You obviously have a direct line from your brain to your urinary tract. That’s why you’re a fucking dimwit.”
Teddy points at me. “This guy has crabs and herpes and who knows what else.”
He looks at Fergi. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s banged so many skanks, he needed to buy a whole new belt because he ran out of room for notches on the old one.”
This is true, actually, but I just laugh and shake my head at him.
“Look, this is none of my business,” Fergi says. She turns to me, softening. “I’ll come out in fifteen, okay?”
“Yeah.”
She leaves and Teddy slams his door shut, still shouting insults at me as he goes.
I have to smile at the whole thing. Teddy and I’ve been friends for so long, we’ve had bad arguments like this in the past where we just unleash hell on one another. In a few hours, we’ll be over the whole thing anyway.
In some ways, it’s a comfort. Arguing like that makes me feel more human, less like I’m about to turn into something ghastly.
I glance around to make sure there are no zombies in sight, and just as importantly, no people from my caravan coming out of the store. The last thing I need now is for someone like Verne to see that I’ve received a zombie bite.
I try pushing my sleeve up my arm to get a look at the damage, but it’s no good.
There’s a small rip where the creature’s teeth penetrated the my shirt, and it’s too small to get a view of the wound. So I slide my arm out of my shirtsleeve and then pull the shirt up to my shoulder.
“Damn.”
It’s pretty nasty. I can see actual tooth marks in my arm, as if my skin were nothing but a plaster cast used to make mouth molds for his dentist appointment. Blood is oozing down my arm in thin rivulets. All in all, it’s not that bad. Nothing a course of antibiotics wouldn’t fix in a normal situation—and besides, I need to take a course of antibiotics for the rash on my junk.
But this isn’t a normal situation. Because of this outbreak, it’s a life and death infection.
Maybe if I was at a hospital they could amputate my arm or something to save me. Do a blood transfusion. Something. Anything.
“Fuck me.” Such a small thing. A few teeth marks, a little blood, but nothing that should kill me. And yet it’s going to kill me…well, not really. It’s going to unkill me, turn me into one of those undead creatures.
I close my eyes momentarily and try to picture what it will be like when I’m crazed with the need for human flesh. For some reason I picture myself chowing down on Teddy Foreskin’s leg like he’s a Thanksgiving turkey.
He’s screaming and trying to get away and I won’t stop eating his big dumb leg.
In this little mental fantasy I’ve pictured, Teddy’s shouting, “Gobble gobble!” at the top of his lungs.
As I picture this scenario, I ask myself whether it appeals to me. Do I feel the first pangs of hunger at the thought of consuming human flesh?
It doesn’t seem like it. My mouth curls into a grimace.
I open my eyes and pull my shirt back down over my arm. I wonder how long the transformation will take. I wonder when the fever will hit, the headache, the inability to get out of bed.
And then comes the end. Me rising up and eating whoever might be near enough to make a decent meal.
I should probably leave right now, isolate myself from everyone I could hurt.
Maybe I should even kill myself.
Another image flashes through my brain—this time, I’m leaping off a twenty-five story building and splattering on the concrete below.
It sounds like a decent enough way to go, but I know that I won’t kill myself. I have a hunger to survive, to live (no pun intended). I’ve always been terrified of death and in truth, being one of the undead sounds a bit more appealing than being one of the regular dead.
If I’m undead, I still have goals.
Sure, they’re very basic goals. Well, pretty much just one singular goal: eat people, as many people as possible until someone shoots me through my zombie brain.
But goals are still goals. There’s something slightly reassuring about the fact that I’ll be working towards something—something…human. Yeah, I’ll have switched teams, like when Johnny Damon switched from the Red Sox to the Yankees. Everyone in Boston hated him for being a traitorous money grubbing shithead, but at the end of the day he was still playing baseball, just wearing a different jersey.
Now I’ll be playing for the other side. The guys with missing limbs and rotten, smelly breath and vacant eyes, drooling mouths, moaning and shambling my way towards whatever victims I can rustle up for my constant feasting.
It’s not what I’d choose to do in a perfect world, clearly, but I need to look at the silver lining here.
