“No,” I say, turning away from her so she can’t see my blood soaked sleeve. “I’m fine. Thanks for helping me out there.”
“Now we’re even,” she says.
“Um…hardly. The way I saved you was much more valiant. You still owe me.”
I walk towards the bathroom as everyone continues staring at me. Teddy follows close behind. “Danny, what the fuck was that?”
“I don’t have time for this, Ted. Not now. I have to go to the bathroom.”
He stops me as I’m about to go inside. “Tell me what’s wrong. Are you still mad at me for pissing myself?”
I look down and see his pants are still wet with urine. “No. I forgot about that, actually. You should ask Shep if he has a pair of pants you can borrow, though.”
“I’ll just take them from his dresser. He’s a little bitch about his clothes and stuff, I doubt he’d even let me borrow any.”
I nod my head, tired and wanting to check the progress of my bite. “I really gotta take a dump, bro. See you in a minute.”
“Hey, what’s that on your sleeve?” Teddy asks loudly, pointing to the wet blood.
I look down. “Oh, that’s just…I spilled some shit on myself when I was fighting those zombies in the supermarket.”
His eyes narrow and I can tell he doesn’t believe me. “Dude, I can see…there’s like a rip in your shirt right there. Did you get…you know…did one of those fucking zombies…” his voice trails off.
“Fuck.” I shake my head and pull him into the bathroom with me, shut the door.
The yellow florescent lights make both of us appear sickly and pale. “Teddy, you better keep your mouth shut about this.”
“You got bit, dude?” His eyes practically bug out of his head.
I pull my shirt off and show him. “Yeah. Thanks to you, dickhead.”
“Thanks to me? What did I do?”
“You left me in that store, asshole. I had to fight four of those things off so that Shep and Fergi could get away. And while I was trying to escape, one of them took a nibble.” I look down at my wound. It’s red, inflamed, and still dripping blood.
Teddy backs away from me like I’m possessed. “Dude. That’s…that’s like really bad, man. Do you know what this means?”
“Yes. I’m going to become one of them.” I glare at him. “But I’m not one of them yet.”
“Are you feeling hungry though? Like, do I look tasty at all to you right now?”
I shrug. “No. But I’m sure once I turn, you’ll look like a chicken parm sub.”
“Holy shit. What will Verne say—“
I take a small step towards him and he puts his arms up, like I’m a vampire coming to suck his blood.
“Verne’s not going to say shit, because nobody’s telling him that I’m infected.
Right?”
Teddy’s still got his arms up to ward me off. “Nobody’s going to say shit.”
“You say a word, I’ll make sure to eat you first, Ted. I don’t care how hungry I am and who’s around. I’ll hunt you down and eat you first. I think you’d make a tasty appetizer.”
“I said I’m not going to tell. Don’t hurt me, Danny.”
I relent, turning away from him and examining my wound in the mirror. “It’s not even that bad,” I say.
“Maybe you should put something on it. Bactine.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure a little Bactine will kill all the zombie viruses swimming around in there.”
“You never know.”
I look at him in the mirror. “You go get yourself some pants from Shep’s room.
While you’re at it, get me a new shirt to put on. Make it something generic so he doesn’t notice I’ve got his stuff on. Like a gray sweatshirt or something.”
Teddy nods stiffly. “Sure. I can do that.”
“And you keep quiet.”
He scurries out of the bathroom. I continue examining my wound, touching it lightly. It burns and aches like any injury, but it doesn’t seem worse than it should. Then again, I don’t know how a zombie infected wound differs from an ordinary wound.
Maybe it doesn’t.
A few minutes later, Teddy returns with a gray long sleeve shirt for me to put on.
I shove my old shirt under the sink, way in the back and put on the new one.
“You’re still wearing your piss pants,” I say, pointing to his soiled trousers.
“His stuff doesn’t fit me,” Teddy complains. “He’s got a size thirty-three waist and I’m a thirty-five.”
“You need to lose some weight.”
“You look nice in that shirt, Danny. I think Fergi will like that a lot.”
“Don’t suck up to me.”
“I just wonder,” he says. “Should you maybe not hang out here? I mean, when you turn and all, you’re going to try and kill all of us.”
“When I get sick, I’ll leave.”
