Authors: Tracey Ward
I’m on the MAX making my way home when I first notice something weird. As we fly through the city, I see a lot of accidents that don’t look exactly like accidents. The road spans out beside us in sections and I notice that there are quite a few cars that appear to have simply stopped. One, however, looks like it tried to drive straight up and over the cement center divider only to become high centered on it like a see saw. There are emergency vehicles up and down the road and I’m worried there’s a sniper loose in the city. It’s terrible that you have to consider that a possibility these days. I check my phone to look at the news and see if there are reports on it but there’s nothing. Just the weather and sports scores, same as always.
A fleeting, terrifying thought crosses my mind and I look at the few other passengers on the MAX with me, trying to decide if they saw the cars and ambulances as well. I don’t see anything on their faces telling me they do, or at least nothing showing they’re concerned, and I’m suddenly very uneasy. Did I remember my pills this morning? I did, I always do. Besides, it would take longer than this for them to leave my system. This is real. This is real.
This is real.
I keep telling myself that and calming my heart, telling it that everything is going to be alright. I’m taking comfort in the fact that the chaos happening outside is not a hallucination, and only later will I appreciate how messed up that is.
When I get to my stop, I exit just outside my building and walk the short distance inside. I don’t see anyone, which is weird for campus at five o’clock on a sunny afternoon, but I hear emergency sirens in the distance. More ambulances, police cars and fire trucks making their way to whatever is happening in the city. Still thinking of a possible gunman, I hurry inside and head toward the common area to see if there’s anything on TV about it yet. I imagine with this much activity, the news channels have got to be on it by now.
What I see in the common area stops me cold. The couch is overturned and shoved back almost to the far wall. One of the small coffee tables is smashed, the debris strewn across the floor. The worst damage, though, is to the television. The massive flat screen is shattered and hanging limply from the wall by a cord. There’s a large dark brown smear across it. I look
around quickly and find no one else in the area and as I stand perfectly still I don’t hear anyone either. It’s eerily silent in the normally bustling building and I wonder what the hell has gone on here in the last two hours. I turn and make a dash for the stairs, taking them two at a time and heading straight up two flights before getting to my floor. Again, I don’t see anyone. Not a soul.
I fumble a bit for my keys and I realize my hands are shaking. It’s occurred to me that the smear on the TV is probably blood and whatever has happened here was violent. Maybe the building was evacuated while I was gone, but if that were the case, where are the police and the Do Not Cross tape at the door? I figure my best bet is to get to my room, turn on the TV in there or get on the internet and look for answers.
When I get my door open, I stumble inside and do a quick scan of the open space. There’s no on here, not that I can see. I walk down the small hallway and knock quietly on doors as I go.
“Hello?” I call out softly.
Since I have no idea what’s going on, I’m scared to raise my voice and call out for just anyone to hear me. What if there’s a threat still in the building? I don’t want them to know I’m here. And alone.
“Guys, are you here? Sara? Dee?”
My roommates don’t answer and I don’t bother opening their bedroom doors. If they are in there and hiding, best to let them hide. I don’t want to be the reason they came out into the open and got themselves hurt or killed. I go into the kitchen where we have a small TV sitting on the counter and I flip it on, looking for the local news. It doesn’t take me long to find it. I’ll find out later it’s broadcasting on every channel as they do in a state of emergency.
“What we’re seeing now,” a pretty blond field reporter is saying into the camera from the side of the freeway. “Is a building hysteria. We haven’t been able to pinpoint any cause of the deaths, but we understand the numbers are high and rising. At this point, there is an illness spreading, a fever of sorts. Many who have witnessed it are telling of vomiting of blood and almost instant death. So far, we don’t know if it’s airborne or how it is passed, so if you come in contact with someone exhibiting symptoms of fever or nausea, please take precautions. Use latex gloves if you touch them, wear a mask if you have one or create a makeshift mask with a scarf or other clothing. And please, stay in your homes. Do not go out on the roads. As you can see, we
are trapped in bumper to bumper traffic here, nothing moving in either direction. I’m told the reason is due to fever victims collapsing at the wheel.”
