She didn't now what it was anymore. Nuclear didn't make people turn crazy. She flipped on the radio and scrolled all the stations, but got only static. She called home again and again, tried Alejandro and anyone she could think, but none of them answered and her phone stopped working altogether fifty miles out of New York. The signal cut out and it wouldn't even attempt to dial, so she flew on alone in furious silence, her jaw working silently under the skin, bound for one place: her parents' home in Utica. If anybody knew what was going on, and what to do, it would be them.
Lara pulled up to the outer gate of their community, Oakwood Briar, a little before midday. Barefoot she got out of the car and went up to the wrought iron metal gate.
"Hey," she called through, hoping to snag the attention of the security guy in his little booth, but no one was there. She shook on the metal but it didn't budge. She backed out onto the road, a safe bet now with no other cars in sight, and ran her stolen Toyota around the circumference. The wall from the gate continued for about fifty yards, then ran down into an intermittent screen of Douglas firs.
She bustled out of the car door and into the heady brown matting of pine needles that lay beyond the grass verge, still damp. The needles pricked her feet softly, and sent up the hickory smell of Christmas. She pushed the damp branches aside and emerged into the Oakwood Briar community, on a looping one-way road that encircled the community.
She ran along the grass of people's front yards, glancing into windows as she went by. There was no one around at all. Cars were in driveways, doors were closed and curtains were drawn, though it was noon.
"Hello!" Lara called. "Anybody home?"
No answer came. She heard barking as she rounded the first cul-de-sac and followed it. Round the corner of a Georgian-style retirement bungalow a crowd of people was gathered, circling the chain-link fence on a backyard. They were pressed so tightly Lara could only see glimpses of the backyard, within which were a pair of full-grown German Shepherds, now racing back and forth and barking frantically at the crowd.
In the crowd were old guys in pajamas pressed hip to hip with grannies in floral nighties, kids in bright superhero romper suits, a few security guys in reassuring dark blue, and one or two young men in bright boxers.
Lara didn't run over to them or shout out. She crept carefully away. When one of the dogs abruptly yelped, and she saw its body swing up over the fence in the arms of the crowd, who dropped it to the ground, tore at its face and belly, and ducked their faces into the gore to eat as though bobbing for apples, she understood.
Zombies?
She covered the distance to her parent's place not expecting anything good, muttering, "Get your shit together Lara," under her breath. She went round the back and opened the basement door with the slim-jim her father, a hobbyist mechanic, kept hidden in the drainpipe.
The basement was quiet but for the low hum of the dehumidifier, working to counteract the natural damp of the surrounding clay soil. The light clicked on and illuminated a familiar square space. Shelves circled the bare concrete walls, laden down with old rolls of carpet, her mom's doll house and her workshop. Along one wall hung all the tools for making her dad's kit cars, and of course their computer, banished to a little faux lounge where a TV and Lazy boy had been set up.
This was the Lara cave, where she spent most of her time whenever she visited.
"Mom," she said, so quietly there was no chance anyone would hear her. "Dad."
She padded over to the tool wall, and trailed her fingers over the chipboard-backing full of pinholes. Adaptable shelving spokes jutted out to hold her father's tools. She settled on a heavy metal mallet, which he used along with a lug wrench to knock the screws off wheels.
Was she going to brain her zombie parents? She snorted at the thought. This was all some crazy, revolting dream. But maybe a little bit?
The air was cold and the concrete colder. She started up the carpeted stairs, which led up into the kitchen. She reached the top and her hand on the door trembled. She opened it tentatively and entered the corridor, enjoying the familiar flex and the warmth of the cedar boards underfoot, and looked around.
"Mom?" she whispered.
She heard a creak from the kitchen. Two steps further and she'd see.
Lara lifted the mallet back with both hands.
"Mom, I'm holding a mallet."
Her mother burst round the side of the kitchen and bounced off the refrigerator so hard she set it rocking. There was blood round her mouth and the same furious white in her eyes, and she came grasping hungrily for more.
