He rocketed toward it, hoping it wasn’t bolted shut, knowing that even if it weren’t, opening it would be a challenge. Halfway there a tall, beer-bellied dead man stepped in front of him, nude and dirt streaked. There were odd puncture marks all over his body that looked as if he had been beaten with a rake.
Cooper paused to plant his foot in the swollen belly, planning to send the corpse backward and on its ass. His kick split the belly, and innards squirted through the hole. The corpse dropped and rolled, taking three more down and getting knotted in its own intestines.
A middle-aged woman stumbled toward him. Large chunks of meat bitten out of her arms. Her hair a wet tangle of knots and leaves that hung in her face. But most disturbing was her mouth. Her jaw had been pried open until it cracked and hung down—her cheeks were ripped, and he could see the tops of her bottom teeth. She came at him with bone-tipped, talon-like fingers that were bloodied and raw.
He dodged her and kept running, but she got a grip on his sleeve. She held fast and spun him around. She was pulled face down to the ground, and Cooper stomped on her head, feeling her skull give way. She tried to stand. Others were coming; he turned to run and faced four more. There were many more behind them.
He needed a weapon immediately, so he squatted down. Acute pain stabbed his injured hand as he worked his fingers beneath a stone and pried it from the dirt. He stood upright, raising it above his head, just in time to bring it down on the first zombie to arrive. The rock smashed the head like a melon, and the dead thing dropped. He hefted the rock again and dropped it on the head of a fat kid. He couldn’t keep this up forever—the rock was heavy and the dead were getting too close. This was a risky way to drop them, as he had to get within arm’s reach. One mistake and they would have him.
He cursed himself for wasting precious seconds and threw the stone with both arms at the chest of a dead man. It hit his chest and caused him to stumble but didn’t stop him.
Cooper reached the concrete pillar; a few corpses were just stumbling toward it. He slammed his elbow into the side of one head, bouncing it off the concrete. It seemed to have killed the thing. He grabbed the edge of the pillar and hauled himself up. The top wasn’t much larger than the manhole it held. He was on his stomach when the dead on the other side of the pillar arrived. He froze for a split second.
He was face to face with a kid he knew from high school. The dead kid’s arms came up and his mouth opened as he reached for him. The kid had sweatpants down around his ankles, which shortened his stride but didn’t stop him. During the fleeting moments Cooper paused, he noticed the kid’s injuries, injuries that were common on all the bodies. They were sexual in nature from the crazed orgy they’d all participated in, lots of bites and chewed-off genitals and breasts. The kid’s reproductive parts were gone, and all that was left was a large bloody hole. Fingers were missing, teeth were cracked, and his eyes were milky with death. He snapped and snarled at Cooper and tried to grab him. Cooper spun around the pillar and kicked the kid in the face.
When the kid went down, he stood, put both feet on the concrete lip on either side of the manhole cover, stuck his fingers in the holes, and hoisted the cast-iron disk above his head. It weighed close to a hundred pounds, but he was able to easily lift it, not something he could probably do under normal circumstances.
He almost dropped the heavy lid on the dead at his feet. Their hands would take hold of him in just a few feet, but if he left the cover off they would easily climb into the hole. Instead, he pulled his feet in and dropped down into the darkness, hoping the hole wasn’t too deep. He saw cast-iron rungs embedded in the concrete and aimed one foot for the top one, planning to push against the opposite wall to prevent himself from falling. As the lid clanked loudly above his head, he held on briefly, but his fingers slipped through the holes and he let go. His foot slipped through the rung, and he pushed his back against the opposite wall. He was just a few feet from the opening.
The lid wasn’t closed all the way. A thin crescent moon of light floated above his head. Rotten, damaged fingers squirmed in the gap as the dead tried to get at him. As more dead fingers filled the gap, the heavy lid shifted a little. They would eventually move it if he didn’t get it seated in the frame, or maybe they would wander off if he left. He didn’t want to chance it.
Cooper repositioned himself on the rungs for better leverage and reached up to move the lid. His hands met with slime and lumps that cracked as he pushed up. He frowned in disgust.
Has to be snails. Almost worse than the zombies,
he thought. He slid the cover over; the moon shrunk, and the lid dropped.
