The Fucking Zombie Apocalypse

by Bryan Smith

  Unfortunately, there are more ready to take its place.

  Another zombie has slipped loose of the mass of flesh and is on the brink of emerging from the elevator. At least one more looks like it’s right on the verge of doing the same.

  “Fuck this shit,” I say again.

  Again, I rush forward, and this time I shove the lead zombie in the chest, causing it to flail uselessly and topple back into the elevator. Before it can get righted and come at me again, I aim the gun at its head, this time making sure to take hold of the gun’s grip in both hands before squeezing the trigger. The second report of the gun also makes me flinch, but this time I’m prepared for the recoil and only get knocked back a few inches as a spray of blood and dumb zombie brains rains down on all the other dumb fucking zombies in there. The elevator doors begin to slide shut again. This time there’s nothing to block them and make them bounce open again. And just as they finally close, I hear that nauseatingly cheery chime again.

  The other elevator is opening now.

  I groan.

  I say, “Goddammit.”

  This one will be empty, I tell myself. You’re finally going to catch a break. This is your reward for the struggle you’ve just endured.

  You’ll no doubt be unsurprised to learn what a gargantuan load of fucking bullshit that inner pronouncement was.

  I shuffle over to the right a few steps to stand before it as the doors come open. My gun is upraised. It occurs to me I have no idea how many bullets still remain in the magazine. I didn’t bother to pop it out and count them before setting out on an escape attempt that thus far could generously be described as not going quite as smoothly as it could be.

  The doors are open.

  There are more zombies in there.

  Of fucking course.

  One comes lurching out right away. It’s considerably more lively than the two I’ve shot. As it comes at me with surprising speed, it makes a sound like a growl and bares its teeth. It’s possible I whimpered at that point. Not even gonna lie. I was scared and maybe a moment away from death. I exert pressure on the trigger, grimacing as I really bear down on it. It feels like it’s taking forever to squeeze off that shot. The fucking zombie is almost upon me. It’s three feet away.

  Two.

  One.

  Then, Boom.

  More blood. More brains.

  The zombie corpse nonetheless takes its time falling over. I give it an assist with a hard shove. It’s out of the way in time for me to shoot the next undead fucker following in the first one’s wake. This second one falls backward, landing half in and half out of the elevator. The doors try to slide shut, but bounce back again. More zombies are trying to come out of the elevator. By the time I can haul the one I’ve just killed out of the way, they’ll be out here and coming after me.

  Fuck it.

  I’m not gonna be able to contain this.

  I turn away from the elevator and start running back down the hallway to the breakroom. Not quite halfway down the corridor, I feel my right foot slide forward a faster than the left foot. It’s the fault of the dead man’s expensive boat shoes. They are decidedly not meant for running at high speed, especially not on a slightly slick surface like the floor of this hallway. I’m off balance and right away I’m flailing about like a fucking spaz in an attempt to stabilize myself before I take a spill. The attempt is spectacularly unsuccessful. The spill happens. I land hard on my ass. The gun flies out of my hand and goes spinning away on the polished white floor tiles. That landing hurts. I scream in pain. You would, too, if you had as little backside cushioning as I do now. On the floor and unable to see them from my current vantage point, I hear the groaning and lurching of the zombies. They’re close. Too fucking close. Staying where I am and allowing the pain time to recede isn’t an option. I have to push through it, goddammit.

  Screaming again—this time through gritted teeth—I roll over, brace my hands on the tiles beneath me, and begin to push myself up off the floor. By the time I manage to get all the way upright, the nearest zombie is maybe six feet away. Several more are right behind him. Because I’m still a touch woozy from the fall, I brace a hand against the wall to my right to keep from immediately falling over again as I spin away from them. The gun is about a dozen feet ahead of me. When I get close to it, I bend to scoop it up. It’s in my fingers for a fraction of a second, but it tumbles away again before I can secure my grip on it.

