by Ellen Datlow
These things happen so fast—your ass getting kicked. In the movies there’s always an explanation. Your antagonists go to great pains to tell you exactly why you’re going to receive a brutal beating right before the beating actually happens. Not in reality. When a mob attacks you, and blood’s filling your mouth, and someone’s kicking you in the back and you can feel your internal organs convulsing … there there are no explanations.
But Carson heard one thing. The most chilling thing he could possibly hear, actually. And that was his name.
They know who I am, he thought. They know I’m the one who had made Zombie Chick famous.
Which was when said Zombie Chick saved Carson from hospitalization.
She didn’t rush down and start growling at the crowd, asking for brains. She merely opened her window and stared down at them. Carson didn’t notice it at first; all he sensed was that the kicks came slower, and then tapered off entirely.
The crowd backed away from Carson and focused on her, up in her window. Cursing at her. Gesturing at her. Spitting. Picking up tiny chunks of broken sidewalk and hurling them at her. Only then did she duck inside and slide the window shut.
Carson wanted to get the hell out of there … pronto. But then he imagined stepping into his boss’s office empty-handed, without a single photo. That simply wasn’t an option. Not if he wanted to eat. So he pushed himself, ribs and legs screaming, and took advantage of the temporary distraction, jogging right up through the center of the crowd, pushing his way past them, blasting through the front door of the apartment complex. By the time they noticed, it was too late—Carson had flipped the deadbolt behind him. As he scanned the mailboxes with the call buzzers he could hear them yelling, threatening to kill him for real …
Looked like they wanted to make good on that promise now, out here in an empty stretch of desert, with no one to interrupt them.
Justine looked down at what she evacuated, noting it was pretty much pure water. She started to straighten up but stopped herself when she noticed the long shadows stumble over themselves.
“Shit.”
Justine stayed bent over, hands on her knees, mind racing. She could hear muffled angry voices and some half-hearted pounding on a car. She figured it was road warriors, insanely persistent Latter-Day Saints missionaries, or they were being followed by her own personal Raincoat Brigade. Whoever it was, she was going to need a decent-sized rock at the very least, and she needed to look as fucked up as possible. The latter was covered, and her eyes scanned quickly for the former.
Jackpot.
Eyes up. Take it slow.
Most of the brigade (biggest bunch of vultures this desert has ever produced, Justine thought) was standing back from the car, attempting to look casual but barely pulling off “vaguely gassy.” There were three men in their mid-forties actually on the car. One was playing the lean-against-the-windshield cop move, with the other two settling for leaning against the side.
Justine crouched in the warm dirt, obscured by a large grouping of banana yucca. If Carson had left the passenger seat unlocked she could probably jump in, he could floor it and ride like hell until they got to a gas station.
Fake cop had just cocked some kind of gun. Seriously? Fuck this. Fuck all of it. She should have never agreed to this interview. She was probably going to be one of those survivors who ended up dead—for real this time—at the hands of a frightened mob.
Unless she could use their fear against them.
Justine stood up, stretched … and moaned. Moaned like some kind of unholy undead piece of hell would yawn after centuries of hungry slumber—or whatever these assholes believed.
“There she is!”
“Why didn’t anyone see her get out?”
“Weren’t you supposed to be watching that patch, Dana?”
“There’s the babykiller! I bet they don’t prosecute in Nevada and he’s smuggling her!”
But the crowd quickly lost interest in Carson and his compact car, and moved en masse towards Justine. Just a yard down was a van with a flat tire facing the road.
Clever dumb bastards, Justine thought. That’ll keep the passing cars moving.
“I’d ask if you didn’t have anything better to do,” Justine called out. “But after watching you all for months out my window I know you don’t.”
Justine found bravado sometimes worked when the rocks weren’t up to snuff.
One of the guys leaning against the car gave a grimace that bordered on a grin at Justine.
“You have served no jail time for killing the most innocent of our Savior’s creations. We just want to … talk to you about it. Maybe get you to turn yourself in. There’s no reason for you to get your bowels in an uproar.”
Some of the gang nodded in agreement, others just eyed Justine as if she was about to leap out like a cat in a closet in a bad slasher movie. Fake Cop kept his fingers moving on the gun that he was holding close to his thigh.
Justine glanced over to the car. Carson was standing there quietly. Now that their little “freak” was front and center, nobody bothered to keep an eye on him. He had his cell phone in his hand. He made eye contact and gave a short nod.
Please, Justine thought. Don’t come to my rescue, photo boy. From the looks of you, you’ve got the muscle strength of warm butter.
Moving her eyes back to the group, Justine took a deep breath and tried to make eye contact with as many as possible.
“Look, I really understand. I hate myself too,” Justine said. “But I really, truly was not myself when that happened, and believe me they would have found out if I was. I’m cured now and my life is a living hell, so can you just leave me alone to fester it out, please? You guys will just go to jail and I’m really not worth it.”
“Maybe we can just shoot ‘er here,” one of them said.
Another: “Shut up. Just shut up. You weren’t even invited here, you dumb psycho.”
