Author: Nicodem The Web Spinner

Things Fall Apart

Sammi Milva barely contained the shudder which threatened to roll up her spine.  Once had been bad, twice had been worse.  But this would have been the third shudder in the five minutes after she awoke, and she thought that that might drive her mad.  Assuming, that was, that she wasn’t mad already.

She sipped at her first cup of coffee; a wonderful brew that had come from a well-stocked kitchen that was almost as big as her house.  Her watch had actually started twenty minutes ago,  but Miguel had let her sleep a little longer.  That was nice of him, she thought, even though all it means is that I’ll do the same for Sarah, and she’ll do the same for Miguel, and we’ll all be right back where we started.

She looked out the window at the vast lawn, and the things walking around on it.  The infestation didn’t seem to be quite as bad today.  Of course, that was like visiting a death camp with only twenty or thirty dead Jews and saying, “hey, that ain’t so bad.”

As she thought this, an image popped into her mind.  A fellow with a cane and a red-banded straw hat, dancing around in his striped suit and crooning: “Heeey, that ain’t soooo baaaaad…”  She almost laughed at this, but bit her lip instead.  Laughing would be worse than shuddering.  Besides, there was no sugar-coating the situation.  If it was two million zombies she was looking at instead of three million, she was still being fed a shit sandwich.  The shuffling dead stretched from the steps of the front lawn all the way out to the Washington Monument (and probably beyond).

The third shudder came anyway, and when her sanity didn’t completely melt away in an instant, Sammi took another sip of coffee.

They were both gone, they weren’t coming back, and that was that.  POTUS, the Prez…whatever you wanted to call him, had boarded Air Force One two weeks ago, assuring them that, while he was leavin’ on a jet plane, he most definitely would be comin’ back again.  The Royal Jackass, Mister Second Fiddle himself, had left three days later aboard AF2, not bothering with platitudes.  Meanwhile, she and what remained of the White House staff were “holding down the fort”.

She had hummed several bars of the song before she realized that she was doing it.  When she did, she was a little amused to find that it was the chorus of an old Elton John song; “Bennie and the Jets”.  She christened it with new words, mumbling them out of a half-smile of exhaustion and fear and tottering sanity, as she watched the zombies:

“P-P-P-POTUS and the Veep!”

 

*    *    *

 

The press conferences had been almost as bad as the problem itself.  She couldn’t remember how many times she’d had to assure reporters that this hadn’t started at Area 51, for example, but it had to have been at least four.  As White House Press Secretary, she’d had to go round after bloody round, sometimes answering the same question two or three times a session.

And the Prez?  Fuck, they’d jumped all over him about it.  Was this some kind of terrorist attack?  If so, how come it seemed to be popping up all over the world all of a sudden?  Did the White House know why (or have anything to do with the fact that) international communications were beginning to black out left and right?  And on and on and on.  She had reflected to the President – a touch grimly – that the only reason the relentless press conferences had eventually stopped was that most of the reporters were finally eaten.

What had been the most maddening thing about it – to Sammi, at least – was that the tone of each conference seemed to be one of finding a place to lay the blame, rather than a solution to the problem.  She supposed that at least part of that could be chalked up to the CDC.  The President’s budget cuts the year before had slapped them right in the face, so it wasn’t too surprising that when they got caught with their pants down, they immediately tossed the hot potato through the Oval Office window.  As if Capitol Hill didn’t have enough on its hands already.  This snowballing clusterfuck was a political, economic, military and religious catastrophe all rolled up into one, and the last thing they needed to have been doing was trying to place blame.

So yes, that was part of the hell of it.  But…not all.  No, the other part was the fear in the eyes of the reporters.  These were, after all, the type of people who would’ve been pushing to get to the front of the line to cover a nuclear holocaust, or to take the first temperature readings on the day that hell froze over.  Barely human themselves, it sometimes seemed to Sammi.

And yet, as two weeks turned slowly into the first month, she had seen the color first fade on their cheeks, then drain away entirely.  Naked fear played across their features, and many began to seem distracted, as if they were only coming to work because there was nothing else for them to do.  And who knew?  For some of them, that was probably exactly the case.  Toward the end – of the press conferences, a week and a half ago – some of them had begun to ask if they could stay.  The White House might not be the absolute best place to be, but it was better than others in that it was at least fortified.  By then, the gas was running out for the press helicopters, and many of them were having to brave the streets to come on foot.  These had not really been press conferences, of course; by that point they were just gatherings for refugees, people somewhere in the valley between name tag and toe tag, a ragged band brandishing digital recorders which no longer had anything to dock with, and staring into the eternally-dark eyes of their i-Phones.

 

*    *    *

 

She set her coffee down on the table, and her fingers brushed the butt of the Walther.  One of the zombies was getting too close.  They were unable to climb stairs, but this guy had made his way over a pile of bodies, and was now stumbling around just a little north of Sammi’s comfort zone.  She brought the pistol most of the way out of its holster – the fingers of her left hand began curling to fit the shape of the door lock – and then she dropped it back.  No sense waking everybody.  Instead, she studied the zombie as it shuffled around, still a safe thirty or so steps below her.

It was the corpse of a very large black man.  Sammi had no doubt that it must have taken at least five or six zombies to have been able to do as much damage as had been done.  The left arm -which hung uselessly at its side – had been chewed down to the bone in most places, although here and there she could see little chunks of meat that had been missed, small hills of sun-browned musculature casting their own unimportant shadows on the blood-bathed expanses of radius and ulna.  The same could be said of the face, which on the same side as the arm was mostly gone.  One whisker from that side of the face curled in a kinky arc, and the tip of it came to rest against the protruding sharp edge of a fractured cheekbone – she realized that she could tell when it was moaning because a ragged chunk of his cheek would jiggle back and forth with the breath of it.

And what terrible breath it must have.  What terrible breath they all must have.  For some reason Sammi could not identify (unless it might be another step on that increasingly short road to insanity), she found this concept to be very funny.  Monsters with bad breath?  Try Colgate!  Try Altoids!  Try Lis-teh-fucking-rine!

She laughed a little, and her own breath reached forward and fogged up a little section of the window.  She realized that she had damn near been pressing her nose to it, watching this guy.  On a whim, she decided to name him.

“Fred?  Do you look like a Fred?” she whispered at the corpse.  It did not hear her, and may not have seen her at all.  Although, why else would it be trying to get up here?  “No, not Fred.  Fred’s a white guy’s name…unless you count Frederick Douglass.  Or that other guy, what was his name?  Frederick the Entertainer?  No, that’s not right…”  She paused ponderously.  Finally, she looked back up, grinning now.

“Fine, fine.  Fred it is.  How ya doin’, Freddie boy?”

The monster made no reply, not even a moan.  At that moment, its gaze wasn’t even fixed precisely in her direction.  It was looking off a little to its right, although she thought that “looking” wasn’t really the word for it.  She didn’t think they did much “looking”.  It was more like…well, just pointing their eyes, in one way or another.  She thought that “looking” implied a little more intelligence than these bastards deserved credit for.  “Looking” was something you did when you had a reason to “look”, right?

But maybe that was just more nonsense.  Maybe it was more madness.  Pretty soon, they’d be hauling her off to the funny farm.  Except, the funny farm didn’t exist any more, did it?

Why of course it does, dear.  Just take a look at the world all around you.  It’s nothing but one big happy funny farm out there, you crazy bitch!

 

*    *    *

 

The reporters hadn’t been the only ones, either.  Refugees from all over D.C. had come off and on, desperately seeking shelter from the onslaught of the undead.  It had been hard to turn them away, and Sammi was grateful that she hadn’t always been the one to have to do it.  The Prez had done it himself, the first few times, citing known shelter areas in the city in which people were more likely to be safe.  These shelter areas – “military zones” was the technical term – had likely been overrun within the first week or so of the outbreak.  That had been before all the data had come forth on preventative measures, and thousands of the infected had slipped past dozens of checkpoints throughout the city.  Could the Prez be blamed for that?  No, probably not.  The information he got on the situation was almost as sketchy as what the rest of them got.  He probably really did think he was sending them to a safer place, at least at first.  Later…well, who was she to hazard a guess?  Besides, all that did was go back to the blame game, and that wasn’t going to help anyone now.

After POTUS and the Veep had gone, it had been up to her.  She was the highest ranking officer in the remaining food chain by then.  And hadn’t she believed that she was doing the right thing by sending them away?  Hadn’t it been in these refugees’ best interests to keep moving, and to try to eventually get out of the city?  Surely that was the case.

And yet…

And yet part of her nagged at that.  Because part of her knew that if they let people in, two new elements would be introduced, one of potential and one of fact.  The potential element was the infected, and if the law of averages was worth a shit, that could almost be counted as an eventual fact, couldn’t it?  Sooner or later, they would let the wrong person or persons through the door, and then it would all be for nothing.  Oh, they might catch one or two in time to do something about it, but wasn’t it more likely that they wouldn’t?  That some poor schmuck would expire in the middle of the night, and then come back as one of those things within the walls of the White House?

