by Jason Beech
TRIPLE ZOMBIE
JASON BEECH
THE BLOODY PATH TO NEW MEXICO
JOHN BRUNNI
CAPTAIN METH-MOUTH ON THE HIGH SEAS OF CHICAGO
JAMES A. NEWMAN
UNDEAD CARGO
JASON BEECH lives with his wife and daughter in New Jersey. As a kid he once stole a mushroom from a corner shop. The owner’s dog followed him all the way home, making him walk about a mile’s diversion from where he lived to shake the damn thing off. Otherwise, he’s a law-abiding citizen who loves crime fiction. His work can be found at SHOTGUN HONEY and THE FLASH FICTION OFFENSIVE. He structurally edited Monica Kaushik’s Maya & the Butterfly, and her soon-published WARRIORS OF DARKNES.
THE BLOODY PATH TO NEW MEXICO
LIZZY CURSED at Frank, muttering “idiot” for bringing them to the attention of the undead just so he could sport with them.
Get off his shot. Get his man.
He’d wasted enough ammo on other grunting undead, them trying to rip their flesh, pull out their intestines. He’d grown up playing football, thinking his physical agility and bone-crunching body checks and tackles made him the man to get them in and out of this. She thought all that high school sport had mushed his brain and no amount of logic or science classes would ever have helped. But he’s the only man she had, and the only one she was likely to get in this infested world they lived in. She had to do what his teachers or parents could never do: change him. For the sake of the spawn they needed to reproduce. For the sake of mankind.
A legless zombie dug its nails into the tarmac the best it could to pull itself towards her. She watched it all the way to her feet, almost unable to keep her eyes off it even as she battered its leggy compadres’ heads. When it finally got close enough to reach for her ankle, she caved its cranium with her sister’s little baseball bat.
They edged away from this group of the risen dead before that larger collection coming round the corner of Target saw them.
***
FRANK’S GRIP on his rifle tightened as he crouched. He had to squint to cut through the smoke from the upturned Audi, but he had caught the sunken eyes of his former friend. Danny knelt over a carcass, looking as dumb now as ever, his muffin belly a result of what he always did best: eat. Frank didn't think Danny had the appetite for donuts like he once had. All that sugar gave him any number of cavities, and gums which puffed and bled.
From this distance, looking through the gap between the Shoprite truck and its crumpled trailer, Frank couldn't tell if the blood smudged across Danny's gums, teeth, face, front of his shirt, and even his hair, belonged to him or not.
“We should go, before they see us,” Lizzy said.
“And you need to grow some balls,” he growled, unable to take his eyes off Danny.
“Excuse me,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Wisps of red cloud clawed the deepening blue sky as if one of Danny’s tribe had scraped it a wound.
“If we don’t go, we turn into them.” She pulled at his right arm. It barely gave, her fingers unable to gain purchase on his tight bicep. She let her hand dangle, fingers twitching.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“What?” She gave him a sharp little punch, pulling away immediately on impact.
He turned his eyes on her, frightening her more than Danny and his munching by the Audi.
“I’m tired,” he snapped. “I’m sick of looking over my shoulder all the time. Maybe it’s a good thing to join them. It’ll let me switch off.”
She wrapped a skinny arm around his waist and pulled. Her willpower, rather than strength, pulled him further away from the carnage. Danny stood among a crowd of his ilk, and Frank could sense a battle of wills about to take place, like lions he’d seen in documentaries that fought for rank.
“Do they look switched off to you?” She swept an arm across the scene. The lowering sun cast shadows from each, maybe twenty, of them, elongating the fear that already quivered their frames. “They don’t rest. They’re on the lookout for fresh meat all the time. They go crazy if they don’t find it. That’s not resting.” She blew her fringe out of her vision. “We just need to bide our time.”
A little spot at the back of his mind, a place he hardly used because it took such effort, calculated her reason and agreed with it. But the rest of his brain could never fall in line. Ego took hold and pushed that geeky part back into place, cowering in a corner.
“You know what he did, right?”
He knew she didn’t like to comb her hair with dirty-nailed fingers. She told him they needed to keep certain standards; otherwise they should give up right away. She didn’t comb her rich auburn hair now, more raked it, hard, like her head had become overrun by vermin. It had started to smell that way. At first she had risked the confined spaces of a pharmacy to get her hands on shampoo and body wash, but one close escape too many had stayed her attempts. Her hair sounded like straw being pulled apart. It played on his strings, forcing a shiver he tried hard to contain.
“I know what he did,” she eventually breathed. “And it really doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Bullshit.”
“Keep your voice down, for crying out loud.”
***
HE’S SUCH an idiot, she thought. They could have been on their way west to New Mexico by now. She walked through plumes of dust kicked up by Frank in lieu of a tin can, in the fields at the edge of town. Corn had once grown here, but seeds had last been planted five years ago, just before all this happened. Now the fields gave themselves back to nature. Weeds and grass grabbed their ankles as if infected by what had taken everybody they knew. Their mothers, fathers… Lizzy’s five year old sister. She kicked the memory away.
Sentiment caused danger.
