The Last: A Zombie Novel

by Grist, Michael John

  More glass smashes. Bodies rain down from above like cats and dogs. The old lady hobbles closer. I rev the moped and race on, up onto the overpass by 134th. Pulaski Park whizzes by again, empty basketball courts baking in the morning sun, and I thump onto the bridge. There are no zombies milling here now, they're all at my house.

  I veer around the tipped delivery truck and a few abandoned cars. Halfway over, with a fresh salty breeze blowing down the river, I come upon the wreckage of the plane fuselage, lying across most of the road. The oval tube of the plane's body is blackened by fire.

  A zombie child bursts out from behind a car and I yank the handlebars left. For a moment I think I'll go off the bridge where the railings have been scoured away, but I get the moped under control and race on, leaving the child running behind.

  Scattered around the fuselage lies all manner of charred wreckage: narrow food trolleys spitting up plastic ready-meal trays, in-flight magazines like a drift of glossy snow, broken bodies, some of them crawling. There's a bank of seats tipped upside down, and zombie hands wave out from underneath like legs on a millipede. For a surreal second I imagine the bank picking itself up and coming hurtling after me, running on hundreds of zombie arms.

  I angle for a slim gap between the fuselage and the edge of the bridge. I'm not getting off and creeping through on foot now; there's too many of them behind me. I duck low on the moped, rev the engine, and cut through the gap like Evel Knievel through a ring of fire.

  Whoo!

  The road is clear beyond. There are zombies, but I'm getting good at the moped now and evade them easily. I take it down off the bridge and onto 1st Avenue, into Manhattan proper. This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done, driving into one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, but whatever, I ride on. I flash briefly on Rick Grimes riding his horse into Atlanta and laugh.

  I'm on an iron steed. A lime-green moped. When they make the movie of my life it will look pretty silly.

  I squeeze the accelerator and accelerate south. The streets are nearly deserted here, but for a preponderance of eighteen-wheelers, and I figure the infection must have hit some time deep in the middle of the night for them to be so many of them, with so few commuters and so many people trapped in their houses still, wearing pajamas.

  I speed under the green copper bridges on 125th and 124th, past a night bus, a cop car, the wreckage of a downed helicopter lying in a bonfire-like heap of shattered glass and twisted metal pilings, torn from the face of a nearby skyscraper.

  Thomas Jefferson Park whizzes by on my left, the Metropolitan Hospital on 99th on my right, where zombies wearing white gowns wander in the car parks. They all pick up my trail and follow along. Around 94th street I hit the canyon walls of skyscrapers that will flank both sides of the street all the way down to Coney Island, boxing me in.

  There are more of them on the streets now, rising up like floodwaters: businessmen and women heading home late or coming into work early, revelers in lurid makeup and skin-tight tops enjoying a walk of shame that will last until their bodies rot into the ground, a fat guy in a sumo diaper, his great gray haunches quivering with dead meat.

  I round a long stretch limo on 92nd, quietly ticking in the rising morning heat. Down 87th street I glimpse a horde wandering down a beautiful, tree-lined avenue. Everything is so surreal and seen like postcards. A KFC near 90th has its doors wedged open by the husk of a dead dog, its entrails splayed across the sidewalk in a dark inkblot of dried blood.

  Through the 80s and into the 70s I go, through the 70s to the 60s until on 65th street outside a gorgeous little sandstone church I spy the pale tide of a herd ahead, and pull sharply right. I speed three streets over to Lexington Avenue, clear of the swarm; god knows what they were gathering for. Another survivor?

  Down Lexington I put the pedal down, hitting eighty through a school zone, past Bloomingdales with its flags out on a long clear stretch to the sea. I've never seen New York so empty except in movies. The odd zombie stumbles along like a latecomer to the party over on 1st, and I whizz by. The streets are narrower here, three lanes wide and claustrophobic. My knuckles ache from clutching the handlebars so tightly. There's blood on my hands and sleeves.