The other thing was the food supply.  There was enough food to feed a few people for a very long time.  But a lot of people?  How long would it last then?  How long before they all began to starve?  How long before hunger would drive one or all of them to do something crazy, like try to run away from this place, or worse?  For that matter, what if their hunger drove them to sink to the level of their undead foes, dining on the flesh of one another?  It could never, ever come to that, of course, but…

She was ashamed of herself, mostly because she knew that the predominant reason in her mind during these refusals was not at all concern for the refugees’ safety, but concern for her own.  That was what it all boiled down to, and it was driving her mad.

 

*    *    *

 

Fred was definitely looking at her now.  The sliver of cheek on his face flapped back and forth a little, and she almost thought she could pick out his individual moan over the low drone of the rest of them, as if her ears were capable of picking out the sound of one poorly-tuned instrument in a cacophony of poorly-tuned instruments.  Silly, of course.

Fred’s lips seemed to pull back a little, almost as if he were affecting some kind of hungry sneer.  Sammi returned the gesture, but she found it was almost more of a smile than anything else.  And why not?  Fred was sort of cute, in an undead way.  One part of her mind was suddenly appalled to hear the other part give voice to such a disgusting (and crazy) utterance, but she ignored it.  She allowed herself to wonder what Fred had been like in his life.  He was wearing a business suit, but it was too dirty and too tattered for her to be able to tell if it was expensive or not – usually she could tell about these kinds of things with at least a fair amount of accuracy.

So, all right, she couldn’t tell whether he was wearing Armani or Bill Blass, but that was no big deal.  He was wearing a suit, at least, and that was something.  Also, as large a man as he had been, it almost certainly had to have been tailored.  Guys Fred’s size didn’t usually just walk in and out of The Men’s Wearhouse in thirty minutes, loaded for bear.

Fred resumed his attempt at upward mobility, bringing first one foot forward against the step in front of him, then the other, his useless chewed arm swinging like a horrific pendulum by his side, his other arm reaching toward her as if he would love to fondle her nose.  When the second shoe hit the step, Fred overbalanced and tipped forward.  Sammi wasn’t sure if she had actually heard him moaning above the others, but she was almost positive she could hear his face hit the pavement as he self-administered a curb check.

She started backward, giving off a little shriek as she did so.  Her hands rose to the side of her face, her now-jagged fingernails digging into the skin just beneath her temples.  Was Fred all right?  Had he hurt himself?

What in the blue fuck do you care? another voice in her head asked.  You’d better hope he – it – did.  You’d just fucking better!

But the truth was, she didn’t.  And when Fred began to pull himself back up into a standing position, slowly managing some sort of half balance on his one useful arm, she felt a sigh of relief whistle out from her clenched teeth.  She lowered her hands from her face, and placed the left one against the glass of the window, leaning on it for support as she continued to watch.  She half expected Fred to dust himself off, then give her a goofy grin as if to say “well, I did it again.”  But he didn’t do that.  Instead, he rose to his full height, his eyes staring – well, pointing – off into the nothingness again, as if he had completely forgotten that she existed…which he most likely had.  His face was worse now.  The torn cheek now hung much more loosely off the frame of his face.  His lower lip was torn open, and because no blood had come out of it, she was able to see the broken lower teeth behind it.  As she watched, two or three flecks of those teeth went tumbling out of the V shape that his new lip configuration had created, and bounced on the steps below him.  Again, she half-imagined that she could hear each individual clink as they came slowly to rest.

You poor thing! part of her mind said.  The rest shot back: What?!  What the hell did you just say?!

Her palm began to sweat, and her hand slid several inches down the glass, leaving behind it five damp fingerprint streaks.  She had been leaning heavily on this hand, and now it was her turn to regain balance.  This she did with much more ease than Fred would have or could have, and once she was back in place, she looked out to find that he had seen her again.  This time, the trembling of that torn jowl was more pronounced; it sent the curly beard-hair away for the briefest of seconds, then allowed it to reunite with the cheekbone again.

Fred started forward toward her once again, and once again he fell.  This time, he managed to land atop the corpse of one of his fellow zombies…

 

*    *    *

 

Zombies.  That’s what you have to keep telling yourself.  That’s not a man out there, it’s a living corpse.  And you, little Missy, would be crazy to think anything else of him…it.

Crazy.

But it didn’t seem crazy.  Was it possible to anthropomorphize what had already once been a human being?  Surely that was prohibited under some sort of homo sapiens double jeopardy law, right?

She laughed, this time more than a little titter, but covered her mouth with her free hand to stifle it.  No sense waking the others up, especially when waking them up might mean exposing them to her…well, her little fit.  If it had to have some kind of label, she supposed that should be it.  She wasn’t crazy, after all; she just occasionally had a crazy idea or two.  Like the idea that Fred out there – that zombie out there – was sort of cute, and that he might actually want just to talk to her.

Yes, that was even what it looked like, now that she thought about it.  He seemed to be extending that one working hand in a gesture of friendship, diplomacy.  Anyone, but particularly a White House Press Secretary, ought to be able to recognize diplomacy on sight.  Perhaps he wanted to meet with her, tell her all about the demands of the zombie population.  She could imagine how such an interview might go.

Sammi: Good afternoon, Fred Zombie.  Welcome to the White House.  Can I get you anything before we begin?

Fred: (distortedly) Well, normally I’d take a forearm, but I’m trying to watch my belly.  It sort of gets distended, you know…

Sammi: I understand.  How about some fingers, then?  Just to take the edge off.

Fred: That would be wonderful.

Sammi: Here you go.  Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks, Mr. Zombie…

Fred: (through a mouthful of finger-meat) Please, call me Fred.

Sammi: Thank you, Fred.  You really know how to lighten a tense situation.

Fred: Well, that’s why I’m here, and not some of the others.  I have a tendency to set people’s minds at ease.

Sammi: Well, you’ve set mine.  So let’s get started.  What would you say the core demands of the zombie population are?

Fred: First of all, we’re discussing among ourselves the distinct possibility that the term “zombie” might not be very politically correct…

Sammi: Oh, my apologies, Fred.  Did you have another title in mind?

Fred: (thinks for a moment) We talked about “the Undead”, also “the Living Dead”.  We don’t think the latter applies, really, since we’re not living, after all.  And, let’s face it, “Undead” conjures up a fairly negative association, wouldn’t you agree?

Sammi: Undoubtedly.

Fred: The jury’s still out, of course, but for now let’s work with one of the suggestions from the group: the Posi-Humans.  You know, kinda like antimatter, the positron?  Guy named Craig thought that one up.  He used to be a physicist or something.

Sammi: That sounds just fine, Fred.  All right, what would you say the core demands of the…the…

Fred: Posi-Humans.

Sammi: …the Posi-Humans are?

Fred: (bringing his working hand up to his chest and drumming the fingers there) Well, you’re really probably not going to like them.  First of all, we demand the right to eat humans.

Sammi: Yeah, that’s a pretty tall order.

Fred: (sighing dismissively) You asked.  Second of all…and this really isn’t so much of a demand as a request…we’d appreciate it if the majority of the stalled traffic throughout the city could be moved to allow passage on foot.  We…can’t drive, you see.

Sammi: Yeah, I know.  Now, how are we going to go about moving the traffic if your people – sorry, Posi-Humans – are eating us while we do it?

Fred: (with a nervous laugh) Point for your side, Miss Milva.  I can’t promise that none of your people will be harmed, but after all, you are the superior species in terms of intellect.  Surely you can figure something out.

Sammi: I’ll see what I can do.  Moving on to…

 

*    *    *

 

…the next step.  Sammi blinked, unsure of what she had just seen.  But when her eyes opened again, it was just as true as before she had closed them.  Fred had made it up to the next step.  It was impossible, of course, but it had happened nonetheless.  It wasn’t much progress, and Fred fell down again once he had attained the next step.  But it was shocking nonetheless.

Was it possible that they were beginning to learn?  Surely not.

And yet there he – no, it, dammit!  It’s not a he, you moron! – was, getting back up on the next step.  Sammi’s stomach lurched, and she felt like she might throw up.  The others needed to know about this.  She wanted to turn around and go wake them up.  She desperately wanted that.  But her feet wouldn’t move from their spot.  She was rooted to the floor, staring helplessly out at Fred.

His name’s not fucking Fred!  Quit calling him – it – that!

And an incredible thought occurred to her at that moment.  She could just unlock the door.  Yes, unlock the door and run out to him, run out to Fred.  After all, it was cruel to make him climb the rest of those steps alone!  The man had only one working arm.  How much of a bitch could she possibly be?

“Sammi?” a voice said from behind her.  Sammi had had no formal training in the use of firearms, yet she whirled and produced the Walther from its holster with a speed and ferocity that might have made Clint Eastwood shit his pants.

But it was only Miguel, standing there, pale as a sheet as he stared down the barrel of the Walther.  She lowered it slowly, then uttered a high, tittery laugh.

“They can climb stairs,” she said.  Miguel only stood there.  His eyebrows raised, but the eyes themselves did not leave the lowering gun.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean I saw Fred climb up a fucking stair, you dumb shit!” she yelled, but it only came out as a hoarse croak.