The reporter goes on about the traffic jams and virus but I’m pulled away when I hear a sound from in the bathroom at the end of the hall. I hadn’t thought to check there and now I feel a prickling sensation all over my skin. I wonder if one of the other girls is in there, sick with the mystery fever. Silently, I go under the sink to where our untouched first aid kit is hiding and pull it out onto the counter. I grab a pair of latex gloves and am happily surprised to see a surgical mask, just as Blondie suggested I wear. Feeling kind of like an idiot wearing all of this gear, I creep slowly down the hall toward the bathroom. There’s another sound, a loud bang, as though someone has stumbled against the wall and I quicken my pace.
“Dee? Is that you? Sara?”
When I reach the end of the hall, I take a deep breath,
imagining what ‘vomiting blood’ might look like, and cautiously push the door open. This outer door leads into an area with nothing but two sinks and some storage. There’s an inner door that leads to the toilet and shower, and when I find the sink room clear, I realize the noise is coming from the toilet area. My skin is still humming and my heart is in my throat as I approach the second door. I can’t tell exactly why I’m so scared, other than I don’t want to get sick and puke blood, but something in me is screaming at me to beware. Call it instinct if you want, but whatever it is, it doesn’t like the sound of what’s behind that door. It sounds wet and I want to say the noise is from being sick but I know it’s not.
I pull on the handle, swing the door open and instantly vomit into my mask. There on the floor is Dee, sitting crouched like a wild thing resting on her haunches, blood coating nearly every surface of her body. Her normally brown hair is matted with dark red, making it glossy, black and horrifying. Her face is unrecognizable through the blood and heavy pallor of her skin. When I opened the door, she looked up and as her roving eyes found mine, I saw that they are white and opaque. Dead. She looks dead, but she’s moving and gnawing. I see blond hair on the floor. It’s not attached to very much, just some flaps of what must be scalp lying in a bloody heap at Dee’s feet.
Sara has blond hair
. I think to myself.
Or had
.
I’m convinced that the mound of flesh, muscle and gore spread before Dee like a macabre buffet is my former roommate. And the living dead girl eating her is my other former roommate, as I certainly can’t see sharing close quarters with her now.
I slam the door shut, rip my soiled mask off my face and run for the other door. I need to get out of this apartment, out of this building and… I don’t know what after that. What’s important now is
running
.
I hear the door slam open and bounce off the wall behind me as I clear the outer door.
No!
I think,
She’s following me.
I had harbored a small hope that she’d ignore me seeing as she already had dinner, but she always had been a selfish, greedy bitch. Drink the last of the milk out of the carton and put it back empty type.
I make it to the door out of the apartment before she catches me, and she only manages that because I’m stuck fumbling with the knob, the lock I so brilliantly engaged upon entering. It’s slow going and I’m not surprised when I feel fingers dig painfully into my shoulder. I scream and spin around, my arms up and out, trying to break her hold on me. And I do, for a moment, but she’s unfazed and leaps right back at me. Tears stream down my face, though I don’t remember at what point I started crying, and my vision is blurred as we struggle. She’s gnashing her teeth at me and hissing like a viper, and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs for her to leave me alone while I push against her shoulders to try and keep her face off me. I’m worried she’ll bite my hands, but she’s so focused on eating my face, she doesn’t seem to care about my arms other to hold them painfully tight. I’m bruising, I know it, and I wonder if the bones are close to breaking because her grip is so incredibly strong.
Through the blur of my tears, looking at the hideous horror movie appearance of her face, I suddenly have the horrible thought that I was right on the MAX. That all along this is just a hallucination. The cars piled up, the empty campus, the destroyed common area, the grotesque scene in the bathroom. My meds must have failed me, there’s no way this is real. I start weeping in earnest now because I am terrified of what that means. This is so vivid, so real and it’s the worst episode I’ve ever had by far. Damn Zombie Boy for putting this idea in my head! I don’t know how to get out of it, how to break the spell and see the real Dee and not this demon trying to murder me. I’m worried I might have hurt her in real life and my push against her shoulders slackens, my screams dying in my throat.
