Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

• • •

“This is the only way I know how,” Ian says, his voice quavering.

To tell your story as though you are someone else?

“Maybe it will become my own again. When the pain lessens.”

• • •

Earlier today one of the many newly-stray cats found its way into Ian’s mostly abandoned house. It poked around first in the kitchen, but no crumbs were to be found as Ian ate them all several days ago. The cat, a fluffy calico missing its collar, jumped gracefully over the old pool of coagulated blood and the body in the doorway to the hall. It sniffed the air, a curious mix of metal and old, rotting meat, but again found nothing of interest.

• • •

How do you know what the cat did before it came to you?

“What do you mean?” Ian asks aloud.

This is your story. You can’t know what you didn’t see.

“You just said it. This is
my
story. I’ll tell it however I want to.”

At least you still have some fight in you. Go on.

• • •

Ms. Kitty—as Ian dubbed it and its missing tag might have labeled it—walked slowly up the stairs to the second floor and easily followed the scent of spectacularly aged tuna to a spot in the wall that she knew would open if she complained enough. She searched for her most pitiful voice and let out a
merow
.

Ian jumped at the sound.

The wall did not open, but she heard movement on the other side and so she
merowed
again, this time with more urgency, something she hoped the being could hear in her voice.

A fucking cat!
Ian thought. He hated cats, especially when the fleas from this cat’s mangy body crawled under the door to bite his legs.

“Kitty!” Ian whispered as quietly as he could. “Shut up!”

A human.
Ms. Kitty was happy about that. The other ones tried to grab her and they never shared their food or talked to her, but this one was different. She began to purr.

“Why do you things always find me?” Ian asked, knowing full well it was because he couldn’t stand them and that, in some way, drew them to him.

Still the cat wailed at the top of its little cat lungs.

The dead followed noise with an instinctual passion, regardless of its source. The cat would get Ian killed if it didn’t close its stupid cat mouth. He tucked his pants into his socks, stood up in the small space and slowly opened the door. As he made his way to the bedroom window, Ms. Kitty followed close to him, rubbing her filthy body against his legs.

They love this
, she remembered.

“Stop that, I fucking hate it!” Ian whispered, but he didn’t push the cat away. His plan involved it and the ten zombies down on the front lawn. Grant would have wrung the cat’s neck, because he was a problem solver, but Ian was only really learning how to manage now and he wouldn’t kill unless he absolutely…had to.

• • •

Is it time to tell them?

“No way, no fucking way.”

Ian’s heart is pounding, pulling the remaining energy from the rest of his body to express his anxiety. For a moment, he feels bad about what he did to the cat, but then he scratches at the fleabites still plaguing his ankles.

What did you do to that nasty thing?

• • •

Ian opened the latch on the window and swung it open. The air was crisp and surprisingly fresh. The night, still. No wind blew which meant that Ms. Kitty mournful wails were easier for the undead to hear. He held his hand out to the four-legged monster and it hungrily walked closer for more love.

Next comes the food
, Ms. Kitty thought.

Ian quickly slid one hand under the cat’s belly and with a fluid arc of his arm he sent the cat flying out the window into the yard below. It landed on its feet and the dead swarmed it, but the cat was too quick. It scrambled into some bushes on the left side of the lawn.

Now, hours later, Ian is back in the closet discovering more fleabites with the beam of his dying flashlight and trying to regain body heat lost to the fall air. A few pieces of musty clothing that were never glamorous or nice are piled atop him. The dust and a cold developing in his chest drive him to cough. He presses a thick, wool coat against his mouth to maintain his invisibility to the dead. Its fabric houses countless moth larvae. In his hacking, Ian has accidentally inhaled some. He nearly wretches, but reminds himself to be thankful for the eighth-cup of squirming protein. There are two sleeping bags in the room beyond the closet door, but he refuses to allow himself such luxury.

