Dead Men (and Women) Walking Page 10

  But God damn it, he didn't want to die.

  Mack got a good swing going when a screeching sound of twisting metal terrified him. He hit the window, bounced again. Quickly, he braced his legs against the window and swung with all his might. He arched away from the window...

  And dropped.

  He slammed back first onto the car's roof. The force shattered all the windows, and glass sprayed the road.

  Mack's eyes were open and he was breathing. Somehow, he was still breathing. A circular shape plummeted toward him from the roof. It took a second for his dizzy brain to realize it was the fire hose reel.

  His back screamed in agony as he rolled sideways and dropped off the crushed metal. He hit the ground face first. Felt his nose shatter and the wetness of blood covering his lips.

  Slowly he turned his head. Under the car, he could see Angie's hand laying in the gutter, a line of blood traced its way from her shoulder to her palm.

  The fire hose reel missed the car. He heard it thump into Angie and fall sideways, clattering on the pavement. Her body jolted from the strike.

  "Get up," he told himself and was surprised at how strained his voice sounded. His hand reached up, found the door's window frame and gripped it tightly. Using it for support, Mack slowly got to his feet.

  The world around him was blurred.

  He took a step forward. Almost fell but regained his balance at the last moment. Then took another step. And another, and another.

  PAUL

  By E.P. Spader

  Breath burst into my lungs like a fast-spreading July wildfire. With it came an explosion of panic; my heart beat quick and irregular and sweat dribbled and pooled in cold, loose pores in my skin. I was shaking uncontrollably and my limbs seemed to twitch and writhe in a spastic melody directed by a foreign conductor. After a moment of this, a feeling of relief slowly crept in and with it came thoughts of Paul. I had to find him---my life depended on it.

  Nothing seemed right. My left arm, which I knew was broken, didn't hurt even when moved. I was lying by the side of the road. It was dark, with only a few scattered, dim lights visible on the distant horizon. The others were milling about aimlessly, rummaging through the remains of broken-down cars lying dead in the road for God-knows-what. I didn't feel right. I felt as though I were dying. My head pounded mercilessly and everything was covered in a soft, bluish haze. I had to find Paul. He could help. He was the only one who could. I wished that I had some aspirin.

  I got up with very little effort, favoring my left arm even though I didn't need to. It hung limp at my side and dangled there like a dead, broken branch teetering in the wind. A bone jutted painlessly out of pierced purple skin at an almost impossible angle. It looked gruesome. The others glanced at me and provided nods of support but could do little else to alleviate my anxiety. A quick look westward told me that that was the direction I need to go---toward the lights. Paul would be there.

  I stumbled along slowly, hugging the side of the expressway in nearly complete darkness as I traveled westward toward the lights. My legs, filled with pins and needles, felt like a toddler's. Every so often I would stumble into a car blanketed by shadows near the guardrail or step into a rut and fall. No matter. I kept my eye on the prize and plodded forward despite desperate, fleeting notions of giving up and dying there in the road like a wounded animal. The others were there, too, following me as if I were some bizarre pied piper of Hamelin. They didn't talk. Like me, they just kept moving.

  The sun was up by the time we reached the college---the source of the lights. The doors and windows of its main entrance were barricaded with a flotsam of oddments of wood, furniture and scrap metal. Some of the others began the long, tedious task of deconstructing the barrier, but I was smarter than that; I moved to the south of the building. The maintenance garages were there, and they'd be much easier to breach. A handful of others, taking notice of my plan, followed.

  The folding, aluminum garage doors were locked, but barely sturdy. Finding a long piece of iron rebar, I constructed a makeshift lever and easily pried off the lock. The folding door swung up to reveal nothing but a rusted-out tractor and heaps of tools and spare parts buried in the darkness within. Beyond the darkness the faint glow of artificial light leaked from beneath a door. And beyond that, voices.

  All at once, something in me changed that affected my fundamental reasoning. My pulse quickened. My eyes grew wide and thirsty. The voices, now deafening due to an escalating argument among, from what I could tell, two young men and a woman, rang heavily in my ears and acted as the catalyst that had me running for the door. In my haste, I clumsily knocked into a pail that flew end-over-end into a pile of debris. The door immediately flew open. In its threshold, silhouetted in a bath of fluorescent light, stood three people: two men and a woman. Paul was among them.

