Decaying Humanity (3 page)

    On the sixth day, the stove stopped working and we had to switch to petroleum camping cans. They were nice to have when you were camping, which I suppose at this point we practically were, but they severely lacked in comparison. The movies never showed this part, the small things that we had never dealt with before. We were safe and well stocked with supplies, enough to last at least a month. I still found myself complaining and griping, but it made me feel like an ass each time I did. Dammit though, it was hot and humid and it made me cranky. At this point I think we would have killed a man if he walked by with an ice cream cone or anything cold. Jugs of protein powder had never been my favorite thing but they weren’t that bad, with milk. Now, with lukewarm bathtub water it was hard for me to swallow them without hesitating.
    On the seventh day, a fight broke out in our front yard. We only peeked through the blinds at the tail end, but it ended with a teenage girl being stabbed to death. A grizzled older man scavenged things from her body, all the while looking over his shoulder as if he was being watched. He snatched up a few items and ran off towards the park. We missed the start of their “
conversation
,” so we couldn’t determine if he killed her solely for her stuff or another reason entirely. At first we just sat there staring at her corpse from the window. Nearly an hour had passed and neither one of us said a word. We eventually left our vigil and tried to play a card game, but every few minutes one of us would have to peek out the window. Each time I went back I half expected her to be stumbling down the road in search of brains. Instead, she just laid there, face down in the grass.
    “Do you think it works like in
Super Biters 6
?” Harvey asked.
    “That was the one where their body parts all act independently and if you cut off the head it still tries to bite you?”
    “Oh, I meant the other one, you know the one where the virus was in the air and it infected everyone. Whenever they died, no matter the cause, they would turn,” he replied.
    “That’s
Super Biters 7
,” I responded. “I don’t know what time frame we would be looking at, but she has been in the grass for almost six hours and hasn’t moved. If I had to guess, I would say that for the time being we could check that theory off our list.”
    So the corpse of a young woman lay in our front lawn for two days. She began to do what corpses do—she began to rot. The sun barred down on her and the air was so humid. It was so strong; we even caught whiffs of her from inside. She had bloated up and crows had started picking at her. It was hard to watch, but even harder to look away.

    Then, on the tenth day, it happened. Harvey ran from the living room window to my room and nearly knocked over the cheap kitchen table. He shook my shoulder while whisper-yelling for me to look out the window. I followed him over to the window and peered through the slats and there it was.

    A large lumbering man in an Auto Fixit jumpsuit moved toward her body like a slow motion homing missile. His face was battered and smeared with oil and blood. As he crossed through the yard, his mouth made a wide chewing motion and he swatted and reached for the girl’s corpse, even though he was still a good distance away. His right eyelid had drooped low enough that his eye looked like a crazy white marble, staring intently on the corpse. The left leg of his jumpsuit was shredded away, revealing a nearly eaten leg. He walked in a broken, limping shuffle. He, or it, switched randomly between dragging one leg and walking slowly on both. He tripped over a soft spot in the yard and fell onto his chest. It didn’t appear to lack the strength or motor skills to stand up, but struggled to find the focus. His brain seemed at least half occupied on moving toward that corpse. He crawled about 10 feet before finally getting back up. Watching his thirty-second journey felt more like an hour. He was slow, but not slow enough that I would want to go outside and try my luck.

    “At least they don’t move like the ones in “
Xombie Marathon 2
,” I whispered after noting his speed. Harvey simply nodded. Perhaps I had spoken too soon.
    This bloody beast of a man got within ten feet of the girl and suddenly rushed at her with a burst of speed that was out of character from his previous stroll. He fell on top of her and for a second was stunned by the decision of where to begin. I looked away and he dove his teeth into her soft peeling midsection. It wasn’t the initial act of a zombie eating a corpse that made me sick, it was his persistence.

