George also didn’t get the zombie ‘victim’ issue right. When a zombie killed you in his movies, you came back. But real zombies don’t leave enough of their kills for anything to animate. I’ve never seen a finger or part of an intestine suddenly come to life. It’s much worse if you just get bitten and not eaten because you turn zombie in a matter of seconds. Scary, especially if you’re standing next to the bitee when it happens. That’s pretty much how they took over the world.
See, they’re fast. Very fast. George couldn’t decide between the shambling, blank-eyed version in Night or the quick killers of Dawn of the Dead, so he made both. Unfortunately, it’s the quick. They’re on you in seconds, ten or fifteen of them, so you have to get up a set of stairs. They’re not very good on stairs. That’s why I have a series of planks and ropes connecting the second stories of all these condos together—I can run from building to building when I don’t feel like fighting.
Something else George got wrong—they not only eat us, but each other. That’s good on one hand, cuts down their numbers, but bad on the other because only the best zombies are still around. And they’ll stay around. Since the supply of tasty Lives is dwindling, the smart zombies are increasingly turning to the dumb ones. I’d hoped they’d all eventually starve, like in the aforementioned 28 Days, but in that movie they were just running around pissed off. Real zombies eat well. And don’t die.
They don’t. Think of it, how do you kill a bacterial colony? Lysol? Tried that once, and all I got was a pretty mad, but fragrant, zombie chasing me until I cut his legs off. You disable, not kill. You have to burn them to a crisp or drop them in a vat of acid to assure a kill, so immobilize and leave for their friends, or starvation. Even bacteria have to eat.
Head shots, yeah that’s another one ole George messed up.
It’s funny how, in the beginning, people took their cues from Romero. Even when hordes of the damn things were racing down streets sweeping up whole populations and eating them down to the toenails, a lot of folks treated them like the Night/Dead types, so went about their business like they had all day. Stupid. Long after even the dullest had given up that trope, I still ran into Lives who bought that ‘head shot’ thing. Shotguns and pistols are only good against Lives. Who’s such a good shot they can take out the patellas of a zombie horde running up on you at thirty mph?
Samurai sword, when you absolutely, positively have to cripple every freakin’ zombie in the room.
Love mine. It’s real. Got it out of a gun shop. Sharp, man, it’s sharp. I’ve gotten pretty good with it. I watched a bunch of Toshiro Mifune movies to get the draws and cuts just right. Not Kill Bill—hokey Western concepts. Another good training film is that Robert Mitchum one, The Yakuza. Copy the way Takakura Ken moves and you can handle the sword pretty well.
Works like this. I’ll be out during the day, which is a no-no but sometimes you have to explore possible caches in full light. Zombies don’t slosh around much at night, turning into the shamblers for some reason, so we Lives live our lives by the stars, pretty much. Every once in awhile, though, gotta see the sun.
Funny, it’s like a reverse 30 Days of Night…with artistic license taken, of course.
Anyways, I’ll be nosing around some Starbucks overlooked by previous looters (love me some fresh beans, I do) when a zombie platoon will suddenly appear and come after me. I’ve got this patented move, turn like I’m running away, but I’m actually spinning on my heel while drawing the sword from over my shoulder. I keep the scabbard on my back because I have orangutan arms and it’s the only way to draw comfortably. I’ll cut through an outstretched arm and pretty much through one leg, dropping the zombie in the others’ path, and they fall over him like a Three Stooges’ routine. Then it’s a matter of slicing through the pile, taking out legs and arms until they’re just a bloody mass of torso, snapping at me and each other. Skedaddle before the growling and screeches attract another patrol, come back a few nights later, hoping some Lives haven’t beaten me to it, and load up. There’ll still be a few writhing torsos, but all they do is chew on their neighbors.