  I scream an expletive.

  What a dumb fucking word.

  “Expletive.”

  Jesus.

  I scream, “Fuck!”

  This time the gun has spun through an open exam room door. It’s just inside the doorway. Thankfully. Otherwise I might have written the goddamn thing off as lost. I get to the door and bend to scoop it up again, this time taking that extra second or two necessary to get a good hold on the fucker. This time I don’t drop it, but it’s almost at the cost of my life.

  The nearest zombie has reached me. I feel ragged fingernails grasping at my shirt sleeve. Spinning toward the thing, I drill an elbow into the center of its face, pulping its nose. A burst of blood stains my shirt. This pisses me off. I’ve just obtained the goddamn thing and already the fucking zombie apocalypse is making a mess of it.

  C’est la fucking vie.

  I press the gun against the zombie’s forehead and squeeze the trigger. It drops to the floor, but there are more right behind it. Too many. That second elevator was as full as the first, but it appears the zombies packed into it are livelier in general than those others were. And faster. I mean, they’re still slow shamblers, make no mistake, but there’s no denying they’ve got a bit more spring in their step. Even in the midst of this struggle to live, I can’t help but spend a moment wondering what the story was behind the elevator zombies. Did they become zombies before they went into the elevators or after? It could be they were dead fuckers already and were herded into the elevators by a contingent of the living in a doomed effort to contain what was happening. I guess I could see that, but my money’s on an alternate scenario. I base this on the way so many of those poor bastards were wedged into those things. They were still alive, all of them, and they were desperate for a place to hide, but something went wrong. Maybe they were in there a while, listening to the sounds of the dawning apocalypse raging outside those closed doors. Maybe long enough that they slept. And while they slept, one among them died. That’s all it would have taken. Just one to die and turn into a dead fuck. And you can imagine easily enough the gory chain reaction that would have followed.

  Sounds right to me, but there’s no way to fucking know, is there? It’s not like I can quiz any of these undead pieces of shit about it. And, anyway, I feel kind of sorry for them, but their story isn’t my story, except for this slice of it that intersects with mine.

  I adjust my aim and squeeze the trigger again, killing the next closest zombie.

  There’s enough space between me and the rest of them now that I feel safe turning away from them and resuming my flight back down the hallway. This time I jog instead of run, hoping to avoid a repeat of my previous tumble, because another one might be the end of me. But that doesn’t happen. I get to the breakroom and reach the door to the stairwell. It’s only been a few minutes since the last time I opened this door, but it feels kind of like a fucking lifetime. I’ve wasted a lot of precious time. My regret over the impulse to check out the elevators runs deep. If I hadn’t done that, I might have been out of here already. It was a mistake. On the other hand, there’s no way I could have known that ahead of time. There had been logic behind the idea. It’d seemed sensible in that moment. Only in retrospect did it seem otherwise.

  However, the experience did teach me a valuable lesson, one I should have learned a long time ago.

  Never take anything for granted.

  This time I ease the door open a bit more carefully than the last time. Not too slowly, because those undead cocksuckers are still coming after me, but slowl
y enough to hopefully prepare myself for any threat that might be lurking out there in the stairwell. It was empty the last time I checked, as you might fucking remember, if you had a fucking brain in your head, but that doesn’t mean that’ll still be the case. It’s possible some zombies from a lower level have ascended to check out the commotion.

  I peek through the slim crack between the door and the edge of the doorframe.

  Still empty.

  Or so it seems.

  I pull the door the rest of the way open and there you are again, lurking off to the side, giggling in the corner with a can of beer in your hand.

  The fucking devil.

  Goddammit.

  PART VIII

  FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE END OF THE WORLD

  “YOU AGAIN.”

  I say it deadpan, my features twisted in an expression of tired disbelief.