She’s not the threat
.
I am
.
Dee has me laid halfway across the breakfast bar, about to take a bite like I’m Sunday morning waffles, when the door to our apartment slams open and a blurry figure bursts inside. I see a swift motion, hear a loud crack and Dee is gone. She drops to the floor, all the life or whatever was driving her fading out instantly and leaving her a crumpled heap on the ground. I continue to lay on the breakfast bar, too stunned and freaked out to move or say anything. Tears continue to fall from my eyes, down the sides of my face and into my hair.
What the hell just happened?
“Are you alright? Did she bite you?”
I roll my head to the right and look at the guy standing in my kitchen, a bloodied baseball bat gripped tightly in his hands. He’s tall with short brown hair, blue eyes and a grey shirt spattered in blood and brain. I blink at him. I don’t know if he is part of a hallucination or proof that this is real. His presence means something, I just don’t know what.
“Did that really just happen?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
He glances nervously down at the floor where I know Dee’s body lies and then looks back at me. He studies me for a second, scanning every inch of me as I’m sprawled out on the counter, but his examination isn’t lewd. It’s calculating.
He nods reluctantly. “Yeah, it did. She didn’t bite you, right?”
I shake my head and sit up. The room spins for a second then rights itself. I leap down and instantly regret it as my feet slip and slide in the blood and tissue all over the floor. I can see Dee at the epicenter of the mess. Her arm is broken and there’s stark white bone protruding through her pale flesh. Her big worry, though, is her head. It’s caved in and almost unrecognizable, pieces of skull and brain matter scattered across the floor. The sick part of all of this is that it’s familiar and not terribly shocking. I’m reminded of being sixteen in a different kitchen with a different body, but if you’ve seen the interior of one skull, you’ve seen ‘em all. I can feel myself start to shut down, shut it out. I can’t go that route and I know it. Whatever this was I barely survived it and if it hadn’t been for the stranger standing in front of me I wouldn’t have made it out alive.
“Thank you.” I say, looking him in the eye. “You saved my life.”
He nods curtly while his eyes look around nervously. “I heard your screams from across the hall. I had to at least try.”
“I’m glad you did.” I wipe my face to rid it of the tear streaks and whatever else might be on it. At this point who the hell knows? Could be part of someone’s spleen. “What’s happening? Do you know?
He shakes his head, watching me closely. “Not really, no. I’ve been watching the news and they don’t know either.”
“Nothing beyond the fever stuff?”
“No and that’s obviously sugar coating it. Whatever is happening, it’s happening fast and it’s violent.”
I nod. “I left here two hours ago and everything was fine. I come back and it’s a ghost town except for you and her.” I say pointing to Dee. Then I remember Sara and point down the hall. “Well, and her.”
His bat immediately rises in the air and he puts his back to the door.
“There’s another one in here?” His voice is hushed but angry. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because this one ate her. At least most of her, until I interrupted.”
“What was left?”
“I don’t know,” I respond, my tone growing angry like his. “I didn’t stop and do inventory. There wasn’t much.”
“Was her head intact?”
“No. It was cracked wide open.”
This must put him at ease because he lowers the bat, but he eyes me again.
“How are you so calm? I sat down and freaked out for a good hour after one tried to grab me. You haven’t missed a beat.’
I glare at him. “You have no idea how I feel.”
“I know how you’re acting and it’s like this is no big deal. Happens every day. I don’t know where you’re from, but in my home town, your classmates don’t try to rip your face off.”