You’d think, with all the close contact, I’da been bitten. They’ve come close, but I wear anti-stick gloves and body armor and stay just out of range. I get splashed with zombie blood quite a bit, of course, and have swallowed my share, but never suffered any effects. Odd. A bite turns you, but swallowing the blood doesn’t. That drove the CDC nuts before they were overrun. A few of their Top Scientists posited it wasn’t bacteria but Something Else Entirely, a new life form; a bacrus, a viteria. Whatever. I keep taking penicillin, avoid bites, and go merrily on my way.
Phil thinks it’s just a matter of time before we all turn, but I’m not convinced. He said my penicillin was just hardening the Something Else Entirely and eventually I’d have to eat truckloads to keep from turning. Phil is a bit of a pessimist. I laugh and offer him a couple of ampicillins to go with his Bowmore. “Get that crap away from me,” but he’s grinning. Phil is all right.
We Lives have a pretty robust social life, even though we’re in competition. Just so many food stores in the greater metropolitan area, ya know. But, it’s friendly competition and we make pains not to tread each other’s territory, disputes generally resolved through a drinking contest or an actual dual, if the disputants are just too mule headed. We don’t like doing that, because there just aren’t that many of us. Judging by the growing length of names on the Wall of Heroes behind the bar, there are fewer each week.
We meet on Friday nights at Live Music, which is Kelly’s dive on the eleventh floor of some building down by the river, ‘Live’ having a wry connotation. We sing rounds, lots of old Irish music like “Danny Boy” and “Wild Rover.” Pretty good time had by all. We trade gossip and will, at some point, head to the back and the Breeders. There’s the pleasure aspect, of course, but also the duty to renew the species. Not that we’re overly successful. We’ve had only two or three pregnancies come to term, and only one of those actually lived past two years. He’s ten now, cute as button, and turning into quite the knife man. He helps Kelly out and his mom will make an appearance, to great cheers from We Happy Few. Good to hear a contralto among all those basses.
Wish we could hear more, but there just aren’t a lot of women. They just didn’t have the strength and speed to fend off zombies. Those who survived made their way to Breeder locations and set up shop, safe and prosperous, because we pay with food and whatever we can find. It isn’t some macho chauvinism causing all this, just the natural order of things. Feminism is great in decadent, fat times, but not so in a state of nature.
So we have no girlfriends or wives and a tacit agreement not to let jealousy divide us, but, of course, it does. Human nature. A couple of the names on Kelly’s Wall are there because guys can’t control themselves, and there’s even a couple of female names for the same reason. Too bad.
And because guys can’t control themselves, there’s a lot of pairing among the boys. Fine. If you gotta stick it somewhere and can’t wait your turn, knock yourself out. I don’t swing that way, but don’t begrudge those who do. I draw the line with zombie relations, though. Not that it happens a lot, but you hear stories. If I ever came across a Live doing a zombie, I’d cut both of them in half. Not only is it revolting, it’s species betrayal. Not going to stand for that.
And I’m not going to stand for some damn zombie driving a dump truck, either.
I watch, utterly amazed, through my peephole as the truck lumbers by. Takes me a moment to gather wits because the last thing I expected was some truck shaking me to wakefulness, but I grab my sword and a backup tanto and head across a plank bridge, keeping up with the truck. It’s full daylight and I’m armored. I’m always armored, even when sleeping, because I’m not all that convinced zombies won’t one day figure out how to get up the stairs. I mean, hey, there’s one driving a truck, who saw that coming?
The zombie is not going very fast so it’s not that hard staying with him until I get
to the end of my complex, then I have to go downstairs and that slows me down as I recon ground floors; wouldn’t do to pop up in the middle of grazing zombies. The street slows me down even more because zombies are sharp sighted and, apparently, have a dog’s ability to smell so I hug two story buildings in case I gotta run. But, I manage to keep the truck in sight.
It’s closed so I have no idea what the zombie is hauling, if anything. Probably some vestigial memory, this particular zombie prompted to find an old truck and drive it around just like when he was human, just like that badass zombie in Romero’s Land of the Dead going out to the gas pumps every time the bell rang. I expect the truck to crash at any moment.
