When he had finished eating, Milt got out the sheath and belt for the sword, sheathed the sword, and put it in the belt, which he then fastened around his belly. He had some trouble coordinating this, and the sword belt clattered onto the floor a few times before he got it right. The belt was tight around his big-boned middle, even on the last hole of the belt.
They don’t make sword belts for real men anymore, he thought.
In sheathing the sword and affixing the belt to himself, Milt had begun to notice that hefting the heavy, ten pound sword around was hard work.
He took two deep puffs of his inhaler, found his spare, and stuffed both into his back pocket. He put on his black trench coat and marched back up to the store.
Milt emerged from his store, a spongy, trench-coated, gargantuan would-be vanquisher, the sword dangling between his legs.
He had to shield his eyes from the bright light with a fat forearm, and he hissed a belch. He hated being outside in the light, but there would be so much to do now that the zombies were here, now that Milt’s time had come.
After a few moments, his eyes began to adjust, and Milt lowered his arm. He shifted the sword belt so that the sword wasn’t dangling between his legs but jutting out from his side.
Milt hunched over and began to creep, putting the soggy slipper-clad foot carefully in front of the dry slipper-clad one.
No, Milt decided, he wasn’t going to creep. Milt stood up a tad straighter—as straight as his atrophied back muscles would allow—and decided that he was going to stalk. Yes, he was going to stalk his zombie prey.
So resolved, Milt began to stalk, to hunt. He channeled his video game mindset into reality. He would be the hero of this world, he told himself, just as he was the greatest, most ingenious hero in the
World of Warcraft
virtual world. In the
World of Warcraft,
Milt could do anything he wanted. He could kill, and steal, and loot and plunder. Now…now that the real world had changed, he could do all of those things in real life.
Milt had one hand on his sword and the other on his back pocket where his inhalers were. He was thinking about how good it had felt to dispatch the zombie in his store, notwithstanding the remarkable bout of hurling that it had brought on. Milt decided that he would rule this new apocalyptic world, and that he would reward himself for each of his kills with his favorite movie watching, sword-sharpening, and Snickers ice cream eating ritual. Maybe he would even have to branch out and think of some new rituals. There were so many options now, so much to do.
For the first time in years, Milt didn’t miss his computer, although he was starting to thirst for some Coca-Cola.
Then the sword belt unfastened and fell, Milt’s feet tangled in it, and he fell into a sweaty, belching heap on the strip mall sidewalk.
42
Sven kept checking the rearview mirror as he drove. The headless man or zombie or whatever he was still clung to the back of the car, but at least he wasn’t trying to get in anymore.
It had been a close call with the girl just now. Sven didn’t like that. He wanted to avoid situations just like that one. But there was no one to blame. Jane was right that they had to help the kids and the girl must’ve been scared out of her mind. It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t jumped into the car with them right away. She seemed to have snapped out of it now, and it looked to Sven like she was in higher spirits than the boy.
“So what are your names back there?” Sven asked, trying to be friendly.
“I’m Lorie.”
“She already told us her name,” Jane said. “Remember?”
“What?” Sven asked. “Sorry, I must’ve been distracted by all the zombies trying to kill us. My fault.”
“They’re not zombies,” Jane snapped.
“They seem like zombies,” Lorie said.
Sven nodded. “Zombies it is, or infected, or whatever, so long as we get away to safety, it doesn’t matter.”
“My name is Evan.”
“Cool,” Sven said, “I’m Sven. Nice to meet you both.”
Lorie giggled at this, and Sven thought he saw the queasy-looking boy suppress a smile. Sven hoped the boy wasn’t going to puke in the car. Sven didn’t like to clean puke, and seeing as how the car was their only safe place right now, he didn’t want kid puke in it. He sighed. He would deal with that when the time came.
“Let me guess,” Sven said. “You think I have a funny name.”
The kids shook their heads, grinning broadly now. Sven looked over at Jane, who seemed happy too, all things considered. There was still a clinging decapitated zombie on the back of Sven’s car, there was that to consider.
“It’s Norwegian,” Sven said.
“He’s from
Norway
,” Jane added. “They like to work out a lot there.” Jane shot a smile at Sven.
“That’s right,” Sven said. “In
Norway
we lift weights six hours a day, starting in kindergarten.”
Lorie frowned. “No you don’t.”
“Yeah,” Sven said, “it’s true.”
“I don’t like to lift weights,” Evan said.
“Well,” Sven said, “if you lived in
Norway
, you’d learn to like it. You’d have to.”
Evan coughed and looked thoughtful.
“So do you kids go to school together or something?” Sven asked.
“Yeah,” Lorie said. “We just started high school together.”
“Oh,” Sven said, “that’s exciting. Is there a good gym in your school? Good sports program?”
“Sure,” Lorie said. “I run track.”
“I’m on the chess team,” Evan said, chiming in.
“That’s not a sport,” Lorie said.