“Who’s…”

“Not Fred!” she said, shaking her head as if to clear it.  “What I mean is, I saw one of the zombies climb a step.”

“Sammi, I don’t think…”

“I fucking saw it, Miguel!  I was watching, and he just…that is, it just took a step up.”  Her eyes blazed, and the hand that held the gun began to move back and forth in a seemingly aimless arc.  Miguel regarded it, a little fearfully.

“All right,” he said, and the reasonable tone in his voice told her that he thought she was cracking up.  “So one of them managed to take a step.  I’m sure it was a coincidence.  These things can happen, you know.”

“Don’t you patronize me, Miguel!” she said, and to her own horror, she raised the gun at him.  His eyebrows shot back up again, and he raised his hands.

“Sammi, what are you…?”

But that was when she shot him.

 

*    *    *

 

Night lay across the D.C. sky like a blanket full of tiny holes; the moon and stars shone down vaguely through it, penetrating the underlying sheet of thin, wispy clouds and illuminating the dead – the Posi-Humans – beneath that.  The moans were louder now, but Sammi guessed that that was because the door was open.

The cold night breeze blew in through it, chilling her and driving her arms up to and around her knees.  She drew them up to her breast, hugging herself tightly as she began to rock back and forth a little.  The feel of the Walther against her thigh was a good one.  It beat the shit out of the feeling on her face, the one the breeze produced when it blew across the tacky surfaces of the blood flecks.  Those had come from Sarah, of course, who had been much closer than Miguel when…

Fred was still down there.  She couldn’t see him now from where she was sitting, but she knew that he was still down there.  And who knew, he might have made another step or two.  She doubted it; she now imagined that Miguel had probably been right about that.  But it was possible.  She rocked back and forth, alternately fighting and embracing the panic, and all the things it brought with it.

Had she been so wrong?  After all, Miguel and Sarah had shot just as many people as she had.  Not zombies, but people.  That last day, when the remaining reporters had stormed the White House, demanding refuge?  What had happened then?  Had she been the only one to open fire on them?  Had she even been the first?

“Fucking right I wasn’t!” she breathed into her knees.  She felt a new wetness on her face, and for a horrible moment she thought it was more of Sarah’s blood, perhaps some that she had missed before.  But of course it wasn’t.  The tears began to stream down, slowly at first, then building up to a torrential flood.  She began to sob wildly, rocking harder and harder until her back was slamming up against the wall she sat near.  Her heels left the floor, banged down on it, left it, banged down again.  The fingers at the ends of her hands began to shake violently, and the Walther clattered to the floor with a clank which was almost noisy enough to block out the loud noise of her sobs and the louder noise of the moans.

Those moans!  Those insufferable, God-forsaken moans!  A thronging chorus of the damned, come to see another soul wing its way downward through the cracks and fissures of the Earth, and into the eternal blissless existence saved only for those burning in the deep fires of hell.

This was Trenton Milva’s little girl Samantha, who had always wanted to grow up to be a singer – at least until her junior year of high school.  The girl who, at seven, had once plucked a bouquet of daisies, and had proceeded to place one on top of each of the gravestones in the Morton Hills Cemetery, which had sat in timbery shadows across the street from the small house where she had lived and where she would continue to live until her nineteenth year.  The girl who had lost her virginity in a broom closet, of all places, and to Gabe Hirsch, of all people.  The girl who had decided late in her high school career that singing was fine, but it wasn’t going to get her where she really wanted to go.  The girl who had, instead of applying at Julliard or the Royal Academy of Music, applied at Harvard and Yale, and who had gotten Yale.  This was the girl who was now a woman, and who had spent the last decade clawing and biting her way toward the top.  And hey, White House Press Secretary was pretty fucking close to the top, wasn’t it?

And now she was, be it ever so humble, at least at the top of the stairs.

But not for long, she thought.

She got up slowly.  The tears were still streaming down her face, and two or three of them fell from her cheek, plopping on the marble floor and shooting up a tiny cascade of saline in all directions.  She grabbed the Walther, not even noticing them.  She tried to walk over to the open door, and found herself hobbling a little instead.  She was thirty-seven, but even at such a tender age, her body didn’t take kindly to her sitting in one position for too long.

Fred was still there, but he hadn’t made it up another step.

“Fucking fluke,” she said idly.  Her voice shook from having sobbed, but her mouth turned up into a horrible, mean grin.  She raised the Walther and pointed it at Fred’s head.  Then, thinking better of it, she lowered it a little, and blew off most of Fred’s useful arm.  Fred did not cry out, but he did fall backward.  He went tumbling down, head over heels, unable to use either arm now to slow his fall (not that he would have).  When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he landed among some of his standing brethren, his legs splayed outward and both of his arms beneath him.  He began to move immediately, and Sammi knew that eventually he would get back up, eager to be back at the task of making it up the stairs to get at her.

“I won’t make you wait, Fred darling,” she said, and laughed into the bitter night air.  She raised the still-hot muzzle of the Walther to her temple, and fired the one shot allowed to a human in such instances.

Moments later, her body did indeed land very near to Fred’s.

 

END.

by J. M. Jennings

 

Corbin had been a physician for five years when his Vanessa hung herself in the garage. It was a Thursday, and his wife had left the car out on the street rather than pulling in to her normal spot. It’s strange, what you remember about these things.

Fuck the car and fuck you, Ness, he thought bitterly, hooking up Ellie’s IV for what could have been the last time. It wasn’t the last time, but it definitely could have been – vCJD was the last piece of Vanessa left to him. Cruztfeld-fucking-Jakobs, human variant, handed down from Ness to her daughter like a diamond should have been, or a favorite recipe. Ellie’s brain was rotting, but how do you tell a nine-year-old that her brain is rotting from anything but television? How do you explain to flesh and blood why all the lines and needles and shiny gallows-y IV stands are better than the searing pain the poor kid’s mother must have felt, and had most likely driven her hang herself?

“G’night sweet pea, daddy loves you.” Ell wheezed a little in her sleep, one leg shuttering perceptibly under the covers. Kuru. Mad cow. He tapped the bedside lamp to life, flipped the switch to the ceiling light, reflexively adjusted the door so he could see her fair little face from the recliner (more for his sake than hers, he knew,) sat his ass in the LaZBoy, and fell asleep watching the news. Corbin’s brain, too, was rotting.

——-

6:30 the following morning, Ellie’s hospice nurse arrived. Yelena hadn’t slept any better than the little shuddering doll in the bed, limbs all akimbo and trembling, fine sandy hair tacked to a spot of slobber on a cheek, sunken cheek. Back in the old country, Yelena would have stood her up, helped her walk, played a game in the fresh air. Yelena of the new country resisted the urge to yawn, brushed the lock of sticky hair from the sallow cheek, and yelped when Ellies’s little milk teeth sank into her wrist, cutting nerve and vessel, tearing to the bone. Yanking her arm away tore the flesh out of the wound as Ellie, once cherubic, snapped her little jaws with alarming vigor on the morsel, still connected by a tendon and a rose-hued string of saliva. The nurse pulled away, speechless and unable to scream, unable to breathe. The tendon snapped off at the gnashing teeth, and Yelena bolted.

“Mighty bitey,” an unkept Alabaman in an oily baseball cap had described an encounter with an unidentified assailant on the previous night’s 10 o’clock news. “Mighty bitey, came outta nowhere.”

The strigoi, as Yelena had chosen to call them, had dominated the news for the past few nights. She knew it was being blown out of proportion – this is America, after all – but surely every legend has a seed of truth? Surely the zombies, as her neighbors called them, lusted for blood? This was an especially pervasive trait of America; had the sopping wound on her arm been the product of a dream cultured into Ellie, a Pavlovian response to the beating heart of a foreigner? The steering wheel swung before her eyes in the car, probably shock, the snapping tendon echoing in her ears, where is Ellie? What have I done?

What has she done?

——-

Corbin’s keys landed on the counter with a clatter. He was on the edge of fuming. Where the fuck is Yelena? Is this tomato some-damn-thing on the linoleum? Looks more like… Is this trail going to, from…? Oh, fuck…FUCK….

Ellie, in a staggering motion some would call walking, stepped in perfected profile view past the kitchen island. The plastic lines dragged behind her, still taped to pallid forearms, needles torn from their careful placement. One lock of sandy hair had blackened with smeared blood, stuck to a once-rosy cheek, all grown cold since roughly 1:20 am. The watery green eyes, so like his own, had paled over in death, same as the bit of skin hanging by gristle from Ell’s lips. She wheezed a bit as her face lolled over the rigid shoulder, locking eyes with her daddy. Corbin was frozen.

She no longer trembled, but for the first time since the disease set in, since the prions punched holes in her little brain, since she found Mama “flying” in the garage, since the Alabama broadcasts, Ellie screamed.

——-

Yelena hadn’t left her apartment since she gave her statement to the Sheriff. The crusted wound, throbbing and necrotic, had spread over the forearm and hand, now limp and useless. Between her fever dreams, or when she was capable of thinking at all, she thought only of her grandmother’s stories of strigoi, the iron stakes they put through her grandfather’s belly, and of red, red meat. One option left.

