Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  Gone. Gone. Gone.

  Fucking gone.

  All of them.

  These men.

  Gone. Gone. Gone.

  The air hangs heavy and still on Tiller Drive, like a corpse—the stench of bleach whipping around us. Aimee grabs my shirt and points to the boarded-up windows next to the stoop. A familiar sign has been hammered into plywood, but from the looks of it the sign has been there for a long time—washed-out color, faded lettering. The sign is clearly no longer an option for this building or any building on Tiller Drive. The sign is a realtor sign. The sign is for my father. It reads: FOR SALE. PLEASE CONTACT BALLENTINE BARKER, AGENT.

  “I need to get inside,” I say. My father’s property seems to be a meeting place for my English teacher and other whackjobs to wear executioner masks and do what exactly? Fuck each other senseless in an orgy? Fight each other for the fuck of it? Too many movie clichés present themselves as possible answers.

  “I’m only going to say this once and hopefully you take me at my word. I mean this with all of the love in the world,” she says. “Don’t be a fucking moron.”

  My heart feels like a slug crawling out of a salt bath.

  “You can walk away. We can forget together. Move on and never look back.” Aimee touches my cheeks. “No one has to know about this but us.”

  I cover her hands with my own and kiss her fingers. They smell like vanilla sugar. I kiss them until she pulls away. She knows that I’m not forgetting anything anytime soon. We make our way back to the SUV, sticking to the shadows of Tiller Drive, passing only empty cars.

  “There’s an alley not far from here,” she says. “It’s your only chance to do this.”

  “You’re going to abandon me here,” I say.

  “You’ll just have to trust me,” she says, offering me her hand. “Because you really don’t have any other choice.” She’s right. I don’t. So I accept her hand into mine and laugh at the fact that I was never going to deny her touch. Aimee revs the engine in short bursts and rolls down the windows, before banging a sharp U-turn away from Tiller Drive, before cutting a hard left into a black hole between two buildings—the alley.

  The alley is narrow, barely wide enough to fit the car, the side mirrors inches from bent chain-link fences protecting the backyards of the row homes. A stale, decaying smell lifts out of each concrete yard from both the loose and collected garbage piling up; the discarded machinery, like refrigerators and dryers; the abandoned gardens overrun with ivy and weeds and overgrown crabapple trees. The alley street grows wider—a V-shape. Aimee turns off the headlights again, always concerned with going unseen, minimizing our exposure to the masked men. Broken glass crunches under the tires. We pass a mangled, wheel-less shopping cart, empty. Chest-high grass grows up through the cement along the rust-chewed fences. A warm breeze rolls over the broken buildings, carrying away the stale stench for a moment. There is no life back here, no sign of men in masks, only us and the remnants of the end of things

  We pass the house.

  Aimee pumps the brake, forcing the car to a dead-stop, jolting us forward. Baseball bats slide out from a canvas bag in the back. A chain-link fence is propped open, creating a makeshift driveway where a big, black van with tinted windows is purposefully parked, backed up against the house, facing out into the alley, ready for a getaway. Two, dying trees quarantine the van by the house. Hazy, yellow light escapes at the edges of the plywood in the windows on the first and second floor of the house. A fire escape zigzags up the back of the building, rising up to the second floor and the roof. The farther up the ladder goes, the less light exists.

  This is the house.

  “Keep the engine running,” I say, as Aimee parks the SUV up the street from the house and out of sight. “If anyone comes out of that house, floor it and don’t look back.”

  “Be safe,” she says.

  “Should we kiss?” I ask.

  “When you come back,” she says.

  I reach behind my seat, feeling around on the floor until I find it—my beautiful bastard, a wooden, Cal Ripken Signature Louisville Slugger baseball bat.

  Aimee’s dad won’t mind if I borrow his bat. I’m protecting his daughter. Being Chivalrous and shit.

  Lock-and-load.

