Collected Short Fiction, page 206
Tom:
“What choice do they have? Obviously he got bitten and he was trying to hide it.”
Emily:
“All right, then how can you film it?”
Tom:
“Because someone ought to witness this.”
Emily:
“This?!”
Tom:
“People witness executions in states that have the death penalty.”
Nate:
“Only because they’re barbarians.”
Tom:
“Because it matters. It matters if someone gets executed.”
The woman with the gun fires. The man’s head explodes; blood, bone, and tissue splatter her trousers and the bottom of her shirt as well as the man sitting closest. He jumps away, pulls off his shirt and scrubs at his flesh with it, then throws it aside and removes his shorts.
The others get up and move away while the woman who has just killed the wounded man sets the gun down. She undresses calmly but carefully. She eases off each shoe and as she steps out of her trousers, she looks at each leg for any sign of blood. Rolling up the bottom of her T-shirt a couple of times, she holds it firmly while she slips one arm and then the other out of her sleeves, then pulls the shirt over her head without the spattered part of the T-shirt getting near her face. She tosses it away, takes off her bra and underpants, and then bursts into tears.
The other woman and two of the men put on overalls and rubber gloves before rolling the dead body up in a tarp or canvas and throwing it off the roof. One of them pours a gallon of what appears to be bleach on the blood and gore left on the roof. The naked woman continues to cry until one of the men comes to her with a blanket. He wraps it around her and leads her to a mattress where she curls into the fetal position and doesn’t move for a long time. Another man uses a mop handle to pick up her discarded clothing and drop it off the roof.
Emily:
“They didn’t have to do that.”
Angela:
“They did and you know it.”
Tom:
“This is one of those times when I feel the need of something from the medicine cabinet. Ange, you have the key.”
Angela:
“What do you want?”
Tom:
“What would you want?” [pause] “We got any of that left?”
Emily:
“I meant throwing the body off the roof.”
Tom:
“What?”
Emily:
“They didn’t have to throw the body off the roof. They shouldn’t have done that because that’s like they don’t care any more. And if they don’t care any more, why don’t they all just shoot themselves in the head right now?”
Long silence.
Tom:
“Maybe they’re trying to work up to that.”
Emily:
“We aren’t, are we?”
[END OF FILE]
[Transcript of Videofile_Jolene1.mp4 06-14]
Private Jolene Lindbloom:
“I uploaded the log I wrote on the phone to the storage where I found those two videos, and sent copies of it and the videos to every email address I could think of, including the White House. I figure they’ll reach at least one live recipient.” [sharp fumbling noises] “Then I thought why not do videos myself instead of going crosseyed trying to use the keyboard on the phone. The phone’s got a camera but not enough capacity so I did a little, uh, shopping and found this all charged up and ready to go in one of the electronics stores. They’ve all been smashed in but none of them’s as looted as I would have thought. I guess a lot of looters got eaten, or left before they got eaten, I don’t know.”
Point of view swings from street to the face of a young woman, early twenties. The camera is slightly too close and the lens can’t focus completely.
“Yeah, that’s me, all right. Private Jolene Lindbloom, US Army, serial number blah-blah-blah, who cares. Sorry, I’ve tried to stay disciplined but I’m losing it already. I went into this intending to be a good soldier, really, and look at me now. I forget everything they taught me at the drop of an apocalypse.”
Point of view swings from face to street with scaffolded building. Camera pans left to subway entrance and then down so we can see iron gates pulled closed, chained, and padlocked.