  The devil grins and takes a swig from his beer as he pushes away from the wall. “Hey. How’s it hanging, mi compadre?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The door clicks shut behind me. I’m finally safe from the pack of zombies I inadvertently freed from that second elevator. It’s clear, though, that true safety is still out of reach.

  Maybe for good.

  And, listen, before we go any further, for the sake of relative clarity, I’ll refrain from addressing you directly for the remainder of this account. You’ll go back to being just another character in my story.

  For now.

  You fucking asshole.

  Okay, now I’ll refrain from addressing you directly.

  Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

  Anyway, it’s I-don’t-know-how-many-years-later since I last saw this grinning cockface, but he’s still wearing the same obnoxiously loud outfit. Red and white Hawaiian shirt hanging open over a hairy potbelly. Cargo shorts and flip-flops. Wide-brimmed white Panama hat tipped low over his forehead. His skin is tinged a dusty shade of crimson most would mistake for a deep tan from a distance. Beneath the Panama hat, as I’ve seen before, are a couple of nubby little horns. The devil looks like a tourist from the Midwest trying to fit in while on vacation in fucking Key West.

  If I were a devoted Satanist, I would be one disappointed motherfucker.

  Obnoxious appearance aside, this is definitely the devil. Beelzebub. Ol’ Scratch. His Satanic fucking majesty. And he’s every bit as evil and diabolical as his reputation would have you believe. Hell, this ugly piece of shit is the reason I’ve lost a chunk of my life to the looney bin.

  I raise the gun and point it at his face.

  The devil keeps on grinning and shakes his head. “Come now. Do you really think that’ll hurt me?”

  Recalling the time I tried to punch the devil in the fucking face—it felt like slamming my fist against concrete—I lower the gun and let out a weary breath.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The devil takes another swig of beer. It’s Schlitz, like last time. I can’t remember the last time I even saw motherfucking Schlitz in a store. I’m not even sure they still make that shit. But, hey, this is the devil. He’s got his ways of procuring whatever he wants, I’m sure.

  “I’m here to help you.”

  I laugh.

  The devil finishes his beer and crushes the empty can in his hand. A flip of his hand sends the can rattling down the stairwell. He snaps his fingers and a fresh can appears in the same hand. Magic. Like I said, motherfucker has his ways. He pops the tab on the can and there’s a familiar hiss I haven’t heard in way too long. It elicits an unexpected pang of melancholy. I’ve still got the rest of that expensive bourbon in the pilfered flask, but there’s really nothing like an ice-cold beer.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like a beer?”

  I frown.

  The obvious answer is yes, but . . .

  “Is that even real beer? How can it be, when you make it appear out of thin air like that? It’s an illusion. An infernal Jedi mind trick. Got to be.”

  The devil chuckles. “Oh, it’s real. You’ve got my word on that. I’d try telling you how I do it, but it’d be like trying to explain quantum physics to a puppy. And not even like a purebred puppy. More like a mongrel pound puppy. A retarded mongrel pound puppy.”

  “Did you come here just to insult me? Really?”

  The devil’s grin disappears. This is a strange thing to see. Until now, that grin had seemed permanently affixed to his ugly fucking face. His expression turns serious. As anyone else out there could probably imagine, this development is more than slightly disturbing. A bizarrely jovial and poorly attired epitome of pure fucking evil I can almost kind of handle. The lighthearted veneer allows for a buffering distance from the truth of the thing, but when the veneer drops, shit starts to feel a little too real.

  It feels demonic.

  I can almost smell the brimstone seeping into the air.

  “I’m not here to insult you, buddy. Well, not just for that. I like you, believe it or not. We’re buds. Bros. We’ve partied together, shared some good times. We’ve both rutted in the same sloppy mess of intestines. No, the actual reason I’m here has to do with Crazy Sue. And you.”

  I feel a bit queasy at the reference to our joint defilement of my dead lover’s body. Choking down bile, I manage to continue. “That’s not quite how I’d describe what happened, but let’s set that aside for now. What about Crazy Sue?”