He couldn’t believe he was alive. He rested for a moment before climbing down into the darkness. About twenty feet down, his foot couldn’t find a rung. He used one of the LED reading lights. Below him was a five-foot drainage pipe with a few inches of slow-flowing water in it. The storm drains all led to the bay, so he followed the water flow upstream. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was going, but at least he was alive. He walked stooped over with the light, worried about coming across the dead in the confined space.
After about an hour he wanted to be in the sun, breathe fresh air, and mostly walk upright again. He decided to climb up the next set of rungs he came to. Within yards, he came to a dark shaft above his head, the bottom rung visible in the small globe of his reading light. He looked up and saw two small points of light above him that marked the end of the shaft and the location of the manhole cover. He guessed it to be about thirty feet.
At the top, he braced himself and pushed the cover up and over. It clanged loudly as it hit the street. After being in the dark so long, Cooper was blinded by the sun. He instinctively ducked back into the shaft until his eyes adjusted. When he poked his head back up, he saw he was in the middle of a one-lane tarmac road. There were trees on either side of him.
He soon discovered he wasn’t too far off course and was getting close to his next goal. He left the road and headed down a smoothly sloping hill thick with large trees but little underbrush. All seemed clear. But only minutes later he heard a faint, distant moan and slowed down. He continued forward, walking carefully and trying to be quiet. He heard the moan again; it was louder and he wondered if he was hearing a living or a dead person. There was an indefinable quality to the sound that made it seem as if it came from a living human. He stopped when he saw a pair of legs. A person wearing muddy jeans and a pair of even muddier tennis shoes was sitting just past the tree Cooper was behind. A faint and raspy voice called out, “Hello?”
Cooper walked forward and saw an old man sitting with his back to a tree. His head was a mess of matted, gone mostly gray hair. He wore threadbare clothes, and an overstuffed backpack sat next to him. But most notably, he held a shotgun pointed straight at Cooper and sneered when he saw him.
“Ha, I thought you might be one of them sick assholes.” He lifted the gun higher and waved it around. “Now give me all your shit!” His finger was on the trigger, which made Cooper wince as the old man struggled to stand. It looked as if one of his legs was injured, as his pants were torn and bloody. He grimaced in pain and favored the injured leg. He managed to get upright and lean against the tree.
About ten feet behind the old man was the edge of a large parking lot. There was a giant chain grocery store to the right and the highway Cooper was looking for to the left. He watched as a few zombies broke from the trees and stumbled onto the far side of the parking lot. There were more behind them, and within seconds a wave of corpses flowed across the lot. Most of them were nude, which was very disturbing. Even from across the lot he could see many of their wounds, blemishes, bruises, and deformities. Up close, these injuries were just horrible to look at, especially the eyes. The eyes always shook him up, almost panicked him. They were milky, filmed over, but moved and seemed to watch with some intelligence.
“Come on, idiot! Let’s have it, wallet, watch, everything,” the oldster snapped, tired of Cooper’s delay.
“You fire that and the dead will swarm us.” Cooper dug in his back pocket with his right hand as he pointed at the wave of deadheads with his left. The old man ignored him.
Cooper did have his wallet; he’d pocketed it out of sheer habit. The cash, credit cards, identification, were all useless. And by force of habit he felt as if he were handing over something very valuable.
“I can outrun them, ’sides you look like a damn piñata in that jacket.”
“You think you can outrun them?” Cooper wore somewhat colorful clothing and wondered if that would attract the dead. It made sense that brighter colors would make movement easier to detect.
“’Course I can. Now stop all your shit!” The old man’s shout caught the attention of the dead, and he shouted some more. “Give me your wallet!”
Cooper tossed it to him, feeling pissed off and even victimized. The old man dropped the gun and laughed as he hopped away. The dead were getting closer.
“Hey, you need to get moving.” Cooper tried to warn the old man, but he ignored him and hobbled into the parking lot, rummaging through the wallet. Two corpses got hold of him, and he looked surprised as they dragged him to the ground. He started to scream as others piled on.