Here’s the thing; he’s right, I am way too calm and collected considering what just happened. It’s exactly how I deal with the onslaught of stuff about my mom and what it boils down to is this: I don’t deal with it. I put everything at a distance and interact with it only as much as I need to. Dr. Clement has been on me about this for years now and I’ll never change. Not only did I see my mother’s remains after she committed suicide, I began developing hallucinations in my adolescence, and guess who headlined almost every time. Believe me, they were never pretty. I saw what I saw the night she died, only now she was talking to me. She walked around the living world with me, a mess of horror and gore, and spoke to me about horrible, disgusting and terrifying things that I do not repeat, not even in my own head. So yeah, I keep the world at a distance because quite frankly I don’t need any more connections to people that can turn into running horror stories in my head. Before the meds kicked in and we found the right doses, I was seeing my Uncle Syd flayed alive before me while he sat and quietly ate his oatmeal. He had no idea and still doesn’t. What goes on in my head is my cross to bear and no one else’s.
“Don’t give me shit just because you don’t know how to cope.” I mutter ungratefully at my savior.
His eyes flash with anger and I see him take a deep breath to yell at me, but then he freezes, his eyes darting to the closed door. He quickly and silently throws the latch and locks us in. I scowl at him to ask what he’s doing, but he presses his finger to his lips, telling me to be quiet then puts his eye to the peep hole. For the longest time I don’t know what we’re waiting for, but then I hear it. A low groan followed by wheezing and then the groan again. It’s accompanied by the sound of shuffling feet and dragging. My heart leaps into my throat and I feel my skin prickle. I reach out to gingerly touch the guy’s arm, but even that small contact makes him jump a mile and he almost drops his bat on the floor. He closes his eyes briefly and I can tell he’s calming himself. When he opens them again, I pinch my lips together, trying to look contrite.
Sorry.
I mouth to him.
He nods quickly and shifts his bat in his hands. Outside, the shuffling and groaning continues as it creeps closer and closer to the door.
What is that?
I mouth again, doing my best to remain silent.
He juts his chin in the direction of the kitchen. Toward Dee. Then he points to the peep hole.
Look
.
I take care not to touch the door as I rise up on my toes to look through the hole. I can’t see anything yet but I can hear the shuffling getting close. Finally, a figure comes into view and I frown.
It’s Zombie Boy. His shaggy brown hair is matted in blood, as is his face and both hands. His shirt is surprisingly clean and I can see it’s the same one he was wearing when we talked earlier. For some reason, that makes me sad. He lumbers by the door, his head thrown back at a broken angle and I spot what the dragging sound is. There’s a hand clasped to his ankle on his left leg and he’s dragging the body attached to it behind him. As he continues by, I see more of the other body and it’s not a whole one. It’s moaning and wheezing like he is, but its cut off at the waist, its legs nowhere to be seen. I pull away from the door and motion for the guy beside me to take a look. He does and comes back with a grimace.
Freaky.
he says silently.
I raise my eyebrows high and nod emphatically. We both stand looking down at the floor as we focus on listening to the receding sounds of our fellow students. When the sounds die out, we look at each other but we don’t speak. I have a million things running through my head right now, not the least of which is whether or not I’ve finally gone fully insane, but one word keeps bobbing to the surface of the chaos.
I look him in the eye, take a deep breath and silently mouth one word.
Zombies.
He stares at me without reacting, and in that split second I doubt myself and think I’ve made a terrible mistake. It sounds crazy. I knew it when I said it. I may as well have said mummies, vampires or witches for all the sense it makes, but if it’s not zombies then I don’t know what it is. Just when I’m about to turn and bail, he takes a small breath and nods faintly.
Fucking zombies.
he mouths, and I can’t help but smile.
I crook my finger at him as I turn to walk down the hall. He checks the bolts on the door one more time and then falls in step behind me to my bedroom. Light from the setting sun is pouring into the room, bathing it in an amber glow. He looks around, this time not with the hawk eyes he was using in the kitchen, but with genuine interest. There’s not much to see. I have a few framed pictures of my Uncle Syd and I on the desk next to my laptop and books. Other than that, it’s just clothes in the closet and sheets on the bed. I’ve seen the other girls’ rooms and they have photos of friends and boyfriends everywhere, ticket stubs from concerts, trinkets from vacations—all of it strewn across every surface of the room telling stories of the life they live. I’m more of a minimalist in that I don’t do or have any of those things.