“This is an example of my handiwork. I got a Mr Microphone and used it to hail anyone alive in the station – I wasn’t about to go in, no way in hell. I think if anyone had been in there to hear me, they’d have yelled to let me know. I’m saying this because I do not want to think I might have locked any live people in with zombies but I also know there’s a possibility. If I did, I hope they can blow their brains out or figure some other way to destroy their own heads so they don’t have to come back. I mean, when you die, you’re entitled to rest in peace, just like God himself said. Now we got a regular zombie population explosion, responsible people don’t want to make it worse. It’s like—” [smothered giggling] “—you got to spay and neuter your pets, and make sure your head’s crushed or cut off when you die. Otherwise—”
Camera swings left and refocuses on a sidewalk across the street where a human-looking figure is moving awkwardly, dragging one foot. Literally – it’s scraping the pavement at a right angle to the leg. This was a young man, late teens or early twenties at most; blood and tissue is crusted around his mouth and the left eye is slightly out of its socket. There is so much blood and filth on the shirt that it’s impossible to tell what color it really is. The corpse seems to look directly into the camera with its good eye and starts to drag along faster, mouth working, jaws snapping.
“—you’re part of the problem. Gotta go.”
[CUT]
Daylight indicates slightly later in the day, ground level. Looking down a long, wide street to what seems to be a traffic pile-up of cars, buses and trucks.
“If I had any sense, I’d delete the recording I made before or cut the sound. I’m not making myself look too good here. I thought I was going to start getting less shaky but I’m not. Instead of feeling like I’m getting further away from the subway, it’s like it’s actually sinking in more and more. Memories of what I saw keep resurfacing in my mind, just like pop-ups on a web page, and I can’t stop seeing them. Tommy McManus’s face ripping away. Linda Washington spitting, spitting, spitting – we’re all yelling and guns are going off and the sarge is still giving orders but under all that, I can hear Linda making those disgusted sounds – phthah, phthah, phthah! Still trying to get the taste out of her mouth when two of them caught her bayonet hand and chewed through her arm up at the shoulder till they took it off. Blood sprayed out as she fell away and while that’s hosing everyone down, what’s going through my mind? This lecture from back in basic about how fast you can kill somebody if you cut the brachial artery. I can’t hear Linda any more. Can’t see her either under the zombies piled on top of her.”
Camera pans right along a row of storefronts. Most windows are cracked or smashed. Abrupt change to face of Jolene Lindbloom, first in extreme close-up. Then she moves back, sits on chair. She is indoors; behind her is a pale green wall with a vertical crack running from ceiling to floor (probably – it goes out of frame). It’s not a very wide crack but it is visible. It is not clear exactly what kind of room this is. Light comes from a window somewhere behind and to the right of the camera; it is not strong and continues to degrade while Lindbloom talks. By the end of the file, her shadow is barely visible.
“OK. So I was saying, about Linda and . . . that. Right then I decided to bug out. Saying it like that makes it sound like I thought it over and said to myself, ‘OK, time to get the fuck outa here.’ I just bugged. I turned around and started clubbing, punching, shoving, ducking, whatever it took to get out. Some of the ones I hit must have been my buddies. I couldn’t see too well and I didn’t really care at that point. I just kept punchin’ and pushin’ and kickin’ and then I was running and running and running and I didn’t stop until my legs gave out. I don’t know exactly where I was but I wasn’t in the subway any more.”
“Dream about it almost every night, several times a night. Sometimes I dream that I watched Linda Washington bug out while a bunch of zombies piled on top of me, other times I dream that I woke up the next day and found a big bite on my leg. Or that I wake up and find Tommy McManus standing over me saying, ‘Thanks a lot, buddy,’ enunciating perfectly even without most of his face. And there’s this part where I see the sarge lying on his back, struggling to get the barrel of his sidearm positioned just right under his chin before he fires; he’s having trouble because of the zombie chewing through his belly. That shows up in every dream. I don’t know exactly where but I remember it so vividly every morning. And I know it’s a dream because each time, I see it from the vantage point of some distance away, as if I’d stopped to look back when I was bugging out. And I sure as hell don’t remember doing that. I wouldn’t let myself. Ergo, it’s a dream. Or part of a dream.