As his body and the closet warm up, the smell from what he left downstairs is returning. He climbed in the closet to get away from that mess, but it keeps creeping back into his nose and his mind.

His father wouldn’t like to hear about his avoidance or the “reduced activity” of his closet life. He’d tell Ian that he had a serious disorder. Ian would have to agree. His was the first documented case of “post-apocalypsia.” Then Ian would laugh and his father would yell at him for making fun of mental health. Ian shouldn’t take mental health lightly because something is definitely wrong with him. Dreaming up conversations with dead relatives could be viewed as delusional.

• • •

“I don’t know if he’s dead,” Ian says to himself.

No, you don’t. But if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that your father was never cut out to survive. Arthur Ward would be the guy trying to reason with a zombie as it bit into the flesh of his arm.

“You’re right. He’d be psychoanalyzing and diagnosing anger issues and suggesting treatment all the way to his grave.”

• • •

Back to the things of which we are certain. The bedroom beyond the closet isn’t completely empty. It has a nice bed; one of those big, well-made four-poster beds. It would block the door well, but Ian doesn’t have enough strength to move it. And anyway, blockading doesn’t work if the dead find out you’re inside. They will tear at the wall until they make a new hole to tear at you through.

Speaking of things tearing at people, Ian is ready to tell you why he is worthless and alone and unable to cope with anything.

• • •

Ian? Do share.

He clears his drying throat to speak aloud.

“I am worthless and alone because…”

…I KILLED MY BEST FRIEND

“Downstairs in this house, below where I am sitting.”

• • •

The metallic scent of blood wafts up through the stairwell. For Ian, killing undead Grant was different than killing the other zombies, and not because they were friends. Grant was
angrier
and his eyes drilled into Ian as he attacked, as though he was aware of all that had transpired. This eerie awareness of Ian’s shortcomings was actually guilt that filled Ian. His freshly undead friend was truly
just
a zombie with only one need or care, to feed. But guilt is a powerful thing.

Even though hardly a week has passed, his memories of the living Grant have faded quickly. When people you love are alive and reachable for an afternoon conversation, it’s easy to think of all the times you’ve been together and all of the fun you’ve had on other occasions. But as soon as they have left the living world, only tidbits of their life and what they meant to you bubble to the surface of your memory. It might be a unique gesture, an oft-repeated phrase, or a scent that clung to them. Ian is having difficulty remembering any of it.

In an effort to recall something more than Grant’s anger in the end, Ian pulls his legs in tight, rests his forehead on his knees and wraps his arms around his body. He closes his eyes and searches his memory.

• • •

Tell us, Ian. What did your best friend look like?

“He had very dark hair, blacker than black if that is possible,” Ian says into the darkness. “He rarely washed it. It was oily and shiny, like crow feathers. He was tall. My Mom measured us both at our house since Grant’s mom didn’t do nice things. He had five inches on me. The features of his face were chiseled. When he smiled, lines formed at the corners of his mouth. He could pass for 25. I think his fake id said that anyway. He used it for beer.”

• • •

Grant had been handsome before he was dead. More handsome than Ian. The girls at school chased Grant, but always regretted it. They labeled him a “jerk” or a “total asshole.” He was loyal only to Ian. Ian, with an extra twenty pounds on his waistline, was not the pick of the litter, but he was a much nicer person than his friend. Regardless, the girls he liked never liked him back. You might get a half decent guy if you combined Ian’s personality with Grant’s body. Separate they were nothing, which is partially why surviving without him was extra difficult for Ian.

He lost half of himself when Grant died, when he killed him.

• • •

How did you kill him, Ian? We’re supposed to be talking about that. You won’t make any progress if you avoid the story. How did it start?

“I was sitting next to his body, waiting for it to move again.”