  "Paul!" I screamed, sounding more like "Parr," with a deep-resonating gurgle. Constricted and dry, my throat was simply unable to wrap itself around the word. Again: "Paul!" Worse this time, resembling little more than a grunt.

  A flash of light and thunderclap came in response as I was thrown back from the impact of the .12 gauge slug that burrowed deep into my chest. Unhurt and undeterred, I immediately got to my feet and continued my full-out sprint toward the door.

  "No!" Paul screamed.

  The throng of the others were piling into the maintenance garage behind me, but I reached Paul first. He was mine. They'd simply have to share the other pair amongst themselves.

  "Paul," I tried again as I embraced him and held him still. Again, an incoherent croak. I was salivating. My eyes were saucers. I bit into the back of his head and felt the warmth of his blood trickle past my teeth. I managed to crack through his skull in less time than I ever thought possible.

  His brain tasted like pink cotton candy.

  OLD HABITS, NEW HABITS

  By Arthur Sánchez

  The Wednesday night meeting of Z.A.P.2, (Zombies are People, 2 -- the morons couldn't figure out how to incorporate a "T" into their name so they use a number), is well under way when Hammer and I get there. Hammer hates the place and it's always a struggle to get him to show up. He hates having to go to support group meetings. He hates that zombies aren't free to do what they are meant to do. But most of all he hates the group counselor -- Mrs. Finklestein. That's cause Mrs. Finklestein has it in for us. She doesn't think we're good zombies -- which to tell the truth we're not. So I had to make certain promises to Hammer just to get him in the building.

  Of course, walking in Hammer plops himself down right by the door and refuses to go any further. At 6' 6" and two hundred and fifty pounds of rippin muscle nobody's going to change his mind anyhow. But that's all right cause tonight that's a good place for him to be. That, of course, means that I've got to take a seat in the "circle." That's Mrs. Finklestein's idea -- that all us zombies sit in a circle to support each other. I made a crack once about it being the circle of not life but nobody got it. Being dead these numb-nuts have less of a sense of humor than they did when they were alive.

  "Robert," Mrs. Finklestein says in her fake cheery voice as I approach the group, "so nice of you to join us -- and almost on time, too." She smiles that big dumb-ass smile of hers -- as if she's said something clever. Stupid old cow hasn't said something clever since before they buried, then ate, Grover Cleveland.

  "Bite me," I tell her as I take my seat. Poor old Hoskins, who's in the next chair, actually gives me a glassy stare and starts to lean over -- his mouth puckering as he tries to get his choppers working. Old goat ends up getting saliva on my coat.

  "James!" Mrs. Finklestein shouts as she leaps up. Now there's a sight, 400 pounds of dead blubber wriggling to its feet. Even the support hose can't make that look appetizing. "For shame! We are not mindless animals. We are people, too. We can overcome our weaknesses. We are better than that."

  I gotta say one thing for the fat cow, when she gets her dander up she can be damn impressive. That tone of righteous indignatio
n in her voice has caused many a zombie to crumble with shame and remorse. Like they're to blame for being what they are. Hoskins rheumy eyes actually start to tear as he mumbles his apologies. I turn away in disgust. What's the point in living (or not living) if you gotta be like that?

  "And Robert," Mrs. Finklestein says as she turns to me, blubber all aquiver, "I'd appreciate it if you kept a civil tongue in your head. Inflammatory statements such as that will not be tolerated."

  "Sure," I say with a shrug of my shoulders, knocking some of the graveyard dirt off my coat and onto the floor, "love to. If you tell me where I can find a civil tongue I'll rip it out and keep it in my head. It won't be a problem cause I got this hole right back here where that cop shot me last year." I lift up my ponytail and show them where part of my skull is missing. The sight of exposed brain gets Hoskins quivering like a pervert at a tittie show.

  Things might have blown up right then and there if Veronica didn't shown up. Sweet, sweet, Veronica, dead six years and guys still try to pick her up. Long black hair, big blue eyes, the graveyard pallor of her skin only making her sexier. Before she got caught, and forced to attend support meetings, she used to cruise the bars downtown for her meals. You know what I'm saying -- a real man-eater.