She watched Frank’s back, examining how his hips swayed with each step, a John Wayne for the end times, and wondered if she would ever lay with him. He had tried a few times before, but she had rejected every attempt. She feared he would push it to the extreme and rape her. She smiled at the fact he never had. He had that going for him, at least. She didn’t fancy him. Yet. She tried. Lizzy had used her fingers many times, attempting to fantasize a sexual relationship with this man, but she could never reach any satisfaction. Her mind wandered to George Clooney every time, then she’d feel guilty and force Frank’s head back on George’s shoulders. But that thick skull never fit right. The image looked like a kid had mutilated two dolls and fixed different body parts together.
***
SHE MET him two years ago. She’d sneaked by a ruck of the undead, feeding on an old woman who had barely enough meat to feed a hamster, never mind half a dozen braindead men – was there any other kind? - to get into a Target store. She needed batteries for the battery pack which juiced her battered laptop, and a dozen or so matchbooks. Internet servers had survived this apocalypse, even if hardly any websites had. Wikipedia survived, like a cockroach. She took that back, it linked her to sanity. Despite its flaws, she needed to keep her brain working, and learning about world history kept her mind from melting.
At the far end of the toy aisle, where the GI Joes flirted with Barbies who would never survive any of this – she knew some real-life ones who hadn’t - a man stood staring at a crate of Lego. Lizzie slid her laptop bag to the floor, careful its rough worn fabric didn’t make a single scratching noise on the hard floor. She tip-toed past the smiling Barbies, all of them waving a right hand, a “buy me” beckoning she had resisted even as a kid. A lack of proper company made her paranoid. She felt like the plastic bimbettes mocked her, like their fleshy counterparts did at school. The GI Joes seemed to scowl at them, saying, “Barbie, this ain’t no time for frippery. There’s k
illin’ to be done.”
She shook her head clear. She had started making up a lot of stories recently, trying to create sense in the new world. She raised her little sister’s small metal baseball bat behind her right shoulder, judging the angle to swipe. The man-thing’s sweat stabbed her nostrils, screwing her face tight. Still, she could bear it more than the reek of death that normally hung around them.
“You’ll need more than a baseball bat to get out of here, pumpkin.”
Lizzy stumbled back, her left arm reaching out for balance. Instead, she leaned back into the flimsy pile of packaging containing the Barbies, and fell to the floor, blinking away the stack of smiles which tumbled over her.
“Don’t eat me,” she said.
“I’m not one of them.” He turned and flashed a yellow smile.
Her heart beat faster now than when she thought him a zombie.
“Don’t rape me.”
“I’m not that kind of man, pumpkin. Anything else?”
“Don’t call me pumpkin.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
She allowed him her hand and he pulled her up from the trashed Barbie boxes. She planted her feet, sudying him framed by the shelves of GI Joes, eyeing every red line criss-crossing his left pupil.
She shifted her gaze to his yellow teeth. “Toothpaste is in aisle seven,” she said.
***
HE BLASTED them out of that confined space, attracting even more of the undead. Thankfully, he had a shoulder bag full of ammo, keen to use it.
Two years of companionship had not dulled the occasional sharp feeling that she would prefer solitude. She slapped out-of-date sunscreen across her face to protect against the beating sun, watching a couple of hawks circle some prey. She thought a body might lie out there in the fields. The thought made her rub the sunscreen harder to calm her shivers. She relaxed, thinking hawks only preyed on live animals. Like us, she thought.
She gave Frank’s ankle a soft flick with her bare toe. She aired her feet from the stinking sneakers she barely took off for fear of needing to run at any moment. He ignored her, instead viewing the town below the hill through the telescope attached to his rifle, making the occasional shot. She hated the way he allowed himself a double-edged smile, half of it for the head he’d just splattered like a watermelon across a sidewalk, half because it defied her disapproval.
“They’re looking for us. Always looking.”
“I’m glad they’re dead,” she said. “You just don’t need to enjoy it so much. I know some of those people.”
“What’s a man supposed to do for entertainment? Darn socks?”
She kneeled behind his stretched body and applied sunscreen to his exposed calves.
“That tickles,” he protested, looking back at her.
“There are no doctors anymore. If you get cancer …”
“On my calves?”
“Skin cancer, my boy.”
“I have my cure right here.” He patted the rifle resting on its attached tripod.
His eyes pinched. He must have seen my skin blotch, or something, she thought. Yes, she’d miss him. The longing for isolation was always a momentary blip. She could only enjoy these pregnant belly hills with another. Nothing had much pleasure solo, unless it ended with the arrival of company.
“We should be on our way to New Mexico.”
“I have no business in New Mexico.”
“We agreed.”
She stuck her thumbs deep into his tight calves, making him sit and spin, a tickled laugh bursting from him. He grabbed her hands to avoid her further penetrating his flesh. That could have been a moment, she thought. His left eye prevented experimentation with his zipper. Its red deepened each day.
She sensed his awareness, and then his disappointment. He turned back to his gun, popped off another shot. One less set of teeth to sink into their flesh. She had to admire his restraint. She remembered a little harmless flirting at high school had led some boys to accuse her of being a cock-tease, as if the occasional sauciness entitled them to rights over her body.
