Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Zombies keep on coming. Twenty or more of them. On fire. Only caring about killing us.

  It hits me. Realization like a punch to the sternum. This plan is fucked. The question of how we will succeed is moot. Idiotic. Fucked. The only question now, is how to survive.

  “Retreat!” I yell between gun shots. “Back to the elevators!”

  I turn.

  And turn.

  And turn.

  “Which the hell way are they?” Gran has lost his hippy chill. He looks desperate and trapped.

  I gun down a zombie, spot something that resembles an opening. “This way!”

  We move. Everything is flame and smoke and noise. A T-junction arrives, abrupt in the smoke. I spin right. More zombies. Left. More zombies. Even more. I spin back right, draw a bead on one’s forehead.

  There is a crash as part of the ceiling gives way. Vines rush down, spilling out of the hole. Reams of sprinkler system. Pipes sag, crack. Water gushes.

  Zombies are buried in rubble, consumed by hungry fire. And all I can think is, no. No, I wanted to go that way.

  I spin again. The horde is closer. I fire a single futile shot. I go for another, pull the trigger. The gun clicks, dry and empty as a zombie’s throat.

  I eject the magazine, stuff another one home. My last one. Fifteen more rounds.

  “This is fucked.” Gran is starting to look panicky. I’m starting to feel it.

  Then I spot a door. Halfway between us and the oncoming horde. “This way!” I plunge toward it. The zombies plunge toward us. We’re fractionally faster, get to the door with one second before they are on us. I use it to apply the boot. A lock pops, hinges scream.

  We race through, parallel to the flames now, smoke still billowing at us, but finally out of immediate danger of being broiled alive. My lungs rasp. Too much soot and shit in them for me to get a proper breath. As we run past open doorways I see outside light spilling in. I almost want to stop, go to one of those windows, throw it open, just so I can breathe.

  How did this go so wrong? It had sounded almost rational at some point. Flame to flush out the zombies. Come in fast and hard. Use the sprinklers to control everything. But the flames came too fast. And the zombies didn’t care. And there are so many of them.

  God. We have to get out. We can’t save humanity from here. I don’t even know if we can save ourselves.

  Except we have to. This can’t end here. I have promised Felicity. She trusts me on this. I can’t betray that trust.

  I can’t.

  And then, there. Right fucking there. We round a corner and I see it. An open office doorway. A room untouched by fire. And computers. Hard drive after hard drive piled one on top of the other. A mad jungle of wires.

  “There!” I scream, cough, hack. “There!” I point.

  We barrel forward, spill into the room. Tabitha scrambles with her laptop, tries to wire it up between wracking coughs.

  It’s absurd. Of course it’s absurd. What can we do here? How many seconds do we have? But it’s the plan. It’s hope. Driving us. It’s the deranged part of us that makes us do what we do.

  Then they come. Round the corner after us. The horde. Gran, Felicity and I take the door. Gunfire joins the crackling and spitting of load-bearing structures around us. Behind us Tabitha curses and froths.

  “Fucking firewall bullshit…

  “Can’t design a server for shit…

  “Fucking architecture, motherfucker.”

  On and on. And on and on the zombies come. The smoke getting thicker. Making it harder to see. And they keep getting closer, closer. Stumbling over their own dead.

  “Can’t hold this much longer, dudette,” Gran yells. And he’s right.

  “Need time,” Tabitha snaps back at him. And then, for good measure, “Fuck.”

  I’m conserving ammunition, but I’m still down to three shots.

  I look to Felicity. She is grim and desperate. Soot cakes her nostrils. Her cheeks are pale and sweat streaked. But there is nothing but fire in her eyes. Fire and determination, to see this done. To save her own.

  I promise to her there and then—silently but with utter sincerity—that I will make good on my promises. I don’t know how the hell I’ll do it, but I will save the whole goddamn world with three bullets or less. I will be the hero. For her.

  And then, suddenly, she is gone.

  58

  The zombie comes out of nowhere. No, comes out of a doorway. Out of a fire-gutted office.

