After the Bite

by Lovato, David

  “We’ll start off small,” Sam said. “An acoustic show, really. Just find some people and an enclosed space. Have someone guard the door.”

  “Then what?” Harry asked.

  “Word of mouth, my friend,” Sam said.

  “Word of mouth. That’s it?” Wilder said.

  “Don’t underestimate it.”

  Setting up their first gig proved to be simpler than they thought. They found a coffee shop with a stage and sound equipment, barricaded the doors and windows, and cleared the bodies out. It took them two days, and they slept inside the shop.

  “Now we just need an audience,” Sam said, once their work had been finished.

  “Where are we going to find one?” Wilder said.

  And so the graffiti campaign began. They made signs and flyers, tagged billboards, painted on boarded-up windows and doors, announcing their show. They set the date three days away to allow time for people to catch wind. On opening night, they waited anxiously as showtime approached.

  “Something’s still not right,” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” Eddie replied. “We don’t have a bassist, and we don’t have a name. How are people supposed to believe a flyer announcing a show by a band with no name?”

  “They’ll come regardless,” Sam said. “We offered protection.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “In the form of you handing one of them a shotgun and telling them to guard the door.”

  “We barricaded this place pretty well, what could possibly go wrong?”

  “We could all get eaten,” Wilder said.

  “Nobody lives forever.”

  A half hour before the show was scheduled to start, there was a knock on the door. Sam readied the shotgun and opened it slowly. A group of teenagers stood outside, looking around anxiously.

  “We read there was a show here?” one of them said. Sam opened the door.

  “Indeed there is. Hurry up, come in!”

  The group entered the coffee shop, and Sam closed the door behind them.

  “We’re a little early, right?” one of them said.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Make yourselves at home. There’s a full coffee bar, help yourselves.”

  As the half hour went by, several more people showed up. Sam guessed the crowd to be around a dozen. Finally, he took the stage and picked up his microphone.

  “All right, hello everyone, and thanks for coming.” There was a bit of feedback as he stopped talking, finding himself speechless for the first time he could recall. “As you can see, we’ve spent some time boarding this place up. The front door should lock pretty tightly, but we want to make things as safe as possible. Can we get a volunteer to stand near the door with our shotgun?”

  The crowd whispered among themselves.

  “I’ll do it,” said a young man standing near the back of the room already.

  “Thanks, mate,” Sam said. The man approached the stage, and Sam handed him the shotgun. He looked to be about Wilder’s age.

  “And can you put up this sign, too?”

  Sam handed the man a sign that read:

  Terribly sorry, but the show is already underway. To maximize security, we will not be opening the doors for any reason once the show starts. If you were here to see the show, we apologize. Try to catch us next time, and stay safe!

  “Sure,” the man said. He headed for the door and started to set things up. Sam returned to the mic.

  “Also, and this is a bit embarrassing, but our bassist got eaten by a zombie. If any of you play bass, or know someone who does, and want to come along in this little adventure with us, that’d be grand, yeah?”

  The crowd laughed quietly.

  “You don’t even have to be good. God knows the rest of us aren’t.”

  The crowd laughed louder.

  “All right,” Sam said. “Here goes.”

  He looked at his bandmates, who nodded. They were ready for their first show.

  ****

  As the sound faded and the ears in the room rang, the crowd cheered. The band had played both of the songs they’d written as well as some various covers they’d done, with a grand total of about seven songs. It was a short set, but the crowd was incredibly receptive. The band members mingled with the crowd afterward. Nobody was willing to say that the band was great, but they were good enough, and they were the only band touring. Sam was ecstatic.

  The man guarding the door returned Sam’s shotgun.

  “Thanks again, mate,” Sam said.

  “I’ll do it,” the man replied. Sam eyed him curiously.

  “Do what now?”

  “I’ll play with you guys. I play bass. And better yet, I got nowhere to go.” Sam’s face brightened immediately.

  “Guys!” His bandmates looked at him. “We got ourselves a bassist!”

  “Is he any good?” Harry asked.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “Hate to be brutally honest, but I’m a lot better than you guys. But you guys happen to be the only ones interested in touring or making music, so you’ll have to do.”

  Sam’s smile diminished a bit, but he tried not to let it get to him.

  “I’m Sam.”

  “Dante.”

  “Well, Dante, welcome to our band.”

  “What’s your name?” Dante said. Sam fell silent. “Don’t have one, do you?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  A scream erupted near the door. Some of the people had tried to leave, but a crowd of zombies had been waiting outside. The girl who had opened the door (and likely also screamed) pushed backward into her friends, who also scrambled through the tables and chairs, trying to get away.

  Sam readied the shotgun and fired. Two zombies fell, and a few more staggered back.

  “Guys!” Sam said.

  Wilder headed for the stage, while Harry and Eddie used chairs to push the bottlenecked zombies at the door back outside.

  “We can’t hold them forever!” Eddie said.

  “I’m low on ammo!” Sam said.

