Pulse (22 page)

I knew I wasn’t thinking it through, but pride overtook me. Frank was an honorable man, and he was only looking out for me. But I couldn’t stand the idea of someone thinking I couldn’t take care of myself. I just couldn’t.

“That’s right. I’ve got a plan and I’m sticking to it.”

“You’ve got a plan? You just said yo—”

The cell made a horrific high pitched squeal before going silent. No automated voice explained the phenomenon.

That was the last time I used a phone.

---

A few days after talking to Frank, I regretted my decision. His intention was noble and I shot him down. Our conversation was probably our last, and I acted like a complete ass. My pack was still resting by the door, and I visualized it mocking me for saying no. Then the bag reminded me of how I met Francis. I was sobered by the thought.

In 1993, when I was 16, my grandparents and I had just moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. At th
at point I was ‘just too far gone.’ The epitome of a no-good punk. Unwanted, I packed my few belongings and ran away. I wasn’t smart and didn’t know the area, so I unintentionally hiked up into the Ozarks.

I found myself on the property of Francis Jackson Bordeaux with a shotgun pointed at me. Frank was a Vietnam veteran with a mean case
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Long story short, I lived with him for about a year until I moved onto another chapter of my life. I learned
a lot from Francis J. Bordeaux, almost everything that mattered.

I thought about Frank’s personality, how when I lived with him and I said no, he took no as yes every time. A part of me believed, despite my harsh refusal, he was still coming to get me.

He was
, I decided. There was no way he’d changed enough
not
to come get me. That was when my plan was set; I would turtle up in my apartment until Frank came. Until then, it was the same old routine. Watch outside, maintain inside.

Frank opened my eyes to how bad things were in the city. Instead of just looking, I analyzed the situation. T
he entire city was clearly on its way to complete destruction. Looters took advantage of the turmoil and broke into every shop they could. Even the windows of the children’s toy store across the street were shattered, dollies and teddy bears strewn everywhere.

Despite not leaving the apartment (or maybe because of it), my body was still fresh and lithe. I hadn’t spent a single day running away from animated corpses or fighting my way through hordes of the living trying to escape to a different fate. At twenty-seven, I was as spry as any teenager, maybe even more so. (Undoubtedly, my laidback personality had something to do with it.)

As I walked through my two-bedroom
one-bath residence, I took mental note of its state. The kitchen and dining room were both sparsely furnished. Someone would think an inhabitant was nonexistent. The short hallway and bedrooms were stark, void of any personal expression. The only signs of human existence were empty canned goods on the kitchen counter, an H&K PSG-1 towering among the empty bags of candy in the dining room, and a scatter of Frank Sinatra records resting on the living room floor with the record player.

There were many places I’m sure I could have gone to get some
goods. There was a convenience store down the street that offered all the candy I could eat. (One might wonder how it’s possible for me to live on sugar. The answer was this: I don’t.) My bedroom overflowed with MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat), the flavorful choice of the U.S. military. Although their flavor wasn’t as delicious as a roll of Life-Savers, it kept me running.

Call me crazy, but I knew some kind of apocalypse would happen in my lifetime. I wasn’t necessarily preparing for the undead, but stocking up on MREs over time seemed like a good idea anyway. Stockpiling gun after gun since I was sixteen? Well, that was just
a hobby.

After moseying into the eating area, checking what I did have left food-wise, I went back to the balcony to assess the corpse situation. The spring air was impregnated with the stench of rotting flesh, a scent not unbearably unpleasant, and within that the electric undertone of a lightning storm soon to come.
The street had emptied. I guessed the dead had better luck indoors, where people might still be hiding, so they went hunting inside.

A
mom and pop grocery store stood across the street from my building, next to the book store. It looked thoroughly looted. Windows were nonexistent and rotting corpses lay on the ground. I figured there had to be some sweets still available in there, though. Who went for things like candy when the mindless dead were seeking them out? No one, of course, but I got grouchy without a good sugar fix. I was also bored and wanted to leave.

Even though the streets looked abandoned, there was no way the undead weren’t waiting in the shadows for lunch to come strolling by. I’d have to be cautious.

A simple backpack would suffice for raiding. It was big enough to hold a lot, but wouldn’t get too heavy and weigh me down. After a thorough search of my apartment, I dug up a crowbar to use as a silent melee weapon. I was taking my 9mm, not because I was trigger happy but because it was necessary. Despite my abundance of ammo, using the gun would only draw more attention. A gun shot was a dinner bell; one I didn’t want to ring.

Weeks had passed since I had last left the apartment. I wasn’t sure I could step out of it without
being eaten alive by the pesky undead. But I had to try.

After unlocking the three deadbolts and removing the extra wooden plank across my door, I peeked out. The hallway was scattered with random junk and the walls were smeared with dried blood. Only one or two of the
apartments were open. Down the hallway was an elevator next to emergency stairs. The elevator was partially closed, with half a corpse wedged between its doors. The door to the stairs was closed.

When I passed the open doors, I shut them as quietly as possible. I wasn’t sure if zombies could open doors, but it wouldn’t hurt to close them.
One of the rooms revealed a man, an undead bag of skin and bones, who had apparently hanged himself early on. His throat was torn up, but he still tried to groan in relief at the sight of me. He swayed as he tried to come after me, overwhelmed that a meal finally stumbled his way. The rope was Kevlar, a material he’d often expressed fondness for. Between the quality of the rope and his barely existent weight, I wasn’t surprised he was still hanging.

His name was Rick Johnson, I remembered
, as I stared at his face. Years ago, when I moved into the apartment, he tried desperately to invite me to dinner to meet his daughter. My lack of interest ended in a fight, after which we never spoke to one another again. That suited me just fine. 

