The Last: A Zombie Novel (9 page)

I pause to catch my breath. Maybe a minute ago I was in the house and now I'm here. A tall tenement rises to the side and a flash of movement inside catches my eye. There, perhaps on the fifth floor, someone's banging against the glass. I study the building's façade and pick out more of them, trapped like prisoners in hundreds of stacked cells, looking out at me and hammering on the glass.

Can they see me? Seconds later the glass on one of the high-up windows goes out, falling like a spray of twinkling light, followed by a body. I catch flashes of a dark naked male, then he hits the cement with a disgusting wet thump. A second later he gets up, ruptured and bloody and with his neck broken at a hideous angle, and starts shuffling for me

More glass smashes. Bodies rain down from above like cats and dogs. The old lady hobbles closer. I rev the moped and race on, up onto the overpass by 134
^th
. Pulaski Park whizzes by again, empty basketball courts baking in the morning sun, and I thump onto the bridge. There are no zombies milling here now, they're all at my house.

I veer around the tipped delivery truck and a few abandoned cars. Halfway over, with a fresh salty breeze blowing down the river, I come upon the wreckage of the plane fuselage, lying across most of the road. The oval tube of the plane's body is blackened by fire.  

A zombie child bursts out from behind a car and I yank the handlebars left. For a moment I think I'll go off the bridge where the railings have been scoured away, but I get the moped under control and race on, leaving the child running behind.

Scattered around the fuselage lies all manner of charred wreckage: narrow food trolleys spitting up plastic ready-meal trays, in-flight magazines like a drift of glossy snow, broken bodies, some of them crawling. There's a bank of seats tipped upside down, and zombie hands wave out from underneath like legs on a millipede. For a surreal second I imagine the bank picking itself up and coming hurtling after me, running on hundreds of zombie arms.

I angle for a slim gap between the fuselage and the edge of the bridge. I'm not getting off and creeping through on foot now; there's too many of them behind me. I duck low on the moped, rev the engine, and cut through the gap like Evel Knievel through a ring of fire.

Whoo! 

The road is clear beyond. There are zombies, but I'm getting good at the moped now and evade them easily. I take it down off the bridge and onto 1
^st
Avenue, into Manhattan proper. This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done, driving into one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, but whatever, I ride on. I flash briefly on Rick Grimes riding his horse into Atlanta and laugh.

I'm on an iron steed. A lime-green moped. When they make the movie of my life it will look pretty silly.

I squeeze the accelerator and accelerate south. The streets are nearly deserted here, but for a preponderance of eighteen-wheelers, and I figure the infection must have hit some time deep in the middle of the night for them to be so many of them, with so few commuters and so many people trapped in their houses still, wearing pajamas.

I speed under the green copper bridges on 125
^th
and 124
^th
, past a night bus, a cop car, the wreckage of a downed helicopter lying in a bonfire-like heap of shattered glass and twisted metal pilings, torn from the face of a nearby skyscraper.

Thomas Jefferson Park whizzes by on my left, the Metropolitan Hospital on 99
^th
on my right, where zombies wearing white gowns wander in the car parks. They all pick up my trail and follow along. Around 94
^th
street I hit the canyon walls of skyscrapers that will flank both sides of the street all the way down to Coney Island, boxing me in.

There are more of them on the streets now, rising up like floodwaters: businessmen and women heading home late or coming into work early, revelers in lurid makeup and skin-tight tops enjoying a walk of shame that will last until their bodies rot into the ground, a fat guy in a sumo diaper, his great gray haunches quivering with dead meat.

I round a long stretch limo on 92
^nd
, quietly ticking in the rising morning heat. Down 87
^th
street I glimpse a horde wandering down a beautiful, tree-lined avenue. Everything is so surreal and seen like postcards. A KFC near 90
^th
has its doors wedged open by the husk of a dead dog, its entrails splayed across the sidewalk in a dark inkblot of dried blood.

