Dying to Live

by Kim Paffenroth

  "I know," Jack sighed. "It's a pull, a pull too strong for some people, stronger than the will to survive. We had people leave to look for family. None of them ever came back. I hope they found them and are off on an island somewhere."

  "Me too, but we all know the chances of that." I took a gulp. "Those of us who wanted to leave took some supplies, guns, and one of the smaller boats. We found a place to land where we didn't see any of them, and we went our separate ways to look. I don't know what happened to any of the others, but I stayed alive and kept looking. I found my town, found my house. Nothing there. No bodies, no blood, the car was gone, but what does that prove? Just that they didn't die in the house. After that, I didn't know what to do, so I just wandered. And that's pretty much how I ended up on your doorstep. Sorry, it's nothing too dramatic, I guess."

  We were silent for a while. "I was at work," Sarah said very quietly. "Me, and the doctor, and the receptionist."

  "I thought you said you were a dental hygienist?" I asked.

  "The dentists usually prefer to be called ‘doctor.' It was a crowded little strip mall, and it all went to hell in a couple hours, with people outside being attacked in the parking lot, cars crashing, explosions, sirens, gunshots. We just locked the doors and drew the blinds and watched the TV. I'm sorry, it seems so cowardly now, like I should've tried to help or do something."

  Jack and Tanya both knew to put their hands on her shoulders. "It's okay, baby," Tanya whispered. "You did plenty here. Everyone knows. You just hold on to that."

  Sarah resumed. "But when the TV started saying that we were supposed to get to a rescue station, they wanted to make a run for it. His car was parked close, and it really looked like maybe we could make it. This was just the first day, so we didn't know about… we didn't know that they… you know…"

  "That they rip your guts out and eat them while you're still watching," Jack muttered, looking into his cup. Tanya glared at him.

  "Yes, I think they wouldn't have tried it if they knew that. The people we had seen attacked in the parking lot, it just looked like they were fighting with them, and then they'd fall behind a car or something. We didn't know. And the TV hadn't said anything about that. They just said to go to a rescue station. So they wanted to try it. I just couldn't. I told them that I couldn't, that I'd just freeze and scream. So they said okay, they'd go and send back help later.

  "So they tried it, and I just closed and locked the door behind them. There were so many of those things in the parking lot that we hadn't seen, and they got them. And I saw it all. It was quick, at least. I don't know what I would've done if it hadn't been quick."

  She stopped and put her head on Tanya's shoulder. Then she picked back up. As I had thought, she was quick to break down, but more resilient in coming back. She took a sip of the bourbon. "I'm okay, thanks. I was in the office for a while. It seemed like forever. I didn't make a sound, after I saw what had happened to them. I barely moved or breathed.

  "When I saw there were none of them right outside, I wrote ‘HELP' on the window with lipstick. I filled a bunch of containers with water before the water stopped running, but I didn't have food. I tore the place apart and just found the usual stuff that you throw in a drawer and forget about—little bags of saltines or oyster crackers, ketchup and sugar and soy sauce packets, the after dinner mints you get from restaurants. I ate the damn fern we had growing on the counter. I was pretty weak when the people from here picked me up."

  The silence was a little longer this time, and then, inevitably, Tanya spoke. "I was at home. In the kitchen. No TV on. It was summer. I didn't let the kids hardly watch TV. But then I heard them scream. First one, then the other. They came running in, all bloody. They were babbling something crazy about the neighbor bit them and they ran away from him. They both had what looked like teeth marks on their arms. I was looking at them when the neighbor came through the door, all weird and crazy-looking and covered with blood.

  "I pushed my babies behind me and told them to go upstairs and lock themselves in the bathroom. He was coming toward us, mouth open, all drooling and shit. He was bit too, on the neck, I could see, but I didn't care about him. I grabbed the frying pan and told him to just stop, I was going to call the police. But he was between me and the phone anyway, and I already thought that this was way past what the police could do anything about.