I shut that door, writing Rick and that story off all together.

Except for a dull thudding noise behind Apartment 8’s door, the creaking of Hang-Man’s rope, everything was quiet. The silence was ominous, especially when I considered what horrors lay behind the closed doors. My mind ramped up with thoughts of ghouls eating themselves as a last resort, or just standing around in the rooms forever, or at least until someone came and killed them.

My luck held
, and I made it down the flights of stairs without incident. The main and only entrance to the apartment wasn’t broken in any way, but why would it be? There wasn’t really anything to loot in here. Someone would have to be desperate to raid a low-class apartment building like mine.

Before I left the lobby downstairs, I studied the street from my new ground view. Paper and dark blood coated the sidewalks and the street
. I could barely make out the asphalt from all the debris. There were body parts everywhere. Half a torso here, an arm there. One lower half still twitched, but since it couldn’t do me any harm, I didn’t care.

The carnage was interesting to look at—in a modern art kind of way—but I didn’t want to spend too much time surveying. This mission was a run in run out kind of
deal. No matter how long I waited, or how hard I looked, they’d still be there.

S
lowly, I pushed the door open and slipped through, glancing up and down the street. A single zombie stumbled out of a clothing boutique, but hadn’t noticed me yet.

His arms were
gone, with only a few scraggly tendons and nerves left dangling from sockets. A hideous smashing of skin, bone, and muscle made up his face. I doubted he could even see, so I took advantage of his oblivion and made a dash across the street.

My boots slapped against the ground and echoed loudly. It couldn’t be prevented, but the noise made me cringe.
Running was a zombie’s second favorite noise. It meant breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Maybe all three. (A Zs favorite noise was people screaming—that generally meant he got lucky.)

The grocery smelled foul before I even went inside. A thick scent bombarded me, choking me as it hit in waves. It wasn’t just the smell of rotting food
. A body I had spotted earlier was slimy and covered in maggots. This one had been dead for a considerably long time and was extra gooey. (I never knew organs took on such bizarre colors when rotted.)

With my back pressed against the wall, I turned and peered
through the corner of the broken window. I couldn’t spot any Zs above the short aisles, but they could be crawling or crouched too low for me to see. The whole place was the poster child of an apocalypse. Only a few items remained on the shelves. Rotting dairy products had turned green after falling from the refrigerators. There was a puddle of curdled green goop just beyond the doorway. I tried to breathe through my mouth and not acknowledge the stench.

Without thinking twice, I jogged into the store, stepping carefully as to avoid the wet patches on the ground. I shrugged my pack off and unzipped it, keen on shoving in
as many goodies as possible. The candy section was practically untouched, save for a lone arm rotting near Snickers bars.

G
lancing around, I pilfered Life Savers and listened intently for any zombies. A soft squeaking caught my attention as I stuffed Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies in the top of my backpack. As the squeaking grew louder, my pilfering sped up.

A torso pulled its way along the floor. It was a woman, once, but I could only tell because of her chest. Her hair had come off in clumps, leaving behind a ragged
, bloody skull. Her face had been scoured off, leaving nothing but tattered gore behind. White, foggy eyes bulged out of her skull. Intestines followed behind her, creating bloody trails on the checkered linoleum floor.

I was quiet
. Didn’t move a muscle. A slick pool of blood in front of her hindered her progress. Torso Woman ground her teeth in frustration and let out a loud, teetering groan as her arms thrashed about.

Somewhere outside a chorus of replies sounded off, reverberating down the street and into the store. My position had been given away. In a world infested with undead, if there were two entrances, then there was only one exit.
The one you came in by would be the one zombies filed in through. For me that meant no exits. My luck with the immobile Torso Woman would run out once other, more capable zombies saw me.

After I zipped and secured the backpack, I approached the woman and killed her with one swift whack
from my crowbar. I went to the entrance and took the risk of running straight out.

The armless zombie was steps away from me. I darted past him, scanning the street as I went. Behind him another two followed. To my other side, multiple Zs were staggering out of storefronts, excited by Torso Woman’s call.

My apartment was just a walk across the street. If I ran fast enough, I’d be able to shoot right by them without taking time to put them out of their misery. I took that option.

Gnarled hands grabbed at me as I barreled through, wrenching the door open the moment I was close enough. There was no time to lock it since they were right behind me, salivating for my flesh. Adrenaline carried me up the stairs faster than a hunted rabbit.

As I entered the hallway to my apartment, a zombie lunged from the side. My sidestep would’ve worked if there hadn’t been a sour patch of blood and other coagulated liquids resting on the maroon linoleum where my boot struck. Instead, I slipped and fell onto my back, the undead going right with me. His ridged hands clawed at me while he snapped his jaws at my exposed neck. Crowbar long forgotten, I reached into my holster for the 9mm while I held the pus laden beast away. With one burst of strength, I knocked him off and brought up the gun simultaneously, squeezing a bullet into his head. Grabbing the crowbar and holstering the handgun, I scrambled to my feet and rushed down the hallway. All the apartment doors I shut remained shut, except for mine which I had left open.

How could I have done something that dimwitted? I wanted to take my time and check the rooms, but couldn’t risk the delay, so I walked straight in, slamming the door shut.
After quickly locking the bolts and dropping the extra board into position, I stood still and listened, already questioning my decision to lock up so early. But I’d rather fight one or two Zs trapped inside than the horde coming from outside.

No noises g
ave away an undead, but that didn’t mean one wasn’t there. Crowbar on the ready, I glimpsed into my spare room. It was empty, as was the bathroom next to it. Leaning the other way, I took a step forward, glancing into my bedroom. It, too, was clear.