I've Been Deader

by Adam Sifre

  Back in the kitchen, Fred walked to the back door, opened it and stepped outside.

  Chapter 14

  Tasks

  One long day, no doubt about that. Fred was exhausted and dead on his feet. He hadn't slept a wink since becoming a zombie; small wonder he shambled everywhere these days.

  He sat on an old-fashioned park bench covered in flaking green paint and facing a children's playground, currently empty. Lacking the necessary motor skills to use a Blackberry, he found himself able to enjoy a few moments of peace and quiet and review his mental To-do list.

  Fred's To-Do List

  1. Raid CVS for an eye patch. Check.

  No slave to vanity, Fred nevertheless loved his new eye patch. Covering the hole formerly occupied by his right eye wouldn't allow him to pass as a breather. Hell, the stench alone would give him away if he strayed upwind from anything living. Still, there was no reason to advertise his current status to the armed and curious. He wondered if the eye patch would have improved his chances with Aleta. He mentally sighed.

  No use crying over spilled blood. But still ...

  2. Find Broadcasters. No check.

  His control trick wasn't perfect. For starters, he needed to see the zombie before he could control it. Fortunately, once he issued a command the zombie would execute it or die again trying, whether Fred was around or not. More troubling however, was his inability to read their minds. At first this hadn't bothered him. Reading the average zombie's mind would be as exciting as watching a Best of C-Span marathon.

  Then he started receiving flashes from a zombie somewhere out west. A picture of a bedroom, some kind of uniform on the floor. Another flash showing an open jail cell, two mutilated bodies on the floor. Flash of some kind of movie cartoon - Nazis running back and forth, shooting at the screen. Not a movie exactly, but he couldn't recall the word he was searching for. The flashes from the unknown corpse weren't very useful. He had never seen the zombie and so couldn't control it. But getting his hands on a local broadcaster would be invaluable. Imagine sending one into a breather camp. Instant recon, an intriguing idea.

  3. Floss. No Check.

  Try as he might, he couldn't get the last of Aleta out of his mouth. All day his black tongue worried at the last bits stuck behind his molars. Time to go our separate ways, my dear Aleta. It was fun while it lasted, but we both need closure.

  He'd already forgotten exactly what she looked like or even why he loved her. Still, a vague sense of unease tugged at him whenever he thought about her. So he thought about something else.

  Like:

  4. Find information on Timmy. No Check.

  He had a son - big deal. Zombies ate loved ones all the time. Still, Fred couldn't deny having a mindless obsession with finding Timmy. Questions about his son pulled at his thoughts like a lodestone. Was he a breather? Dead? Undead? Was he safe or in danger? Is he dangerous?

  He thought back to the day he turned. He'd taken Timmy to the shelter in his son's school basement. It was already overcrowded when they had arrived, as by then the shit had pretty much hit the fan. The air reeked of smoke and panic. Fred was having second thoughts. A room packed with nervous adults might be more dangerous than staying outside. If he hadn't already been bitten, he might have left with his son to take their chances on the road. In the end it was Timmy who decided for them. He hugged Fred tightly around the waist for a few seconds.

  "Love you, Dad."

  "Love you too, pal. I won't be long. I'll get Mom and then we'll get out of here. Go someplace safe until this all sorts out," he lied.

  Timmy gave him a smile that didn't come close to touching his eyes. "Okay."

  His son didn't cry. Even then, terrified and wanting his mother in the worst way, he put on a brave face. Timmy hated crying in front of people. Fred remembered a day three or four years ago, right before Christmas, when he had taken his son to a playground much like this one. One of Fred's greatest joys, he remembered, was spending time together in the park in those fantastic hours between after school and before dinner. On that particular day, one of the older boys - a snot-nosed fifth grader named Rob or Roy or some such bullshit - had dared Timmy to go down the 'big boys' slide backward. Timmy took the dare and took a fall. He didn't shed a tear on the playground, on the way to the hospital or when the doctor manhandled his poor arm into the sling. Only back home, alone in bed, had he let himself go. It broke Fred's heart to hear it and the hardest thing he had ever done was to stay out of his son's room that night.

