Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (6 page)

Limpy smiles. “Hell no.”

“OK,” Jones says, “I'll take the odds. Limpy thinks you die. I say you surprise us and live. You live, you got a place to stay. You die, you die. You understand?”

You swallow. “I understand.”

“So, what's it gonna be, kid?”

THROUGH THE GLASS PAINFULLY

You turn, grab the chair next to you, and give the huge glass window two hard whacks. It cracks.

Tommy's coming for you. No time to finish clearing out the glass.

You leap.

The glass that overlooks the Garden shatters as you fall through. It's not like the movies where Bruce Willis just jumps through and keeps moving. The window explodes into a thousand tiny glass razor blades.

Blood pours over your eyes—so much that you can't see. You take one step and fall—your calf muscle is sliced to shit. You try to catch yourself, but spin awkwardly around the back of a chair and tumble down the stairs. It's a long way down—and there's nothing there to stop you. You try to grab hold of something, anything—but gravity's winning.

Your head smashes against a heavy cement step, and everything goes black.

You come to, sprawled out on the court. A gigantic zombie looms over you. Through the death mask, you recognize him. Starting center for the New York Knicks.

He leans down, rips you to your feet with his monstrous hands. Takes a chunk out of your shoulder, then lets go. You drop back onto the court.

Jesus. Five of them approach. The Knicks' starting roster. Standing over you. Ready for dinner…

THE BAR IT IS

Praying for good news, you forget the cab and head for the bar. Almost on cue, the crowd thins. People pour through the doorway, poking at their phones. Good sign or bad, you don't know.

You step inside—take in the heavy smell of beer and spilt liquor. With the TV crowd gone, the majority of those left are the serious drinkers, the lifers. The guys who spend early Monday afternoons in a bar, alone. There's about a dozen of them—most at the bar, a few at the tables in the back.

The bouncer, a large, mostly fat, black guy in a Joe Namath jersey types on his BlackBerry.

“What's the news?” you ask him.

Paying you as little attention as possible, he nods to the TV hanging above the door: two talking heads at the news desk. Trying to look professional, but mostly just looking confused.

The broadcast cuts away from the studio to helicopter shots of the city. Different locations. Lincoln Center. Washington Square. Columbus Circle. Everywhere the same—zombies swarming, attacking, feasting.

Christ. This can't be real.

The broadcast switches locations again. A mass of the beasts gathering around Battery Park. Jesus—that's the southern tip of Manhattan—miles from the hospital! How the hell did they get everywhere so goddamn quickly? Then the broadcast cuts again—this time zombies milling around a deserted subway station. Your stomach turns as you realize that if just one infected person gets on a subway or on a bus or in a cab—shit,
they could get anywhere. God, these things could be on a plane and off to Antigua or Timbuktu or who-knows-the-fuck-where.

You're having trouble breathing now. Chest tight.

You catch your reflection in the mirror behind the bar. You look like you just caught a sucker punch from Mike Tyson. Everyone else wears a similar look—like maybe Mike Tyson ran around the bar real quick and sucker-punched everybody. Even the old vets, the seen-everything-and-drank-their-way-through-it-all guys—just stunned looks on their rough, withered faces. Staring at the mirror, you start to zone out—hypnotizing yourself almost. Anything to not have to look at that TV or hear the news or think about what's happening outside or imagine the nightmares the future holds.

Someone bumps into you and brushes you aside, snapping you out of your trance. A bony, thin guy, late twenties, in a slick suit with slicker hair. Wall Street, all the way. You wonder what he's doing up here during work hours, everything financial is below Fifty-ninth—maybe his doorman caught him on his way out of his fancy, prewar apartment building, told him something was going down. Or maybe his coke dealer's in the neighborhood and he's chasing a Monday morning high.

He pushes past you and edges up to the bar. Raises a wad of cash in the air. “Hey—honey!” he calls, waving the cash at the bartender.