  "He came at me, and I kicked him in the nuts, but he didn't even flinch. Nothing. Like I'd kicked the damned wall next to him and not him. He kept coming at me, and I gave him the frying pan across the head. Hard. And two more times. The first two times I heard a crunch, and the last time it sounded all wet and squishy. He went down. The blood started seeping out from under him, all thick and dark. The kitchen looked like a damned horror movie, with all the blood from my kids and him. I dragged him outside quick and locked all the doors.

  "I thought to get my babies to a hospital, but then I looked outside and there were more of those things in the street. Just like Sarah said—cars crashing, houses on fire, shooting, all hell breaking loose. I turned on the TV and started to see what was going on. Then I went upstairs to my babies, bound their wounds, kept them warm and safe." She snickered, but bitterly. "Gave them chicken soup. My babies' last meal was damned chicken soup from a can." Even she was breaking down at this memory, but she inhaled through gritted teeth and kept going.

  "I kept them in there for three days, as quiet as I could make them. Nobody else bothered us. Like Sarah, I thought I should have some kind of sign, in case people came by to help us, so I put a sheet out the one window, with ‘HELP' written on it in marker. When my babies were asleep, I watched the TV, and I knew what was going to happen to them. We only had a small house. They shared the same room. I couldn't leave one in there when the other… turned. So I watched them closely.

  "When I thought my daughter was nearly gone, I made her a little bed on the floor of the closet in their room and tucked her in it. When I was sure she was gone, I closed the closet door and shoved the back of the chair up under the door handle to hold it. It was only a couple minutes and that horrible banging started on the closet door. Steady. Like a damn drum. She was tiny, though, and I was pretty sure she couldn't get through. I whispered her name, in case it was really her and she could still hear me, but there was never any voice, just the steady banging.

  "My son passed a few hours later, and I closed the door on their room and jammed it with another chair the same way. He was bigger, though, and I worried it wouldn't hold, so I risked making a lot of noise by nailing the door shut. I tried to time the hammering with the banging he was making on the door. I was lucky and none of them came to check it out. I went downstairs and I never went upstairs again.

  "I ate, I guess, and stayed alive, but I didn't think anything until Jack and them came to get me later. All I remember was that damn banging."

  We'd said what we needed to say, that bizarre mixture of way too much and not nearly enough, but just what was necessary and what the alcohol made possible. I stood up, drunker than I thought, but then I hadn't had anything to drink in months. "You all saved my life," I started. "I couldn't find my family, but I'm glad I found you, and I'll try to never let you down."

  It was getting to be one of those sloppy drunk moments, and Jack—either holding up better himself, or wishing to avoid any messy disclosures of his own—was the one to shut it down. He raised his glass and toasted, "To the future."

  We finished off what we had in our cups.

  "Now let's go sleep the sleep of the just," Jack said. The ladies left the way they had come, arm in arm, propping each other up, and Jack took me back to my little cubicle. It was the kind of evening that you wouldn't ever call fun, but you'd look back on it for the rest of your life and know that it was one of the most important times you'd ever have.

  Chapter Five

  I awoke the next morning with only the slightest of hangovers, and an overall feeling of well-being, of safety and belonging, that I hadn't h
ad since all this had begun. Not even on the ship.

  Although last night's food was about the same as I could've scrounged up on my own, breakfast turned out to be slightly better than I had grown used to. My heart leapt when I saw there were more of the burnt biscuits. I think they were leftover, as they seemed harder and drier than before, but the cooks offset this with their post-apocalyptic version of biscuit gravy: since sausage, bacon, or butter were all out of the question, I had to assume this was some mixture of cooking oil and flour, but it tasted like someone had poured the whole pepper shaker in it, making it a pretty lively addition. The thing they served as coffee was the first hot beverage I'd had since leaving the ship, but it was definitely not Starbucks.