But it doesn’t. It makes turns…right out the city…which is a problem. In the ‘burbs, there’s a dearth of second story homes, all mostly single story ranchers. No Live in his right mind lives out here. No zombie does, either, congregating downtown hoping to snag an unwary Live and a hot meal, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few crazy zombies lurking about. “Crazy zombies.” Ha.
So I lose sight of the truck because I’m looking for trouble but I can still hear it. You can hear everything miles away now, since traffic has died down a bit, hardy har har. This must be the first bit of traffic since all the gas went bad and all the batteries died.
Which, of course, poses another question—how the heck did a zombie manage to find the last functioning truck in America?
Alarm bells go off in my head. Who would have such a truck stored and lovingly maintained all this time and none of us heard about it? And a zombie gets it started and is merrily driving it around the city?
No freakin’ way.
Something else must be happening, probably bad, and I’m not one to put up with something bad happening in my general vicinity. It’s how I’ve stayed alive so long, being proactive. A lot of the other guys hunker down and rely on barricades and shotguns to keep them going, but that’s stupid. George C. Scott said in Patton, “Fortifications are a monument to man’s stupidity,” or something like that. Gonna get caught in there one day, I tell ‘em. They tell me to screw off. Fine.
I’m for taking the fight to the enemy so I’ll hide up on a stairwell and wait for a zombie patrol to wander by then drop down among them, slash slash, pile of growling, snapping torsos and I’ll scream real loud and another patrol will come busting in and slash! slash! again, and soon there’s a mountain of mad zombie heads all trying to get me using their tongues to crawl, for chrissake. Makes me laugh and I leave, knowing another patrol will be there moments later to eat up what’s left. Cuts their numbers down somewhat and keeps them away from my hideyhole.
But if they’re out driving around…
I pelt down several alleys, knowing I’ve got places I can barricade a door and fight if need be, until night comes. The truck is still on the air but, after a couple of miles, I stop because…wait a minute…wait a minute.
That’s not one truck anymore. That’s several trucks. A zombie convoy?
What. The. Hell?
I haven’t been out to this part of the city in a decade or more but I remember the layout. Typical industrial sector, office and factory parks surrounded by the plebes’ residences, all anchored around a series of reservoirs because you gotta have water. If I recalls me geography right, there’s a lovely reservoir in the direction of all that truck traffic.
What. The. Hell?
What would a bunch of trucks be doing at a lake? A bunch of trucks driven by zombies?
No way.
Maybe somebody’s figured out how to enslave zombies and is using them as an unpaid work force for some kind of project out there, like in that old 40’s flick King of the Zombies. Putting zombies to good use, man, that would be revolutionary. Must check this out.
I sprint down the street, catching myself at the corner like Wile E. Coyote on one leg and jumping back inside a partially collapsed garage because one must be careful even though a zombie chain-gang workin’ in the coal mine has me all a-giggle. Good thing, because right about that time I catch sight of another truck moving on the street behind me.
No, not a truck…a bus. Driven by, and filled with, zombies, which floors me. I have to rub my eyes a couple of times and pinch myself to make sure this isn’t some bizarre dream I’m having. What, has the King of the Zombies established a Public Transit for the Undead? Getting them out to the job site like a bunch of cubicle drones?
Man, who IS this guy?
The only way to find out is follow and, fortunately, the bus is slower and more cumbersome than the truck so I keep up. There doesn’t seem to be any patrols so I can move somewhat openly.
The roads here turn country pretty quick—no buildings to use as shelter. Lots of woods, though, and I could climb a tree but I’m not sure if that’s wise. Zombies could be like bears and just wait until I fell out from starvation. Best not to be seen. Or smelled. I crawl through the brush by the side of the road, waiting for upwind breezes.
The whole time, zombie-filled buses and trucks are going by. Quite the operation, this. I throw caution to the upwinds and begin running beside the road, keeping out of sight as much as possible…
…until the smell hits me.