  He absently raised a hand to wipe away tears that weren't there; would never be there again. Like son, like father.

  The incessant yapping of a toy Poodle interrupted his thoughts. A few moments later the little monstrosity named Niki ran toward Fred from the other end of the park, followed by Fred's reason for being here.

  The silent little girl ran after the dog. Nearly doubled over, arms stretched out before her, she gained on Niki. Fred was surprised at how fast she ran. If Red Bull ever expanded its market to the undead, he had just found their spokesperson.

  Fred didn't know why undead children were so much quicker than adult zombies. He had a theory that nature or evolution or whatever provided the talent to compensate for their relative physical weakness. It made sense. It also explained why some zombies had different talents. Some talents would help them survive and some wouldn't. The ones that died took their useless talents with them and the ones that survived passed their talents on. He recalled seeing one zombie with the ability to set fires with its hands. It demonstrated this by scratching its ass and setting itself ablaze.

  The girl ran behind Niki, her wild, filthy blonde hair flying behind her. Both continued to run straight at him. Even for an undead child, this one was fast. A few moments later Niki's yaps turned to yelps as the girl, still running, held her struggling catch in her outstretched hands.

  Fred transmitted a simple command and she came to an abrupt halt. For a brief second he thought she looked angry, but that was impossible. Niki whined, yelped and peed. In his mind, Fred made a mental picture of 'Paradise Chinese Buffet'.

  Go, he thought. The girl turned and started to run the way she had come.

  Wait. Obedient, she stopped.

  Eat first.

  5. Recruit Runners. Check

  Chapter 15

  Government Work

  The text on screen jumped and jittered worse than a liberal at a Rush Limbaugh surprise party.

  President Dobbs ignored the teleprompter and shifted into ad-lib mode, making a mental note to declare a national holiday in memory of the day when something went right - should that ever happen.

  "I don't need to tell you, my fellow Americans, that we stand at a crossroads, the likes of which recorded history has never seen. Not since the early years of the Obama administration and its relentless pursuit of national health care, has the American way of life been so openly threatened."

  He paused to clear his throat, letting the viewers see their leader caught up in the emotion of the moment, and giving him a few seconds to figure out what to say next.

  "But I do not fear for this country. I do not. Americans have a proud tradition of gaining strength from adversity. Nobility through sacrifice. Like our fathers and their father's fathers before them, we will prevail. By doing everything that is necessary to ensure victory. No matter how great or how daunting the obstacles placed on the road to victory may seem."

  Behind the camera his Chief of Staff and the Vice President exchanged worried looks. It didn't take a genius to guess what they were thinking. Dealing with an army of undead and a bunch of rabid radio talk-show hosts was bad enough. They didn't need an ad-libbing president fucking up the works on National TV.

  Dobbs decided to wrap it up before he started channeling George Bush. Better to forget what needed to be said than to say something he would later need the public to forget.

  "And so, I make this promise to you, my fellow citizens. We will eradicate this plague during
the first term of my administration, and, contrary to what some of the more vocal critics of my administration have repeated time and time again, we will do so without raising taxes on ninety-eight percent of the population."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Dobbs saw his Chief of Staff relax. The one unbreakable rule - whether it was subsidizing corn farmers, instituting a new homeland security agency, or eradicating flesh-eating zombies - was always to assure the people that someone else was going to pay for it.

  "We will succeed. Our children will return to school again. Our hospitals will reopen. As will your neighborhood food markets. We will stay the course and we will prevail. Good night, and God bless the United States of America."

  He stared confidently at the camera for a full ten seconds after the red 'on air' indicator winked out. Better safe than sorry. As if on cue, beads of perspiration peppered his forehead. Like all good politicians, Dobbs never broke a sweat in front of the cameras.

  "What the FUCK is going on?" Dobbs shouted. "I am the leader of the free world and I can't get through one god damned speech without the teleprompter going bat shit? I mean FUCK."