So I make the decision that I’ll embrace my zombiehood, when it comes, but as one last gesture of my humanity, I’ll make sure to get the hell away from my friends and crawl somewhere that I can’t hurt them when I change over.
At the same time, I want to spend a few last minutes with Teddy and Shep and Fergi. I just need to get away from them in time. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that when the time comes.
With my mind made up, I have nothing to do now but wait.
***
We’ve just pulled into Shep’s driveway, relieved to be back, but with one last hurdle to get over before we’re safe.
After getting weapons from Dick’s Sporting Goods store, we had some time in the parking lot to discuss strategy. Nobody had the energy left to try and find a better place to hide out, so we ended up agreeing to come back to Shep’s house. Nobody wanted to try the police station or a school, even though Verne begged.
Tomorrow, we told him. Tomorrow we’ll try the police.
Verne still thinks going to the police will solve everything. The guy is dumber than Teddy after he’s had a twelve pack of Budweiser.
In any case, we’re home, sort of.
I turn my car off and look over at Teddy. Ever since I realized I was going to be a zombie soon, I’ve been feeling a bit sentimental. “Sorry about earlier, buddy,” I say, patting his shoulder.
He smiles, relieved at my change of heart. “Me too, man.” Then he turns to Fergi, who’s sitting in the backseat with a loaded crossbow in one hand. “By the way, I was totally kidding about Danny having a venereal disease. He’s clean as a whistle.”
“I’m sure,” she replies, rolling her eyes.
“I’m serious,” Teddy tells her. “You want me to suck his cock and prove it? I will, that’s how sure I am.”
“Chill, Ted. She doesn’t care,” I say, grinning at him like a dad looking at his mentally challenged son. Sure, Teddy’s a dumbass but he’s my dumbass.
“I’m just saying,” Teddy continues, “she should know you’re a good guy. A good friend.”
“Thanks. Good looking out.” I clap him on the back. “Now hurry inside before those zombies turn you into pasta primavera.”
Teddy bolts out of the car, just as Verne and his crew empty out of his van and head for the house.
“We better hurry up,” I say, looking out the back window and seeing about four zombies shambling towards us from across the street.
Fergi opens her door and slides out. “You coming, Danny?”
“I’ll bring up the rear, don’t worry about me.”
“But you don’t have anything to defend yourself.”
I smile at her. She doesn’t know I’m already a dead man. “It’s fine, honey.
Move your ass.”
I step out of the car and look across at my new people, my soon to be family. The four of them move as one, a team effort in every sense of the word. Individually, these creatures are slow as molasses, robotic, with little to no intelligence. But the more of them that congregate in one spot, the more dangerous they become.
It’s their teamwork, I decide, that makes them so dangerous. These four are on their way to us now. They won’t get anybody this time. Even now, the last of our group is running inside Shep’s house. The front door will slam and lock, and these zombies have no ability to so much as turn a door handle, and certainly they don’t know how to pick up a two by four to use as a weapon.
But they won’t stop coming, and more of them will join in the hunt. Now there are four—I bet in a week there will be twenty-four or maybe even a hundred and four.
They’ll find a way in at some point, or we’ll have to come out.
It suddenly hits me that in a week I’ll be on the other side. I might be one of the guys trying to get in the house, rather than attempting to keep these monsters out.
How long do I have left? Should I just leave and crawl away to my doom? With Nana it only took the better part of one day for her to turn, but she was old. Maybe for a young, strapping buck like myself, it will take a few days or longer before I succumb to zombie sickness.
They’re coming closer now. I’m in awe of them—in awe of the fact that soon, very soon, I will be no different from them. It’s like swimming into the ocean and seeing a shark, and somehow realizing that in a few hours, you’ll actually be a shark. Dead eyed, cold-blooded, drifting through dark, frigid waters, searching for food and nothing else.
One of the zombies lets out a yawn-like groan as its eyes fix on me.
“You want a piece of me?” I yell at the thing, suddenly angry. “I’m not afraid of you, motherfucker.”
From Shep’s house comes a chorus of yells for me to get inside.
“Danny! What are you doing?” Fergi screams.
I look back at her. Her titties are so nice, so fresh and her nipples would probably taste like lemon drops. “I would have fucked you so good,” I say softly.