“Last night, I slept on a roof with some other people. I climbed up ten floors in this apartment building I thought was empty. Two floors before I got to the roof level, I came face-to-face with these guys with guns. And I mean they had an armory. That didn’t bother me so much as their faces. Actually, their eyes. They had crazy eyes. That’s the only way I can describe it: crazy eyes. You find yourself looking at someone with crazy eyes and you don’t know what they’re gonna do, except it won’t be pretty.
“If I’d had my sidearm handy instead of in my backpack, I think I’d have shot them just by reflex, before they could shoot me. Instead I just froze with their semi-automatics pointed at my head. Sometime later, one of them lowered his weapon and said, ‘If you’re looking for a safe place to sleep, you can stay here as long as you can prove you aren’t infected.’
“I was still frozen. The other one said, ‘You gotta strip, show us nothing bit you.’ He turned around and hollered up the stairs: ‘Female up!’
“This plump woman about forty came down, looked at me and told the guys to turn their backs. I could take off my clothes and let her see I didn’t have any bites or I could find another place to spend the night, no problem either way. I obliged her. What the hell. All the time, she was telling me about how they were mostly people from the neighborhood in the beginning but they’d lost a few and picked up some others looking for a safe place to rest. She and some of the others including the two guys planned to stay put and wait for National Guard or the Army or whoever was supposed to come and get them. They were sending emails and trying to make contact with other people and sometimes even Twitter was back up and they hardly ever lost the wireless signal. I was putting my clothes back on when I realized that at some point, I’d stopped listening because I was crying. She didn’t pay any attention.
“The guys went through my backpack and of course they found the sidearm. One of them knew enough about weapons to know it was military issue. I’d have told him I’d found it if he’d asked but he didn’t. To my surprise, they let me keep it. Because I only had one, the woman told me as I followed her up to the roof. If I’d had two or three or more, they’d have taken them for the stockpile. But they weren’t going to take my only self-defense. Things weren’t that bad. Yet.
“There were about thirty people with sleeping bags or blankets getting ready to bed down. I found a spot near the center, between an older man and his granddaughter and a black-haired woman about my age with vivid tattoos running the full length of her skinny arms and a curved upholstery needle through her left eyebrow. I noticed she was putting studs and rings in her nose and cheeks and ears rather than taking them out, which seemed pretty weird. She caught me watching and said she didn’t wear any of her jewelry when she was out because the zombies could grab her by it but she didn’t want the holes to close up.
“I didn’t know holes closed up but all I said was ‘Good thinking’ or something like that. She introduced herself as Cal (short for Calla Lily). The older man was Rodrigo, the granddaughter’s name was Graciela. Then a chubby guy showed up with a teapot and cups on a tray and asked if anybody wanted some herbal tea. I felt myself start to shake. Just a little but I knew it was gonna get worse so I asked where I could go to the toilet. In the apartments one floor down, they said and the policy was not to flush except solid waste.
“The apartments had all been broken into and stripped of anything useful. Very practical and organized bunch, I thought, as I locked myself in a small bathroom with a shower stall rather than a tub and a sink about the size of soup bowl, and had hysterics.
“Or maybe not hysterics, exactly, because I didn’t scream or wail or anything. I just shook, because I couldn’t do anything else.
“I wanted to leave. I wanted to take my stuff and run for it but I was too tired. There was the prospect of something close to a good night’s sleep; I couldn’t resist that. But first thing in the morning, I was bugging out.
“Where did these people think they were? What did they think was going on? Well, yeah, obviously: they thought the cavalry was coming; they thought the Army or the National Guard was on the way to scoop their asses up and take them to safety. I was so glad I’d ditched my uniform. And I know I was being a coward not telling them about the subway or about what they’d decided to do about Queens and Long Island. Or Plan B.