The mallet dropped from her hand and Lara leapt back, at the last moment grabbing the basement door and yanking it fully open. It caught her mother on the shoulder and rolled her, and Lara leaned in to that roll, pushing the door and her mother with it closed.
The back of her mother's head hit the door jamb with a solid thunk, Lara gave her a shove, and she tottered through and fell. Lara slammed the door and jammed her back to it, while from the other side came the thump thump thump of her mother tumbling down the stairs.
"Oh my god," Lara said.
She looked to her left. Her father was standing there. The strangest thing was, he was wearing a plain white T-shirt with words sprayed across it in purple car-body paint.
We love you Lara.
He came for her. She pulled the same trick on him, more smoothly this time, though his weight as the door caught him across the face almost knocked her back. She kicked off the wall and rolled round, shoving him off-balance as she'd always learned in Wing Chun classes, and kept the door closing. It felt like forcing a crab into a hot pot, but he went down.
She slammed the door. Thump thump thump he went all the way down. She opened the door and looked. He was OK, he was getting up already. Her mom was already up, though her leg seemed to be twisted at a nasty angle.
Lara closed the door, locked it, then ran to the sink to puke.
So this was the zombie apocalypse, then.
Nothing much happened for a long time after that.
Lara laid low. Zombies came up to the door in dribs and drabs, like Mormons, but they were often distracted away by dogs or cats. There was a cat living on the roof of the folks across the street, and every now and then it came down for long enough to run down a mouse. There were dogs barking constantly, though their number steadily diminished as they were rousted out, or died of starvation.
Lara stayed mostly on the second floor, looking out of the windows, far enough away from the basement that she didn't have to hear her parents rattling around down there. She'd been down to look at them once, and had surprised herself by not crying.
It wasn't that she didn't care about them. She did. But this was so emphatically not them. The message of her father's shirt had told her all she needed to know. They'd known, they'd had enough warning to send her a text and write her a farewell, and wasn't that nice and tidy?
She was in shock, true enough. She sat on her chair by her old roll-top desk, where she'd blitzed out on learning drugs to help her study for law school, and looked out through the lacy windows like Mama Bates, waiting, but nobody came.
No army, no navy, no CIA. She had the radio on but nothing played but a lonely hiss. The electric went out and then the water, but she was hardly hungry or thirsty. She stopped eating almost altogether, just little bites once a day. She watched the old zombies flow up and down the street, stopping at her door only to be lured away. She watched them go gray, watched as more splatters of blood appeared on their clothes from the dogs they'd managed to pry out of their yards.
After a week of lolling, waiting, watching and reading her old books and diaries, she tooled up. Her father kept a shotgun, a pump-action Remington with forty shells worth of ammunition. She took one of his fishing jackets and stuffed the pockets full of shells. She hooked a knife through her belt. She put on two pairs of jeans and two thick jackets, then duct-taped glossy magazines round her arms and legs, round her midriff and chest. She found an old football helmet and fitted it to her head.
She loaded the shotgun. She went down to the basement.
It was easy. Boom, boom.
She emerged through the basement door into the garden. This was hunting.
She took out two near nice Mrs. Batcher's hot tub. One of them tumbled into the water and sank like a turd. She reloaded and continued on. She patrolled the community, finding them in strange pockets; some gathered around the last few emaciated dogs, some at water sources, others wandering aimlessly.
She blew them all away. One almost got her when it ran up silently from behind, over grass. It smacked hard against her back, one area she hadn't been able to armor well, and she felt the hard crunch of its nose bone against her spine.
She hacked its chest to shreds with the kitchen knife, then blew off its head, digging a gout into the patch of garden with the point-blank shotgun blast.
She patrolled until it grew dark. Many of the neighbors still remained inside their houses, hitting against blood-smeared glass, but she left them where they were.