  It’s barely even human. Its arms are stumps. I can hear its skin crack as it barrels out in front of me, passes within a whisker of me.

  Into Felicity.

  And another, another, another. They pour out of the door. A great running crowd of them. I bounce off a bloody shoulder, bounce back.

  And Felicity.

  Felicity.

  Felicity. Borne away by the tide of them. The pack pours through the corridor in front of me, out of one door and through another, bearing Felicity with them. I hear her scream.

  I’m always going to hear that scream.

  I stand. I reel. My vision blurs at the corners of my eyes. It’s hard to get a breath.

  I’m always going to hear that scream.

  “Fire! Shoot! Fuck!” Gran. Gran yelling. Gran not having even seen. Concentrating on the zombies coming from the other direction. Concentrating on the threat encroaching on the server room.

  “We’re going to be over-run!” he yells.

  “Need more time!” Tabitha yells.

  Would you ever really forgive me if I saved you at the expense of the greater good?

  She said maybe not. But I hear her scream again. And I realize that no matter what she says, I could not live with myself if I made that sacrifice. I could not.

  I am not that kind of hero.

  59

  I run. Away from Gran. Away from Tabitha. Away from the mission. From saving the world.

  I run to Felicity.

  I slam through a doorway. Stumble, stagger, catch my feet beneath me, push after the horde. Not too far. They’re still within sight. Just a room away. Silhouetted by the light of windows beyond them.

  Felicity screams.

  I’m always going to hear that scream.

  No. Not if I save her. Not if I stop them. And as long as she’s screaming she’s still alive. Hold onto that, Arthur. Hold onto that.

  I’ve raced like this before. Raced to save the life of someone I loved. It didn’t go so well.

  Fuck history. Fuck these zombies.

  They run out of rooms, out of corridors. They dead end, before the window.

  I get my gun up, fire.

  A zombie is holding Felicity. I see my bullet strike him in the shoulder. See it knock him back. See him hit the glass of the window. He flails. Kicks. More of them. More of them hitting the window. I see glass crack.

  No. No. No, no, no.

  I barrel into the room. I shoot another, another. Heads detonate. But that’s wrong, the wrong call, Arthur. The wrong damn call. The heads don’t impede the passage of the bullets. They strike the glass. One, two. The window cracks. The bodies of decapitated zombies reel back into it. The glass fractures.

  No, no, no. Nonono.

  I have to get to her. I have to—

  I try to stop. To stamp on the brakes. But I am momentum’s bitch. I am too desperate and beaten. I stagger, hit one zombie, spin off, hit another. I collide with the zombie holding Felicity. We are momentarily inches apart. She is gasping, yelling, clawing at the creature’s skin. Fighting. Always fighting.

  I grab her in my arms, haul on her. I feel the zombie’s grip weakening.

  Zombies slam into my back. Fingers. Claws. We’re pressed against the glass. I can hear it creaking, cracking.

  And then I have her, for a moment, I have her. She is safe in my arms.

  No. Not safe. Not exactly.

  Nononono.

  The glass cracks.

  Nonononononono.

  The g
lass breaks.

  Nonononononononoooooooo!

  And then all of us—every single last one of us—we all go sailing out, into space, and down.

  60

  I am in the air.

  I am in the air.

  I am eighty stories up and—oh God, oh God, oh God—I am in the air.

  I can see so much. Manhattan, the capital of the world spread out before me. I can see—finally and fully—the extent of the chaos wreaked by Clyde’s plans. I can see Central Park like a ruptured tumor at the city’s heart, spilling grass and greenery. I can see the trees metastasizing out of skyscraper windows. I can see the rubble of this city’s broken body. The grid of roads become a grid of forest.

  I can see it all.

  And I don’t care. The majesty and the horror are utterly lost on me. Not even the rapidly approaching ground matters yet. No, the only thing in the world I care about is between here and there, is in front of me, is falling with me, is falling away from me.

  Felicity. Felicity falling. Falling to her death with me.