  He'd only been president for eighteen months, but in that short time he had managed to put on about twenty pounds and ten years. Forget zombies. Shit like this was killing him.

  One of the studio monitors was tuned in to ZNN, where Newt Rhodes, opposition leader and all-round dick, was already telling the American people why the Dobbs administration was incompetent. Adding a little more piss to his lemonade, ZNN kept the 'Zombie Alert' banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen, informing the people that for the seventy-second day in a row the zombie threat level was red.

  When a technician tried to remove the mike from inside his suit lapel Dobbs swatted the hand away. "I can do it my goddamned self, goddamn it. Al, find out who fucked up the Teleprompt and feed his ass to the zombies."

  Chief-of-staff Alfred Flint smiled, and fell into step beside the President. The opposite of Dobbs in almost every way, Flint was tall with an athletic build, youthful good looks, thick black hair with just a touch of gray at the temples, and a quiet demeanor. Dobbs hated him worse than poison. But when it came to making shit stick to his opponents, Al made Karl Rove look like Martha Stewart.

  "Excellent speech, sir."

  Dobbs scowled.

  "Don't be an ass. It shouldn't surprise me that the people of this great country fear increased taxes more than the apocalypse, but it does."

  "These are strange and uncertain times, Mr. President." Flint brushed a nonexistent piece of lint off Dobb's shoulder as they walked. "And in uncertain times people are desperate to cling to something that is familiar, even if it's taxes."

  "We can debate the psychology of the masses some other time. What's next?"

  "A briefing in the situation room. Homeland Security forwarded some video to NSA and Tom thinks you need to see it. He's waiting for us in a secure conference room down the hall."

  "Jesus," Dobbs groused. "More video of zombies eating humans or humans killing zombies? Why the fuck do I need to see more of that shit?" He didn't expect an answer, and Flint didn't disappoint him. "Thank Christ this disaster will be over soon."

  It had taken a while for the army to get its shit together but things were finally starting to break their way. The zombie virus, if it was a virus, had spread through North America like wildfire, surprising the shit out of the world, except maybe for Haiti.

  Flint interrupted the President's thoughts with a rhetorical question of his own. "Should I have the VP there?"

  "Fuck that. The less I see of that waste of space the better. Send him to the U.N. and let him blame this mess on global warming."

  The 'secure' conference room looked like a conference room, except for the gaudy presidential seal weaved into the carpet and curtains. Samuel Stone, Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, stood as they entered.

  "Sir."

  Dobbs waved him to sit. Sam was a big man, at least three hundred pounds. His bald head was always covered in a sheen of sweat despite air-conditioning, and his iron-gray mustache was so thick that Dobbs swore it moved every time Sam exhaled.

  He reminded Dobbs of a cross between Daddy Warbucks and Chumley the Walrus.

  "So what put a fire under your ass so early in the morning, Sam?"

  Sam remained standing until Dobbs was seated, and then squeezed himself into a seat across from the President. "I think it might be best for you to see for yourself, Sir. The video is less than two minutes."

  Dobbs sighed. "Very well."

  Sam nodded to a technician, who discharged his duties in accordance with the highest government standards by pressing a button on a remote. The panel at the back of the room slid back, revealing a fancy shmancy viewing screen. The video started a moment later, showing what looked to Dobbs like an empty street intersection. Not exactly a rare picture these days.

  "This was taken from a traffic camera yesterday in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. There's no audio."

  Dobbs looked at Sam. "So what are we looking at here?"

  Sam removed a laser pointer from his pocket. "Notice the baby carriage here."

  A small red dot appeared on screen, right of center. The carriage, parked in front of a newspaper kiosk, faced away from the camera.

  A moment later three soldiers dressed in combat fatigues and riot head gear entered the scene, assault rifles at the ready.

  Sam continued. "This is a hunter squad attached to 2nd Division. Their mission was a standard s&c."

  Dobbs turned to Sam and raised his eyebrow in exasperation.

  "Sweep and clean, sir. Sorry, sir. As I'm sure you know, Mr. President, these operations have been highly successful. Against an organized, well-armed assault, a zombie is about as dangerous as a rabid dog. Until today, these types of operations had a hundred percent success rate."

