He went that time, on that day many years ago, but not by
choice. His young legs just took him at a trot, his thoughts rattling around in
his skull, people on the sidewalks actin’ crazy, the traffic coming to a halt.
Some others had moved with him, more and more, curiosity
flowing south. He remembered angling toward the river, noticing the change in
the traffic, the cars backed up at the tunnel, a sudden explosion in cops and
firefighters. They yelled at him and others to turn around, more cops than he’d
ever seen.
The blocks had gone by in a blur. He remembered his father
arriving at their apartment once, smiling and sweating, claiming to have walked
all the way there from work. Jeffery didn’t believe him. No one walked the
length of the island. But jogging it that day, gray smoke clogging a cloudless
sky, blocks and blocks drifting by of stuck traffic and people holding their
phones, mouths covered with trembling hands, Jeffery saw that the island
weren’t as big as he liked to think.
He never got there, of course, to where the smoke was coming
from. The crowds heading south bumped into the much different crowds fleeing
north. This is what reminded him of that day eleven years ago, what looked the
same between the island getting hit and bit. The people staggering north back
then had been pale, skin white like ghosts, even the brothers and sisters. They
looked like the dead, their eyes these dark and unblinking circles. They pawed
at their own faces, groaning, holding shoulders to see where they were going,
just like the undead did now.
Jeffery remembered how they cried and moaned, how they fell
in the streets, shaking. People were hugging whoever was there, was closest,
didn’t matter. Jeffery remembered that. It didn’t matter.
A cop had told him to get lost. He picked Jeffery out of the
downtown crowd, could tell that he was different, didn’t belong. Jeffery’s skin
glistened with sweat from the long run, his eyes wide with curiosity, wide with
all he hadn’t seen. They were different than the look from those who
had
.
“My daddy’s down there,” he tried to tell the cop.
“Then your dad’s in a world of hurt,” the officer had said.
Jeffery had been pissed. It was a shitty thing to say. But
he realized later that the cop was just like him. There was no blanket of ash
on that man, no desire to hug a stranger. He hadn’t seen. Hadn’t seen a thing.
Was just reacting. Drafted into a war, not asked.
His father, Jeffery would learn, was not in a world of hurt.
He was helping that world. The ferry had run back and forth across those cold
September waters for much of the morning, people piling aboard from the seawall
like an army of the undead, more and more of them, always coming, crowding
aboard pale as ghosts and shaking like grocery bags caught on a clothesline.
And Jeffery’s dad, hands rough from handling ropes all those long years, had
been there, pulling those people aboard.
27 • Jeffery Biggers
The dumpster lurched as the dead knocked against it, and
Jeffery nearly fell on his ass. He steadied himself and held the extended
aluminum pole with both hands, leaving him with only his jutting elbows for
balance. More bangs, and the dumpster slid a few inches, tired wheels groaning,
the hollow metal resounding beneath him.
It was working. Holy shit, it was working!
Jeffery spread his feet, his knuckles pale as he gripped
that cool aluminum pole, his arms shaking from the strain of holding the thing
out as far as he could.
They’d done this in boot camp, he remembered. It was a form
of punishment. Made them hold their rifles by the barrels, parallel to the
ground, the heavy butts dipping toward the earth. Joints and muscles would
scream while the drill sergeant came around and rested his pasty hands on the
stocks, pressing them down.
The dumpster moved again. The baby wailed. Beneath it,
dozens of hands pawed at the air like drunken fans at a concert, like kids
lining a parade, hoping for someone on a float to throw them candy.
The thing they craved swung from one of those yuppie
backpacks. It was looped over the crusty paint roller, the pole bending under
the strain. The alley had collected a mob. Some stood waving beneath the kid.
Others crowded from the far side—and the dumpster shifted.
Jeffery laughed and shuffled his feet on the unsteady
plastic lid. It was fucking working. If he got out of this shit, he’d have a
helluva story for the next group he bumped into. He was already retelling it as
the dumpster moved a few more inches, the casters squealing as they worked
free. The body of the metal container rang with the angry bangs of scrambling
arms and legs trying to get up from the other side. The ones on the near side
weren’t trying to climb at all, just fixating on the little feet wheeling in
the air over their heads. One crowd pushed and the other did nothing, and the
dumpster moved.