Auspiciously, her aged but well-kept apartment was neatly situated above a garage in the older part of town, and while her landlords had intended to gentrify the property with vinyl fencing, they simply haven’t gotten around to it. Good for me, the thought seeped through the mental fog as the screen popped out, clattering two stories down. Is not aesthetic, but it will do. The fence, wrought iron and seven feet tall, looked a thin black line to her as she balanced her trembling self on the window sill. Paint chips and dead moths crunched under calloused feet, unnoticed, and remained stuck as she leaped, clearing the eves, arms spread wide. Iron bars crashed through flesh and bone, punctured her torso, and swayed slightly under the burden of a bleeding body. Yelena watched her blood trailing down the posts, feeling only hunger as her vision darkened.

END.

As Melody lay in the field enjoying the sun’s warmth, she thought she might be happy for the first time in months. Winter had been hard and dismal, but she’d survived. She was blissfully enjoying the moment; not thinking of the dead or the past or the hardship; just enjoying the sun and the chirping birds. Then a twig snapped and her revelry disappeared in a heartbeat.

She was on the move, jogging slowly beneath the weight of her pack, wondering how she could have let one get so close. Her legs had never been as strong as they’d been in the fall, but the winter’s inactivity turned her soft. She’d have to get back in shape. No workout routine was required. She would either get stronger or die. It was that simple.

She’d been jogging for about an hour before she felt she had gained sufficient distance to rest. She broke open her pack and pulled out a candy bar that she ate slowly, enjoying each bite, not knowing when she’d find another. As she ate, she watched the Shambler slowly cross the field. Occasionally, it would trip, but it always stood back up, coming toward her with an insatiable hunger.

 

She didn’t think of them as men, not anymore. Now they were Shamblers. Why the disease only affected men was a mystery no one ever solved before the Great Unraveling. Initial reactionaries thought it had to do with testosterone, but the more prevalent theories dealt with the smaller Y chromosome. Her college roommate once joked that she could never trust a man because he was born missing part of his DNA. Maybe she was right.

None of that mattered now. Science and theories were replaced with running and scavenging. It wasn’t the strong who survived, it was the swift.

Melody had been on the run for three years. Sometimes it was house to house, other times town to town; sometimes alone, sometimes with a group, but she was never all that comfortable with others. Groups often had their own weird power structure and as the newest member, she was always suspect. They rarely listened to her if she disagreed with their direction, so she’d inevitably slip away to be alone again. The one exception was Dana. Melody met Dana six months after the Great Unraveling and they instantly hit it off. Even though Dana was ten years older, they got along like sisters. They survived their first winter together and during the spring thaw, they ventured into Randall Park Mall on a scavenging run. They ran into a horde of Shamblers that forced them in opposite directions. Melody returned to their former hideout and waited a week, but Dana never showed. Melody had to believe she was dead. Why not? So was everyone else she knew.

Melody hadn’t seen another living soul in a year and she was beginning to think she might be the last person alive. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered anymore. But after eight months of isolation, Melody missed the simple comfort of a conversation.

She finished her candy bar and resumed jogging. She was feeling every ounce of the weight in her backpack and the once soothing sun was now burning hot, but she managed to maintain a comfortable distance. Unfortunately, her shambling friend had found some company. There were now five Shamblers following her.

Finally, she made it to her destination. Fox Springs was a small town, just a few dozen buildings, in the middle of nowhere. Melody’s supplies had dwindled to nearly nothing in her old hideout so she needed to resupply. She hoped this would be her new home. At least for a while.

Looking back, her pursuers were gaining. She headed for the nearest building, but changed course when two Shamblers stumbled through an open doorway. Making as much noise as possible, she broke to the left and weaved her way between a few buildings. She needed to attract every Shambler in town if her plan was to work.

It wasn’t long before nearly a dozen Shamblers were slowly following her up and down the streets. It wasn’t hard to keep ahead of the Shamblers, but she was hungry and tired and eager to complete her plan. Melody had already spotted the perfect building, a church at the end of the street. Now that she had herded them all into one group, she would lure them into the church through the front. She would escape out the back, lock the door, then, while they clawed at the exit, she would circle around and lock the front entrance. Once they were all trapped inside, she would have free reign over the rest of the town. It was a maneuver she’d perfected with Dana.

Satisfied that the town’s Shamblers were all following her, though wondering why there were so few, she reached the front steps of the church. She waited till the group was closer before she opened the door. Melody stepped inside, ready to dash across the room when she heard something move. A mottled hand appeared on the back of one of the pews and behind it came the Shambler’s head, its eyes hungry. It groaned, and now a dozen more starving faces appeared. A second later and she realized the entire room was filled with them.

Quickly, she retreated, but the other Shamblers were almost on her. She ducked right, but didn’t have time to close the church doors. That meant that every single one in the church was now free and she’d easily seen more than forty hungry mouths yearning for her flesh.

With an entire horde now on her heels, this once beautiful day was turning ugly.

Fox Springs was a trap that she needed to escape, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep running. There were plenty of cars, but she’d long ago given up relying on them for escape. Too often they didn’t start and after the long winter of disuse, many were looking the worse for wear. As panic slowly crept over her, she tried to sprint. That’s when her leg cramped.

The pain was so sudden and sharp that Melody first thought something had grabbed her. She let out a yell, then felt foolish. She needed to stay calm, to think. Taking a deep breath, she told herself not to panic.

The cramp slowed her down to a limp as she hobbled her way to the nearest house. Too many months of sitting around doing nothing! She’d let herself go and now she was paying the price. Melody knew that if there were any Shamblers inside, she was dead.

She ran through the front door, turned and locked it. She looked out the front window and watched some of the Shamblers wandering past the front door. She pounded on the glass to make sure she had their attention. She could hear them stumbling onto the porch, clawing at the door. A window crashed as she limped toward the back. She hurried before they trapped her inside. She pushed through the backdoor and was about to step off the porch when something caught her eye. Sitting on the porch was a bicycle.

The tires were flat, but that didn’t matter. She jumped on and pushed off down the hill, letting gravity do most of the work. A few Shamblers saw her and followed, but she was too fast. The bike carried her down a long, gentle slope until it flattened out as she rolled her way to freedom.

Melody peddled onward, pushing for whatever lay ahead. She preferred to plan her forays ahead, but she knew she would have to improvise until she had time to check the maps she carried in her backpack. Right now she needed to find a safe place to spend the night.

A few miles down the road she found a lone house. She checked for inhabitants, living or dead, but it was empty. She pulled the bike inside and locked the doors. She took a deep breath and laughed in relief. Then she cried.

She found several cans of peaches and creamed corn in the pantry. It was her first hearty meal in months. Before the Great Unraveling, Melody had hated canned food, but now she was certain that these peaches were the most delicious thing she ever ate.

Melody nervously passed the night, and at first light, she left. The house was too close to town and she was certain the Shamblers would find her. She gathered what she could and headed south.

Riding on nothing but rim was incredibly bumpy and uncomfortable, but she didn’t care. Riding along the roads, passing open fields and covering distances that would normally take her hours to walk was exhilarating.

As she rode, she wondered what day it was. There had been a calendar hanging in the house where she spent the winter, but it was two years old. It was hard to believe that at one time, days and dates and times seemed important. Calendars and clocks no longer mattered. All that mattered now was the next town and the next meal. She needed to find both.

She checked her maps and decided on a town called Willoughby Hills. It was a larger town than she normally liked to approach, but her bike’s rims were taking a beating and she worried they would soon be useless. She needed to find a bike shop.

It didn’t take her long once she found a house that had a copy of the old Yellow Pages. Melody never used anything other than her phone to look up information, but Dana taught her the old ways, which were once again useful.

She cautiously made her way through the streets until she found the shop. She had spent the night imagining how she would care for her tattered bike which saved her life, but once she entered the shop, she gave up on the idea immediately. Before her were dozens of brand new bikes just waiting to be dusted and oiled. Once she found her new ride, she tricked it out with everything she could: saddlebags, a basket, even a little trailer meant to carry a toddler which she used to load all the food she had scavenged. She also made sure she had plenty of spare inner tubes, oil, wrenches, a nice bright light for the handlebars, and a pump with an air pressure gauge. The ride was unbelievable. Compared to the constant shaking and shuddering of her previous bike, this felt like heaven.

For the first time since the Great Unraveling, Melody left town not knowing or caring where she was going.

That night she dreamt of Lake Chautauqua and the summer cottage she and her family visited when she was a little girl. They would go for two weeks each summer and Melody realized these were some of her happiest childhood memories. When she woke up, she resolved to go there. It was hundreds of miles away, but what else was she doing?

As a pedestrian, she avoided the highways; they were too open and often remote. A Shambler follows tirelessly if he can see you, so open spaces were avoided. But now it was the easiest, most direct route to get her to New York so she made her way to Route 71 and headed north. The asphalt was still in good shape and the miles melted away. She rode an entire day without seeing a single Shambler.