Maybe it’s time for me to go out like a goddamn hero. Maybe this is the way to do it—go out in a blaze of glory, like that corny Bon Jovi Song says.
I step forward with my fists up high. “Come on you stupid bitches. Let’s rumble.”
The first zombie reaches me. It’s an older fellow, with a white, straggly beard, wearing suspenders. His shirt is covered in dark red blood and his sinewy arms reach towards me, mouth yawning with hunger more desperate than any hunger I can imagine.
His desperation enrages me and I let loose with a flurry of punches. His head bobs back and forth as I unleash on him, and down he goes.
“That’s right, bitch. One-two combo gets ‘em every time.”
It occurs to me that I’ve gone a little insane. Maybe a whole lot insane. Perhaps this is part of the zombie infection that even now is spreading through me, taking over.
But there’s no time to think about that now, because two more are upon me. One of them, a short Hispanic looking woman in a matching red sweat suit—the other, a younger kid, maybe seventeen years old in just his shorts and flip flops. He’s missing an eye and a huge hunk of the side of his head.
Is this really how I want to go out? I ask myself. Being eaten by a short Hispanic woman and a kid wearing flip flops and short shorts?
Then I’m karate kicking the lady in the gut. She tries to lean down and bite my leg. I grab her by the hair and bring my knee up into her face. It shatters her nose and blood sprays everywhere. She looks up at me, mouth grimacing, teeth showing like a rabid dog. Scarlet blood drips from her destroyed snout. She lunges again.
“Shit, you’re a fireplug, aint you?” I say, backing up a few steps as she comes forward again.
Now the little shit in his short shorts makes a grab for me. His hand claws at my bicep, wraps around it like a vice. “Shit!” I scream. He’s clawing at my wound and it hurts like hell. I swing him around and try and shake him loose as he lunges for my neck.
He almost gets me. His teeth are inches from my throat when I duck, pick him up like a WWE wrestler, and body slam him to the ground.
I stomp on his head three or four times.
With each little victory I attain, the zombies regroup. Now three others have noticed me and are coming at once, and I won’t be able to stop them. I retreat a few steps, thinking about running back to the house—except there’s nothing for me at the house.
I’ve been bitten and I’ve got this godforsaken plague. In a few hours, maybe a day or two if I’m lucky, I’ll turn.
Perhaps I should just lie down and let them get me. Pray they make it quick and I don’t get the intestines pulled out of me like the biker in Dawn of the Dead.
It’s a strange way to commit suicide, but I’m finding it kind of poetic at the moment. My arms drop to my sides. “Do your worst,” I whisper, closing my eyes as they come towards me.
And then I hear a whistling sound near my head. I open my eyes to see an arrow penetrating the skull of the zombie closest to me. It’s a clean headshot, and the thing falls backwards, lights out. Game over.
Now someone grabs me by the back of my shirt and pulls me away from my potential killers and towards the house. It’s Fergi. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
she says. “Have you lost your mind?” She keeps pulling me as the other zombies close in on us.
“Leave me alone,” I shout.
“I can’t help you if you fight me,” she says. “Come on. Get inside.”
Somehow, this act of kindness brings me back to what’s left of my senses. I realize that I don’t want to die this way, alone, with flesh-eating undead feasting on my bones.
Besides, if they truly eat me, I’d be just dead. A corpse.
The only way to continue on in some form is for me to still have my head and brain attached to my body. That old couple that the zombies dragged out of their car were picked clean. They won’t be coming back to life because there’s nothing left to come back. Same with Elisa, the girl torn apart in the supermarket.
I finally give in and go back inside the house with Fergi. “That was a good shot,”
I tell her, as we squeeze through the front door and slam it shut behind us.
Everyone’s staring at me. Verne is outraged. “What the hell is wrong with you, dude? Are you totally psycho or something?”
I shrug. “I just lost it for a minute.”
“That is soooo not okay,” he says. He’s wearing a holster across his chest with a handgun tucked into it, like a cop. “You put all of us in danger with that stunt. And you attracted those fucking zombies to the house. Now there’s more of them trying to get in here.”
“Sorry.”
Fergi looks me over. “Are you…are you hurt at all?”