“But at least they didn’t know it. As far as any of them were concerned, I was just one more person who’d been looking for a safe place to sleep. The lie went with their guards and the courtesy of having a woman to inspect other women for zombie bites and the offer of herbal tea. There’s this expression I heard once: cozy catastrophe. You see a lot of that in movies and TV, where the world ends and a little group of congenial survivors balance off the disaster part by being able to take anything they need or want – everything is free and nowhere is crowded or noisy and all the issues and neuroses anyone ever had about their day-to-day life just melt away.
“If I stayed just one more night there, I was gonna think I was in something like that, one of those cozy catastrophes. All we have to do is hang out, shop for free, and wait for our ride to pick us up before the herbal tea runs out or the zombies run in, whichever comes first.
“So could I sleep? Could I fuck. I got a couple of hours at most, not before the sky started to get light. Tattooed arms and Grandpa and his granddaughter were still asleep when I packed up and got the hell out. A guy and a woman were on guard duty when I came down. They didn’t try to stop me from leaving but the woman made me take a card with a hand-drawn map of how to find the building – not a lot of detail and definitely not to scale but clear enough. I didn’t want to, but she insisted. I stuck it in one of my pockets intending to throw it away later.
“From there, I went west but it wasn’t long before I started crashing. Not enough sleep. I dragged around till I found this empty health club with a third floor Pilates studio. I barricaded the door and didn’t so much fall asleep as I just passed out. Slept all day, I guess, because when I woke up it was pitch black. And totally silent. I couldn’t hear a thing. I didn’t know whether it was really that quiet or I’d gone deaf. Every other night, I’ve heard gunshots, screams or yelling, sometimes an engine, a very small one like a motorcycle, in the distance but close enough to keep me alert. I figured the more I got into the city, the more I’d hear. Well, not then. Anyway, I just went back to sleep, I was that tired still. And what the fuck, you know? If everybody in Manhattan had really cleared out or if I was deaf, what could I do about it?
“Next time I woke up, it was day. Actually, what woke me was the sound of rain hitting the windows. It was such a normal sound. It didn’t make any sense – rain on the windows, in a world where we have zombies? And not just rain, but thunder and lightning, too.”
“I stayed low and took a peek outside. First thing I see down on the street are these three fucking zombies struggling along, crawling on their hands and knees. They have to crawl because they only have three feet among them. One of them is completely naked and chunks of hair and scalp have been yanked out. The skin on his back has split in places and the backbone is showing through. Another is wearing the remains of a tuxedo and there’s a dress shoe on his left (and only) foot. The third one is wearing a rubber wetsuit.
“So I’m crouched there watching this and suddenly I hear myself say, ‘Only in New York.’ I was just thinking, I didn’t mean to speak out loud. And of course, that gave me away. I don’t know how they didn’t sense me before then – I don’t know how they sense the living, I don’t think anyone does – but me and my big mouth did it. Their heads came up like dogs getting a scent – zombie dogs with serious motor difficulties – and they started crawling in circles for a few moments before they aimed themselves at the building where I was.
“I got out of there at Mach 2. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could outrun them. It’s just that with zombies, there’s never just one, or two, or three. If even just one homes in on you, suddenly a whole pack of them come outa nowhere and then you’re in the shit. And vice versa.
“This is enough for now. It’s getting dark, I gotta find some place to—”
[END OF FILE]
[Transcript of Videofile_Jolene1.mp4 06-15]
Daylight, early to mid-morning. Looking down the same long, wide street to the pile-up of cars, buses and trucks. Camera movement indicates person shooting the video is walking toward the pile-up.
Private Jolene Lindbloom:
“I think we’ll investigate what’s going on here. I want to know if they’re actually driving cars. Sounds like it. I wonder if they cleared the street. Plenty of other streets have cars and buses blocking them—”
Cut to vantage point directly in front of pile-up. Cars and light vans are stacked on top of buses lying on their sides. Camera pans up to show the top of a crane with dangling hook visible behind the motor vehicle barrier.
Man’s voice:
“I said, identify yourself and state your business! What do you want?”
