Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (16 page)

“You all live here?” you ask.

“Now we do. Thirty of us here, if I had to guess. Rooms are upstairs. Tight quarters these days. Before, just a few of us lived here. Others would come and go. Shit—Bob over there's a lawyer—got a nice apartment uptown.”

Bob raises his glass. You return the gesture.

“But now we're all sticking together.”

After meeting everyone, you take a seat at the bar. Watch the Stooges and bullshit with Whiskey. Before the zombie apocalypse, he owned a moving company. “Had six trucks and twenty guys on the payroll,” he explains, proudly.

You get a few beers in you and ask Jones to show you how to do the two-finger whistle. He spends twenty minutes trying, but you fail miserably. Then Tommy shows you how to pack a lip—you stuff your mouth full of Kodiak tobacco, take a swig of beer, then promptly puke on the hardwood floor. Apologetically, you clean it up. They laugh plenty, but don't seem to care much. More drinks. You party into the early morning.

Finally, a skinny drunk named Louis tells you you'll be bunking with him, and you stagger up the stairs behind him.

His room is a toilet. Shit everywhere—old issues of
Barely Legal
, Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, cigarette butts stamped out on the carpeted floor.

He collapses onto the bed, then reaches for a drawer. Pulls out a cigar box.

“You want?” he says, his words slurred.

“What is it?”

“Junk.”

“Huh?”

“Junk. Smack. Scat. Fuckin' heroin.”

“Oh…”

PENCIL PUSHER

The she-beast lunges over the side of the wall and hits the ground. Its tiny fingers, surprisingly strong, get a hold of your leg and the thing tries to chomp down. You struggle to shake it off, but it digs its fingers into your clothes for grip. You fall back, hitting the ground, hard, and it begins crawling up your body.

You grab the she-beast's exposed breast, squeezing it, getting a grip, and then you toss her against the wall. You scramble to your feet.

You look around, frantic, and grab the first thing you see.

A pencil.

In a split second, it's up on its feet.

You lunge forward, stabbing the pencil down and aiming for the eye. But you miss. The pencil pierces its cheek, snaps in two, and you fall right into the thing, exposed. The bitch sinks its teeth into your neck.

You scream. Swing wildly with the broken pencil. You connect with the thing's ear. You jam it in again—feel the wood pierce the eardrum. Blood pours through your fingers and down your wrist.

Twice more through the eardrum, then into the brain and the bitch collapses in a bloody, naked heap. But the damage is done. Your throat is torn open. Blood pours out onto the dirty, sticky floor. This is where you're going to die—in a fucking strip club DJ booth.

You open your mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Your head goes light. Legs weak. You go for the counter, bracing yourself.

Then you get a rush. For an instant, you can feel the blood pumping through your body—you are intently aware of every microscopic cell flowing through each of your hundred thousand veins.

Then it's gone. Everything. Mind goes blank. The pain subsides. Your conscious mind begins to fade.

Woman. She fights
.

Legs. Moving. Propelled forward
.

Woman
.

Object in way. Past it. over. On floor. Stand up
.

Woman
.

Pretty woman. Fleshy
.

Wet. Wet on floor. Body. Dead. Dead meat. Good meat? Bad meat. Carrion. Useless
.

Woman
.

Fresh meat…

Legs faster. One. Two. One. Two. Pulling forward. To woman
.

In front of you. Woman. Shiny thing
.

Woman. Speaks. Awwwwww kiiiiiiddddd ayyymmmmmmm sorrrrrryyyyy…

Shiny thing
.

Legs faster. Woman moves. Stop woman. Stop
.

Shiny thing in hand
.

Uh-oh. Woman moves fast
.

Shiny thing flashes. Coming at face. In eyes. Through head. Skull. Brain…

…..

PASS ON GRASS

You do enjoy the occasional hit off a nicely rolled Dutch or Philly (no wraps please)—but the timing ain't so good. Too,
too
weird. “Ah, no thanks, I'm good. You're getting high right now?”

“How the fuck else you think I make it through a twelve-hour shift?”

“What time is it?”

Chucky takes a huge hit and bursts into a coughing fit. He waves at the car's dashboard clock, trying to catch his breath. 6:17 PM.