  Veronica's stiletto heels clicking on the classroom floor draws everyone's attention away from Mrs. Finklestein's indignant face. To tell the truth, I think the old cow is glad for the interruption. There is only so much she could do to any of us, and she knows it. So instead of calling me on my bad attitude, she takes the easy way out.

  "Veronica," Mrs. Finklestein purrs, "glad you could make it." Notice there's no mention of Veronica being later than Hammer and me. Of course, Veronica barely acknowledges her.

  "Good," Mrs. Finklestein says to the assembled group, pretending like nothing's happened, "Now that we're all here we can begin."

  Veronica takes an empty chair directly across the circle from me. She's wearing a black leather mini-skirt, black leather jacket with no blouse, and is carrying her favorite black leather backpack. What can I say? She's got her own sense of style. She drops the backpack by her feet and the thing hits the floor like a ton of bricks. Just like a woman, always packing too much.

  She catches me staring at her and I give her my best 'good ole boy' grin. She sticks her tongue out at me -- that moist, pink, luscious tongue. It's still coated with the blood of her last meal. Oh, yeah, she's been eating flesh. I knew it the moment she walked in. There's something about a zombie who's been doing what comes natural. They don't slink. They don't slobber. They hold themselves proud. Of course, Veronica's ahead of the game cause she got an admirer down at the coroner's office. Perv lets her pick at the fresh meat when it comes in. No violation of her probation there.

  "Robert?" Mrs. Finklestein's high-pitch whine cuts through my thoughts. "Why don't you start us off tonight? What have you done this week to break the old habits?" So the witch wasn't going to let my comments slide. She was getting revenge by making me take the floor. Well, that's ok cause this week I knew what I wanted to say.

  Standing up I smooth out the folds of my overcoat and straighten my hair. I look around at the circle and take inventory: Mrs. Finklestein, Hoskins, Jackson, the newbie Patricia (she still picks her scabs and leaves bits of herself on the floor every week), Amos, Veronica, Raul, Johnson, Shirley, Hammer, Mike, and me. The gang is all here.

  "Well, Mrs. Finklestein," I say in my best school-boy voice, "I had a good week. I figured out how to break all my old habits."

  To my surprise, Mrs. Finklestein actually looks interested. "You did? How wonderful! Please, please, tell us how you did it."

  I had their attention.

  "Well, I was thinking about our situation -- the fact that we're all zombies -- and about how we all got to be zombies in different ways. Me and Hammer, we're the result of a military experiment gone bad, Hoskins works at the nuclear plant, Veronica was just too bad for Hell, you had a pact with the devil, and Jackson's wife put a voodoo curse on him."

  "That's right," the old black man cried out. "But I got her back. I cooked her up in pot of jambalaya and served her with some nice fried okra. Yes, I did!"

  "Anyway," I shout so as to not lose the floor, "what I realized this week is that zombies are being made all the time. We're part of the natural order of things."

  Mrs. Finklestein starts to look like she is losing hope that I had anything inspirational to say. "Yes, Robert, that's true. But how does knowing our origins help in breaking our old habits?"

  "It doesn't," I say honestly. "But it does help put things in perspective. See, there have always been zombies and there will always be zombies. The fact that the government lets us exist only goes to show that they've given up trying to wipe us out. Instead, they dog tag us and find ways of taking advantage of our undead status. Me and Hammer, we do side jobs for the military. Hoskins has been inside so many nuclear reactors that he's been categorized as hazardous waste."

  "Just get to the point, will ya!" Veronica shouts with exasperation.

  "Patience," I say holding up a finger, "is a virtue." Veronica answers me by holding up a finger of her own. God, I love that woman.

  "Anyway," I continue, "that got me wondering why we're the bad guys? How come we're the monsters? Is it because we like to eat human flesh? No, cause that's been going on since people had pots to put their neighbors in. Is it cause we're undead? No, like I said, they found ways of using that too. Nope, the reason people fear us is cause we're undead, we like to eat human flesh, and we like to eat it while it's still wriggling." Several members of the support group were now sitting up in their chairs. The mere mention of eating flesh made their mouths water.