That night, Melody lay awake beneath a vast array of stars, stars she had never before seen when electricity still ran. She worried returning to Lake Chautauqua might stir up too many memories, but she told herself not to worry about it. Having a destination was enough.

Melody started early the next morning, but by midday, the scent of rain permeated the air as she watched dark clouds roll in from the north. She was traveling in a very rural expanse so she stopped at a remote gas station to wait out the storm.

She checked the place for supplies, but it had long since been ransacked. She left her bike beneath an overhang and went inside. An hour passed before it started, but it was a downpour. Melody was glad she had a safe haven.

She unrolled her sleeping bag and lay on top of it as she listened to the rain and before she knew it, she drifted off. By the time she awoke, the rain had passed. She could see the dark clouds moving south and a rainbow arched across the sky. She was about to step outside when she heard a noise that sent her dashing for cover. It was a quick noise, but it startled her. When she dared to look out the window, she realized that it wasn’t a Shambler she heard, but the sound of another bicycle!

Melody’s heart pounded as she dashed outside, but her bike was still there. Looking down the highway she was stunned to see a small figure getting smaller. Another rider!

Whoever it was hadn’t noticed her parked bike or they would have stopped to scavenge her supplies.

Melody stood next to her bike, uncertain what to do. The longer she hesitated, the further away the stranger rode. In a moment, they would be gone.

It could be anyone, she told herself. Murderer, rapist, thief; someone only too happy to take everything she had so painstakingly gathered.

Fuck it. She would follow.

Melody’s bike was heavily laden with supplies and for a long time she wondered if she would ever catch up. Her legs were getting stronger, but they were sore from the constant exertion. Discouraged, Melody was ready to give up when she realized the rider’s pace was slowing. She pressed forward until she closed the bulk of the gap.

As she approached, Melody wished she could see who she was dealing with. She had learned to tell a lot about another survivor by what they carried and she wanted more information. Like her, the rider carried a massive backpack so she couldn’t make out any features from behind. What did it matter? Whoever it was they were alive.

Melody wondered if she wasn’t crazy for following a complete stranger who could just as easily shoot her the moment she spoke. She was debating how to introduce herself when a familiar sound came to her ears. The rider was whistling!

She recognized the song; it was an old one she learned in grade school. For whatever reason, this put Melody more at ease and now she had an idea. She waited for the tune to return to the chorus, then softly, so as not to startle the stranger, she sang along, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.”

A woman’s voice sang back, “Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin.’ So hush little baby, Don’t you cry.”

Then they sang in unison: “One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing. Then you’ll spread your wings, and you’ll take to the sky.”

Both riders slowed and came to a stop. They leaned across their bikes and awkwardly embraced, trying not to fall over from their heavy packs. Melody wouldn’t let go and she found herself shaking as she let the tears fall down her cheeks. After all the months, and the doubts, and the dreadful fears, she couldn’t believe it.

Dana was alive!

 

END.

by Samson Stormcrow Hayes

Author of the critically acclaimed graphic novel Afterlife (YALSA quick picks selection), screenwriter of “The Deal”, a ghost writer on a Steven Seagal film (advance apologies if you’ve seen it, I was following the producer’s instructions), and author of numerous stories and poetry. Hayes has written for Nigel Lythgoe (producer of American Idol), The Weekly World News, and his epitaph. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, he now resides in Los Angeles where he expects the smog to slowly kill him. He can be found in old parking lots, abandoned malls, or at www.Stormcrowhayes.com.

 

As Melody lay in the field enjoying the sun’s warmth, she thought she might be happy for the first time in months. Winter had been hard and dismal, but she’d survived. She was blissfully enjoying the moment; not thinking of the dead or the past or the hardship; just enjoying the sun and the chirping birds. Then a twig snapped and her revelry disappeared in a heartbeat.

She was on the move, jogging slowly beneath the weight of her pack, wondering how she could have let one get so close. Her legs had never been as strong as they’d been in the fall, but the winter’s inactivity turned her soft. She’d have to get back in shape. No workout routine was required. She would either get stronger or die. It was that simple.

She’d been jogging for about an hour before she felt she had gained sufficient distance to rest. She broke open her pack and pulled out a candy bar that she ate slowly, enjoying each bite, not knowing when she’d find another. As she ate, she watched the Shambler slowly cross the field. Occasionally, it would trip, but it always stood back up, coming toward her with an insatiable hunger.

 

She didn’t think of them as men, not anymore. Now they were Shamblers. Why the disease only affected men was a mystery no one ever solved before the Great Unraveling. Initial reactionaries thought it had to do with testosterone, but the more prevalent theories dealt with the smaller Y chromosome. Her college roommate once joked that she could never trust a man because he was born missing part of his DNA. Maybe she was right.

None of that mattered now. Science and theories were replaced with running and scavenging. It wasn’t the strong who survived, it was the swift.

Melody had been on the run for three years. Sometimes it was house to house, other times town to town; sometimes alone, sometimes with a group, but she was never all that comfortable with others. Groups often had their own weird power structure and as the newest member, she was always suspect. They rarely listened to her if she disagreed with their direction, so she’d inevitably slip away to be alone again. The one exception was Dana. Melody met Dana six months after the Great Unraveling and they instantly hit it off. Even though Dana was ten years older, they got along like sisters. They survived their first winter together and during the spring thaw, they ventured into Randall Park Mall on a scavenging run. They ran into a horde of Shamblers that forced them in opposite directions. Melody returned to their former hideout and waited a week, but Dana never showed. Melody had to believe she was dead. Why not? So was everyone else she knew.

Melody hadn’t seen another living soul in a year and she was beginning to think she might be the last person alive. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered anymore. But after eight months of isolation, Melody missed the simple comfort of a conversation.

She finished her candy bar and resumed jogging. She was feeling every ounce of the weight in her backpack and the once soothing sun was now burning hot, but she managed to maintain a comfortable distance. Unfortunately, her shambling friend had found some company. There were now five Shamblers following her.

Finally, she made it to her destination. Fox Springs was a small town, just a few dozen buildings, in the middle of nowhere. Melody’s supplies had dwindled to nearly nothing in her old hideout so she needed to resupply. She hoped this would be her new home. At least for a while.

Looking back, her pursuers were gaining. She headed for the nearest building, but changed course when two Shamblers stumbled through an open doorway. Making as much noise as possible, she broke to the left and weaved her way between a few buildings. She needed to attract every Shambler in town if her plan was to work.

It wasn’t long before nearly a dozen Shamblers were slowly following her up and down the streets. It wasn’t hard to keep ahead of the Shamblers, but she was hungry and tired and eager to complete her plan. Melody had already spotted the perfect building, a church at the end of the street. Now that she had herded them all into one group, she would lure them into the church through the front. She would escape out the back, lock the door, then, while they clawed at the exit, she would circle around and lock the front entrance. Once they were all trapped inside, she would have free reign over the rest of the town. It was a maneuver she’d perfected with Dana.

Satisfied that the town’s Shamblers were all following her, though wondering why there were so few, she reached the front steps of the church. She waited till the group was closer before she opened the door. Melody stepped inside, ready to dash across the room when she heard something move. A mottled hand appeared on the back of one of the pews and behind it came the Shambler’s head, its eyes hungry. It groaned, and now a dozen more starving faces appeared. A second later and she realized the entire room was filled with them.

Quickly, she retreated, but the other Shamblers were almost on her. She ducked right, but didn’t have time to close the church doors. That meant that every single one in the church was now free and she’d easily seen more than forty hungry mouths yearning for her flesh.

With an entire horde now on her heels, this once beautiful day was turning ugly.

Fox Springs was a trap that she needed to escape, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep running. There were plenty of cars, but she’d long ago given up relying on them for escape. Too often they didn’t start and after the long winter of disuse, many were looking the worse for wear. As panic slowly crept over her, she tried to sprint. That’s when her leg cramped.

The pain was so sudden and sharp that Melody first thought something had grabbed her. She let out a yell, then felt foolish. She needed to stay calm, to think. Taking a deep breath, she told herself not to panic.

The cramp slowed her down to a limp as she hobbled her way to the nearest house. Too many months of sitting around doing nothing! She’d let herself go and now she was paying the price. Melody knew that if there were any Shamblers inside, she was dead.

She ran through the front door, turned and locked it. She looked out the front window and watched some of the Shamblers wandering past the front door. She pounded on the glass to make sure she had their attention. She could hear them stumbling onto the porch, clawing at the door. A window crashed as she limped toward the back. She hurried before they trapped her inside. She pushed through the backdoor and was about to step off the porch when something caught her eye. Sitting on the porch was a bicycle.

The tires were flat, but that didn’t matter. She jumped on and pushed off down the hill, letting gravity do most of the work. A few Shamblers saw her and followed, but she was too fast. The bike carried her down a long, gentle slope until it flattened out as she rolled her way to freedom.

Melody peddled onward, pushing for whatever lay ahead. She preferred to plan her forays ahead, but she knew she would have to improvise until she had time to check the maps she carried in her backpack. Right now she needed to find a safe place to spend the night.

