Brian Keene Read online

  I was thinking about that very thing when Alan and I looted the Safeway.

  We showed up at the Safeway's parking lot in the middle of the night and found a dozen other well-armed people with the same plan. We grabbed two shopping carts and joined in before the shelves were picked clean. The cops weren't around, and neither were the zombies. The other looters ignored us, busy making due for themselves. Four of them stuck together in a group. The others appeared to be loners.

  The meat department and the produce aisles smelled like an open sewer. The stench of rotting vegetation and spoiled meat hung thick in the air. I heard a droning buzz, and noticed that the butcher's display cases were covered with fat, sluggish flies. Thousands of tiny white worms burrowed through rancid steaks and hamburger and pork chops. I remember wondering as I watched them if Hamelin's Revenge could spread to insects-mosquitoes, ticks, or other bloodsuckers. I hoped not. If it could spread to them or to the birds, we were pretty much fucked.

  But then again, we were pretty much fucked anyway.

  The fruit and vegetables in the produce department were covered with fuzz and slime and more flies. We held our breath when we passed through the aisle, and again when we cut through the dairy products section. Exploded cardboard milk cartons were thick with green-blue mold and the stench was overwhelming. A fat man in a soiled T-shirt sat on the floor, his back against one of the coolers, and ate spoiled milk with a spoon, scooping it from the carton like cottage cheese.

  "Hey" Alan said, "you're gonna get sick, dude. That shit will kill you."

  The man smiled sadly. "I hope so. I ain't got the guts to shoot myself, or to let one of those things bite me."

  "Suicide?" I frowned. "Why die at all?"

  The man shoveled another spoonful of sludge into his mouth. It dribbled down his chin as he replied, "Don't you guys see? We only got two options. We can join them or we can feed them. Either way, we're dead."

  A tear slid down his cheek. We walked away without another word.

  "He's just given up," Alan said when we were out of earshot.

  "Fuck that," I said. "I'm going to fight."

  "You ever wonder why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why we fight to survive? Why we sit in your house going stir crazy? I mean, what's the alternative? Shit ain't gonna get better. It's just gonna get worse. Why bother?"

  I didn't have an answer for him.

  Alan and I filled our carts with bottled water; canned vegetables, fruit, and meat; dry goods like cereal and oatmeal; batteries; aspirin; hydrogen peroxide; antibacterial cream; bandages; vitamins; cigarette lighters; matches; and other things we could use. He grabbed a few small propane cylinders for my grill, but I made him put them back. Even if we'd had fresh meat or veggies to put on the grill, the smell of cooking would attract predators- living and otherwise.

  A fly landed on Alan's forearm as he reached for a box of granola bars. He gave a small, disgusted cry and slapped at it. When he took his hand away, the insect was squashed all over his arm. He let it fall to the floor, and then wiped his arm on his shirt. I wondered if he'd been thinking the same thing I had about the bugs.

  "You ready, Lamar?" He shoved his cart forward.

  "Yeah," I said. "Let's go home."

  "Home?" He snorted. "Is that what it is these days?"

  I didn't answer.

  We now had enough goods in our two carts to last us a month. Maybe more if we rationed. 1 figured we'd hunker down and stay barricaded inside my house and wait to see what happened next. On our way to the exit, I added a case of warm beer almost as an afterthought. We passed by the cash registers. It felt weird not paying. Then we got the hell out of there. Our fellow looters weren't arguing with each other, but the whole place had an underlying mood of fear. It felt like any moment the whole store could explode.

  Or the zombies could show up.

  We were on our way back home when it happened. The streets were deserted, except for abandoned vehicles. Most of them were either wrecked or shot up. A few had been burned. The damp pavement shined. It had rained earlier in the day. With the power out, there were no lights to mark our way, but the moon was full and round. Its dull glow was strangely comforting. Broken glass crunched under our feet. The wheel on Alan's cart squeaked. Somewhere, a dog barked. A distant gunshot echoed off the buildings. A plane passed overhead, red and blue lights blinking in the darkness. I wondered who was on it and where they were going. The wind shifted, bringing the smell of decay. It was the end of August and summer would soon be over, but the days were still sweltering, the nights barely tolerable. The heat really compounded the stench of the dead, but that was a good thing. You could smell them coming before you saw them. We sped up our pace.