  Mrs. Finklestein must have noticed the change too cause she's quick to react. "Yes, Robert, all this is true. So what is it that you realized?"

  I smile. "That there's a way to eat our proverbial cake and have it too."

  Patricia looks up from a particularly nasty scab she's been picking and frowns. "Is he talking about pastry or flesh?"

  "What I'm talking about," and this is when I sweep back the folds of my coat and pull out my sawed-off shotgun, "is cannibalism." I let off with both barrels and blow Patricia's head clean off. Wet gobs of chewy brains fly in all directions and I don't know what's got their attention more -- my smoking gun or all that available meat.

  "What's the meaning of this?" Mrs. Finklestein shouts as she jumps to her feet.

  "The meaning of this," I say as I expertly reload the gun, "is that I've found the ultimate solution. People fear us cause we eat people. But what if we didn't eat living people? What if we only ate un-living people? It's not like they'd object, would they?" I fire the gun into Raul's chest leaving a bowling ball-sized hole. He looks dumbly at the ragged edges of flesh and starts to pick at it himself.

  "That's insane," Mrs. Finklestein says with only the slightest quiver of fear in her voice. "How does that help society?"

  "It doesn't," I say with a smile, "but it helps me. Oh, and Hammer too." I look back and the big man is up on his feet -- grinning.

  "Hey, you jerk!" Veronica shouts. "What about me?"

  "And you too, baby. I wasn't forgetting about you."

  "Better not forget about me," she snarls back. She then reaches down into her backpack and pulls out a couple of butcher knives -- long and razor sharp. She leaps upon Mike and with a couple of quick swipes severs his head. Blood spurts everywhere and she immediately grabs the torso and begins to suck down the juices moaning with the pleasure of a fresh kill.

  "You can't do this," Mrs. Finklestein says as she realizes the simplicity of my plan. She starts to slowly back up towards the window. "We're members of society. We have jobs. I know the Governor."

  "Oh, but I can," I tell her. "See, Hammer and I have already spoken to some folks we know in the Federal Government and they're all for it. Like I told you, new zombies are being made all the time. Our numbers are starting to grow and it's causing concern. So m
e and Hammer, we made them a suggestion they couldn't resist and we got ourselves the first two licenses ever issued to hunt zombies. It's seasonal of course. Just to thin out the herd and prevent starvation." I hear a scream behind me and I turn to spot Hammer ripping Jackson's head off with his bare hands. Poor fool thought he could get past my partner in the midst of all the confusion. When I turn back, Mrs. Finklestein is making a run for the windows so I blow off her left leg. It's like watching a tower of jello hitting the ground.

  "Hey," Hammer yells to me, spitting out bits of Jackson as he speaks. Boy never did learn to cover his mouth when he's chewing. "You promised I could eat her!"

  I look down at Mrs. Finklestein's quivering body. Hoskins has already retrieved her severed leg and was happily caressing the limb as he gibbered to himself. It'd been years since the old boy had gotten any leg. "Don't worry," I call over my shoulder, "there's more than enough to go around." I reload my gun.

  Surveying the room I see that not everybody is opposed to my plan. Amos and Shirley are sitting side-by-side happily sharing Patricia's remains. They shyly hold up fistfuls of bloody rib bones and nod their heads towards me. I nod back. My license only lets me bag 2 zombies a month so technically I'm done. But we could still put Mrs. Finklestein down as one of Hammer's kills. I walk over to the quivering mound that is Mrs. Finklestein and put the barrel of my gun to the base of her skull. The fat woman turns her terrified eyes towards me.

  "Robert," she sputters, "you must resist the old urges. You must break the old habits. Zombies are people too." She actually looks hopeful that she can reason with me.

  "No, Mrs. Finklestein," I say, "that's where you got it wrong. Zombies aren't people. Zombies eat people." Then I pull the trigger. It is perhaps the most satisfying kill I've ever made. Of course, I have to retrieve the head for Hammer. He was very insistent before the hunt began that he get to eat Mrs. Finklestein's brain. And you know Hammer, ain't nobody going to change his mind -- once it's been made.