The madness continued. Burning the dead became the law, but there weren't enough fire pits or crematories to go around. Last bit of the news 1 saw, in Pennsylvania, a National Guard officer had reportedly ordered the death of civilians by firing squad. They were accused of looting. In Miami, zombies overran the airport. A popular television preacher committed suicide, believing that the Rapture had occurred and he'd missed it. In China, a nuclear reactor went into meltdown. Chicago and Phoenix were on fire. The military finally retreated from New York City after losing control and admitting defeat.
More people died every day. Then they came back. And every day there were less of us. It was a cruel, cruel summer.
I stayed inside. Didn't have any family. My mama died years ago. Breast cancer. Our health insurance sucked. There wasn't much they could do, in any case. Found a lump during a routine exam. Three months later, she was gone. I never knew my old man. Heard he was useless. That's all I knew of him.
"Mama, tell me about my dad." "He was useless."
I had a brother, Marcus, who lived in California. Hadn't seen him in years, and when the phones went down, I had no way of contacting him. I hadn't been in a serious relationship in a long time-not since my last partner, Louis, moved to New Orleans. I had no one to worry about. So I hid. 1 was safe inside my home, and had no reason to leave.
The big thing 1 had to deal with was the passage of time. Trapped inside the house all day and all night with no television or Xbox or shit like that. I had to find things to occupy my mind, because otherwise I'd get very depressed and start thinking about walking outside, finding the nearest zombie, and letting him have a bite. The loneliness was the worst part, and that's why I was glad when I found out Alan was alive and he joined me (even if he was hopelessly straight). Alan was my neighbor. Nice enough guy. He'd worked at the plant too, and got laid off the same time as me. Alan took a gig with a temp agency. Did odd jobs like flagging traffic and loading trucks. Some days they had work for him. Some days they didn't. He barely scraped by. But he'd never once let his spirits get down. He was a funny, jovial person. After he'd moved in (because his house wasn't as secure) my loneliness vanished.
But eventually, with his added presence, supplies went quicker than I'd imagined. With the power out, the food in the fridge had spoiled and the kitchen smelled like the zombies. I still had plenty of beer, canned goods, and packaged foods. Had plenty of water, too. We pissed in empty beer bottles so the toilet water would remain untainted. I figured we could drink from the commode if necessary.
When we ran out of food, we had to venture out. That was when I participated in looting the Safeway. I know what you're thinking. Black man, late-twenties… of course he looted the grocery store. Well fuck you. It wasn't like that. I grew up hard. Lived in an old row house in the middle of Druid Hill Park. Place was a fucking dump. We had rags stuffed in the cracks in the walls and plastic over the windows in the wintertime to keep out the cold. My childhood pets were all cockroaches. The neighborhood was filthy-garbage on the sidewalks and dead grass and broken glass covering the vacant lots. I saw my friends get gunned down in the streets. Saw their dried blood on the sidewalks. Saw the cops and the preachers shrug in resigned consignation. They didn't care. Neither did anybody else. Only time people gave a fuck was during an election year-or if somebody white and wealthy got killed. I spent my childhood in shit. 1 stepped on crack vials every time I went outside to play. Drugs were all around me. So was crime. It was a way of life. But I didn't buy into that shit. 1 lived my life differently. Stayed in school. Worked a job. Never did drugs. Never boozed. Never robbed anybody. Like I said, until the stick-up at the dealership, I'd never held a gun in my life. And I ain't proud of that incident. But shove your stereotypes up your ass. I'm educated. No college, but I graduated high school. Not that GED shit, either. I actually went to class and got my diploma the old-fashioned way. I read a lot and watched Discovery Channel. I didn't talk like a thug. Didn't feel the need to emulate a rapper. Ground my teeth every time some well-meaning white acquaintance deferred to me at a party when the conversation turned to basketball or slave reparations or Colin Powell's run for president or hip-hop. I didn't flash the bling. I respected women. Didn't view them as ho’s. Didn't hang out in front of the liquor store. Thought P Diddy was a douche bag. Vote or die? Fuck you, you stupid, conceited, fronting motherfucker. I felt the same way about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, too. They were supposed to identify with what I'd been through? Please. None of them spoke for me. I didn't feel the need to respect them just because we shared the same skin color. Didn't drape myself in gold jewelry. Didn't let my pants sag around my fucking ankles. I refused to let a media-inspired culture influence how I dressed, talked, walked, thought, or behaved.
Don't talk to me about equal rights. I got it from both sides. The quiet, almost apologetic racism from white America, and the more flagrant disapproval from my own race, simply because I refused to live up to what they'd been conditioned to think an African-American should be. My peers thought there was something wrong with me simply because I refused to act like a thug.
And even on good days, when I'd faced down each and every one of the stereotypes that comes with being a black man-even then I'd be met with a whole bunch more prejudice because of my sexual orientation.
Think that it's hard being black? Try being a gay black male sometime.
Hamelin's Revenge not withstanding…
The biggest stereotype of all was my steady employment. People either expected me to deal drugs, live off welfare, or be a fucking limp-wrist hairdresser. I don't know why. There's nothing about me that's either gangsta or feminine. Maybe they'd watched too much
New Jack City
or
Will & Grace.
I had a good job on the assembly line at the Ford plant in White Marsh, and I kept it. Thing was, it didn't keep me. That's what led me to the Ford dealership with a gun stuffed in my waistband. And I was living with the guilt of what I'd done there up until Hamelin's Revenge came along.
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 bullets inside.