“What’s your name?” I ask quietly, drawing his attention away from my lack of a life.
“Jordan. Yours?”
“Alissa. Thanks again for saving my life, Jordan.”
“Anytime.” He glances around the room again, this time more critically. “All of your roommates are…”
“Dead? Looks like it.”
“So you’re alone?”
“Ha.” I chuckle without joy. I am always alone. “Yeah, I’m alone.”
He rubs his hand briskly up and down the back of his neck, and he’s either agitated or uncomfortable, I’m not sure which. I could understand both.
“Are you alone?” I ask him.
“Yeah.” he responds quickly. “I don’t think there are any other survivors in the building. Most people ran.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He looks around the room again and I’m beginning to wonder if he’s committed it to memory yet. There really is nothing of interest in here, but then I realize it might be more about
not
looking at me.
“We need to find you a weapon.” he says, ignorin
g my question. “Something lightweight but with a reach. Like this bat. You don’t play softball, do you?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “But if I need a weapon, I think I’m covered.”
I go into my tiny closet and take out my baby. It was a Christmas present three years ago from Uncle Syd. He asked if I wanted this or a car, and I chose this. Hands down. When I pull the lightweight compound bow from its hiding place, I see Jordan’s eyes widen. It’s about three feet long from tip to tip and only weighs three pounds, making it ultra-light and easy to carry with you hunting all day.
“Whoa.” Jordan says, eyeing the bow and quiver full of arrows I pull out next. “Are you a good shot?”
“Do you want to see the trophy?”
“You don’t actually have one, do you?”
“Yeah. It’s in a box in the closet.”
“Why don’t you have it out where you can see it?”
I lower my head to adjust my bow. “I don’t put myself on display.”
Speaking of, I can feel Jordan watching me as I adjust the bow. I haven’t touched it in months but she remembers me perfectly, and as I feel the tension of the string under my
fingertips, I smile and breathe a little easier. I should have been going to the range at least, even if I couldn’t get away to go hunting with Uncle Syd. I was raised by a redneck for the majority of my adolescence so it should come as no surprise that I can hunt with a bow, a knife and a gun. I don’t have a gun here, but I suddenly remember I do have my hunting knife and I pull that out of the closet too.
Jordan gives a low whistle as I strap the knife to my thigh.
“You are a zombie survivalist’s dream come true.” he mumbles.
I stand abruptly and stare at him. “What is it with guys and zombies? Do you have a survival plan too?”
“Of course I do.” he says with absolutely no shame. “You don’t?”
“No.” I mutter, grudgingly remembering Zombie Boys warning. “But I’m sorry now.”
“Well, first thing is, you’ve gotta get out of the city.”
“Why? Shouldn’t I just barricade the door and wait for help?”
“Ha.” he barks a laugh and then his face falls. “Oh wow, you’re serious. No. We cannot do that. How much food do you think is in this apartment? Most importantly, how much non-perishable food is there? Enough to last us a week? A month? You want to hang out with those dead bodies that long? Help isn’t coming, that’s something you have to remember, so waiting it out is a bad plan.”
“What’s all this
we
talk?” I ask sharply, feeling uncomfortable with the idea of teaming up with a stranger. Or with anyone, really. “And what do you mean help isn’t coming. Of course there will be some kind of help. Quarantines will be set up—“
“Of which
you
will be on the wrong side. I’m getting out before that happens. If they decide to quarantine the entire city, whoever is left will be nothing but hens locked in with the wolves. You can’t outlast the undead. They won’t die off naturally and eventually you’ll run out of resources and they’ll either kill you or you’ll starve. Also, the government might just decide the ends justify the means and firebomb the city to contain this thing. It’ll be a loss of life, but it will disputably be an acceptable one for the sake of the rest of the planet.”
“It’s been a matter of hours. You’re getting ahead of yourself, don’t you think?”
“You also have to stay off the freeways when you leave.” he continues, ignoring me. “Too many people going that way, we’ll never make it. Sorry,
I’ll
never make it. You can do what you want. Why are you looking at me like that?”