A few miles down the road she found a lone house. She checked for inhabitants, living or dead, but it was empty. She pulled the bike inside and locked the doors. She took a deep breath and laughed in relief. Then she cried.

She found several cans of peaches and creamed corn in the pantry. It was her first hearty meal in months. Before the Great Unraveling, Melody had hated canned food, but now she was certain that these peaches were the most delicious thing she ever ate.

Melody nervously passed the night, and at first light, she left. The house was too close to town and she was certain the Shamblers would find her. She gathered what she could and headed south.

Riding on nothing but rim was incredibly bumpy and uncomfortable, but she didn’t care. Riding along the roads, passing open fields and covering distances that would normally take her hours to walk was exhilarating.

As she rode, she wondered what day it was. There had been a calendar hanging in the house where she spent the winter, but it was two years old. It was hard to believe that at one time, days and dates and times seemed important. Calendars and clocks no longer mattered. All that mattered now was the next town and the next meal. She needed to find both.

She checked her maps and decided on a town called Willoughby Hills. It was a larger town than she normally liked to approach, but her bike’s rims were taking a beating and she worried they would soon be useless. She needed to find a bike shop.

It didn’t take her long once she found a house that had a copy of the old Yellow Pages. Melody never used anything other than her phone to look up information, but Dana taught her the old ways, which were once again useful.

She cautiously made her way through the streets until she found the shop. She had spent the night imagining how she would care for her tattered bike which saved her life, but once she entered the shop, she gave up on the idea immediately. Before her were dozens of brand new bikes just waiting to be dusted and oiled. Once she found her new ride, she tricked it out with everything she could: saddlebags, a basket, even a little trailer meant to carry a toddler which she used to load all the food she had scavenged. She also made sure she had plenty of spare inner tubes, oil, wrenches, a nice bright light for the handlebars, and a pump with an air pressure gauge. The ride was unbelievable. Compared to the constant shaking and shuddering of her previous bike, this felt like heaven.

For the first time since the Great Unraveling, Melody left town not knowing or caring where she was going.

That night she dreamt of Lake Chautauqua and the summer cottage she and her family visited when she was a little girl. They would go for two weeks each summer and Melody realized these were some of her happiest childhood memories. When she woke up, she resolved to go there. It was hundreds of miles away, but what else was she doing?

As a pedestrian, she avoided the highways; they were too open and often remote. A Shambler follows tirelessly if he can see you, so open spaces were avoided. But now it was the easiest, most direct route to get her to New York so she made her way to Route 71 and headed north. The asphalt was still in good shape and the miles melted away. She rode an entire day without seeing a single Shambler.

That night, Melody lay awake beneath a vast array of stars, stars she had never before seen when electricity still ran. She worried returning to Lake Chautauqua might stir up too many memories, but she told herself not to worry about it. Having a destination was enough.

Melody started early the next morning, but by midday, the scent of rain permeated the air as she watched dark clouds roll in from the north. She was traveling in a very rural expanse so she stopped at a remote gas station to wait out the storm.

She checked the place for supplies, but it had long since been ransacked. She left her bike beneath an overhang and went inside. An hour passed before it started, but it was a downpour. Melody was glad she had a safe haven.

She unrolled her sleeping bag and lay on top of it as she listened to the rain and before she knew it, she drifted off. By the time she awoke, the rain had passed. She could see the dark clouds moving south and a rainbow arched across the sky. She was about to step outside when she heard a noise that sent her dashing for cover. It was a quick noise, but it startled her. When she dared to look out the window, she realized that it wasn’t a Shambler she heard, but the sound of another bicycle!

Melody’s heart pounded as she dashed outside, but her bike was still there. Looking down the highway she was stunned to see a small figure getting smaller. Another rider!

Whoever it was hadn’t noticed her parked bike or they would have stopped to scavenge her supplies.

Melody stood next to her bike, uncertain what to do. The longer she hesitated, the further away the stranger rode. In a moment, they would be gone.

It could be anyone, she told herself. Murderer, rapist, thief; someone only too happy to take everything she had so painstakingly gathered.

Fuck it. She would follow.

Melody’s bike was heavily laden with supplies and for a long time she wondered if she would ever catch up. Her legs were getting stronger, but they were sore from the constant exertion. Discouraged, Melody was ready to give up when she realized the rider’s pace was slowing. She pressed forward until she closed the bulk of the gap.

As she approached, Melody wished she could see who she was dealing with. She had learned to tell a lot about another survivor by what they carried and she wanted more information. Like her, the rider carried a massive backpack so she couldn’t make out any features from behind. What did it matter? Whoever it was they were alive.

Melody wondered if she wasn’t crazy for following a complete stranger who could just as easily shoot her the moment she spoke. She was debating how to introduce herself when a familiar sound came to her ears. The rider was whistling!

She recognized the song; it was an old one she learned in grade school. For whatever reason, this put Melody more at ease and now she had an idea. She waited for the tune to return to the chorus, then softly, so as not to startle the stranger, she sang along, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.”

A woman’s voice sang back, “Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin.’ So hush little baby, Don’t you cry.”

Then they sang in unison: “One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing. Then you’ll spread your wings, and you’ll take to the sky.”

Both riders slowed and came to a stop. They leaned across their bikes and awkwardly embraced, trying not to fall over from their heavy packs. Melody wouldn’t let go and she found herself shaking as she let the tears fall down her cheeks. After all the months, and the doubts, and the dreadful fears, she couldn’t believe it.

Dana was alive!

 

END.

by Samson Stormcrow Hayes

Author of the critically acclaimed graphic novel Afterlife (YALSA quick picks selection), screenwriter of “The Deal”, a ghost writer on a Steven Seagal film (advance apologies if you’ve seen it, I was following the producer’s instructions), and author of numerous stories and poetry. Hayes has written for Nigel Lythgoe (producer of American Idol), The Weekly World News, and his epitaph. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, he now resides in Los Angeles where he expects the smog to slowly kill him. He can be found in old parking lots, abandoned malls, or at www.Stormcrowhayes.com.

 

 

“I hope y’all get parvo,” Rambo said, completely defeating the purpose of the contraction by making y’all two syllables. Why couldn’t Pa understand. He luv’d Jewely. Yesterday when he’d whistled and yelled “Hey hottie,” she’d actually crossed to his side of the road. That’s when he knew she was the one for him.

Her folks didn’t think he was good enough for her and had come here to convince his Pa to forbid him from seeing her (and to get him to release her from the cage in the backyard). He was Rambo Penicillin Jones. His Pa ran the biggest dog fighting ring this side of the Ole Miss. They lived in a double wide for Christ’s sake. If anything Jewely wasn’t up to the standards his Pa set for him but that didn’t matter to Rambo.

“Y’all can’t keep me from seein’ her,” Rambo screamed at the people conspiring to keep him from the love of his life.

“Listen here boy. I’m your Pa and you’ll do as I say,” his father said. “Besides she’s a zombie. Ya can’t be with her. That’s like necra, necra,” Pa started to get flustered. That happened when he tried to use those big words. “Well it’d be necrafilthia. I know there aren’t many women left, but if you’re that hard up, there’s always old Betsy. She ain’t much to look at but at least she’s alive.”

“Pa, Betsy’s your gal,” Rambo said. He didn’t want to hurt his Pa’s feelings by telling him that Betsy wasn’t very good, just standing there the whole time and occasionally letting out a distracting moo at the most inopportune moments.

Jewely’s parents took that moment to interject. “Now look here Mister Jones. My wife and I take offense to you referring to our daughter that way. She might have caught the virus that spared the rest of us in this room, but she’s still our daughter and we love her.” Mr. Store smoothed his Cardigan of imaginary wrinkles and looked over at his wife, Fancy.

“Mister Jones,” Fancy said smiling. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement that’ll be mutually beneficial.”

“Whoa. Don’t go throwing those highfalutin words round here. Ain’t gonna impress no one.” Pa wasn’t one to let people get the upper hand. “Y’all said something about payment.”

“We did.” She reached into the large pink paper bag sitting next to her chair and pulled out a stack of albums. “Would you be interested in any of these? They’re not really our taste in music but I thought they might be something you could appreciate.”

Pa reached out to take the records from Mrs. Store. “Let me take a gander at those,” he said. His eyes had lit up when she pulled them out of the bag but being the shrewd negotiator he was, he quickly put on his poker face. Pa had a great poker face. No one could ever tell what he was really feeling when he had it on. They just thought he hadn’t had a bowel movement in a week.

Rambo glanced down as his Pa rifled through the records, then slowly backed up to the door. While everyone else’s attention was on the albums, he exited the trailer, his hopes for a life with Jewely fading. Pa had an old crank operated phonograph but the only two records he had were Lawrence Welk and the Sound of Music soundtrack, neither of which Pa considered good music. Jewely’s parents had brought a stack that included Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Cash, and Conway Twitty. Any one of those would be worth far more than one girl, no matter how hot she was.

Rambo went straight to the fighting cage that Pa had stashed Jewely in. As soon as she saw him coming, she reached out through the bars, yearning to get to him. The toothless smile she bared for him reminded him of the last woman he loved, his cousin Rosie.