Fake Cop and the one that had been talking had a tension between them that made Justine more nervous than the pure hatred that was being leveled at her.
The man turned back to her.
“I’m sorry, this was stupid. My name is Mike. How about you let your friend leave, and you come with us and we can talk to my brother—he’s a police officer—and we can get you right… .”
Mike stopped himself. Justine could see that he had just spotted the phone in Carson’s hand.
“Well shit, son,” Mike said. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.”
Justine, strangely enough, wished the same thing.
For an awful moment there, Carson thought that Justine’s “cure” hadn’t fully taken.
His fevered imagination put together the sequence of events this way:
She’s riding along, in the sun, next to a living human being. She doesn’t get out much. She’s not around people much. Something in her breaks down. She senses the flesh, the blood beating through his veins. It’s all too much. It makes her sick. She thinks she has to puke. She asks him to pull over and she scrambles from the car when it hits her. She can’t help it, can’t control it. Suddenly she’s acting like a zombie again… .
Because suddenly, she was.
A zombie again.
Forcing this unholy sound out of her throat, clawing at invisible enemies, eyes rolling up in the back of her head …
The protest mob jolted, taking a step away from each other, as if collectively hoping the crazy baby-killing zombie bitch would attack the person standing next to them. Carson jolted, too, from the shock of it, but also the thought that just a few minutes ago, he’d been inside a speeding car with this woman. Thing.
He instantly regretted that it was a cell phone in his hand and not his camera, which was still packed up in the backseat. He hated himself for even thinking it, but … c’mon! The impact of a photo like that would be seismic. Proof that the cure doesn’t work! As shown by its most infamous poster child… .
But those fantasies were dashed the moment he he
ard Justine scream, in perfect English:
“Carson—the car—NOW!”
The best Justine could hope for was not getting shot.
She dove into the crowd and just started shoving. There was no telling how many other guns were hiding in this group, but she was counting on the stark raving fear factor and element of surprise to keep the men from using them. For a few seconds at least. Until fucking Carson got the car revved up… .
“Carson, goddamnit!’
She couldn’t keep herself from picturing how, if Carson wasn’t here, she’d probably just have gone for it. Her anger and annoyance were burning so hot that she could easier have chosen this day as her last—as long as she took these assholes out along with her.
Baby-Eating Zombie Desert Rampage; 8 Dead!
Justine smiled at the imagined headline; she should have been the journalist.
But no, Justine felt oddly protective towards Carson. He wasn’t much, but right at this moment he was the only one listening. One last blind elbow to what felt like a butt, and Justine scrammed it to the passenger door.
“GO GO GO!” she screamed at Carson as she locked her door, screaming in laughter as Carson fishtailed it out of there with white knuckles. “All we need is some banjo chase music, compadre!”
Once they’d cleared the first quarter mile, Justine patted the shoulder of the poor, shaking Carson.
“The fuck,” Carson sputtered. “The fuck was that?”
“The usual,” Justine said.
“Are you okay? I mean … shit, did they …”
Justine looked behind them, seeing only a random semi-truck. “I’m fine. Actually, no. I’m not fine. I’m hungry. Starving even.”
Carson looked at her, wide-eyed. Justine noticed the stare also contained a bit of apprehension. “What?”
“And in an answer to your earlier question,” she said, “no. I’m not a vegetarian.”
Justine had Carson stop at a roadside barbecue joint a handful of miles outside Barstow. She assured him it was the best obscure, outdoor barbecue you could get in the southwest, not to mention that she was pretty sure the owner was a Hell’s Angel and therefore coated the area with a kind of grimy aura of protection.
Carson sat at a picnic table while Justine ordered them two orders of the works. She had put on a pair of large-framed glasses and affected an uneven Texan drawl, claiming it was a disguise while Carson suspected it was mostly to amuse herself.
Roughly half an hour had passed since they were accosted, but in that short span of time Justine had seemed to come alive. Bouncing in her seat, looking behind them in her sun visor’s mirror and squeezing his shoulder every few minutes—she was as enthusiastic as he imagined she might have been on a regular road trip in her life before infection had made her somber and shifty-eyed. Her skin also seemed to take on what he could only describe as a glow, and her stone grey eyes seemed to skew closer to silver.
“How much for one rib?”
Carson sat up straight and turned to see Justine laughing with the barbecue proprietor before shaking her head and walking to their table. She smiled at him before laying down a stack of white sandwich bread and two Styrofoam boxes in front of him.
“Is everything ok? Did you need more money?” Carson asked while he peeked under one of the lids.
“What? Are you not familiar with the comedic stylings of Chris Rock?” Justine was still putting on her weird drawl, which was toeing the line between cute and unsettling pretty aggressively. “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka? No? Boy, we need to hook you up with a movie marathon.”
Justine took the bench across from Carson, popped open her lid, and proceeded to stare at the meat. The only motion she made was to follow in the tradition of countless customers before her in leisurely picking at the peeling red paint of the table with a fingernail. Carson couldn’t help indulging himself in a mouthful of brisket before asking her if everything was okay.
Justine sighed.