“Sure it is,” Evan said.
“Is not, you’re just sitting down the whole time, how can it be a sport? There’s no running or anything.”
“It doesn’t have to be running for it to be a sport. There’s someone you’re playing against, an opponent. It’s a mental sport.”
“There’s no such thing. What do you think Sven?”
Sven knew that chess was no sport, but why hurt the kid’s feelings?
“I don’t know that much about it,” Sven said, “but maybe it is.”
Lorie shook her head, “He’s just trying to be nice.”
“Hey,” Jane said. “Are you guys hungry?”
“No,” Evan said.
“Kinda,” Lorie said.
“What kind of delicious treats have you brought on this trip?” Jane asked.
Sven was fine with sharing his and Ivan’s rations, but now they would definitely need to stop and pick up more along the way. It made him nervous.
“Well,” Sven said, “I’ve got jerky—elk and beef, granola bars, cat food, and protein bars.”
“Let me guess,” Jane said, looking back at the two kids. “You want the granola bars right? Definitely not the cat food.”
They nodded. Sven liked that Jane was good with kids, and that she was there. He probably would have picked the kids up if she hadn’t been there, but what would he have done with them? Jane was good with stuff like that.
Jane got some granola bars out and handed them back to Evan and Lorie. They thanked her, and proceeded with their munching.
Sven’s mind wandered back to the clinging zombie. When would that thing fall off? Would it ever fall off? Was it infecting them just by being so close? It had no teeth left now that its head was gone, at least there was that.
“Do you guys know what’s happening?” Lorie asked. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
Jane turned around to look at Lorie. “We don’t know yet, honey. It might be some kind of virus, like a flu. We’re just gonna try to avoid infected people and sooner or later this will all clear up…I hope.”
“Will the sick people get better?” Lorie jerked a thumb backward, at the shadow of the headless zombie clinger.
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “I...” she trailed off.
Sven knew the decapitated zombie was beyond help, but it was probably best not to focus on that. Sven saw that Lorie kept looking back at the headless creature, and he wished he could have gotten the thing off, but its grip was too strong, and Sven hadn’t wanted to get too close. The shaking and rattling of the moving vehicle was doing nothing to dislodge the zombie either.
They came to a traffic light and Sven stopped out of habit. The traffic light was off, and there was nothing to wait for. Sven looked left and right, and in all directions for any movement, but all he saw were scattered, stopped cars. They were yet to come across any other moving vehicles, after that first one that had ignored them.
Sven slowly pulled out into the intersection.
All of a sudden, Ivan let out a loud hiss. Sven looked over and saw that Ivan was up on the back of Jane’s seat, hissing in Lorie and Evan’s direction.
The brief moment that Sven had looked away from the road was enough.
They hit something.
43
There was a shaking, and Ivan skittered back down into the woman’s lap. He remembered the woman from before. She was a nice woman, and she belonged with him and Sven. Ivan knew that, and it was good. Ivan liked the girl in the back too. He didn’t know her very well, but she smelled nice, and maybe she could stay with them too. But the boy, the boy was bad. Ivan couldn’t understand why Sven and the woman had let the boy come with them—to come into the moving safe place. Why would they do that? Couldn’t they smell the bad smell? Ivan could see the smell, it was coming off the boy like the heat out of a radiator. Ivan liked radiators. They were warm. But the boy was rotten, and Ivan didn’t like that. The smell was so bad that Ivan didn’t even want a treat at that moment—not even a fish treat. He was a boy to run from, and to warn others to run from. Ivan bared his teeth and loaded up another hiss in the back of his throat.
44
As luck had it, Milt’s belly broke his fall, and he didn’t even so much as scrape his hands on the hot pavement—surprisingly hot for the late spring morning.
Milt floundered on the sidewalk for a few moments, as he struggled to untangle himself from his flowing trench coat and the sword belt. Maybe the trench coat had been a mistake, he thought. Maybe sunglasses would have been a better option. But the trench coat was good, Milt reminded himself, for protecting his tender flesh from the sun’s harmful rays.
There was no time to go back and change now anyway. Milt gathered his strength, and with a mighty heave, he rolled himself over, got to his knees, and stood up. He picked up his sword belt and refastened it.
By the time Milt caught his breath, his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, allowing him to take in the state of the strip mall for the first time since he exited his shop.
It was a post-apocalyptic strip mall if ever Milt had seen one. It was like a virtual reality zombie apocalypse. Milt made himself blink. Except that it wasn’t virtual. It was real.
Zombies staggered about, bumping into cars and storefronts and each other. What idiots, Milt thought. They didn’t look or act much differently now that they were zombies than they had when they were people. They weren’t great warriors, that was for sure. Milt saw that there were many zombies still in their cars, turning from side to side and pointlessly flailing their limbs. They weren’t getting out. Had the idiots forgotten how to unbuckle their seatbelts and open their doors?