  “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Wilder said. He had retrieved his guitar from the stage, which he then leaped off of and rushed at the door. He swung his guitar as hard as he could. It struck a zombie in the head, blood spewing out as it crushed the creature’s skull, and it fell into some of the other zombies with enough force to knock them down. Eddie and Harry pushed the rest out into the street.

  “Go, guys!” Sam said. “Thanks for coming!” The audience rushed passed the dazed and fallen zombies to their vehicles. Only the band remained, and the zombies started to recuperate.

  “Guys, we need to get our shit!” Harry said.

  “Working on it!” Sam said. He fired another shot, and another zombie fell. There were still at least half a dozen heading toward them.

  Wilder swung again, knocking another zombie out. Dante and Eddie began rushing back and forth between the stage and the van, furiously packing up their equipment. Harry continued using the chair to push zombies down, but they would get back up and shamble effortlessly toward him, only to be pushed down again. It was as funny as it was depressing.

  “All right, let’s go!” Eddie said. The five boys climbed into the van and sped down the street.

  Sam was laughing hysterically. All of them were sweating profusely, and they were incredibly cramped in the van, especially Wilder, who had climbed into the back with the equipment since the van only had four seats.

  “What the hell are you laughing about?” Eddie said.

  “I think we earned ourselves a name!” Sam said. The others looked at him. “We are the Bad-Ass Zombie Killers!”

  As the van drove into the night, the others eventually began to laugh along with him.

  ****

  Harry and Eddie were asleep as the van rolled along the desolate highway in the middle of the night. Wilder had made himself comfortable. Sam didn’t talk much as he drove. Dante turned around and looked at Wilder, leaning against the back door of the van, his guitar between his legs, broken.
r />   “Sorry about your guitar,” he said.

  “It’s all right. We’ll get a new one. We need some drums anyway. Lost a few toms the night the shit went down.”

  “Ah,” Dante said. “That explains why your songs were off.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “We’ll need a bass for you, as well.”

  “And some shells wouldn’t hurt, either,” Dante said.

  Sam slammed on the brakes, and everyone in the van jerked forward, Harry and Eddie ripped from their sleep.

  “What the hell, Sam?” Harry asked.

  “Look,” Sam said.

  In the headlights of the van, stretched across the entire road, was a massive hoard of zombies, the last remnants of what had once been a panicked traffic jam.

  It was too late to turn off the lights. The hoard had noticed them.

  “Back it up,” Harry said.

  “And do what? Drive all the way back to the nearest city? We’ll never make it, we’re almost empty!”

  “Go around, then!” Wilder said. The hoard began to slowly make its way toward the group.

  “I can’t see shit,” Sam said. “Can’t tell where the road ends or begins!”

  “Fuck this,” Eddie said, opening his door. “If I’m going to die, I’ll do it in the fresh air!”

  The others also got out of the van. Sam looked frantically at the road, trying to size up how much of the black mass before them was cars, and how much was workable road.

  “Guys, we need to figure something out now!” Harry said.

  “Do you hear that?” Dante said. Beneath the gathered moans of the group of zombies was a low hum.

  “What the hell is it?” Wilder said.

  “Maybe it’s God,” Harry said, “coming to take our souls.”

  “That’d make a great song,” Sam said.

  “We’ll have to remember to play it in Hell,” Dante replied.

  The sound was, in fact, not God coming for to carry their souls away. The zombies and the cars became illuminated, but from behind, as dozens upon dozens of motorcycles made their way through the traffic. The teens stood in awe as the bike gang did what was apparently their work. They shot and clubbed at the zombies. One sliced with a machete, decapitating a zombie as he passed it at thirty miles per hour. Another biker tossed a chain across the road to one of his buddies, and the two tightened it as they rode on either side of a zombie, cutting it in half.

  “Oh my God,” Sam said. “It’s fucking beautiful!”

  The gang rode around the group of zombies like cowboys herding cattle. The two with the chain rode circles around the last two zombies, letting the chain slacken just a bit as they passed by, back and forth and around the two zombies, the chain beginning to tighten as the bikers neared the ends, squeezing the zombies together, tightening ever more. Then, both bikers gunned their steeds in opposite directions, holding the chains tightly. The zombies came apart, woven through the bits of chain as it tightened, and chunks of the zombies flew in all directions.

  “Yeeeee-haaaaaaa!” Sam said, raising his fist in the air.

  The bikers then turned to the bandmates. They drove toward the five boys and their van, circled it, kicking up dust which entered unwelcomed into their eyes and mouths. One biker stopped before them on the road, followed by another at his left, then one at his right, then another and another until the entire gang formed a complete circle around the van and the boys.

  “That was brilliant!” Sam said. He was the only one that didn’t seem at all nervous about what was happening.

  “What are you kids doing out here?” the first biker said.

  “We’re a band,” Sam said. “Bazk.”

  “A… band?” the man looked at his fellow bikers through his sunglasses, then roared with laughter, his arms folded. The other bikers also began to laugh. “Well I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he finally said. He spat something brown into the dirt. “You kids have some balls on you, that’s for sure.”