  92

  I choke up on the bat and hold it high, stepping carefully and slowly through the backyard. Masked men could be anywhere. The black van with tinted windows is backed up all the way to French double doors on the first floor of the house, the doors reinforced with thick sheets of plywood. I place a palm on the plywood and push, but nothing happens. It doesn’t bend at all. No weakness exists. Foggy, yellow light lurks beneath the wood, coming from inside. Where the fuck did everyone go? What were they doing in there? There’s another door on the side of the house, but that is closed off too. Every window and door appear impenetrable, the house of masked men and yellow light.

  The black van is shiny in the low yellow glow of the house and dent-free with an extended back cab capable of extra storage. The license plate is nothing I’ve ever seen; maybe these are what people call “dealer’s tags,” random numbers and letters on a cardboard square of paper. I tap on the hood, feeling for heat, but the hood is cold, cold, cold, dead cold. The van has easily been here for hours, at least. Rembrandt only just arrived to the house and he seems to be the guest of freaking honor, so that begs the question—who is responsible for this van and what is inside? Are the meatheads in executioner masks the owners? I yank on the silver handle of the driver and passenger doors, but both are supremely fucking locked. I cup my hands at my eyes and press my face into the black glass of the passenger window, hoping for a glimpse of something, but all I see is darkness. For a moment, I have a daymare where the side door slides open and vicious, hungry, angry zombie dogs leap out at me, snarling, growling, gnashing their fangy teeth. They attack and rip into my flesh, but even in my daymare I can’t bring myself to bash the dogs with my bat. Only humans deserve the type of pain this bat can yield. I pull on the silver handle of the side door, but this also does not open. I work my way around to the double doors of the van. I choke up on the bat and slip the base of the bat into the handle, ready to yank it open and confront whatever is inside. I Mississippi count. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. FOUR! I throw myself into a backwards movement, pulling with everything I can muster, and the door swings free in a loud squeak and stays open. The smooth wood of the bat taps along my fingers, as they spider down the handle and cock it back. I attack the van, scaring out the big bad by swinging blindly inside, and immediately connect with a metal toolbox, which sends silver vibrations into my forearms. The back is not exactly empty, but is vacant of men.

  Heavy sheets of plastic—thicker than shower-liner, tougher than leather—are folded into squares, like a comforter, and stacked neatly in the back. I open the metal toolbox and find it filled with nothing but nails. I feel around on the floor of the van and make out the shape of a nail gun. These guys have this place fortified. There’s a huge amount of open space in the van, which means something else is missing, something else is being used. I move up into the front cab of the van and flip through the visors and glove box but don’t find anything. My foot snags the strap of a book bag behind the driver’s side. I put down the bat and unzip the teeth—various executioner masks. It’s the only thing missing, so I grab one from the bottom of the bag and pull it over my head. I close up the back doors of the van and look at my reflection in the black shine. I’m one step closer to becoming one of them.

  Now all that remains is finding a way inside.

  93

  A retractable ladder is wedged up into the small metal landing of the fire escape, running up the side of the house. Stairs rise up from the landing. I jump several times, trying to grab the bottom rung of the ladder, but my lack of athleticism and height makes this impossible. I could be at this all day and never touch the damn thing.

  I center myself under the ladder. I swing the
bat and hit the rung to see if it will drop with a shock. Instead, the bat makes a deep and loud clang. Hard vibrations shutter through my body, from my hands to my teeth to my toes. There’s nothing here to stand on. No empty boxes or gardening cabinets. No chairs or loose bricks. The back of the house is pristine.

  I climb up the van from the front bumper, over the hood and up the windshield. I stand at the van’s back edge, just over the double doors.

  First I toss the bat, which hits the side of the house and clatters to the landing.

  I won’t count. It needs to happen fast and be exact. My legs need to power me up and to my target. I think of Coach O’Bannon—stiff back, arms over head, bend the knees, bounce, feet at the edge, goddamnit, and launch.

  I rocket toward the ladder.

  But my aim is off. My forearms slam against the bottom rung and I twist and grab to take hold of the rung with my hands and as I do my arms are nearly wrenched from their sockets. Then I’m just hanging there, arms in a death grip.