  Around 56th street I catch my first glimpse of the Chrysler building's crenellated top, unbowed, jutting confidently above the other buildings. It follows me all the way down to 42nd street. On 40th I hit another horde and swing left over to 2nd Avenue, then juice it the rest of the way down to 23rd and past the Metro station stairs. There I swing right, racing along my old commute route, and halt the moped bang in front of Sir Clowdesley.

  Bizarre.

  Clowdesley looks like a New Orleans bar from the outside, all weathered brown wood and Nemo-ish spiral copper designs, with a perplexity of Hard Rock-like literary merchandise pasted to the windows and decoupaged to the walls.

  I jump off my steed and stride up to tug on the stout wooden door, only to find it's locked. I tug harder as if that'll make a difference, but it doesn't.

  I press my face to one of the windows to look inside. It's empty of course, with no sign of Lara. That doesn't mean anything though, and I've nowhere else to go. I pull my dumbbell bar out of my pack and smash through one of the windows. I can only hope it's high enough that they can't climb through. I scrape the frame clear and drag myself in.

  I've reached Sir Clowdesley!

  I sit at one of the wooden window seats in my favorite old haunt, which I am doubtless now mayor of for life, and catch my breath, thinking about all the mad, horrific, disgusting things I just saw.

  Level one cleared.

  POST-APOCALYPSE

  8 – CLOWDESLEY

  It is surreal to be here.

  I look into the shadowy interior, up the stairs to the cozy library where I used to sit and dream about zombies, and marvel at how nothing has changed. The air still smells of fine-roasted Jamaican beans. If I close my eyes I can hear the clatter of the baristas whacking milk froth off their steamer sieves.

  It was only yesterday. Now there's no one left to govern.

  I get my breath back and stand up. There's plenty to do, and Lara might come at any minute. I make purposeful strides, formulating a new plan with every step. I need to get secure, I need to put up a flag for Lara to see, and I need to figure out what the hell is going on.

  First things first.

  At the coffee bar I lift the hinged counter section and go to the door in back. Inside lies a pokey little office; desk, chair, a few neat gray filing cabinets and a thumbtack-studded corkboard with all kinds of notifications. It's darker here, lit by only sunlight from the front windows. I hold up my phone in flashlight mode.

  Lara

  She's on the work-rota Tuesday through Saturday.

  I rustle in the desk and come up with a roll of duct tape and a few marker chalk pens. An idea pings into my head like a twitter notification, and I bring it up.

  Approved.

  I climb to the coffee bar and find the release clip to pull the blackboards out. There are four of them in total, a lovely coincidence. Each is about a meter square, and I lay them out on the floor.

  A zombie rolls up to the broken window like it's a drive-thru booth, a red-haired lady with crusted blood down her throat.

  "We're closed," I tell her. She doesn't listen. I drag one of the big sofas over and upend it in front of her face. It covers the window almost completely.

  Good enough for me. She thumps against it and I tune her out.

  The blackboards are covered in stuff about coffee; gentle boasts, bits of art, prices, wit. I spray the boards down with liquid detergent and smear the old chalk trails off using a bar rag. They come away in rainbow sweeps, leaving a pure black canvas behind.

  I reflect on the infinite possibilities it offers. I am an artist, after all.

  I write my message one huge letter to a board.

  L A R A

  Four boards for four letters, like panels in a comic. I paint t
hem in bright yellow, which really pops against the black. I add a message on the bottom of the first board.

  I'm inside, Lara. It's Amo. If I'm not here when you come, please wait. I'll be back.

  Finally I draw a quick cartoon zombie at the edge of the last panel, all pale-faced and white-eyed, for fun. It's standing at a door and staring at the doorbell with its jaw hanging down, to take the edge off the reality. It's not funny, but it looks, what, poignant? Irreverent?

  I put the boards up across the windows. They lean nicely against the wall above the windows. I tape them steady with duct tape. The zombie lady outside tracks me, whacking whichever window I'm standing behind.

  When all the boards are up it's quite dark inside Sir Clowdesley. I cover the last window with bits of paper from the office, and the zombie lady stops thumping so much. That's good information to have.