A hand got close to the screaming kid, a tall fucker.
Jeffery bit his lip and steadied the pole. Goddamn, this was wrong. But it
weren’t like he was throwing the kid over their heads and making a dash. Hell,
he didn’t have to risk his neck to be down there in the first place.
The dumpster moved quite a bit, the kid swinging in its
harness, Jeffery letting go with one hand and swinging his free arm for
balance. He used the kid like bait to guide some of the chompers between the
dumpster and the brick wall behind him. They followed like sheep. As they
crowded in and scrambled for the prize, the dumpster really moved. It lurched
away from the building, and more of them filed into place. Too damn easy. Too
predictable.
He swung the kid around and steered the biggest crush of foul
undead toward the other side of the alley, getting the hang of it. There was an
urge to glance up at his audience above, the boy in the window, to shout out
that he was gonna be okay, but there was so much to concentrate on. He switched
hands and gave his other one a shake, fingers tingling. The plastic lid buckled
some more. Jeffery had a thought of falling through, of losing his platform.
The paranoia that’d built up over weeks of running told him this would happen
next. The worst shit possible would always happen next. And there would be a
goddam chomper
in
the dumpster, lying in wait. He shook this thought
away. That’s not how this was going down. He was already telling the story to
the next group, telling them how near he’d come from having his bones picked
clean. He was gonna make it.
A few inches at a time, the dumpster crept across the alley.
More of the fuckers squeezed in around the wrecked van, joining the pack.
Jeffery worried it would be too many, that the crush would get so dense that
the dumpster would simply stop moving. He was already out in the center of the
alley, an island in a shark-infested sea. Man, this would be a story. He
laughed with nerves, the metallic taste of adrenaline on his tongue, thinking
of all the times he’d been shot at and how he thought it’d make for a good
story back home. Fuck, he shoulda re-upped. Another tour, and he’d be safer
over there than he was now.
One of the undead managed to get its armpits up on the lip
of the dumpster, scrambling over some of those that’d fallen down. Jeffery
kicked him in the head. He tried to keep toward the edges of the lid where it
was more solid, but hands were brushing his boots. Shit, this was tenuous.
Tightroping this motherfucker. Six feet away from the nearest window. Four feet.
Almost three feet, when his plan hit a snag. The bastards on that side of the
dumpster wouldn’t clear out. They were like a bumper, a wall, blocking
progress.
He shifted hands again and tried urging them out with the
kicking and screaming kid, but more took their place from the other side.
Jeffery was fucked. He looked back at the kid in the window, needing to see
some other living soul, and the boy’s wide eyes and slack mouth confirmed his
own fears: well and truly fucked.
He pulled the kid back in. The chompers were piling up,
banging into the dumpster from all sides. Soon they would start forming ramps
and making their way to the top. Jeffery pictured them crashing through the lid
with him, banging on the insides of the reeking container, being eaten away at
from all sides, him and the baby, mixing in the same guts.
Fuck. Fuck.
He loosened the backpack from the end of the painting handle
and worked his arms through the straps. “C’mon, kid,” he breathed. The groans
and the stench were everywhere. This was it. This was it. He twisted the knobs
on the handle again and extended it all the way, really cinched them down
tight. Another fucker was up to her armpits, face caked in blood, a real hungry
one. Jeffery stepped away and concentrated on the window. “C’mon, kid.” He
speared the glass with the handle, punching it through panes set in place in
the 50s, maybe earlier. Several more pokes and the window was busted up good.
He used the pole to slap the glass out of the frame—thank God they didn’t have
them damn bars on them—and kicked the bitch in the head who was biting after
his boots. Fuck. Fuck. Chomper slobber on his goddamn boots.
The thin strips of wood that formed a grid between the panes
of glass were all that was left. Like an empty game of tic-tac-toe. No breaking
them with the painting stick, but how sturdy could they be? Jeffery pulled the
stick back, used it to push a chomper’s forehead away, the thing snarling
angrily at being toyed with by its food. The plastic lid faintly buckled. The
banging and groaning were like drums reaching some sort of crescendo. Even the
kid had fallen quiet, maybe for being pressed back against a body, maybe just
fuckin’ exhausted, maybe sensing what Jeffery was sensing: that the end was
well fucking nigh.