“But maybe you won’t want to by then—“
“I’ll go when the time is right. Now get the fuck out of here.”
Teddy exits the bathroom, his head hanging low. I feel a little bad, but not too bad. There’s a high probability that he’s going to blab about my infection to anybody who’ll listen.
Teddy’s never been good at keeping secrets and I doubt he’ll start being good now.
***
We decide to try and unload the cars and bring all of our supplies into the house.
The best way to do it is to send out a decoy to distract the zombies from the house and the driveway while the supplies are unloaded.
Of course, nobody wants to be a decoy.
Finally, I volunteer. Fergi looks at me strangely. “You seem awfully interested in getting close and personal with zombies.”
“I’m just not scared of them.”
“Why not?” Verne says.
“Yeah,” Shep agrees. “Why aren’t you scared? They’re fucking terrifying.”
Teddy comes to my defense. “I’ll tell you why he’s not scared. Because this man is a beast. He’s fearless.”
“Since when?” Shep says. “I remember Danny running away from Alex Burns.”
“We were in high school,” I reply. “And everyone was scared of Burnsy.
Remember that time he set St. Jean’s hair on fire?”
“Oh, that was vicious,” Teddy agrees. “And then everyone started calling St Jean
“Pyro”, even though he was the one who got set on fire.”
Shep nods. “Enough of this bullshit. If you want to be a decoy, be a decoy.
Someone needs to do it.”
Fergi’s watching me closely, as if she suspects something. But she doesn’t join in the conversation.
Verne claps his hands, still playing student council president. “Okay, people.
Listen up. In ten minutes, Danny’s going to run outside and get the zombies’ attention—
lead them on a wild goose chase away from our house. Hopefully he can give us five or ten minutes to unload the cars and get all of our supplies inside before they come back.”
Everyone agrees with the plan, and a few minutes later, I head out. Before I go, I turn to Fergi. “Wish me luck?”
“Good luck, Danny,” she says. Her eyes are soft and pleading. I can tell she’s starting to fall for me a little bit. Well, why wouldn’t she? I saved her life and now I’m pretty much a hero. When I get sick and run off, she’ll probably cry and pine after the love we were never able to consummate.
One of my life’s regrets will definitely be that my crotch rot kept me from face fucking her before I became one of the undead.
“See you when I see you, baby,” I say, winking at her. And then I’m out into the cool night air, waving my arms and yelling. A few zombies are right outside the house, clawing at the windows over by the living room. They immediately turn and begin to take up the chase as I run through the yard yelling. Now the other zombies have taken notice, the ones trying to get in other homes, or picking at the scraps of the dead bodies on the neighbor’s lawn.
Soon, I’ve got a crew of them on my tail, probably a dozen by the time I round the bend in the road. I’m breathing heavily and my legs feel like two hunks of lead. “Shit.”
I need to pace myself because those zombies aren’t quite as slow as I thought they’d be.
They’re shambling at a fairly good clip and even though I’m out in front, they’ll keep going forever—whereas I’m already tiring out.
My plan is to simply take them around the block and then run back to the house before they can get to me.
The thing is, I never considered the notion that there might be more of them. And when I round the corner, I see there’s about forty or fifty zombies all coming down the main road ahead of me. It looks like they’re migrating somewhere, like a herd of buffalo.
A couple of the marauding undead see me and now they peel off and start in my direction.
My heart is pounding. I spin in a circle. I’ve got a bunch of them coming at me from both sides of the street.
Time for plan B. I sprint to one of the nearby houses and bang on the door.
“Hey, I’m a human. I’m not a zombie. Please let me in!”
I keep banging. I try the door and it’s locked.
I turn and look back over my shoulder. There are about thirty to forty of the buggers coming up the walkway now. “If you don’t let me in, I’ll break a window and climb in and these zombies will all follow right behind me! I’m not fucking around!” I shout at the top of my lungs. I pound on the door again.
I’m almost at the end of my rope now. My life is flashing before my eyes.
That time I was a just a tot and my babysitter, Alison Skinner, kept insisting that I should eat the ham sandwich she’d made, telling me how much I loved ham. And I told her to get it through her thick skull that I didn’t like ham. I still can recall the look of shock on her face—I didn’t even know what that phrase meant, but I’d heard my mother say that to my father before.