Gagging, I stagger back into the thick brush and clamp a hand over my nose. After all these years, I’ve quite the tolerance for rotted meat, there always being some kind of fresh kill baking in the sun, either zombie or Live, but this! It’s like a gas cloud of decay and rot. I gasp for air at the base of a tree. The rot is so thick you can taste it.
Man, how does the King of the Zombies cope?
I crawl up some rise seeking breathable air. Back when I was in the Army, I was in really good shape, but the one thing that always did me in was the freakin’ Low Crawl. I am definitely not as in good shape as I was back then so a few minutes to catch my breath. Okay. Cautiously, I peer over the top.
Quite the panoramic view. The reservoir is below, decent sized with an earthen dam on one side and an access road all the way around, woods right up to the water’s edge. Urban lake gone all to seed with remnants of picnic areas and outbuildings scattered about. Below the dam is a spillway, and I can see water pooled down there. Pretty deep and frothy.
Frothy?
There’s a line of dump trucks on the far side, one backed down a ramp and lifting its load while three or four others wait behind. A couple of zombies emerge from the pump house, look down at the spillway, then go back inside. Moments later, the water changes flow.
They’re running the pump house?
Astounding, and I shift for a better view. Now I can see buses on the other side of the spillway. There’s some kind of retainer creating a secondary lake below the spillway, but that’s recent construction. It’s a makeshift cistern of some kind, but not running any wheels, or dynamos, or anything like that—too slow—the water just pooled there, brown and scummy. Several pipes are stuck in the lower half of it and, at each end, a zombie stands at a turn wheel. A line of zombies snakes back from the end of the pipes back to the buses, where new zombies disembark and join the queue.
I blink. What are they doing? The zombie at the wheel turns it and brown sludge flows out, where a queued zombie, lips around the pipe end, drinks long and deep then shuffles back up the hill to the bus. Another zombie replaces him and the attendant zombie turns the wheel and the guys come out of the pump house and measure progress and the dump trucks keep coming.
So they do drink water…or a water facsimile…because whatever’s in that cistern’s only resemblance to water is a liquid state. There ain’t a Live in sight, so no King of the Zombies. This is an all-zombie all-the-time operation.
What’s in the cistern, mac?
I focus my attention on the trucks. Whatever they’re dumping feeds the cistern, and given the nature of zombie nourishment, can’t be good. I watch a load slip out. Looks like a mass of brown and black dirt with lumps interspersed, say unprocessed compost. The zombies have broken into an old sewage plant and
started a hauling operation? Why didn’t they all just congregate at the sewage plant and slake thirst there, why all the effort?
You think zombies are logical?
I chuckle and that notches the tension down a bit. Okay, this IS artifact, a series of half remembered pre-zombie tasks. Some recalled driving trucks, others recalled loading trucks. Others remember picnics, so they head out on buses driven by reawakened drivers. Nothing more than rote activity, twitches of a dead nervous system, just a series of coincidences making it look like there’s planning and forethought.
But if it quacks like a duck…
Uneasy, I peer at the trucks. They’re the key, or, more accurately, what they’re hauling, is. I begin another agonizing crawl just short of the ridge top, heading towards the dump point. After about seven days and as many layers of epidermis, I’m there, panting. The trucks are using the road right below me and I peek over. Dang, the load’s covered with canvas.
But the canvas is moving.
I blink. Gotta be the truck’s motion but, no, the canvas is shaking and bulging and pulsing so the load is alive. What, animals? Puppies from some farm? Oh man, zombies are just the worst, ain’t they?
The truck backs down the ramp. There’s a fortunate gap between trees limbs and I can look directly at the back of the truck as the zombie driver tilts the bed and it flaps open…
…dumping a giant load of gnashing, screeching zombie heads and parts into the spillway.
Man, zombies are dumping zombies, or what’s left of zombies, into the water!
Now why in the world are they doing that?
Chivalry Is Dead Page 5