You notice the bartender for the first time. She's a knockout. Petite—five feet at the most. Natural blond hair. Tiny Derek Jeter shirt hugs a pair of gotta-be-fake tits. She walks the length of the bar and eyes Wall Street, unimpressed. “Yeah?”

He drops two crisp hundred-dollar bills onto the bar, flashes her a toothy smile, then announces loudly: “World's ending. Drinks are on me, kiddies.”

LONG-ASS CAB RIDE

You turn your back on the bar—if it's good news, you'll find out about it later. And if it's bad, you don't want to know.

After a half hour, a cab slows to a stop at the corner of Eighty-fifth and Broadway and an older woman gets out. You hear her on her phone: “Of course I heard—I'm going upstairs right now and locking the door.”

You run for the cab. Three others do the same. You get there first, though, and you don't give in. Everyone argues. You tell the other three guys to take a hike and you get inside. “Brooklyn Bridge. And step on it,” you say, like you've turned into some badass. But there's nowhere to go just yet, so the cab just sits there. And the three guys are right outside your window, glaring at you from the sidewalk. You flip open your phone and pretend to talk on it.

You've got a friend in Brooklyn—it's the best plan you can think of at the moment. You check your phone for his address and yell it out to the cabbie. He pulls out into a gap in the traffic—blabbing on his Bluetooth in a language that definitely wasn't available for study in high school.

“Can you put the radio on please?” you ask him.

He doesn't. Either doesn't give a damn or can't hear you over his stupid Bluetooth. You wonder if he has any idea what's happening right now in the city.

“Hey! Radio!” you shout, annoyed.

He shoots you a look through the rearview mirror, lets it linger for a second, then reaches down and turns the radio on. Top 40 stuff. Lady Gaga, you think.

“Thanks, but can you put the news on?” you ask.

Nothing.

“News station?”

He ignores you. You ask twice more, then give up. Oh well—probably better off not knowing anyway. You look out the window. Seconds later you're biting your lower lip and bobbing your head to the music. What? It's a good song.

Back to your phone. You try to send a few texts, but the connection keeps timing out. You agree to resend in digital, whatever the hell that means.

Half an hour later, you've gone maybe ten blocks. Streets are absolutely packed—unlike any other Monday, 11:30 AM you've ever seen in the city. It's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade status. You could walk faster than this.

You try to call your friend in Brooklyn.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Then an automated voice, “I'm sorry, due to
unusually high call volume
we are unable to connect your call at the moment. Please try again later.”

Goddamn it—fucking AT&T.

Traffic's still not moving. Anxious, you pick at the stickers on the back of the driver's seat. Watch the news on the little TV. It's the same cheesy clip playing over and over: Regis and Kelly talking about the wonders of New York City. All sorts of shots of landmarks and multicultural crowds and all that good shit. Just begging for tourist money.

Outside, it's nothing like that. Not the iconic city that never sleeps. Not the Manhattan from
Manhattan
. No—it's a powder keg—a city on the verge of exploding.

Finally, after an hour and a half of stop-and-stop-some-more traffic and a forty-three-dollar cab fare, you can see the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. And it's just what you had
feared. Absolute gridlock—on the street and on the bridge. Police try to direct traffic, but it's useless.

Thousands of people are crossing the bridge on foot. A mass exodus. A guy on a ninja bike drives past you, weaves in and out of the traffic, past the police, and up onto the on-ramp. Bastard. Guys on motorcycles have all the luck.

You sit, anxious. An hour goes by. You move maybe ten feet. A cop directs traffic. Finally, he waves his hands in the air and gives up. He walks through the maze of cars, hops on his police bike, hits the siren, and drives up onto the bridge.

Again, pricks with motorcycles.

You're about to give up, pay the fare, and join the pedestrians when you hear it. The sound. You can just barely make it out over the din of horns, sirens, and angry New Yorkers. Shouting. Screaming. It's the sound of panic.

Out the window, to your left, you see it. People running.
Stampeding
. Behind them, the zombies. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. A thick mass of the dead—stretching all the way across First Avenue. A goddamned army of the things, headed right for you…

THE HAMMER AND THE DRILL