  I stand and look into the darkness. I bring up my phone and double-tap it. Craziness has already invited me in, and right now I need to hear another voice.

  "What now Io?"

  "To what are you referring, Amo?" she answers.

  "All this." I spread my arm to take in the dark and empty coffee shop.

  "I believe we're in your favorite coffee shop. Aren't you mayor here?"

  I chuckle. Io is pretty good at liaising with other apps, even with the Internet down. "I am."

  "All hail the mayor," she says puckishly. "You have coffee to hand out today."

  I snort a laugh. I have all the coffee in New York.

  "I'll get right on that," I say. I pocket the phone and the hammer. It's a much better weapon than the dumbbell bar, which I slot into my bag next to its twin.

  Moving on. I need to get secure. Ideas race through my head. Paper bales didn't do a thing. Doors and windows don't stop them. I need something sturdier, a wall of some kind.

  I glance around the dark shop. I've got a few shelves, some tables and chairs, enough to reinforce the windows maybe, maybe enough to stop the flood at the door, but what good will that do me if a flood is all Lara sees?

  She won't come near Sir Clowdesley if it's thronged with bodies. I need to clear a space so she can see my sign. I need to press outward and reclaim the street.

  Nothing in here can do that. But I have an idea of what might.

  I climb the stairs into the dark of the library mezzanine. The familiar smell of old, well-worn paper surrounds me, mingling with the rich aroma of ingrained coffee. It feels like safety. In the corner lies the wood-paneled fire door in the corner. The emergency light above it glows a dull green.

  I stride over with my dumbbell club in my hand. My heart hammers in the silence. A simple twist of the lever in the handle unlocks it, and I jerk backward and it swings open smoothly.

  Beyond there's a nondescript stairwell lit by emergency lights. Cold dank air streams over my face. Raw concrete steps spiral upward in a tight oblong.

  "Hello?" I call.

  No answer comes. It makes sense there'd be no one on these steps in the middle of the night.

  Across the way are the toilets and the glow of another emergency exit. I walk over, depress the emergency bar and swing the door open. Light floods in, and I step out to a tiny and ancient loading dock, about a meter tall above the ground, like a balcony onto the inner square of a New York block, fully enclosed by buildings. It strikes me like a peaceful oasis. A cracked and weed-sprung road leads twenty yards away, overshadowed on all sides, then stops dead at a wall.

  It's a remnant, I suppose; a donut block in the middle of New York, with a road that would have once allowed resupply trucks in and out, now sealed up by buildings. I eye the surrounding structures. They all have windows and doors facing this way. There is not a single zombie about.

  I found my escape route. Through this tiny forgotten access road I can enter any building in the block, and exit at any point I like on 23rd or 24th, 1st or 2nd Avenue. It's a good thing to have.

  I duck back inside.

  The stairwell takes me up, winding. The air is clammy and cold. The door to the second floor doesn't open. I give it a few desultory hits with the bar, accomplishing nothing but putting tiny dints in the metal handle. I keep on up. The third floor is locked too, but the fourth floor door opens readily.

  It leads to a bright modern office, with glass partition walls lining a gray-carpet corridor leading away parallel to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the left. Fresh light rinses over banks of desks, computers, and the occasional whiteboard to either side of the glass corridor. A fern wilts slackly in a ceramic pot by the door, a coffee machine and water cooler face me in a tucked-away culvert, and a wooden door chock skitters away when I accidentally kick it.

  It looks like the office of a tech firm, or maybe a telesales depot. Do we have those in New York? I don't know. Probably they have their logo and a receptionist up at the far end; there must be a lift too that I've never seen, perhaps connected from one of the adjoining buildings.

  I pad along the fuzzy gray carpet, peering left and right into both sides of the office through the glass walls. Cords run everywhere like tangled veins, for phones, computers, printers, all redundant now.

  I stop in the middle. There's nobody here, but more building material than I could have hoped for. The desks look solid, and I'm pretty certain I can craft a zombie-proof wall out of them. I start planning the procedure.