  An undead cat lay twitching in the road, unable to move. Its spine had been crushed and a fresh tire tread stood out in its burst stomach. On the sidewalk, something that might have been a dead crow had congealed into a puddle of tissue. Nose wrinkling, Alan steered his shopping cart around the mess, and the squeaky wheel squealed in protest. I glanced at the worms squirming in the bird's remains and wondered again if they were alive or dead.

  The quick breeze died down and the heat returned-as did the stench. We stayed aware; kept looking over our shoulders. The wheel on my shopping cart kept going crooked, making it a real pain in the ass to push. Every time I hit a stone or piece of broken glass, I had to shove extra hard. When we came across a cracked and rutted section of sidewalk, I wheeled the cart into the street. As we passed by a sewer drain, I noticed a severed head lying against the curb, right over the grating. A few flaps of flesh hung below the chin, but that was it. Water swirled past the head, trickling down into the drain. As we watched, a black tongue slithered from its mouth like a slug. The blue eyes turned up to watch us pass.

  "Should we kill it?" Alan asked.

  "It's already dead."

  "You know what 1 mean."

  I shrugged. "Why bother. It can't hurt anybody. It's just a head."

  "Fucking creepy."

  "Yeah."

  "How long you figure it can survive like that?"

  "Until it rots away, I guess. It doesn't have a stomach or anything. But look at it. I bet if we stuck our fingers down there, it would snap at us. Whatever this disease does, these things operate on instinct. Kind of like a shark. All a shark does is swim and eat. All these things do is walk and eat. It can't walk anymore. But it's still hungry. Bet it stays hungry until its brain dissolves."

  Alan stared down at the head. "Wonder if they think."

  I didn't reply, because I didn't know. Alan cocked his foot back and kicked the head like a football. It sailed off into the night. There was a wet splat as it bounced off the hood of an abandoned car.

  "Field goal." Alan grinned. "I should play for the Ravens."

  "Come on," I said. "Let's get this stuff home while the coast is still clear."

  We'd gone two more blocks when it happened. Alan was armed with a sword. He'd picked it up during a vacation in Tijuana. It was a cheap piece of junk, but he'd sharpened the blade and practiced with it in my kitchen. Before they all rotted, he'd gotten pretty good at slicing cantaloupes in half, but he hadn't yet had the opportunity to try it on a zombie. I was carrying a pistol. I don't know what kind. As I said, I was never much of a gun aficionado. During the dealership robbery, I'd used a Ruger.22 pistol, purchased hot downtown. Bought a box of ammo to go with it. I'd thrown both into the harbor afterward. When things broke down a few weeks later, I'd wished I still had it. This new gun was a revolver. I knew that much. Didn't know anything else, except that if I pulled the trigger, I'd shoot something. I'd been calling it a pistol, and Alan had tried correcting me, saying it wasn't a pistol, but a revolver. I didn't see the difference. Didn't care, either, as long as it worked. I'd picked it up off a dead guy lying in the middle of the intersection. We'd come across him on our way to the grocery store. After some experimentation, I figured out how to get the cylinder open. There were four bul
lets inside.

  Like Alan and his sword, I hadn't had to use them yet.

  Until that zombie bitch shuffled out of the bushes…

  Here's the thing about zombies. You can get the fuck away from them easily enough. They're usually quiet, but they're also slow and stupid. You see them coming, so it's real easy to run away. And like I said earlier, even if you don't see them, you can usually smell the fuckers. Ever smell roadkill? It's the same thing, except mobile. But that night, the breeze kept shifting. First it would blow off the Chesapeake Bay and away from us. Then it would switch, but that was no better, because the stench of decay would get so strong you couldn't tell if it was a zombie approaching you or just the city itself-a giant graveyard full of rotting corpses.

  We passed by a small row house with a withered, brown hedge out front. The windows were broken. The aluminum siding was splattered with gore. The zombie must have come from behind the hedge, because that was the only spot to hide. We didn't see her, didn't smell her, until she'd latched on to Alan.