  I feel a shudder, a snap, a collapse, but can’t tell if it’s in my body or not. Then I feel it—the ladder yanks loose, unhinging from the landing of the fire escape, and slides down at an angle. Or not sliding: a single, deep slice. Another shudder. Another snap. And the ladder freezes again. White spots explode everywhere.

  Then all is still. I’m just dangling, an inch or two off the ground. I can just touch the tips of my toes to the ground, holding the rung.

  Hand over hand, I pull myself up the ladder until I can get a foot on the bottom rung. Then it’s easy: I’m up on the landing. On two flat feet again, with my bat in my hands.

  Two windows covered in plywood are within reach of the landing. I press on the first one with my hand and feel for weaknesses in the wood, but like the others, the wood is thick and nailed deep into the frame of the house. I don’t even bother with it and move to the next window. I press on the wood again, expecting the same resistant result. This time the wood shifts in the sill, but only enough to notice the difference, the bottom corner denting in a bit. This is the window that’ll work, if any of them work at all. In a short and fast swing, I slam the butt of the bat into the corner of the wood like a battering ram and it bashes through. Rotten wood flakes away around me. This is my savior—termites. I slam the butt into the corner above my hole and half of the plywood window now shatters away at my feet. I bash a few more times on the remaining half of plywood and snap off enough for me to fit through. I fit my arms and upper body in first, before pulling my legs up behind me, easing the plywood back into place, no one the wiser.

  Inside the window frame where many years ago an actual window used to exist, darkness now was landlord. I hold my hands out in front of me and feel a cold plastic sheet, slick from moisture, pulled tight across the frame. My hands pull apart the plastic, ripping a hole wide enough for me to get though. The fuzzy, yellow light cuts through the hole. The open window is a small step down as I climb into an empty upstairs room. It, too, is completely wrapped in plastic.

  I am inside the house.

  94

  The second floor of the house is empty and needlessly protected.

  There is one immediate detail, second to the vacancy, that triggers me to choke up on the bat—every square inch is covered in heavy plastic. The kind used in construction sites to keep the workers’ boots from scuffing up the floors. The kind used in homes to paintproof shit from being stained with driblets and drops. It covers everything. Plastic covers the hardwood floors and expertly sticks to the stairs. It rises up the red brick walls and across the ceiling in tight overlapping lanes. It wraps the banister like Christmas garland. Not a smidge—nothing is exposed. Someone spent a patient eternity covering every inch of this damn place. I know the house isn’t empty, but it is. For now. In this very moment all is noiseless. No crisp crinkling of plastic under quick feet—nothing.

  I remember the homemade video. I remember the similar seeming plastic on the wall and floor on that homemade video. This is that same exact place. I am there. That is here. In the house, I feel like the inside of an IV bag.

  An overpowering chemical stench—bleach—whips up and burns my eyes and the insides of my mouth and nose. I snort acidic fumes. Reminds me of how Dad describes the first time he smelled napalm, the way the petrol fumes lingered for days across the village, burning exposed skin, searing ungoggled eyes—those hazy, wavy ripples on lonesome desert highways. He said it hurt to breathe the air, but that he got used to it. He said the smell covered the smell of something much worse. The end.

  Another hallway: empty bedroom, dressing room, bathroom, and smaller room or den. More work lamps lay in corners, lighting contained patches of space, but encouraging the shadows to devour the rest. I reach the bathroom off of the hallway and step through the plastic covered doorway, patting the wall with my hand. A light switch. My fingers dig through the crisscrossed lanes of thick plastic. Flick on the light.