Other than it growing quieter and more still, nothing changed. Back in her house it was too quiet. It got dark and she was alone. She got out lipstick and wrote on the dresser mirror.
What now?
The words stared back at her.
She loaded up on food from neighbor's houses, clearing out the zombies as she went. She found more guns and more ammo; hunting rifles, handguns, a few more shotguns. She piled them up in her munitions area in the kitchen. She buried her parents in the back yard. She made rotas of her sweeps around the community. She set up shop in the security guard's room, and found his stash of secret porn in the desk.
At times she thought of Amo, and their strange and wondrous night together. She thought of the message she'd left him.
Good luck with the zombies.
She was too tired to laugh.
Weeks went by. She tried going out of the community again, but the streets outside terrified her now. She found the car that had brought her from New York where she'd left it, spattered with bird shit and gummy seedpods from the fir trees. There was enough fuel for a run round the block, so she made it.
Nothing. In the distance, down by the strip mall on Chesapeake, she thought she saw a gang of zombies breaking into the gas station.
It was getting hotter out. Of course the AC wouldn't run. She took to sitting in people's cars, running the engine just to keep the air on. She played on an old Gameboy she found, running her score on Tetris high enough to get the spaceship to launch. When the gas ran out she just paused her game and moved to another car.
She swam in the neighbor's pool. She read an old John LeCarré book. She talked to her parents' graves about all the things she had hoped to achieve in her life. She stayed calm, like a lawyer, and waited for someone to come.
Two months went by, and still nobody came. The radio hissed. She stood at the top of the basement stairs looking down, and wondered how long she could last like this before she put a noose round her neck and joined her parents.
Over several days she packed her father's car; the latest model was a Hyundai. She put her guns and her Gameboy and some food in. Could Amo be alive? If anybody was alive, it would surely be in the city. Maybe he was. Maybe somebody was.
She thought of his comic, the last few panels he'd shown her. Sitting at the wheel in her parent's driveway, decked out in her clammy magazine armor, she wondered if his tower of straining zombies was what she'd find in Times Square, reaching for the sky
At least that would be something. Anything would be better than this.
ROAD TRIP
16 – FAREWELL
Lincoln Tunnel is empty of the ocean, and the road out of New York is a peaceful affair, bar the rumbling of the JCB's treads thrown back at me by the dark tunnel walls. I flip the hinged window out and enjoy watching the dot of light up ahead getting closer, like a distant vision of the world at the end of an impossibly long birth canal.
It has been a nightmare. I have done things I never thought possible. I have been so evil I had to kill myself, and I've been so good I'm still on a high.
I burst up into the light. A toll bay tells me to stop but screw it, I go straight through. Some rules, like road tolls and parking violations, just exist to be broken.
The metal barrier rail bends backward then snaps off its hinge, clattering to the side. The JCB is so wide it strikes sparks off either side of the gate.
Booya!
We rumble on. There are more cars here, where the tunnel bleeds into Weehawken and up to the 495. I circle the on-ramp loop, shoving my way through. I keep an eye on the convoy behind, but they're well tethered, and none as wide as the JCB. There should be no problem.
I put on my music. I've set it up remotely from my phone, wireless with a Bluetooth signal booster taped to the battle-tank's roof. I click for the art mix I used to paint to, shuffle, and the first song kicks in from speakers strapped to the back window of the delivery truck: Katy Perry's Roar from 2014. Fitting.
A few floaters bob by and I wave at them. This is a big day for them, to see living prey. They'll probably follow me until their socks come off. Most of them have lost their shoes, at least the soles of them, a long time ago. They trudge around on raw skin.
We loop up round a Port Authority loading yard, then we're on top, on the highway as it begins. A few other vehicles lie scattered around, beginning to sag on their tires and rust round their light fittings.
I pull the JCB to a stop on the corner, open the slot in the roof, and climb up to stand on the cab top. I walk along the tail fin I welded to the back, which bridges me neatly over to the top of the battle-tank, and from there I take in the view back across the Hudson river.