“No. Sure. Everything is fine. This is the first time I had even the desire to eat meat since you-know-what, let alone actually ate the stuff. Before that I was a stone cold carnivore.”
She never took her eyes off her meal, but had worked up to poking it around with her spork.
Carson raised his eyebrows and took a long sip of his lukewarm Mountain Dew. He became aware of a weird undercurrent that had seemed to sit itself at their table, but couldn’t place it.
Justine stabbed at a piece of pork until the weak teeth of the spork finally speared it enough to lift. He eyed the meat and her mouth, wishing he had his camera out. She caught him staring. He flashed her a quick, reassuring half smile when their eyes met. Justine saluted him with her spork full of pork, and took it in one bite.
She chewed. Carson took another mouthful of his meal in camaraderie. He waited until they both swallowed and took sips of their respective drinks before asking her how it was.
“Tastes good, but just that one bite already made my jaw ache.”
“Does eating hurt?”
“Aren’t you forward? But no; the little I eat just sits with me funny and makes my tongue feel coated in something like wax. I probably brush my teeth about 10 times a day. I don’t care enough about my check-ups with the therapist or doctor to find out if it’s mostly in my head or if human veal just forever fucked up my stomach.”
Carson coughed in surprise, choking a bit as Justine’s words hit him. She gave him a sad shrug and continued eating the meat.
“This is good though. No coated-tongue feeling, either.”
“Maybe you just needed time. Just try to take it slow.”
Carson took out his camera, nodded as if to ask, Is this okay? Justine paused for a moment before nodding in return. He snapped a few photos of her eating with the large, faded Moose’s BBQ sign behind her.
Suddenly he noticed a man moving at a leaden pace a few feet behind Justine. Carson lowered his camera. The man was gaunt, with gnarled hands reminiscent of arthritic joints and old tree branches. He worked his mouth around hungrily; almost like an infant eyeing a nipple just out of reach. Only when he noticed the old, slow-shambling man pull out a Black & Mild cigar and chomp it between his grinning teeth did he relax.
“I’ll be right back,” Justine said, and put a hand on his shoulder as she passed. Carson thought she might be feeling sick again, but when he glanced across the way a few minutes later he saw that she was on her cell phone.
They rode in mostly companionable silence for about ninety more minutes, until the suburban sprawl of Henderson appeared. Carson felt a thrumming work its way up his spine, plucking at his nerves until his skin physically itched. Here was the moment he’d been dreading: setting up a shot where you ask someone to hunker down in a place where they’d experienced the darkest moment of their life.
“You, uh, feeling okay?” Carson asked.
Justine rustled a bit in her seat, looking tiny and weird from the corner of Carson’s eye.
“Yeah. Was worried about all that food I ate, but it’s staying down.”
Carson cleared his throat, and Justine hurried over the sound. “I know that’s not what you’re asking about, but I’m putting off any reaction to this as long as I can. Is that okay with you?”
Carson nodded as he squeezed his hands tighter around the wheel. Justine crammed some more gum into her mouth. She had told him that with her stomach working with rarely any food in it had given her “death breath.” He hadn’t noticed any of it personally, but when she also divulged how often and obsessively she brushed her teeth, he understood that the situation went a little deeper than oral hygiene.
Carson fumbled at the radio dials until he heard Sam Cooke’s voice. He told himself to stop feeling guilty. Everyone in this car was there by choice, right? Of course they were.
Except they really weren’t.
Carson had been there by chance.
Justine had been there because of a fluke of a disease. She didn’t know what she was doing, where
she’d gone, who she’d hurt.
And it was only because Carson happened to be there, with his camera, that Justine—and the rest of the world—knew that while she’d been a zombie, she had eaten an infant child.
The area had been cleaned up more than Carson expected. Imported palm trees stood perfectly distanced from each other, as pretty and welcoming as well-trained showgirls. As they pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store, his memory replaced the newly built structures with the way he remembered the place looking the last time he was here—a looted out, broken shell of a place crawling with cops, zombies and “reporters” like himself. There was a rumor that the area was harboring a building full of people who had taken over a grocery store after raiding a gun store, but the virus had gotten in there with them. Carson had been unable to confirm any of this at the time. He was mostly walking around in the area in a horrified daze, snapping photos to give himself a sense of purpose in all of the chaos.
“So, where were you?” Justine asked.
Carson shook himself mentally into the present. “I was walking around the barricades at the back of the lot. I guess luckily nobody was paying much attention to me. My editor just told me to snap anything interesting or fucked up that might pop out.”
Justine turned to him. “And then out I popped, all interesting and fucked up with bells on?”
Carson tried to smile. “Yeah.”
Justine laughed in surprise but it quickly died in her throat.
They slowly pulled themselves out of the car, groaning and stretching as they squinted into the sun. A nervous and false jovial energy permeated the air between them, as if they decided by an unspoken vote to act as if they were here to recreate a photo from a first date rather than an amnesiac murder.
Justine wandered the half-full parking lot while Carson started gathering and preparing his gear. Once he was fully kitted up he inhaled deeply and started towards her.