Cooper was frozen in place, torn between wanting to help the old man and knowing it was futile. The old man stopped yelling, but to Cooper’s horror he was moaning and gurgling. He was being eaten alive, and it made Cooper sick. He debated mercy-killing the old man, but the dead were already thick across the lot.
The old man had at least five corpses kneeling over him, and Cooper heard them ripping the clothes from his body and watched as pieces of cloth flew over their heads. Then a different ripping began, a wet tearing as they pulled the flesh from his body in large patches. As the zombies jostled each other, Cooper got glimpses of them digging cracked nails into soft white flesh and pulling back slow and hard. The noise was disgusting and set his teeth on edge. It appeared they didn’t want the skin but only the meat below.
They ate with gusto, opening their jaws wide and biting off hunks of meat so large they could barely close their mouths. Often they took that juicy bite and fell backward, holding it with both hands, and ate. Then another filled the spot and took their pound of flesh.
The old man stopped moaning, but the dead continued to rip and tear at his body. Cooper heard a wet cracking, and a zombie stood up holding a forearm. The flesh was stripped off already and he held it in both hands, gnawing on it like a fat kid eating a turkey leg at a renaissance fair.
Another zombie stood, holding some swollen pinkish organ, and bit into it. It burst with fluid that ran down its chin and arms. The zombie let the bite fall from its mouth and dropped the soggy organ. It bent down and picked up a discarded hunk of meat and started chewing. As the corpse ate, its eyes met Cooper’s and he felt his bowels loosen, but he managed to keep his pants clean. It furrowed its brow as if it wanted to attack or sound an alarm, but it was focused on the task at hand. Cooper cursed himself for being so distracted, hypnotized, by the gruesome scene and dawdling.
There were so many dead in the lot that a few were close enough to notice him. Three stopped and looked right at him but didn’t moan or attack. He couldn’t figure out why, but he didn’t stick around to find out. He turned and jogged off.
He had no idea if the highway would be a safer place, but now he had no choice. In addition to the dead coming at him from the lot, the thrashing and cracking in the brush told him they were coming from behind as well. A quick look confirmed it. The woods were filled with hundreds of shambling corpses.
10.
At the top level of the five-story parking structure, it was quiet, the wind was cold and stiff, and the view was expansive. Everyone was out of the van and lined up along the edge, looking over the long-term parking lot of the San Jose International Airport. Everyone now included Ron’s wife, Donna, and Bill’s wife, Mary. After Ron and Bill had spent some time with Sal, they felt comfortable introducing him.
The group of six stood for a moment and stretched. All was quiet. The scene was beautiful despite the state of the world, maybe even more so. Just a week or so without thousands of cars, trucks, and airplanes, and the air was fresher for it. No matter what one might believe about global warming and pollution, it was indisputable that things were a lot more pleasant without all the noise and fumes. The world was so still and quiet, the view so incredible, that the group stood for several long minutes taking it in, almost forgetting the terrible things they had experienced in the last few weeks.
Sal spoke first. It was startling in contrast to the quiet of the moment and his tendency to not speak at all. “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly obvious, which everybody decided not to see.”
Sal’s appearance made them nervous, as it had many people in the past, but now he was unshaven, unkempt, and brooding. In the past, he would have attempted to put people at ease by smiling, talking, interacting, but now he didn’t care. His countenance was that of a beast, a dark menacing brute that could easily scare men and horrify women.
“What?” Everyone was looking at him, but it was Bill that asked the question with a look of derision. It was Bill’s wife, Mary, who responded.
“That’s Ayn Rand,” she said with a smile. She was an attractive blond, a lower-school teacher, or had been when such jobs existed. She wore a thick turtleneck sweater and looked several years younger than her husband.
“Well, a paraphrase,” Sal said flatly, looking out over the city.
Mary looked at him and smiled.
Bill caught the look and frowned. He and Mary had been drifting apart for years, especially since they discovered she couldn’t have children. He was a house painter and wanted to drink beer and watch football, while she was an educator and wanted to read books and watch old movies. And even though it was his wife that was infertile, he felt like it reflected poorly on him as a man. He made sure people knew it was her defect and not his by calling her names like Infertile Myrtle. If ever the subject of children came up, as it often did, his comment was usually that he was firing a cannon, but there was no target to hit.