  Then I hear a shuffle. It's coming from the far end, where a fuzzy gray partition rises flanked by more ferns, beyond which I guess lies the reception and the door to the lifts. I set my feet and slide the pack off my back. Seconds later a fat dead guy emerges.

  My heart does a belly flop. He pops out of cover at a lurching run, bouncing lightly off one of the glass walls, his glowing white eyes targeted on me. There's dark blood down his white shirt and staining his navy jacket. His black tie is askew like he's tried to hang himself with it and the rope broke, twisting at a painful angle. His neck is flushed red, his feet slap the floor, and there's a glinting silver shield at his waist.

  He's private security, probably patrolling the floors last night. I spin but there's no time to run back for the stairwell, and I can't cede this building anyway. I need these desks, and besides this is not a mild-looking family standing in their pajamas, this is some asshole I've never met made-up like Halloween, packing heat and picking up speed like a damn bull charging. He wants to eat me, for god's sake. I'm not going to play patty-cake with him.

  I start running. I redouble my grip on the dumbbell bar. When we're about ten feet apart I launch myself into the air, feet first and held out rigid. For a second I fly, then I impact the guy's chest full on and punch him off his feet. My heels catch on his chin and send me somersaulting through the air past him. Before I hit the ground, I have time for just one thought:

  I dropkicked the shit out of this bastard.

  Then I hit the friction-burn carpet and crack my side hard, roll and smack my ankle bizarrely off the flat glass, and wind up lying on my side with my wrist throbbing. What the shit? That was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done. It was also utterly awesome.

  I think this for about two seconds, until I get up and see another security guy coming at me from behind the divider, while his buddy shakes the fall off and starts to run too. Shit, what are they breeding back there?

  I bolt up and turn to the glass to my right. One good stab with the bar and jagged clumps of it come down, another smack affords me some clearance, and I leap through seconds before they smack chest-first into each other.

  I spring up on an office chair, which then reclines weirdly, like some asshole hasn't even taken the time to set it in a proper position, twisting my ankle. I fall onto the long bank of desks, smacking my knee on the edge and catching myself bodily on a monitor, which then folds back so I smack my face on a keyboard.

  My teeth crunch, I bite my lip, my gut and chest spark with pain where the monitor top hit, and a hand grabs at my feet.

  "Shit!" I yell, and scrabble away w
ith the pain forgotten. I roll into a chair on the other side of the bank and then out of it again, so now I'm standing on a twingeing ankle with two fat mall cops wheezing evilly at me. Finally, to put the cherry on top of the cake, they split up and come for me round either side of the desks.

  I look around desperately, remembering how little my computer did to the zombies outside my tenement. There are actually the same brand of computer here, which seems ironic.

  There's one more long bank of desks and I climb up onto it. Monitors are the only thing I can use, and even if they don't kill them, they might buy me some time. I run to the end of the desks, toward the guy I dropkicked. I pick up a screen just as he comes near, and throw it with all my strength. It arcs beautifully towards him, a perfect shot, then catches on its cables with a crack and spins, swinging hard back toward my feet.

  I cry out and leap away, dancing for my balance as it crunches onto the desk and the screen shatters. I get my balance back standing in the middle of the far bank on a keyboard and a mouse-mat, again with nowhere to go. Both of the fat zombies are right in front of me now, blocked only from grabbing my legs by a row of wheelie office chairs.

  This is utterly stupid.

  I snatch up a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and Frisbee it at the nearest of them. It cracks off his mouth and his head recoils but it makes no difference. He stumbles through the chairs blindly, reaching for my feet.

  I bring the bar down edge first. It buries in his eye socket with a horrible slurp and a geyser of gray goo. I gag and pull back, but the bar is lodged now and I just tug him closer, pulling myself off balance.

  As I'm about to fall into his embrace, I push away, relinquishing the bar. He staggers back with blood and gray matter gushing down his face, but he doesn't go down. The other one is through the chairs now and almost on me.