  "How you doing?" Jack asked as he came up beside me. "Ready for training this morning?" He shadow-boxed a little, like a great big kid. "Show us your moves? See some of ours?"

  "I don't know, Jack," I said, finishing off the coffee, but I went along anyway. I followed him to the second floor, into a small auditorium. There were windows on the east side, with the blinds open, so it was fairly bright. Several people were onstage. Jack gestured for me to sit in the audience section first as he went up. I looked around and saw Tanya and sat next to her. She didn't seem unhappy to see me.

  "Thanks for the social hour last night," she said, leaning over. "You need that once in a while."

  "I know I did. How's training go here?"

  "Jack will start with a big group, going over some basics with them, what everyone needs to know, even those who aren't really designated as fighters. It's like karate, only you really work on hitting the other guy in the head, and breaking holds."

  "Did you do karate before this?"

  "Dance instructor. Taught little girls to dance ballet, tap, and jazz. I don't like karate moves, they seem unnatural to me, but I guess dancing helped me pick them up better than some people do."

  Jack was on the stage in front of ten people, taking them through what looked like a karate class. They obviously had learned to do a series of set moves like a kata at the beginning of class, then Jack had paired people up and improvised a sort of zombie sparring: one person played the zombie assailant, while the other went through set counterattacks, mostly blows to the head. The class went on for some time, then Jack dismissed them and came down to us.

  "Hey, you guys, we're going to take a break, then it's time for my advanced students. That means you, big gal," he gave Tanya a couple playful punches on the shoulder, then turned to give me a couple. "I don't know about you, tough guy, but we'll see if we can get you to where you don't need us saving your ass anymore. Meet me up there in five, Tanya."

  "Don't worry," she said, looking over her shoulder at me as she walked up to the stage, with the hint of a smile. "Me and Popcorn will have him pretty softened up before you get up here."

  Some of the beginning class had sat in the auditorium to watch, but I looked around to see who this mysterious Popcorn was. At the far left side of the auditorium was a boy of about nine or ten, and I knew it was him. There was no word to describe him except "feral"—he was wiry, tanned like he never came inside during the day, and his hair looked like it had never been cut; it just flowed off his head in a shaggy mess past his shoulders. He looked like Mowgli's evil twin. Between the very in-shape Tanya and the Wild Child over there, I could well imagine that Jack was going to be thoroughly worked over. I was glad, as I had no formal combat training, and I wasn't looking forward to getting up in front of these people who clearly had been working on it pretty hard for some time.

  * * * * *

  A kid pushed three homemade dummies out onto the stage: one in the back, and one on each side. They were crudely made, like scarecrows. Tanya stood in the middle. Jack came out from the right side, next to the one dummy. He was padded all over, with gloves and a Kevlar helmet, so much that he looked like the Michelin Man. Even though it wasn't a very good place to hit a 2ombie, as Tanya's story proved, Jack's crotch was understandably the most cushioned part. This was clearly going to be full contact.

  "Batons," he said, and the kid gave Tanya two police batons. She twirled them, as she shook out her legs. "Ready?"

  "Ready!"

  "Begin!" Jack walked toward her, trying to imitate a zombie's slow, lurching gait.

  I still think that most fights don't look like anything special, but Tanya definitely made it look more like Chuck Norris than I ever could. She took two steps toward the dummy in the back as she brought her left hand across to her right hip. With a snarl, she unleashed a backhanded blow with her left baton that sent the dummy's head bouncing across the stage. Just for effect, she shoved the torso to the ground and kicked it.

  With a flourish, she brought both batons up to either side as she took four steps across the stage. She gave a shout as she slammed both batons together on either side of the second dummy's head, then she kicked it in the midsection and sent it sprawling.

  She turned to face Jack, who had only taken a couple steps. Tanya strode up to him, and raising the baton in her left hand as a feint, she swung with her right, trying to hit him in the side of the head. Jack, moving a bit more dexterously than a normal zombie did, caught her right arm.