  The air is full of limbs. Of bodies. Zombies around us. Still clawing and cawing. One of them has a hand around Felicity’s neck. Its fingers are burned. Bones protrude where nails should be. I see them score bloody lines over her pale skin.

  Water floods my eyes. The wind tearing at them. I blink it away. So I can see Felicity’s face contorting in pain.

  No. No. I deny this end. I deny this death. No, you will not get to eat my girlfriend’s face.

  My pistol is still in my hand. I aim, pull the trigger. In midair. Falling down the full length of the Empire State Building. Fuck logic. Fuck you, you zombie bastard.

  The gun clicks. The magazine is empty. I had three bullets to save the world. And I’ve used them all.

  Fury. Frustration. Desperation. I don’t know what fuels my arm, as I fling the pistol at the zombie. But it cracks hard against the zombie’s skull. The zombie goes cross-eyed, spins away through the air. Away from Felicity.

  I fall to her. Into her. My body colliding with hers. Her eyes wide, staring at me. And I wish I could read those eyes, those beautiful eyes, just one last time. But there is no time now. How many stories do we have left together? Sixty? Forty? How many seconds before we hit the ground?

  Something slams into my back. It claws at me.

  Seriously? In midair? Mid-suicidal leap? In the middle of my last goddamn moment of peace? Still these zombie bastards are coming at me?

  I push off Felicity. The zombie spins off me. I punch it, send it spinning through midair to collide with the side of the Empire State Building. It becomes nothing but a distant smear of red.

  Windows race past me. Another flailing zombie is somehow angling through the air toward me. And of course it is me who ends up falling to his death with the parachuting expert bloody zombies. Of course. Of bloody course.

  God, there is so much of the building above us. So much. There can be so little left. How fast we must be going. I feel the wind ripping at me.

  I swing my legs, connect with the zombie’s neck. It snags my ankle, pulls me in, jaws wide. I bunch my knees, come in faster than it expects. I use wind velocity to speed the blow I direct at its temple.

  Something in its skull gives way. Then its fingers do. I kick off its flailing torso, use momentum to spin through the air, and down. Back. Back to Felicity.

  She is right below me. I reach out to her. And, God, there is the ground. So close. So very close. And there is so little time.

  A tree. One of Clyde’s fucking trees. That is what I’m going to land on. What is going to kill me. A pissing tree.

  If only I could say “I love you,” before the end. I start, open my mouth, manage to get out the, “I—” Then the wind rips the breath from me. There is no time to get another.

  I hit the tree.

  Everything ends.

  61

  62

  ?

  I fly through space. Through streets. I float through dappled darkness. I am surrounded by concrete and leaves.

  I look for a white light. There is only shadow. Swallowing. Enveloping…

  ?

  Felicity. Felicity is with me. Flying beside me. Floating in and out of my field of vision. Like a broken bird. On her back. Head cast back, hair trailing.

  Darkness comes again.

  ?

  Flying. Always flying. Wasn’t I flying a moment ago… Flying… down?

  Except now, there is this pressure. On my back, bearing me along. Bearing me up.

  So not flying.

  Another word. It lurks at the edges of thought. Blurry. Vaseline-smeared thoughts. Hard to grasp. No solid edges.

  Carried. I am being carried.

  Carried into darkness.

  ?

  Falling. Not flying. Falling. Again.

  There is sound now. Perhaps there has always been sound. I think perhaps there has.

  I reach the ground.

  If I am falling shouldn’t the ground hurt? But this is soft. As if a great hand has laid me down.

  Bark and leaves. The world is full of bark and leaves.

  The sound I realize is words.

  “—caught you. I did, Arthur. You’re going to be safe, mate.”

  I can’t understand them. They don’t mean anything to me. Meaning is water on their oil-slick shell.

  Still, I try to remember them in case I can grasp their meaning later.

  “Just get down into the tunnels.”

  Aren’t I already down? What tunnels? The voice doesn’t make any sense.