  The devil gulps beer. He belches. “I sensed a disturbance in the Force.” There’s a twitch of a grin at the corners of his mouth, but it fades quickly. “Or the equivalent thereof in Hell. See, I can make with the Star Wars references, too. I told you, we’re simpatico. Anyway, I can tell when someone’s trying to tap into infernal power. And I’m not talking about some teenaged wannabe me worshipper invoking my name in some half-assed spell or summoning. I mean the real deal, an attempt to hijack and redirect the underlying power of Hell itself. It doesn’t happen very often for the simple reason that doing it is next to impossible. Since the dawn of time, it’s only happened one other time. That’s how fucking rare it is. So, naturally, I took a keen interest in tracking down the responsible party. Didn’t take long. I am the devil, after all. And Hell is my playground. You can’t go mucking around in there without me finding out about it. And do you want to know who my investigation revealed as the perpetrator?”

  It isn’t hard to figure out where this is going. “Crazy Sue?”

  The devil smiles and nods. “Hey, good for you. You are absolutely, one-hundred percent correct. Maybe you’re not so dumb, after all.”

  I ignore the insult and say, “But how could Crazy Sue do a thing like that? She’s dead.”

  The devil chuckles. “Don’t be so provincial. Dead on the physical plane doesn’t mean gone forever or non-existent. Sue’s noncorporeal essence is still out there. At the time of death, souls are assigned either to purgatory or heaven or hell. A few are left in limbo and become what you dumb mortals think of as ghosts.”

  “And that’s what Sue is? A ghost?”

  “That’s right, buddy. Damn, you’re getting quicker on the uptake all the time. You’re still not quite Mensa material, but you could be on the verge of graduating from the short bus.”

  Again, I ignore the insult. Not because I’m above such crassness. Trading insults and being a rude dick in general is right in my fucking wheelhouse. I’m good at it. But I don’t bother this time because I’m too stunned by this final confirmation that I hadn’t been hallucinating after emerging from the drug haze in the cell. Sue really had been in there with me. Or, rather, her ghost had been in there with me.

  I let out a breath and shake my head. “Holy shit.”

  The devil gulps beer and wipes foam from his mouth. “Indeed. And it seems the incorporeal bitch still has a soft spot for you, which, call me old-fashioned, seems kind of odd considering it was you who cut her belly open and started that whole thing of rolling around in her offal and getting turned on by it.”

  I glare at him. “Fuck
you. That only happened because you fucked with my head somehow. I wouldn’t have done something that fucking perverted otherwise.”

  The devil grins and winks at me. “Are you sure about that?”

  My glare intensifies. “I’m pretty fucking sure, asshole. So, you’re here to track down Sue? Well, don’t expect me to help with that, because I won’t. I don’t even care how much you torture or threaten me. It is not fucking happening. You hear me?”

  A smirk tugs at a corner of the infernal douchebag’s mouth. “Damn, I don’t know, you should be careful with statements like that. You keep forgetting that I am Evil Incarnate. I am ancient. I am eternal. My wrath is terrible beyond your comprehension. And so on and so forth. Anyway, I’m not here to torture or threaten you. Like I said, we’re pals. I mean that most sincerely. And, anyway, I don’t need to find Sue. I only needed to identify the source of the hack, which I did. And now her access to my power has been permanently blocked. No, I’m not worried about her at all. She’s free to flit about on this miserable fucking plane without fear of reprisal from me forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Confusion displaces some of my anger. “Okay. Let’s say I believe that. Then why in fuck are you here?”

  The devil finishes off his second beer and again crushes the empty in his hand. This one also goes rattling down the stairwell. He snaps his fingers and yet another replacement appears out of fucking nowhere. He sighs as he pops the tab on the new can. There’s an unmistakable tinge of sadness in the sound. “I told you right at the start, I’m here to help you. You really need to work on your listening skills.”