  Sharp flourescent light cuts away the darkness. Plastic runs over the tiled floor I can see underneath. Hugs the toilet bowl and tank. Lines the in’s and out’s of the claw-foot bathtub. Over the walls and ceiling and small oval mirror above the sink. My reflection distorts through the plastic. I have an eggplant-shaped head and wide cucumber slices for eyes. That sick, chemical stench rears back and attacks. Stronger this time. Taste it on my lips. Smoky fire-like fumes scourge. My eyes well with emotionless tears. My nose leaks a windy trail of blood to my mouth. I spit onto the plastic. People say that blood tastes like pennies. It doesn’t. It tastes like quarters. The room shifts. It tilts. I lean into the wall, steadying myself, waiting for the impairment to pass. When it does, I see it in the sink. I don’t believe it at first. I think the fumes are making me hallucinate. I lower my bat to the floor and push off the wall propelling myself to the sink, placing my palms on either side of the spigot, leaning down for a closer look, waiting for it to disappear. But it doesn’t. It only becomes more real. My head no longer feels connected to my neck, snapping down by force of gravity. The stench thickens. There. On the counter. Surgical equipment on a silver tray. Several sizes of scalpels in ascending order of blade length. Metal clamps. Unused gauze. A box of plastic gloves. Safety goggles.

  And in the sink, the centerpiece of it all.

  A hairless human foot, severed just above the ankle, rests heel down in the pit of the sink. Spongy bone pokes through the top, revealing a single clean cut. No evidence of splintered or fractured bone. Red, raw muscle hugs the insides. Five toes with trimmed, unpainted toenails. The skin color is a faded and aged piss yellow. A raw breast of chicken cutlet left out over night. Dark brown lines crack beneath the dried surface of the skin. Bloated blue veins run deeper but are visible just the same. It must be a fake. Impossibly real. I poke it with my finger and it feels warm, fresh, detached. Dry heaving sets in. Voices in the hallway. Masked men arriving below. I unflick the light and grab at the door, fucking wrapped in plastic too, and swing it shut in a single, dragging crunch of plastic. I close it close enough to all the way, leaving a tiny sliver open and stand behind it, listening for the men but overpowered by my careless breathing.

  I am okay.

  I am not okay.

  The men in masks crunch across the plastic and up the stairs to the second floor.

  “There’s no way anybody got in up here.”

  “I know that and you know that, but for some reason he doesn’t know that.”

  “The paranoid fuck. Thinks he’s being followed.”

  They pass the bathroom and enter another room and codes come crashing down.

  ZSC #1.

  ZSC #2.

  ZSC #3.

  ZSC #4.

  ZSC #5.

  95

  I open the door and am out of the bathroom, out of the black, and down the hallway. Pounding down the stairs. Through to the vacant family room.

  Everything covered in plastic.

  I stand in the foyer and stare straight through: foyer, fireplace room, fa
mily room, stairs, kitchen. No furniture, but a wide open, narrow space. No sound. Soft, yellow light beaming from work lamps tossed into corners. This space is void. Plastic bunches under my feet. I drop my bat, and it whacks the floor with increasing speed until it settles into a dead stop.

  Leave, I hear that inner boy scream. Leave.

  I reach the place in the house where the front door should be, but it’s too late—the door is gone. I can’t find it—disappeared behind a wall of plastic. I rip at the exposed edges, pulling away sheet after sheet, until I touch the doorframe and fumble at the locks—bolted shut and a padlock surgically implanted as added prevention. I move to the front windows, ripping and pulling, but can see the plywood through the plastic. The house is on lockdown. There is no way out. I pick up the bat and stare back down the hallway of the house. This must be how ghosts feel. I have to go back through.

  I pass through the family room, toward the kitchen and the French double doors. The backyard. The van. Aimee. Just on the other side of those doors and through the reinforced plywood. The yellow light upstairs shuts off. Then, the kitchen. The front of the house.

  I hear a man somewhere say, “It’s the Blackout.”

  Light spills out from only one door, leading to a staircase that spirals down, all covered in plastic. I keep the baseball bat low and at my side, which is completely unseen under the darkness. I move quickly to the door and pass through alone, so no one spots my weapon.

  I say, “What the fuck are you doing, Jeremy?”

  I say, “Why are you talking to yourself, asshole?”

  I think of all the movies—zombie and otherwise—where someone talks out loud to themselves as they do something completely moronic. I am that guy right now. Talking to myself. Being a fucking moron.