  He was behind me, talking in hushed tones about getting out of the city and heading for the wilderness-the woods in Pennsylvania or southern Maryland. Maybe even down to the outskirts of Ocean City, around some of the more desolate beach areas. I was against it. Thought we should just stay inside my place. We didn't know shit about what was going on elsewhere. What if the woods were full of infected animals? I waited for Alan to reply. His shopping cart coasted past me and out into the street. At the same time, he started screaming.

  I let go of my cart and whipped around. The zombie clung to Alan, scratching and biting. This close, her stench made me gag. She wrapped her swollen, rotting arms around Alan like an exuberant lover and then clambered onto his back. She held on tightly. He buckled under her weight, but managed to maintain his footing. Her feet dangled off the ground. She wore no shoes or socks and her toes were caked with filth.

  Alan dropped his sword. It clanged onto the pavement. Panicked, I could only watch as he hunched over, beating at the harpy clinging to his back. The creature moaned and he shrieked. Her cracked fingernails raked at his arm and neck, ripping his skin. She leaned forward and her teeth snapped shut on his cheek. The dead woman jerked her head back and Alan's flesh stretched like soft taffy. Alan screamed again, and even in the darkness I could see the blood welling up inside his mouth. His skin stretched even farther, pulled taught, and then tore. His flapping cheek dangled from the zombie's clenched teeth. His screams turned into a gurgle. Other than her brief moan, the corpse didn't make a sound.

  It was then that I remembered the gun. It had been clenched in my hand the whole time, but I'd been so fucking overwhelmed with shock and fear that I'd forgotten about it. The zombie's head was thrown back away from Alan's left shoulder. She was chewing the piece of meat while he thrashed and spun. Blood streamed down his neck, soaking his clothing. His skin looked garish and pale, and I saw his teeth and his tongue flopping around in the ragged hole. Amazingly, he didn't collapse. He kept beating at her, making gargling sounds in his throat. When he spun around again, I raised the pistol. The zombie's head darted forward for another bite.

  I stepped close, put the gun against her forehead and pulled the trigger. At the same time, 1 turned my face away, closed my eyes and kept my mouth shut tight, pursing my lips together so that no blood would splatter into my mouth. The pistol jumped in my grip. There was an explosion. Over the zombie's stench, I smelled burned hair and gun smoke.

  The zombie went limp, slumped, and then slid to the asphalt like a sack of cement. Alan collapsed to his knees. He tried to scream again, but the sound was garbled. He sounded like a wild animal. His eyes rolled up at me, wide and horrified. Sweat and blood covered what was left of his face. He tried to speak, but I could barely understand him.

  "Shloo eeee…"

  "Oh, fuck." 1 backed away from him. Alan was dead. Even if I managed to stop the bleeding and somehow patch up his face, he'd been bitten. Hamelin's Revenge was already coursing through his veins. He'd died the moment she broke the skin.

  I heard the sound of tinkling glass from a nearby alley. The zombies were on the move, attracted by the gunshot.

  "Laarr," Alan slurred. "Shloo eeee."

  Lamar, shoot me.…

  I raised the gun. My hands trembled.

  "I'm sorry, man. I am so fucking sorry."

  I did as he asked. I shot him.

  Like I said, things have changed. People have changed. Me included. I didn't even look away. The gunshot echoed into the night. Somewhere, another dog barked. Another rotting corpse shuffled into sight. When it saw me, it grinned and made a low moaning noise. Blinking away tears, I raised the pistol, and then lowered it again. The zombie was too far away to shoot with accuracy and I didn't want to waste bullets.

  I forgot about the shopping carts and ran home. I saw more zombies but stayed out of their reach. They lurched out of alleyways and stumbled out of houses and apartment buildings. 1 didn't see anybody else who was still alive, but I heard a woman screaming. Couldn't tell where she was, and in truth, I didn't stick around long enough to see. When a rat skittered by me and disappeared behind a parked car, I nearly screamed. I didn't know if it was dead or alive. I wondered if I should consider myself lucky to be alive, or cursed because I wasn't dead yet. Of course, if I were dead, I'd be a zombie. I wondered if they knew-remembered- who they'd been. If there was such a thing as a soul, was it still inside them, conscious and staring out through those dead eyes, unable to act as its body was hijacked?