“I know babe,” Rambo said, touched by her desire for him. “They just don’t understand our luv. To Pa you’re just a zombie. To me you’re a hottie. But you know what, them’s just words.”

Jewely continued to strain to get to Rambo and let out a low moan, “Uuhhuuhh.”

“Uuuhh huhh,” Rambo said in response. “I know just how you feel.”

Unable to bear the sight of his love in the cage any longer, Rambo ran and retrieved a pair of bolt cutters from the storage shed.

“Pa’s gonna tan my hide for this,” he said as he snipped the padlock off the door of the cage. “Follow me,” he told Jewely and then began to weave his way through the trailer park with Jewely shambling along after.

Near the back of the trailer park was an Airstream trailer, its dull aluminum bread-loaf shaped body supported by its one axle and four concrete cinder blocks. It had belonged to old Miss Walters before she had become an hors d’oeuvre for some not very discriminating zombies. It still smelled like she did, cheap perfume and wet cat, almost a year after her demise, which is why the surviving members of the trailer park avoided it.

Rambo, in a flash of inspiration never before experienced by his fifth grade educated brain, decided old Miss Walter’s trailer was the perfect place to stash his love. He led her there and then coaxed her inside where he was hoping to consummate his love with her.

Once inside she surprised him with the ferocity of her desire for him. Her hands were all over him, tugging and pulling at whatever she could get ahold of, while she leaned forward and gummed his neck and face. It didn’t take long for Rambo’s body to respond to her advances.

He was struggling to get out of his overalls, having a difficult time with her hands in the way, when he heard a metallic bang from outside the trailer.

“Hold up a sec,” he said. “I heard somethin’.” She didn’t pause in her efforts as he listened intently. After a moment he pushed her into the bathroom section of the trailer and pulled the partition closed. “Wait here. I’ll check it out.”

He slipped out of the trailer as Jewely fumbled about in the small space he had confined her in. She didn’t know where the tasty morsel went, but the taste of him had awoken a deep hunger inside her. She thrashed about the little space she was in, looking for something to eat and knocked something off the edge of the sink that caught her eye as it fell. The pink color of flesh pulled at the hunger Jewely felt so she picked up the two pieces and put them in her mouth. They shifted as she tried to chew them until they were maneuvered next to the bottom and roof of her mouth. There they stayed.

“I’m back,” Rambo called out, “T’was just a raccoon knockin’ over a trash can.” He pulled open the partition, already out of his overalls. As Jewely turned toward the sound of Rambo talking, he reached out for her, a distinct bulge in his tighty-whities revealing his expectation of their encounter. Unfortunately for Rambo, he was about to discover that Jewely’s feelings for him were different than his feelings for her.

She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him toward her. Believing she wanted to gum on his neck some more, he let his hands wander to places that usually got him slapped for trying to touch. The sudden pain in his neck surprised him. “Hey baby, not so hard,” was the last thing he ever said before Jewely, with a little help from old Miss Walters dentures, chewed through his carotid artery.

In the last moments of this life, Rambo stared at the star filled crisscrossing stripes of the confederate flag that covered most of the wall. Silently he raged against the injustice of the world (Silently because his larynx was currently being chewed up by the woman he loved). He raged, not because his life was ebbing away. He couldn’t fully grasp his own mortality. He didn’t even rage at the tragedy of a woman using the love a man feels for her to eat him alive, although throughout history, many men have lamented that very fact. No, Rambo raged at a much simpler, yet no less painful truth. He had finally figured out that he wasn’t going to get any.

 

END.

 

We were having coffee on the porch when the first beat up truck arrived across the street.  The screens in the sun room windows blur the view to the interior while allowing us to peek out uninhibited.  We can be the nibby neighbors without the telltale lift of blinds or pulled curtain.

The truck was a POS, Piece O’ Shit. A broken rear spring caused the it to list heavily to the left, like a ship ready to roll over into a sea of asphalt. A misaligned junkyard bed butted against the cab with dented red and blue fenders flanking either side. A flotsam of precariously balanced furniture reached up from the bed like clawing fingers.

 

He got out on the driver’s side and I knew immediately what he was. He wore a grubby Pirates ball cap pulled over his eyes and even though he tried to cover it, he walked with the stoop shouldered, shuffling gate of the undead.   

 

“Just what we need,” I said to the wife–“Friggin’ zombies.”

 

“They look kind of normal,” Evie said, hesitantly.  “Sort of.”  Her voice trailed off. She knew I was right.                                                                                              

 

“Look at the way his clothes are hanging on him. All limp. There’s no muscle underneath. It’s all dead flesh.”

 

“He does look a little pale”

 

“It’s not pale. That’s five pounds of pancake make–up.”

 

A woman exited the passenger side and started limping up the steps of the dilapidated house. Gray, stringy hair hung from under her John Deere cap.

 

“She’s wearing a ball cap too,” I said. “Sure sign.”

 

“They walk almost normal.”

 

“Physical therapy. Health insurance covers it, under the Affordable Care Act. They have their own clinics. You’ve seen the signs: ’24-Hour Physical Therapy’.  They go at night and the windows are blackened.”

 

A car pulled in behind the truck a few minutes later with an older man and woman. Zombies too.

 

“Oh man,” I said. “A whole damn family of zombies, even grandma and grandpa.”  The old man sported a bush hat while the older woman wore a floppy sun hat.  Zombies wore hats to hide their faces and protect against UV rays which increased the deterioration of their flesh.  

 

The house was an abandoned, rotting eyesore directly across from ours.  Too many old houses neglected and dying in our town.  Nobody to take care of them. Every neighborhood had one.  An old Grandma lived in her home alone but wasn’t able to do maintenance as she tottered on in her declining years so it fell into a pit of shabby. The houses breathed their last and shut the curtains along with her. Too busy adult children lived a thousand miles away.  The family rents its cheap, as is, squeezing pennies from dirt, not caring who lives there. This one had paint peeling off the siding, and a hole in the roof where shingles had blown away in an early spring storm leaving exposed tar paper and sheeting. Water had to be pissing down all over the inside through the hole. The yard was a jungle of waist high grass and weeds.  Some windless days, the grass moved, weaving a sinuous trail of something crawling below, maybe rats.

 

A succession of unsavory renters did more damage.  We were certain the first occupant manufactured and sold drugs.  Cars came and went at all hours. Flashing lights on the ceiling at 2:30 am and the police finally carted him away.  It only sat empty for a month before the puppy mill moved in. Cage after cage, stacked ceiling high.  Small dogs yapping day and night. Truck showing up daily with bags of dog food.  Police did eventually force it closed after weekly calls to city inspectors and numerous neighborhood petitions about the stench. This last year it lay tired and empty. We hoped it would stay that way or collapse on its own of weariness some night.  I petitioned the city to condemn it and tear it down but the city fathers said it ain’t happening until it’s a hazard.  “Define hazard,” I said. And now these queer, shuffling diseased things were moving in.

 

I’d been tempted, more than once, to sneak over in the dark of night and set the place ablaze. None of the neighbors would testify against me, in fact, they’d probably get up collection to offer me a paid Bahamian vacation.

 

***

 

Two days after the first pickup arrived, they returned with another load of well worn furniture. This time a tattered couch and overstuffed chair. By weeks end, three loads of furniture stumbled and fell up the steps. They had help from other zombies. A twenty-five year old paint splotched Fairlane spewed out six of their friends along with a fog of smoking oil. The zombies were officially in residence across the street.

 

The first month the comings-and-goings were non-stop. We’d lost count of how many stayed in the house but I think there were seven or eight altogether.  Wife guessed nine or ten. She gave them names to keep track.  Two more weeks of watching and we concluded they were occupying the house in rotating shifts.  ‘Hot racking’, we called it in the navy.

 

The older woman from the first day, with the straw hat, she deemed ‘the matriarch’.  The man who accompanied her was Uncle Buck. We thought they were the parents or in-laws of the younger couple. The older couple dropped off a young boy, possibly their grandson.  A fourteen year old who may have been chubby once before the zombie virus thinned him down.  

 

“Let’s call him Paulie,” she said.  It was now a daily ritual to sit on the porch and watch the comings and goings across the street.  It was better than any reality TV show.

 

“Why Paulie?”

 

“Seems like a good name. First I thought of ‘Blubber’ or “Pudge” both those are insulting. He’s probably a good kid. Was.”

 

Society was still working on the syntax of referring to reborn.  Technically–they were still dead.  The heart didn’t pump, kidneys and liver were dormant too but somehow, they had brain function.  I read a study somewhere, in a popular science magazine that said, IQ was only minimally decreased and it depended a lot on the circumstances of where and how long they lay dead before re-animation occurred.  

 

The legal issues. Oh boy! Early on, before the world understood what was happening, certificates of death were issued. Re-animation generated a maelstrom of bureaucratic paperwork and relegated the undead to the status of second–class citizens. Or maybe third.  Dogs had more rights than the undead.