• • •

Grant had been killed once and now he would rise again. How quickly Grant would turn, Ian wasn’t sure. There wasn’t a science to it as far as he knew. So he sat down on the floor near him and looked around at the shitty house in which his best friend had just died. There on the floor, Ian could feel a draft of cold air coming under the back door. He got to his feet, grabbed the dusty tablecloth from the unused dining room and rolled it into a long tube. It fit the breezy gap well and helped cut down on the wind significantly.

They had talked many times in the past about the proper way to kill one another in the event of infection. A blade of any kind was too personal and messy. Both agreed on a gunshot wound to the brain, effective and easiest for the living party. Only Ian hated guns and he didn’t have one anyway. Any gun they’d found was useless to them.

• • •

So, you were going to leave him? Let him rise and walk alone, forever in this house?

“I knew there had to be a better house than this one, maybe even in the same neighborhood. But it was cold outside and getting colder. I was scared of going out with no one to watch my back.”

You decided to stay and take care of it.

“He would have done the same for me. I needed to find something to re-kill him with.”

• • •

Ian wandered the first floor of the house in search of a weapon that would be easy to wield and tough enough to break a skull with minimal effort. This would have been a normal time for him to cry, but he was in shock and there was still work to be done, so he had to stay focused. He opted for a leg from one of the dining room chairs. The dining set was one of the few nice things in the house, made of solid hardwood, not flat pack crap from Ikea. He tried repeatedly to break a leg off. Sheer force could not compromise the quality and construction of the chair. In the basement, Ian located a wrench to loosen the nut that held the leg. The wrench itself could have been a better weapon from an impact standpoint but he couldn’t tolerate being closer to zombie Grant than necessary. He’d need the full length of the chair leg between them.

He returned with the weapon in time for Grant’s reanimation.

The chair leg felt great in his hands, sturdy, but he wished for more time to increase its lethality. There were nails and barbed wire in the basement. He could get the taxidermied elk head that was still embedded in the other body in a sitting room down the hall, but it was slippery with blood.

• • •

You killed more time than zombies that day.

“I really didn’t want to come up with ways to destroy my best friend’s brain.”

A sharp pain travels up from his hands and into his arms.

You’re clenching your fists. You’re drawing blood.

Ian brings awareness to his fingers. Indeed the nails at the ends of them are digging into the skin of his palms. He opens his hands and wipes the blood on his pants.

The fleas will love you for this easy feast. Now, we were killing Grant, weren’t we?

• • •

It took five blows and he managed to get them all in before Grant could stand up. Panting and sobbing, Ian stood and let the chair leg drop to the hallway floor.

Normal people would have moved the body, would have tried to keep the house livable. Normal people would have bagged the pieces and scrubbed the blood from the floorboards. Grant and Ian, together, would have, but Ian wasn’t himself anymore and Grant was a lump of non-moving flesh and bone.

The smell gets stronger every day, reminding Ian that decay happens and although the house was cold with winter air, it wasn’t cold enough to slow the process much. Necessity doesn’t make killing someone less horrific. A set of biting teeth doesn’t make bashing a head in less likely to scar someone for the remainder of their life. When Ian fell asleep in the closet on the first night after dealing with Grant, he dreamt of the sound of the wood hitting his head and the gurgling noises that came from his throat as it filled with blood.

The images and sounds fit nicely into his growing library of nightmares.

• • •

You aren’t telling them everything, Ian.

“What am I leaving out?” he screams. “He’s gone! Nothing’s going to bring him back!”

It’s the second time you killed him. Tell them why his eyes held so much anger toward you.

“He had every right to be angry with me! He died in the first place because…”

…I DIDN’T PLAY HERO

In every house they’d had the pleasure of occupying, Ian and Grant had a rule about keeping all of the interior doors open. It was important to leave oneself as many exits from a room as possible. With a vicious zombie on your toes, every moment was precious. Earlier, on the night he ended up dead, Grant heard noises from the first floor of the shitty house. Bravely, or stupidly, he crawled from his sleeping bag and went downstairs to find the cause.