Through the 80s and into the 70s I go, through the 70s to the 60s until on 65
^th
street outside a gorgeous little sandstone church I spy the pale tide of a herd ahead, and pull sharply right. I speed three streets over to Lexington Avenue, clear of the swarm; god knows what they were gathering for. Another survivor?

Down Lexington I put the pedal down, hitting eighty through a school zone, past Bloomingdales with its flags out on a long clear stretch to the sea. I've never seen New York so empty except in movies. The odd zombie stumbles along like a latecomer to the party over on 1
^st
, and I whizz by. The streets are narrower here, three lanes wide and claustrophobic. My knuckles ache from clutching the handlebars so tightly. There's blood on my hands and sleeves.

Around 56
^th
street I catch my first glimpse of the Chrysler building's crenellated top, unbowed, jutting confidently above the other buildings. It follows me all the way down to 42
^nd
street. On 40
^th
I hit another horde and swing left over to 2
^nd
Avenue, then juice it the rest of the way down to 23
^rd
and past the Metro station stairs. There I swing right, racing along my old commute route, and halt the moped bang in front of Sir Clowdesley.

Bizarre.

Clowdesley looks like a New Orleans bar from the outside, all weathered brown wood and Nemo-ish spiral copper designs, with a perplexity of Hard Rock-like literary merchandise pasted to the windows and decoupaged to the walls.

I jump off my steed and stride up to tug on the stout wooden door, only to find it's locked. I tug harder as if that'll make a difference, but it doesn't.

I press my face to one of the windows to look inside. It's empty of course, with no sign of Lara. That doesn't mean anything though, and I've nowhere else to go. I pull my dumbbell bar out of my pack and smash through one of the windows. I can only hope it's high enough that they can't climb through. I scrape the frame clear and drag myself in.

I've reached Sir Clowdesley!

I sit at one of the wooden window seats in my favorite old haunt, which I am doubtless now mayor of for life, and catch my breath, thinking about all the mad, horrific, disgusting things I just saw.

Level one cleared.

POST-APOCALYPSE

8 – CLOWDESLEY

It is surreal to be here.

I look into the shadowy interior, up the stairs to the cozy library where I used to sit and dream about zombies, and marvel at how nothing has changed. The air still smells of fine-roasted Jamaican beans. If I close my eyes I can hear the clatter of the baristas whacking milk froth off their steamer sieves.

It was only yesterday. Now there's no one left to govern. 

I get my breath back and stand up. There's plenty to do, and Lara might come at any minute. I make purposeful strides, formulating a new plan with every step. I need to get secure, I need to put up a flag for Lara to see, and I need to figure out what the hell is going on.

First things first.

At the coffee bar I lift the hinged counter section and go to the door in back. Inside lies a pokey little office; desk, chair, a few neat gray filing cabinets and a thumbtack-studded corkboard with all kinds of notifications. It's darker here, lit by only sunlight from the front windows. I hold up my phone in flashlight mode.

Lara

She's on the work-rota Tuesday through Saturday.

I rustle in the desk and come up with a roll of duct tape and a few marker chalk pens. An idea pings into my head like a twitter notification, and I bring it up.

Approved.

I climb to the coffee bar and find the release clip to pull the blackboards out. There are four of them in total, a lovely coincidence. Each is about a meter square, and I lay them out on the floor.

A zombie rolls up to the broken window like it's a drive-thru booth, a red-haired lady with crusted blood down her throat.

"We're closed," I tell her. She doesn't listen. I drag one of the big sofas over and upend it in front of her face. It covers the window almost completely.

Good enough for me. She thumps against it and I tune her out.

The blackboards are covered in stuff about coffee; gentle boasts, bits of art, prices, wit. I spray the boards down with liquid detergent and smear the old chalk trails off using a bar rag. They come away in rainbow sweeps, leaving a pure black canvas behind.

I reflect on the infinite possibilities it offers. I am an artist, after all.