“Jesus. I was asleep for like six hours.”

You scratch at your eye. You've got a mean contact high—your brain buzzes. Bass ripples through your seat and you realize music is playing. Some hip-hop that you don't recognize.

“You had a big morning, little buddy,” Chucky says.

“Yeah,” you say, replaying it in your head. “What've you been doing this whole time?”

He shrugs and holds up the blunt.

You sit up and look through the car window toward the gate. Very little light makes it down the tunnel, making it hard to see exactly what's out there. Looks to be about thirty of the monsters at the gate. Some lean against it awkwardly. Others bang at it. Others just wander around the small tunnel.

There's a Gatorade bottle between the two of you. You smell vodka. Chucky puts his massive hand around the neck and shakes it around like a joystick.

“Any other way out of this place?” you ask.

“Nope. Just the gate. This is a privately owned garage—has nothing to do with the building above us, so there's no access.”

“There a phone?”

“In the office. But it's out. No cell service down here, neither.”

The office lights flicker.

“What happens if we lose power down here?”

Chucky shrugs.

You sit silently for a moment, thinking. “You think maybe that gate'll open up on its own—like some sort of failsafe so that if the power goes out no one gets trapped inside?”

Chucky leans forward, looking ultraserious. “I don't know. But that does make sense.”

The office lights flicker again, then go dark. There's a loud “shutting down” noise—reminds you of Obi-Wan pulling the tractor beam switches on the Death Star.

“Fuck,” Chucky says. “If you're right…”

Shit. Not good. Not good at all. “We gotta lock that down,” you say, not hiding the fear in your voice.

In a second, Chucky's out of the car. You follow. He runs to the office, begins rooting through the desk drawers.

“What are you looking for—maybe I can help.”

“I'll find it, I'll find it…” he says. Then, a moment later, he triumphantly holds up a heavy chain lock. “From my old motorcycle,” he says.

There's a loud grinding noise. Fuck—you whirl. You were right.

Slowly, the gate begins to lift.

Chucky darts to the gate and drops to his knees, just inches from the feet of the monsters. He loops the long chain through the bottom rung of the gate and pulls it taut toward a thin pipe that runs along the edge of the garage floor.

He loops it around—then, violently, it jerks free.

“Motherfucker,” he mutters.

The gate's nearly a foot off the ground now. Any more and
the lock won't reach. You run over to help him. The two of you tug the chain, pulling with everything you've got. Finally, you get it around the pipe, and just as the gate begins to stretch the chain to its maximum, he snaps the lock shut.

You both breathe a sigh of relief.

The gate makes a loud whining noise—then starts to click. Chucky smiles.

The zombies watch you, anxious, as they bounce back and forth on their feet. Some have dropped to the ground and are swiping their hands in the gap, trying to get at you. You and Chucky step back a few feet.

“You think it's going to hold?” you ask.

“Nope.”

“Well, we gotta do something… we need a plan!”

“Already got one.”

“Huh?”

“While you were sleeping, I was thinking about how we might get out of here. C'mon.”

You follow Chucky across the garage. He grabs the shotgun from the Mercedes and carries it by the middle.

“There,” Chucky says.

In front of you is some sort of large vehicle, covered by a large green tarp.

“What is it?”

“C'mon,” he says.

You each take a corner of the tarp and pull.

Before you sits a big old GMC pickup truck. Mounted on the front is a red snowplow. Two big, round lights sprout out of the front corners of the hood like antennas on a grasshopper.

You look it up and down. Grab the plow and shake it. It's rusty, but solid. It's perfect, you realize.

Chucky raises the shotgun slightly. “So.… you doing the driving,” he grins, “or the shooting?”

FUCK THAT NOISE

Nope. This ain't for you—not dying here. Not at this man's hands.

Anthony lunges as you run past, ducking underneath his arms. In a second, you're out the door and in the alley.

Zombies everywhere. Hands grab at you. You push through. Turn on to the street.

A taxi is up on the curb, idling, its front end crashed through a bodega window. No driver.

You book it across the street. They're behind you, closing in. One grabs at your shirt, pulls you back. You jerk free, rip open the car door, and dive inside.