies halted across most of the road and I veer around it, only to drive almost directly into an old lady zombie. I bank hard and nearly throw myself from the moped, pulling to a stop on the hard shoulder.

  I pause to catch my breath. Maybe a minute ago I was in the house and now I'm here. A tall tenement rises to the side and a flash of movement inside catches my eye. There, perhaps on the fifth floor, someone's banging against the glass. I study the building's façade and pick out more of them, trapped like prisoners in hundreds of stacked cells, looking out at me and hammering on the glass.

  Can they see me? Seconds later the glass on one of the high-up windows goes out, falling like a spray of twinkling light, followed by a body. I catch flashes of a dark naked male, then he hits the cement with a disgusting wet thump. A second later he gets up, ruptured and bloody and with his neck broken at a hideous angle, and starts shuffling for me