    That thing sat there and ate her. The movies lie to you, someone gets tackled by a biting zombie, they scream and reach out for help and the screen fades to the next scene. What they don’t show you is the five-hour ordeal, where the monster eats every piece of her. I looked on in horror as he clawed and gnawed at her, attempting to consume her entirely. Harvey covered his mouth suddenly and muttered something about pants. I looked closer and while the man’s stomach had severely bloated; it was the back of his pants that made me also cover my mouth. The back of his jumpsuit was now drenched in blood and clumps of half chewed meat. The chunks rolled from his torn pants leg and started to pool next to his knee. As he kneeled in the grass it was…

    “Oh my God, is it…” I started.

    “Shitting her?” Harvey interjected.

    “I think he’s out of room. Is it just being forced out the back end? I mean do they even digest things?”

    “Hell if I know, but it’s…” Harvey paused, clearly trying not to gag. “It’s so much worse than I ever thought it would be.”
    It had broken her apart and chewed on the bones and organs. It even looked somewhat excited to find some of the parts he had already eaten, laying in the dirt by his knees. It shoveled these recycled morsels back into its gaping maw for a second time. Even the chewing was disturbing; it was an awkward mechanical up and down, open and shut motion that let a good portion fall to the ground.

    It was never-ending, and we had both taken breaks from watching this horror show, but, we had to watch. Where would it go after it finished, if it ever finished? Would it smell us? How the hell do they hunt their food? If we wanted to survive, we needed to learn the basics about this creature. When he finished his meal we would learn an important lesson—are we safe inside? I had been gripping my machete so tightly that my hand began to throb.
    After nearly seven hours, he had eaten all that he could. He even recycled previously eaten pieces multiple times until the lawn looked like someone had dropped a bucket of chum. So we waited and watched as the man-creature finally stopped and looked around as if broken free of his trance. He rose to his feet and looked around. He spun around drunkenly, even seeming to look right into our window and then he just froze. It was like someone flipped his off switch and his shoulders just slumped over and he stood there swaying slightly in breeze.

    “What the hell is it doing?” Harvey whispered.

    “Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing,” I responded.

    Nothing is exactly what he did for about 40 minutes. His head was slumped down, staring at his feet. Every so often he would lift his head to look around. Maybe it was trying to catch a scent or see something, but it just remained there motionless.

    Out of nowhere, it suddenly turned towards the park and raised its head. It moved with a sense of purpose again and made the same reaching motions as before. I can only imagine it detected a new meal. I was left pondering how they functioned and more importantly, how would to avoid them. Just seeing one answered the big question, were there really zombies? Now, we knew the terrifying answer.

    I tapped the back of my pen against the pages of the opened cow-patterned notebook.

    “Don’t forget to put the burst of speed in there,” Harvey said while pacing around the room. I always loved lists and notes; it was part of my OCD I suppose. I felt that we needed to document what we saw. Even though, I would never be able to get those images out of my head.

    “Yeah, I wrote down ‘average walk speed with moderate sprint when close,’” I said while showing him my notes.

    He scratched his head. “We should have done something,” he muttered.

    “What do you mean?”

    “Look at those notes, we barely know anything,” he said while putting his thumbs against his temple. “We don’t know if they hunt by smell, sight, or sound.”

    “What are you suggesting we should have done? I’m not volunteering to go out there and run laps around him while you time his mile run,” I said.

    “No, hell no, but I could have opened the back door while you watched him. I could have banged a pot or yelled out to see if they are attracted to sounds,” Harvey said.

    I raised my eyebrows and glared at him for a second, “Dude, that’s freaking smart.”

    Harvey was right. We needed to know our enemies. Survival would depend on knowing the patterns and the abilities of the undead.

    “I have a feeling we’ll get plenty of chances to fill this notebook,” I said.

    “Hey Jim, don’t let me puss out next time. We can’t get scared if we are going to live through this.”

    “Alright, we’ll keep each other strong.”

    That night I laid in the bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it hung motionless from its useless wires. The silence was still the hardest thing to get used to. There was no electricity, no air flow, and no lights. The constant silence made the sudden explosion of noise all the more nerve-wracking.