  Then I decided that I wasn't ready to find out yet.

  Chapter Two

  Once I was safe and sound back inside my house, I checked to make sure nothing had come in while I was gone. I renailed some thick boards over the front door. It wasn't totally secure, but it would be enough for one night, as long as I kept quiet and didn't alert anyone else to my presence inside the house. Too much pounding would allow the zombies or raiders to hone in on my location. In truth, I couldn't have continued barricading myself inside even if I'd wanted to. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and started crying as I hammered twelve penny nails back into the heavy wooden planks. Delayed shock. Mental breakdown. Maybe a little bit of both. But deep down inside, I knew that I wasn't crying for Alan or anybody else. I was crying for myself. I've never been one for self-pity, but I felt it then.

  I was alone again.

  Deciding I'd be safe enough, I resolved to finish the job in the morning. I felt exhausted and weak and dirty. I tried to remember the last time I'd showered, and couldn't. Washing up with a sponge and a bowl of rainwater just didn't cut it.

  In the darkness, I ate a can of fruit cocktail. I didn't have much of an appetite, but I forced the fruit down anyway, even the chunks of pineapple, which I hated. Why is it that when you open a can of fruit cocktail, regardless of the brand, there's always too much pineapple and not enough cherries? Of course, I don't guess there will be any fruit cocktail for a long time. If humanity ever does get back on their feet, we'll have more important things to worry about first. As I sipped the juice from the can, I thought about all the groceries I'd left behind on the street. Sooner or later, I'd have to go out again. It was either starve or forage. Day or night-didn't matter when I went. The danger would be the same. Tonight it had been Alan. Next time it could be me. But I didn't want to think about that just then.

  Naked and sweating from the late summer heat, I collapsed on top of the damp, dirty sheets. The pillowcase stank, even with the stench from outside creeping into the house. The pillowcase smelled like me-of dirt and grime, hopelessness and despair. I had no way to do laundry, and water was too precious to waste. I lay there, tossing and turning, thrashing around. I couldn't read in the darkness, and I didn't want to risk using the flashlight. There wasn't really anything to read, anyway, even if I had been willing to use a light. Just a stack of past-due bills and shut-off notices and a few out-of-date magazines for which there'd be no follow-up issues. It's a
mazing how the feature articles in Time magazine and Newsweek, the stories that had seemed so important, become meaningless and trivial. Distant, as if they were ancient history. I had an iPod and the battery was still good on it, but I couldn't listen to it without somebody else to stand guard. With the headphones on, I wouldn't be able to hear if someone-zombie or otherwise-tried to break in. (Alan and 1 had slept in shifts, even during the day; making sure one of us was always awake and on watch.) 1 couldn't read, couldn't listen to music, and didn't want to think. Add in the sweltering mid-August temperatures and the fear and uncertainty I felt. I was fucked. I didn't think that I'd be able to sleep, but eventually I did. Fitfully.

  I don't remember dreaming. Not that night or any other night, either. I've never been able to remember my dreams. I used to get this weird sense of jealousy when I'd hear other people tell me about their dreams. Most boring shit in the world, but I was always fascinated by it anyway. Wondered if my own were the same. Even their nightmares held me spellbound. Now, all I had to do was look outside. East Baltimore was crawling with nightmares, and there were plenty of them to call my own. Stinking, rotting corpses ran amok in the streets, leaking fluids and shedding body parts. The gutters were thick with offal. Between the smell and the danger, it's a wonder I slept at all.

  A scream woke me. I bolted upright, eyes snapping open, fists clutching the sheets. The sound had already faded, and I wondered if it had been real or if I'd imagined it. Maybe I was finally becoming conscious of my dreams. Out of habit, I turned to the alarm clock to see what time it was, but of course the clock wasn't working. With no watch and no other way of knowing, I decided to try going back to sleep.