Another time, I was eight years old and I kissed Tanya Huggins from down the street and her mouth tasted like Hubba Bubba and chocolate milk.
When I was fifteen and I gave my first speech in class and Mister Kuznetsky said I might be a good candidate for public office someday. I was so proud of myself. Later that year, he kicked me out of class for the year because I’d drawn pictures of him and Miss Burbank (the oldest teacher in school) fucking. He said I was the most vile student, with the least potential he’d come across in all his years of teaching.
A million other memories and images flash through my fear-addled mind, until finally—the front door opens.
I jump inside just in time, and they shut the door as the first zombie of the pack leaps toward us. The door slams and the creature bashes into it head first with a hollow thunk.
“You must be a lucky man.”
I stare, not sure that what I’m seeing is real. I somehow walked into an operating room—or, at least, someone trying to pass their dining room off as an operating room.
There’s a bed jacked up in the center of the space, and someone’s lying in it. Or rather, they’re strapped into the bed. I can see ropes tying them down, and whoever is lying there is struggling mightily to get loose.
A man in a surgical gown and mask is looking at me. In one of his gloved hands, he holds a bloody scalpel. Next to him is a busty blond woman in a nurse’s outfit. But it’s more like the kind of nurse’s outfit you’d see in a porno, not a real one.
“Hey…what’s going on here?” I ask, trying not to sound too weirded out. I don’t want to offend these folks.
A teenage, pimply-faced boy is standing next to me. He must be the one who finally opened the door and let me inside. “You interrupted dad’s procedure,” he says, scowling.
“Sorry, I was about to be eaten. Lots of zombies out there,” I apologize.
“Why don’t you take a seat and watch us make history,” instructs the man in the doctor’s uniform (who I assume is pimply faced kid’s dad).
“Dad’s going to find a cure,” the kid says, smugly grinning at me. “And then we’re going to be rich, like the Kardashians.”
The nurse smiles at me. “We shouldn’t be long. Sam’s just got to cut out the heart.”
“Please, don’t let them kill me!” Screams whoever’s lying on the bed. They thrash around for a few seconds but the straps hold tight.
“Now, now, just relax. It’s in the name of science,” Dr. Sam says. And then he lowers the scalpel. A huge gout of blood spurts up as he cuts into the patient’s body.
More screaming. “Hey now, we’ve got a bleeder,” he chuckles.
I sit on the couch and watch as the pimply faced teen smiles and claps his hands.
I open the curtains and peer out the window, hoping the zombies will have moved on, so I can get the hell out of here.
But no, they’ve encircled the house and are clawing at the windows and the doors.
There are dozens of them, like ants on a crust of bread. It might be hours and hours before they disperse.
Meanwhile, I’m stuck with the Kevorkian family.
“You have to understand,” the father says when I turn back around to view the carnage. “I’m doing this in the name of science. She’s infected.”
The woman on the bed screams incoherently.
The nurse (who I can only assume is his wife) smiles sweetly at me. “Are you thirsty? Would you like some soda?”
“Nancy, for god’s sake. We’re in the middle of an operation here,” Dr. Sam replies.
“Sorry, I just thought—“
“Don’t think. You’re my nurse. I’m sweating. Pat down my forehead with a towel.”
Nurse Nancy grabs a towel from the nearby tray filled with bloody, dirty surgical instruments and pats his forehead. Meanwhile, the woman strapped on the bed is screaming again.
“Are you sure she’s infected?” I ask.
The teenaged boy glares at me. “Aunt Terry got bit when we were out at the mall today. She got bit and dad says that anyone who’s been bitten is going to turn evil.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Sam says, watching me. “You haven’t been bitten, have you?”
“Of course not,” I lie, my heart racing.
“Good. Good. In any case, I should have a vaccine soon enough, and Aunt Terry’s one life will have saved many thousands.”
“Sam, please—please don’t kill me!” Aunt Terry shrieks from the bed. It’s the first coherent statement she’s made since I got here.
“Nancy, put a gag in Aunt Terry’s mouth. She never knows when to shut up.”
As they get ready to perform the rest of the surgery, I turn away and close my eyes, trying to think of a way out of this mess.
And I can’t think of a single one.
THE END