 

A startup software group created a translation app. It was able to render the groans, grunts and moans issuing from the decayed vocal chords into understandable language.  The app sold millions of copies at 99 cents in the first weeks of release because now families could communicate with their undead love ones. Evie installed one of the translator apps on her phone. She had the window sash raised enough for the phone to sit inside the screen with the mic facing out and set it to record.

 

“We can play it back after they’re inside.” Her eyes lit up. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what they’re talking about?” Yeah, I was, like rubber-necking at a train wreck.

 

Uncle Buck drove Paulie to school every morning. Of course they didn’t attend regular schools.  No sense in helping the virus spread.  Anyway, who wants zombies hanging around their daughters?  Paulie wore his pants pulled up to his chest, sized for a taller boy.  Clothes come from charity stores.  No market for fashionable zombie clothing line.

 

We thought Paulie belonged to the younger couple, who were probably husband and wife before the sickness.  Concurrent stages of decay within the family suggests one of them brought the virus home and within a week all of them were infected.  Kids went to camps in summer.  Paulie probably carried the infection home from camp.

 

The initial outbreak started in the heat of mid July. Symptoms manifested as a bad summer cold with profuse sneezing and coughing. The spewed clouds of contamination hung in the air for hours waiting for a host.  That’s how it spread so rapidly and it had resilience so it took a heavy duty thorough cleaning to disinfect a home or office.  The bug created another economic boom for some companies.  Sales of bleach and disinfectant sprays skyrocketed.

 

We called the wife, ‘scrub lady’ because she wore stained blue hospital scrubs.  

 

“She probably works in one of those zombie personal care homes. There’s one on the far end of Fairchance Avenue,” she said.

 

The husband was tall and thin and looked to be the type who wore Birkenstocks before becoming a zombie. He took his hat off once after struggling to manhandle a couch up onto the porch.  My eyes can never un-see the sight of that bare skull.  It is burned into my retina like an image on an old computer monitor.

 

Zombie disease does terrible things to the body once infected. It’s a wasting disease and ultimately the organs shut down and the victim dies. They rot for about a week and then come back to life. This particular mutation of the virus doesn’t make the victims crave human flesh. A few of the  newly reanimated embraced veganism. They did have to eat and for a while scientists had trouble with how the food processed in their bodies because most of the organs inside their bodies didn’t function, no one was sure about the need for food. Nothing supernatural about it. The infected staph bacteria metabolized the food for energy. It wasn’t an efficient process, in fact, it was a losing battle. They could only consume enough to survive. Obesity would never be an issue.

 

Urban populations were decimated in the first wave. People died in droves. Emergency agencies were overwhelmed with corpses. A week to ten days later, the undead began to resurrect, but the body decay continued until the CDC came up with an inoculation to stabilize though not completely arrest the deterioration process. It also helped ameliorate the stench of decay. Before the inoculations, flesh was falling off the poor things. The deodorant and perfume industry boomed with a new growth selling zombie perfume products. The shelves were overflowing with a profusion of zombie, “smell-well” products.

 

Economies worldwide virtually halted.  People sealed doors and windows and stayed inside to avoid contact.  Gradually the inoculation effort took hold.  The spread plateaued and zombies tried to return to their ordinary lives.

 

It took a while for attitudes to change after the explosion of zombieism but stores began hiring them.  A few even got their old jobs back.  It was a good thing because they strained the existing social welfare systems beyond breaking. Most of the jobs were back room positions, as long as they remained hidden, people were okay with it. Consequently a lot of them worked fast food in the kitchens after new food safety regulations went into effect.

 

Zombies have a negative effect on property values when they move or return to a neighborhood because they don’t keep up their yards and there’s trash everywhere. I understand they don’t have the energy for it because of the disease but still, they could make an effort.

 

The guy across the street appeared to be the exception.  He even had a mower. It was a Frankenstein thing of sewn together deck, motor, lopsided wheels and handle. It leaned drunkenly to one side.  I had to give him credit, Saturday morning, he was out there trying to start it.  When it finally did turn over, it belched and burped smoke like a low flying crop duster, draping the yard in an oily fog.  He wobbled back and forth, re-starting it each time it choked on the high grass, cutting wonky lines in the field.  Everything went well until he started on the hillside. The grass was still slick with morning dew. He struggled for control but ultimately lost and tumbled to the ground behind the mower. His body was a distortion of angles, his right leg twisted in an unholy geometry with his foot coming to rest near his head. Instinct overcame judgment and I dashed across the street.

 

“Are you alright?” I asked before catching myself. He was sitting up now and his right leg protruded about eighteen inches out the bottom of his pants.  He shook his head. I held up my hand in stop motion and ran back across the street to grab Evie’s phone.

 

I held the phone up, a silicon and plastic talisman.

 

“You have the translation app,” the speaker said as he growled and groaned. “Looks like my leg came off.” He grabbed the ankle and pulled the thing out from the pant leg. It had disconnected at the knee. Strings of putrefied flesh hung from the knee joint. His head tilted up toward me.

 

“I could use a little help getting up,” he said. I couldn’t tell what his eyes were saying.  The milky whiteness obliterated any hope of reading those windows.  I looked toward the house.

 

“You can get some gloves,” he said. “I understand. I can wait or crawl up the steps. I just might be able to get it reattached before the wife gets home.” He smiled but it was not pleasant.

 

“Yeah, let me run back and get those,” I said. Things were moving too fast for me to think about how it was going to feel to touch that rotting flesh.

 

“You kind of have to go easy,” he said reaching for my gloved hand.  Things pull off.”

When I got him to the steps he said, “I can use the rail from here. Thanks. I’ll reattach it.”

 

“How?”

 

“I’ll stitch it back on wherever I can find some solid flesh and then duck tape the hell out of it. I was a surgeon, you know, before. . . The knee will be stiff but there’s no pain. Nerve endings are shot, you know.” I laughed uncomfortably at his joke.

 

He managed to stagger up the steps and I went back to the porch. I wrapped the gloves in a plastic grocery bag and tossed them in the trash.

 

I saw him a few days later. The taped up leg was definitely stiff.

 

All I knew about the undead, I got from television and opinions differed hugely from network to network. I researched on my own, looking for real medical papers. Stuff about projected lifespans. Outlooks. All the info I could find said we really don’t know. Scientists agreed it wasn’t reversible or curable. So far the only ways they could die was to cut off or smash the head or incineration. For whatever reason either stopped the process. The weird combination of virus infected bacteria was the driver behind zombie disease and was resistant to both antibacterial and antiviral drugs. The early mass killings proved those poor saps could die. They looked and acted like all of the shuffling undead in the movies except for the flesh eating part. We didn’t know they were harmless.

 

Bacteriophages infected a staphylococcus bacteria and it went downhill from there. Anybody could get it but certain populations had a propensity for the infection. For those who weren’t already infected, the inoculation was 93 percent effective in preventing the disease. A world wide effort to inoculate susceptible populations worked and new cases were getting rare, but we already had 10 million undead. Government and social organizations made motions to re-integrate the partially decayed back into society. Only the very rich neighborhoods kept them out.

 

We began a waving relationship almost like normal neighbors.  I’d be in the yard working, he’d pull up in the truck and wave as he went up to the house.  

 

He was touching up parts of the truck with a can of gray primer when I pulled up. I had the zombie translation app on my phone now. As I got out of the car I waved and said, “How’s it going?”

He waved back and the phone squawked, “Not bad. You?”

 

“So-so,” I answered.

 

“Trying to make this POS look better,” he said with a laugh. “Not much hope though. Miss my beemer.”

 

“Yeah, my other car too,” I said. “In my dreams.”

 

“No. I actually had one when I was alive. I was a doctor. Neurosurgeon.”

 

“Wow,” was all I could think to say as I quickened my step toward the door

.

We saw less of them as the stifling heat and thick humidity of August pushed us inside to the air-conditioned the house. We hadn’t seen the boy in weeks and their extended family or friends didn’t visit anymore. I was putting out the garbage on a stifling Monday evening. On his side of the road, he was struggling to wrangle a plastic garbage can down the steps. The heavy can was about to topple over on him. I don’t know why but I took the three steps across the street to help him. I already had gloves on. He nodded a grateful thanks. I pulled the phone from my back pocket and flicked on the translator app.

 

“Sure been hot,” I said. He gave me a funny look, seemed to consider a thought.

 

“The boy went to live with others, and, Jane, my wife, is not doing well.  She’s decided to terminate.” Congress passed the ‘Twice Terminal’ assisted suicide law a month ago and not even religious groups objected.  State and Fed shared the cost of cremation. Wording was legalese but the gist of it read, that since they were once dead, assisting in a second termination was completely within the law.

 

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

 

“I don’t know if I can go on without her.” Felt like I wanted to put my arm around him but I resisted.  “I’ll get her through it and take care of some financial stuff and then do the process myself.

 

“Hard decision,” I said.

 

“We own the house, so I’m deeding it to the city for tear down.” He paused.  “I appreciate you trying to be ‘normal’ with us. We don’t get that often.”

 

I looked down at the dark pavement feeling small.

 

END.

by R. Gene Turchin