  On the screen the three soldiers approached the stroller, one in the lead, the other two back a few feet and flanking. The man out front tilted his head toward his right shoulder and spoke something into a radio mike.

  Dobbs glanced at the Deputy Director. "What do you mean, until today ...?"

  "Holy shit!" Al Flint was on his feet looking at the screen, mouth open in shock.

  Dobbs turned back to the screen. Four zombies ran out from behind the kiosk and quickly closed in on the three soldiers. One immediately locked its mouth on the lead soldier's arm. Dobbs couldn't tell if the man wore body armor. Many soldiers were provided with Kevlar vests, but plenty had to go without. The soldier flanking the right raised his assault rifle and fired multiple shots at one zombie. Its head burst like an overripe melon.

  "Jesus," President Dobbs gasped. "They fucking RAN. How the hell did they do that?" Something else gnawed at his funny bone. All four of the zombies were children. Small children.

  Stone spoke quietly. "There's more, sir."

  On screen, seven adult-sized zombies appeared from behind the newsstand. These were slower, but they were fast enough. The solders, still entangled with the remaining three undead children, were slow to recognize the new threat. In a matter of moments the zombies overwhelmed the soldiers. The video was grainy, but not grainy enough. He turned away from the screen in disgust.

  "They can run now? They ambushed a squad of armed soldiers?"

  "Yes, sir. It would appear so, sir." Stone was still looking at the screen. "I'm afraid there's more."

  Dobbs forced his attention back to the screen. The undead dragged what was left of the soldiers back behind the newsstand and off camera. For a few moments the street remained blessedly empty.

  Then another zombie shambled into view. It entered from the bottom of the screen, opposite the newsstand. With its back to the camera it shambled to the stroller, bent down and reached inside. After a moment, it lifted what was clearly a live baby up into the air. It struggled and squirmed in the zombie's hand. The zombie turned, and unless Dobbs was imagining things the fucker purposely stared right at the cam
era. With the baby still squirming in its one hand, the zombie raised its other hand toward the camera. It looked like some sort of fucked-up referee announcing that the field goal was good.

  Dobbs noticed a patch over the thing's right eye. Five minutes ago, Dobbs would have found that very weird. But a zombie holding a baby in the air with one hand and knowingly staring at the traffic cam with its one good eye raised the weirdness bar. Dobbs watched in horrified silence, eyes glued on the poor infant.

  "My God," President Dobbs breathed, still staring at the screen. "They just committed an organized ambush on armed soldiers and won. How is that possible?"

  "Sir, we have reports of six similar ambushes in the area. We have no information at this time of similar incidents happening anywhere else."

  "Thank God for small fucking favors," Dobbs muttered.

  Back on the screen, he watched the zombie take a few steps toward the camera. And then …

  Dobbs' eyes widened in shock. "Is that zombie ...?"

  "Yes, sir."

  On the screen, the zombie with the ruined face and bum leg extended its free hand toward the camera and gave it the finger. After a few moments it placed the infant back in the stroller. Another zombie appeared and pushed the stroller off camera.

  The monitor went blank.

  Chapter 16

  Paradise

  Circa. 2012, found in 32 Magnolia Way, Newark, NJ; Kitchen wall. Medium: blue crayon

  You taste like chicken,

  Raw, rancid, putrid chicken.

  Finger licking good.

  Back in the day Paradise Buffet was THE place for Wayne Township's elderly and unemployed, one could enjoy from eleven in the morning until three in the afternoon platter after platter of salty Chinese food and shrimp with cocktail sauce. They even had unlimited 'pigs in blankets' which were somehow always in good supply. Aside from eventual triple bypass surgery, all this would cost you only $8.98, including tax. There are people who have an easier time believing in flesh-eating zombies than they do in believing the tales told about the Paradise Buffet. Lo mein and dumplings living side-by-side with mashed potatoes and pot roast. Truly one of the seven wonders of the tri-state area.