He ran along the edge of the lid to keep it from collapsing,
ran past the waving and groping hands, trying not to trip over them, and threw
himself through the void, over the heads, jumping like a kid again, back when
he liked to pretend the ground was lava.
He crashed halfway through the wooden slats. They snapped by
his shoulders and arms, his waist catching on the window, feet scrambling. An
old wound on his stomach lanced out with a pain so sudden and sharp that he
nearly fainted. It felt like one of the slats had fucking pierced him, but it
was just a deep bruise that would never heal, a former injury being struck
again.
Hands fell on his calves. One of his boots was torn off as
he tried to pull himself inside, damn things screaming and moaning and his body
on fire with a thousand aches.
Jeffery scrambled through the busted window, one boot on,
another off. He laughed and whooped. He jumped around a disgusting living room
torn up by scavengers, the baby hollerin’ on his back, its voice going up and
down as it rode the sickening roller coaster of Jeffery’s elation.
With a loud hack and coughing noise, and then a splatter of
nasty warmness against his neck, the kid lost the last meal it would ever get
from its mother. Jeffery didn’t give a shit. He laughed at this, knowing it was
the perfect punch line to the goddamn most unbelievable bullshit story anyone
in this living nightmare would ever share with another wide-eyed and doubting
soul.
He limped around on his one boot, laughing.
Limping
.
The aches wore off from holding that painting stick so far out, from smashing
through the goddamn window. Limping. Looking down. Blood on the filthy carpet,
blood on his sock.
“No,” Jeffery muttered. “Oh, fuck, fuck, no.” He hopped to
the sofa with its stuffing erupting like pearly white guts.
“Fuck me, no. C’mon, kid. C’mon.”
Jeffery sat down and tore off his sock, hand shaking. His
bladder felt near to burst with diet coke. No. Not after all that. No fucking
way.
The sock came away easy, the blood not nearly begun to set,
not an old wound like he’d hoped, not a scab ripped open like he prayed it was.
“Oh, fuck, kid.”
Jeffery worked at the buckles on the yuppie pack. He pulled
the infant around and laid him gently on his back amid the disgorged white furniture
innards. He had no idea how old the child was, always got that wrong whenever
he guessed. It coulda been born yesterday. Could be three months. No fuckin’
clue.
He studied the wound. Saw the bite marks, the torn flesh.
Knives in the kitchen, probably. He could saw through the thing, hack through
the bone. But he’d heard from that one group that it didn’t work. They said
their one-armed friend was still out there somewhere, clacking at the air with
his teeth. It’d been no good at all to cut his arm off.
The kid looked at him with something like worry, with his
little nose and raised brow. There were angry bangs and groans from the alley
heard through the smashed window. The infant had those big eyes babies have,
those little pink lips all puckered up, asking for their next meal. Just like
Jeffery and all the survivors, just like that alley full of chompers, everyone
was always looking for their next meal.
Jeffery studied the little guy, the kid who was supposed
to’ve been his ticket out of there. A one-way ride on one of them helicopters,
always the helicopters comin’ to pull him out of the deep shit. Just one more
ride, that’s all he wanted. Come and get me. Save me from my own goddamn
country. Here’s the red smoke right fuckin’ here. Here’s me waving my rifle,
barrel pointed right back at me, motherfuckers, just like you taught. Here I
am. Come and get me.
Jeffery looked down at his foot, dripping blood.
They already had, he figured. They’d already got him fucking
good.
28 • Jeffery Biggers
Jeffery could still feel that original wound, but he no
longer limped. He walked just as unsteadily on
both
legs. And what
control he could exert over where they took him seemed to come from
resignation. That’s how he could somewhat operate his body. The less he
struggled, the more say he had in where he went. He could steer by
thinking
about a place, by leaning into the walls of his own self—not aggressively, that
didn’t work—but just a gradual lean, like guiding a bowling ball after it had
already left his hand. It reminded Jeffery of the Buddhists he’d read about,
their fascination with water, how it flowed to fill any vessel, how it moved
around a pier rather than put up a fight and try and bash through it.