“What good is an agreement without witnesses?” he said.
Another dead man walking lost his head. She guessed it was a man, she never saw him shoot a woman. But then, she hadn’t looked for a long time.
She wiped the remaining stickiness on her arm, looking for a stream which the recent rain must have bolstered, somewhere. Her head itched. She’d started to feel bumps on her scalp from constant touching. If she had to go this long without washing it, it might be better to shave it off. She saw the flaw in that idea right now, noting the sun bounce off Frank’s shaved head like a beacon shouting “dinner’s ready.”
“Put your cap on.”
He huffed, knowing she was right, probably annoyed she’d suggested it before he realized the wisdom himself. He reached over to his bag where he kept ammo clips. He had filled the bag with them only a week ago. She saw it half-empty now as he reached in deep to pull the green-camouflaged Wal-Mart cap and place it on his head, pulling the peak down to keep her out of his tunnel-vision.
“Why you want to go to New Mexico anyway?”
“I’ve told you, it’s less densely populated than most states, and a hell of a lot less than here on the east coast.”
“Most?”
“And warmer.”
“What would I do for fun if there’s none of these bastards about?”
She let a smile slip, shivering a little at the danger. “You can rebuild civilization. Be a king.”
He looked over his shoulder, gave her breasts the quickest glance, and returned to his telescope. He shuffled. She knew he was rearranging his penis’ position. Take care, she thought, I shouldn’t promise him anything.
“I saw Breaking Bad. I never saw anybody without a coat.”
She breathed deep, let it out slow.
“I’m not going anywhere until I get my money back,” he continued.
She picked up her sister’s baseball bat and slammed it back to the ground, feeling her fingers rise and fall across every little bump on her scalp.
“Why? What’s this obsession?” she asked.
He kept his eyes on the town they both had grown up in. It seemed to float on the shimmering heat at the edge of a tall grass sea. “It’s not obsession. It’s about what’s right.”
“Nothing is right. Accept it. The world is dead. Money has no meaning.”
He jumped to his feet and faced her as she stood to back off, making her shrink for half a moment, before she squared her shoulders to him.
“It’s the principle. That matters. Without it, we’re fucking dead, just like them. And you don’t want that, do you?”
She touched his arm. That’s all it took for him to lose that vicious edge. A female touch which brought his momma back. She always looked at his lips in these moments, looking for a tremble. She knew it laid dormant, waiting to erupt one day.
“Frank,” she whispered. “He’s dead. You can’t have your revenge. He won’t know about it. And he might just finish you off.”
“I’m not using a baseball bat.” He lifted the rifle with his heel, let it rest again. “I just need to sight him once more. I should have shot him last night.”
“Let it be.”
He shrugged her hand from his upper arm. “I lost guys in that robbery. I got skimmed by a cop’s bullet. We worked hard to get out of that shit, hid for an age, and then had him rob me and the others of our share. I want that money, whether I can use it or not. And I want him dead.”
She stepped back. “Wow. You’re an idiot. He’s already dead.”
“He walks.”
“I’m guessing the president does too, but he’s probably eaten his wife and kids by now. And doesn’t know a thing about it.”
“Let me find him, then we go to New Mexico.”
“There are better reasons to go now.” She turned her head, unable to stand looking at his yellow teeth and cracked eye.
He put his hand on her ar
m now. The scar from his index finger knuckle rose above his skin, an Appalachian trail to his wrist. So many scars.
“I know you have unfinished business here, too. Your sister.”
She slapped him hard, saw his steel jaw wobble, felt her fingers sting with afterburn.
“My sister’s dead.”
“I know.” He rubbed his jaw, giving her some satisfaction. “But, walking around, like she undoubtedly is, like them. You don’t want that. How old is she … was she … when she died?”
Her lips mouthed Jessica’s age. She felt her frame shake against Frank’s hand, remembering her little beauty thrashing in the night as the agony she’d already seen in her parents gripped her. She’d already seen people she knew rip others she also knew apart. She had locked her sibling in her room, killed her parents with the baseball bat her sister played T-ball with, and then let the consequences shake her body almost senseless as she took refuge in a lone log cabin in the Pine Barrens. The cabin’s walls and the trunks of endless trees closed in and squeezed her back out into the towns, looking for a little human warmth. She found Frank.
The sound of waving grass lost its breeze-driven rhythm, its white-noise turning to a scraping assault on their ears. Lizzy stretched her neck to see round Frank’s broad shoulders. He turned to follow her gaze. A man, alone, headed for them, dragging a half-useless right leg behind. His right foot had collected enough grass to reach his knee. Frank put a protective arm across her as he bent for his rifle.
Too late. She jogged to the thing, bat in hand, and swung upwards, diagonal, connecting just below its ear. Its neck cracked as its head snapped to her left, milky eyes almost popping from their sockets. She had got used to the sound of blood gurgling up windpipes and splashing to the ground. She planted a foot to its shoulder as it dropped to its knees, and pushed it backwards, wanting to make sure of its death.
“Sorry, Steven,” she said, looking at his employee name badge. He’d never ask anybody if they wanted fries with something ever again.