I write my message one huge letter to a board.

L A R A

Four boards for four letters, like panels in a comic. I paint them in bright yellow, which really pops against the black. I add a message on the bottom of the first board.

I'm inside, Lara. It's Amo. If I'm not here when you come, please wait. I'll be back.

Finally I draw a quick cartoon zombie at the edge of the last panel, all pale-faced and white-eyed, for fun. It's standing at a door and staring at the doorbell with its jaw hanging down, to take the edge off the reality. It's not funny, but it looks, what, poignant? Irreverent?

I put the boards up across the windows. They lean nicely against the wall above the windows. I tape them steady with duct tape. The zombie lady outside tracks me, whacking whichever window I'm standing behind.

When all the boards are up it's quite dark inside Sir Clowdesley. I cover the last window with bits of paper from the office, and the zombie lady stops thumping so much. That's good information to have.

I stand and look into the darkness. I bring up my phone and double-tap it. Craziness has already invited me in, and right now I need to hear another voice.

"What now Io?"

"To what are you referring, Amo?" she answers.

"All this." I spread my arm to take in the dark and empty coffee shop.

"I believe we're in your favorite coffee shop. Aren't you mayor here?"

I chuckle. Io is pretty good at liaising with other apps, even with the Internet down. "I am."

"All hail the mayor," she says puckishly. "You have coffee to hand out today."

I snort a laugh. I have all the coffee in New York.

"I'll get right on that," I say. I pocket the phone and the hammer. It's a much better weapon than the dumbbell bar, which I slot into my bag next to its twin.

Moving on. I need to get secure. Ideas race through my head. Paper bales didn't do a thing. Doors and windows don't stop them. I need something sturdier, a wall of some kind.

I glance around the dark shop. I've got a few shelves, some tables and chairs, enough to reinforce the windows maybe, maybe enough to stop the flood at the door, but what good will that do me if a flood is all Lara sees?

She won't come near Sir Clowdesley if it's thronged with bodies. I need to clear a space so she can see my sign. I need to press outward and reclaim the street.

Nothing in here can do that. But I have an idea of what might. 

I climb the stairs into the dark of the library mezzanine. The familiar smell of old, well-worn paper surrounds me, mingling with the rich aroma of ingrained coffee. It feels like safety. In the corner lies the wood-paneled fire door in the corner. The emergency light above it glows a dull green.

I stride over with my dumbbell club in my hand. My heart hammers in the silence. A simple twist of the lever in the handle unlocks it, and I jerk backward and it swings open smoothly.

Beyond there's a nondescript stairwell lit by emergency lights. Cold dank air streams over my face. Raw concrete steps spiral upward in a tight oblong.

"Hello?" I call.

No answer comes. It makes sense there'd be no one on these steps in the middle of the night.

Across the way are the toilets and the glow of another emergency exit. I walk over, depress the emergency bar and swing the door open. Light floods in, and I step out to a tiny and ancient loading dock, about a meter tall above the ground, like a balcony onto the inner square of a New York block, fully enclosed by buildings. It strikes me like a peaceful oasis. A cracked and weed-sprung road leads twenty yards away, overshadowed on all sides, then stops dead at a wall.

It's a remnant, I suppose; a donut block in the middle of New York, with a road that would have once allowed resupply trucks in and out, now sealed up by buildings. I eye the surrounding structures. They all have windows and doors facing this way. There is not a single zombie about.

I found my escape route. Through this tiny forgotten access road I can enter any building in the block, and exit at any point I like on 23
^rd
or 24
^th
, 1
^st
or 2
^nd
Avenue. It's a good thing to have.

I duck back inside.

The stairwell takes me up, winding. The air is clammy and cold. The door to the second floor doesn't open. I give it a few desultory hits with the bar, accomplishing nothing but putting tiny dints in the metal handle. I keep on up. The third floor is locked too, but the fourth floor door opens readily.