  The tree moves. Caught by a breeze? A strong wind perhaps, because it bows back up into the sky. The voice shouts, “Come on! Come on, you fucking pillocks!”

  The tree looms back down. Fills my vision, and I think perhaps the tree is going to fall on me. But it stops, lying there over me.

  “End of the road here for me, I think, Arthur, mate. No room in the subway tunnels for a tree, I’m afraid, and that fucker Gran has gone and called the planes in. Big face full o’ deadly defoliant for me, it seems. So, you know, when you’re feeling better, kick him in the nuts for me. But you need to get down in the tunnels and away. Got you as far as I could.”

  Three blurs of motion enter my field of vision. They whirl around me. Between me and the tree.

  There is something about that tree. Something like kinship. I don’t really understand it. It’s a tree. Why do I care about a tree? But a great sadness wells up in me. Something tearing free in my gut. Like a wound. The sadness welling up like blood in my throat. Filling my mouth.

  There aren’t words. Not here. Not now. Not this disconnected from the world. They are beyond me. My body is beyond me. I feel it hoisted up. Something behind me. Bearing me away from that tree.

  “It’s been real, mate,” says the tree. And it’s the tree talking, I realize. “Keep rocking in the free world and all that shit, you know?”

  And then I am dragged down steps into a tunnel. Felicity is being dragged beside me. I see her feet bouncing off each step.

  Tunnels. Is that what the tree was talking about?

  I don’t want to leave it. I want it to come with me. I try to cry out, but whether that has any effect, I can’t tell.

  The tree takes a great step. Away from me. Away from the mouth of this tunnel. It takes another. It walks away from me. I am pulled away from him.

  The tunnel fills the world around me. The light of the sky retreats. But I glimpse it long enough to see planes sweeping down over the world above. Planes spouting great white clouds that fall like rain.

  A name comes to me. Up out of the fog and sadness. “Winston.”

  And then he’s gone.

  63

  AN HOUR LATER, IN THE TUNNELS OF THE PATH TRAIN

  Beneath the Hudson river, I finally come to enough for someone to explain it to me.

  “Winston’s dead.”

  I stare, try to process the news. Try to cut through the bullshit my brain is giving me ab
out confusion and concussion and trauma. I try to make the words make sense.

  “Winston’s dead.”

  Clyde has either volunteered or picked the short straw. His face is battered and dirt-smeared. My look of desolate confusion, reflected in his dented cranium, becomes a funhouse mockery.

  “How?” I manage. It feels like I’m trying to manipulate my vocal centers with numb fingers.

  Clyde twists his head. Some human expression should go here, some twisting of the features. But Clyde’s face gives me nothing.

  “He’d taken out all the zombies in the lobby. Very impressive actually, but…” Clyde flaps a hand, dismissing his own tangent. “He went outside and he… saw, or heard you falling. He realized what was going on. And he ran and he caught you.” Clyde hesitates. “Without him you’d be dead.”

  I’d be dead. But I’m not. Winston’s dead.

  God… how? How can that be?

  Dull memories of him carrying me. Of him putting me down. Walking away. Why did he put me down? Jesus fucking Christ, why did he put me down?

  “Gran and Tabby burst out of the building,” Clyde continues. “Going on about the plan having gone all to hell, about having called the planes in. We all had to go to the nearest PATH train. Winston carried you both. But at the train entrance… Well, the system just isn’t designed for flora of Winston’s magnitude. Understandable of course. Can’t imagine many people thought about the evacuation options for tree-men in Manhattan. Not much call for it. But he couldn’t fit into the tunnels. And…”

  God. This is where the story twists. Where the deus gets to go all ex machina. But I already know the ending.

  God, I don’t want to know this ending.

  “There wasn’t time for him to get away,” Clyde says. “There wasn’t anywhere for him to go.” Clyde spasms through another shrug. “The planes came in,” he says. “The Agent Orange… He was still outside when it was delivered.”

  It feels like one of Felicity’s incendiary grenades goes off in my gut. The birth of a sun bright and scalding in too small a space.