  “Same to you,” Sam said. “That was incredible.”

  “We do what we can to clean up the world,” the biker replied. “You heading for the city?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “We need gas, and supplies. It wouldn’t hurt to play another show, either.”

  “Ain’t no way,” the biker said. The smile faded from Sam’s face. “You’ll be torn to pieces. That city’s a slaughterhouse.”

  “Well…” Sam said. “Can we at least get some gas there?”

  “Y’all can try,” the biker replied. “But you won’t last five seconds.”

  “Oh.” Sam looked at his bandmates, unsure of what to think. “Well, thanks for the heads-up. We’re no winkies, though. We can manage.”

  “No idea what the hell that means,” the biker said, “but there’s no way you can make it. Not without some help, anyway.” He laughed again, and nervous smiles started to creep onto the boys’ faces.

  They made their way into the city, bikes surrounding the van on all sides. The symbiotic relationship worked well; the bike gang guarded the band as they put up their posters (most of which were branded with the band’s new tagline: “Bazk in the glory of the last rock band on earth!”)

  The bikers were happy to hear music again, even if it wasn’t quite their style. Together, they helped the boys get some new instruments and set up a few shows. The bikers would line the entrances of every venue, some inside, others out, and make sure everyone could see the show safely.

  The shows themselves got bigger and bigger as word of America’s last touring rock band spread like wildfire. More people joined to help out; some became roadies, managing the band’s equipment. Others helped the bikers guard the crowds and the band at shows. Every now and then, someone with a laptop would record the show and burn CDs to give to fans. The bikers thought the boys crazy for giving away the music for free, but Sam and his friends were happy just to have someone listen to the music they were making.

  Bazk were eventually able to play outdoor shows in amphitheaters. Graffiti and word of mouth drew crowds, and one night, in the town of Carroll, Iowa, they played an outdoor show that drew a crowd of several hundred. Sam couldn’t believe the sea of people he was looking into as he readied the crowd. The band made their way through a few songs, and then Sam looked at the others.

  “We’re going to play a brand new song for you guys tonight!” The crowd cheered. Sam spotted a few people who appeared to be new to the experience, but they seemed to be enjoying it. He smiled, then looked at his bandmates, who signaled to him that they were ready, in a form of communication only bandmates can share.

  “This one’s for you guys and it’s called ‘On the Day That We Die’,” Sam said. The crowd let out a sympathetic “Aww!”

  “You guys can’t ever fucking die!” someone shouted. The crowd cheered him on.

  “Right on, mate!” Same replied. “And neither can any of you!”

  Dante started the song off with a bass line. He had been right; he was good. Far too good for the others. But Sam was glad he had stuck around.

  “Thank you all for being here,” Sam said. “You can never know how much you mean to us.” The crowd cheered louder than ever before.

  Eddie and Harry broke in with the rhythm guitar and drums, and then Wilder did his thing on lead guitar. Sam grabbed the mic.

  “Born in a garage, I was conceived in a dream

  Only hoping the world could understand what I mean

  A lot of time went by

  We saw our loved ones die

  But that could never stop me trying to sing

  We traveled high and low

  And played a couple shows

  Lost some strings, but that’s how it goes

  It couldn’t stop us all from taking to the road

  And on a darkened highway, in the middle of the night

  We were faced with death, but we saw heaven’s light

  We heard the sound of God coming for our souls

  But we kept riding on

 
We had to play our songs

  For reasons nobody on earth could ever know.”

  Sam paused as Wilder broke into a solo. He was good, not great, but the crowd roared anyway, and that’s when Sam’s eyes began to tear up. He realized that the people in the crowd needed this just as badly as he did, that in that moment they were all one. All of their loss and all of their pain could be put aside, just for a little while, and music could fill in the holes left in their hearts.

  “We will never stop

  We’ll be playing a gig on the day that we die

  And the angels will be singing along on high

  The devil himself couldn’t take it away

  So while we run out the clock

  We’ll travel the world, continue to play

  And we’ll pour out our hearts ‘til we collapse on this stage

  And keep rockin ‘til we find a sunny day.”

  The band filled out half a minute with an interlude accompanied by another of Wilder’s solos, and Sam didn’t even try to stop the tears from streaming down his face. Shots rang out along the edge of the field where the bikers stood with their weapons, and Sam saw a few tapping their feet as they made sure everyone could enjoy the show in peace. Sam returned to the mic, and Eddie and Dante accompanied him on backing vocals.

  “We will never stop

  We’ll be playing a gig on the day that we die

  And the angels will be singing along on high

  The devil himself couldn’t take this away

  So while we run out the clock

  We’ll travel the world and continue to play

  We’ll pour out our hearts ‘til we collapse on this stage

  And keep rockin ‘til we find a sunny day.”

  Like Fish

  “What time is your flight back?” Brent asked, laying heavily into the gas as he merged with traffic on route 525. He looked at his phone, which was clipped to a holster on the dashboard, and for the brief moment he saw Erica on the color display, she was smiling. He smiled back and returned his eyes to the road.