    First there was a bright light that filled the living room and then there were sounds of gunshots right outside. Seconds after the gunshots our cheap magnetized alarm started blaring.

    Being so terribly startled I began to shake as a wave of cold fear ran across my body. Wrestling with my mind was a battle all of its own. I remembered what Harvey had asked earlier, we had to get past our fear if we were going to survive. Breaking free of my frozen panic, I did the only thing I could think of—I grabbed my machete and rolled onto the floor.

    My door had been left open in a futile attempt to get more fresh air. I could see the silhouette of a thin man in full camouflage step over our front door, which was now in halves on the floor. He carried a large shotgun and looked around for the alarm. When he saw the tiny white box making the ear piercing wails, he promptly smashed it with the butt of his weapon. He muttered something to himself and then yelled out to the idling truck. “Keep her running; I’ll be out in no time.”

    I scurried to my bedroom window and peeked out. What sat in our yard was a large black truck with spotlights mounted in the back. I could only see one other person at the wheel and what looked like a full haul of supplies in the back. I’d rather take my chances with zombies than raiders. My nerves were shot and I held the machete with both hands and pressed the handle against my forehead. I secretly hoped that my trusty sword would impart to me a great plan of attack. It didn’t.

    I was at such a disadvantage. I couldn’t rush him and I couldn’t just hide. If I hid and he took all our food, well then he pretty much just killed us. This was one of those moments I realized that I had to fight … to the death. The only advantage I had was that I knew the house. My room was right next to the kitchen cupboard, which I prayed he would go to first. If I were him I would remove all threats first, I just had to hope he was more reckless than me.

    “Hey now, I don’t want any trouble,” the man called out after flicking on a light taped to the end of his shotgun. “My group is starvin’ and I need to take half of yer supplies. If you just show yourself now we can work this out peacefully.”

    I thought to myself, bullshit. I’ve watched this scene in too many movies to fall for that. With Harvey being on the other side of the trailer, I kept thinking I had a 50% chance that this wouldn’t be my fight. The man waved his flashlight beam towards me and I ducked behind the door frame. The light started moving closer and I could practically feel his boot steps through the faded carpet. Well Harvey, this looks like my fight.

    Focus, Jim, focus. The light wavered between the bedroom and the rest of the kitchen. I could hear the loud almost sticky peeling sound of his footsteps on the fake tile as he entered the kitchen. I tried to play out each scenario in my mind. I was mentally preparing for a fight I was afraid I would lose. For some reason, my brain just kept reminding me the half useless fact; machetes are not for stabbing. I wasn’t sure how that helped me, but my mind kept repeating it like a mantra.

    I ran the scenario of tackling him blade first as he approached, but again the mantra repeated in my head. I needed enough distance to swing the machete in a way that he couldn’t respond by filling me full of buckshot. I began to play out a second scenario and then I heard the cupboard opening. I was two feet from the home invader, separated by a peach colored panel of drywall. Sweat began to pool in my hands. Was this my only chance? Where do I aim my strike and what do I do next? I was almost breathless and my mind went blank. At that moment, remembering my own name would have been a struggle.

    The flashlight beam filled the kitchen with a motionless light. The fact that it was taped to his weapon led me to hope it was propped up against the wall. I was filled with a rush of sickening adrenaline. This was my moment. I came around the door frame and there he was, filling a backpack with our food. I raised my shaking arm and stared at him trying to prepare a blow that would split his camouflaged hat in two.

    Suddenly the truck bellowed a deep horn blast and the light flashed. Harvey was a couple steps past our broken door and froze in an almost cartoonish tip-toe stance. He had a dumbfounded look as he was highlighted in the dark room. The man in our cabinet turned away from the food, grabbed his weapon and started to bring it to his shoulder. Harvey suddenly hurled himself to the floor in a desperate attempt to avoid being shot.