  Enraged, she brought the left baton down on his forearm to break the hold. He groaned and let go. Then she gave him a backhanded blow with the baton in her left hand, followed by the blow from her right that she had originally intended. He staggered back, and she reversed it—backhanded blow with her right, forehand with the left. She raised both batons, and Jack raised his hands. "That's a takedown," he said, I thought a little weakly. "Finish your last opponent."

  The batons clattered on the stage as Tanya threw them aside. She walked up to the last dummy, giving it a backhanded fist across the face with her right hand, then grabbed its head and twisted it 180 degrees. She jerked it up, just for effect, like she was going to tear its head off, then shoved the whole dummy to the floor.

  "Good job." Jack said, and Tanya returned to sit next to me. "Popcorn, you're up in five."

  "So what's the kid's story?" I asked Tanya.

  "He was one of the people trapped in the city at the rescue center downtown. They didn't have a chance. The city was the last place you wanted to be, once it started. It was just a few cops and firemen downtown, so once they saw they were surrounded, they didn't try to make a break for it. They just fought and fought and kept losing ground, with the building full of women and kids. I saw it on the TV; they were broadcasting it from the news helicopter, but there was no one to help them.

  "Popcorn and his mom were some of the ones who tried to scatter and get away when it was all over. They ran from the center, down the street, and climbed up on a dumpster. His mom lifted him up so he could reach the bottom of a fire escape, but before she could pull herself up, they got her. He had to watch her get eaten, hear her screams. I guess it's like Sarah said—at least it was quick. You don't know how much more messed up he'd be if it hadn't been quick. He looks so tough now, but you can hear him sometimes at night, crying for her."

  "Poor kid," I said, watching him ascend to the stage. You could never get used to hearing these stories of horror and sacrifice as civilization collapsed and individuals tried to save those closest to them.

  "He climbed up the fire escape and broke a window to get inside the building. Lucky for him, it led to the balcony of the old downtown theater. The balcony had been closed off for years, condemned by the fire department, so the stairway leading up to it was locked. There was a stairway up to the roof that was blocked off from the main theater, too, and he could go anywhere there without them seeing him or being able to get to him. He lived there for two months before we picked him up."

  "I take it he lived on popcorn?"

  Tanya laughed a little. "Actually, somebody called him Jujube first, but he didn't like that, and we found that pissing him off isn't the smartest thing you can do. Yeah, he got lucky again in the theater: the stairway to the balcony had been us
ed to store stuff, and there was candy, soda, and popcorn, and he lived on that. He'd climb up to the roof and build a little fire to pop it. He even found a huge box of drink cups: he dragged those up to the roof and put them all over to catch rain water."

  "How'd he start a fire?"

  "More luck. The theater had some kids' meal deal where you got a toy surprise, and one of them was a little plastic magnifying glass. He'd take the wrappers and cardboard boxes and use the sun to light them with that. That's how we spotted him—the smoke from the fire. God was looking out for that kid."

  "You think?" It was just a little surprising, coming from her, after the story she had told last night.

  "What, some shit happens and I can't believe in God anymore? I don't know why He took my babies, and I don't know why Popcorn's still here, but that doesn't mean I can't hear his story and know, deep down, that he's here for some reason, and I'm supposed to love him like my own."

  I looked at her intently. Coming from someone else, such a profession would've struck me as trite and ignorant. But from her, I knew it was the deepest wisdom. I even hoped that maybe someday I could share it.

  "Give him the stilettos," Jack was saying as they prepared for another round. "He likes those." It was hard to see from this far back, but it looked like the assistant gave Popcorn two thin-bladed knives. "Ready?"

  Tanya lowered her voice. "When he was in the theater, one of those things managed to climb up on the dumpster and got in."

  "Begin!"

  Popcorn's arm came down, there was a thwack, and the dummy right next to Jack had a knife sticking out of its face. It looked like it was right about where its left eye would be.

  "Poor zombie," I said quietly.