"Oh my God, Roger's dead!"
"Come on, we can't help him now!"
"Dave—"
"RUN!"
"Barbra, are you—"
"I'm fine...let's just...get there..."
They had started out as a group of nine.
Now three were left, almost four, but Roger hadn't been paying attention and had slipped in a puddle of something unmentionable, gone to one knee and, ostensibly, ended his life.
None of the final three had really known Roger, but even if they had, they would have been...not okay with his demise, but merely...less devastated.
Except for Jess.
Not to say that Barbra and Dave were stone cold, heartless mercenaries for hire or anything, but Jess was just more empathic than most people. Even after three months trapped in this nightmare, she was still unable to detach herself from all the death and pain and horror surrounding her. In a way, it made her more human, holding onto these vestments of emotion, but in another way, it made her more vulnerable.
Barbra saw this, but she had asthma, a much more evident vulnerability than empathy. Dave saw it too, but that was one of the reasons he loved her so much. Even amidst all this, even at the end of the world, he loved her big heart and it hurt him to see her in this situation. This was killing her and there was nothing he could do about it.
But she was surviving.
They were all surviving.
Well, all except Roger.
And Sarah and Ben and Noel and Graham.
Phil and Paul?
Who knew?
They’d had a skewed vision of reality before the dead had stopped dying and started eating.
They'd run into them a few weeks ago and they'd had this air about them...something...not quite right...but they had survived this far and that was what mattered right now.
They left, on their way to Boston, and soon after, Sarah, Ben, Noel and Graham had been killed.
And now Roger.
"Get inside!"
Dave had found an unlocked door and they all piled in, Dave last, pulling the door shut behind him.
That sat in the musty dark, panting.
Barbra's inhaler went off.
After what seemed like hours, they heard the moaning from outside the door, moving slowly toward them.
This part always terrified Jess. She knew from experience that these things had no logic or reasoning capabilities, that the zombies would never know they were hiding in this particular place unless one of them made a sound and even then they still might not find them, but that noise...just moving slowly closer in the dark...
Jess silently thanked Roger for his accidental sacrifice.
They may have gotten away with no problem, but with Roger as a...distraction, it was a certainty.
They would wait here until the zombies outside had passed and then either further explore this place or head out again.
This had become the routine: find a place, assess its positive and negative attributes as a temporary hideout and then either stay for as long as they dared or gather what useful items they could find and move on.
This was New York City after all and, overrun with the walking dead or not, there were a hell of a lot of places three people could hide.
Eventually, the sound faded and then there was silence.
After one more blast from Barbra's inhaler, Dave said "All right, let's find out where we are..."
At the moment, they each had a nice, sturdy MagLite with them, plus a backpack that had granola bars, Balance bars, dried fruit, nuts, jerky and as much bottled water as they could carry without overburdening themselves. Unlike the fiction that Jess had been working with for the past few years, this whole thing hadn't happened like in the books. Yes, there had been some rioting and some looting and some places were indeed stripped clean of every single bit of food and water, but the fact was, New York City was just too big for everything to be gone. On an average block, there were sometimes as many as ten delis, diners, cafes or grocery stores.
Food and water hadn't been a problem, so they had decided to flee on foot; they would find an adequate supply of food and water, hole up for a while and see what developed.
New York was brimming with supplies, but the places between New York and most other places weren't. Why add starvation to the list of things that could kill you?
So that's what they had done.
The problem was that the dead were everywhere. And although they didn't consciously hunt or form large groups, these things just happened. They were always awake and "looking" for food. Sadly, things had developed in a manner that left the three of them with very limited options. At this particular moment, they were toying with the idea of making their way to the Hudson River and seeing if there were boats either patrolling for survivors or simply left after their owners had abandoned them. They had unconsciously been making their way west for the past few days.
"All right," Dave said from the top of the stairs at the end of the darkened hallway, "there's an open apartment up here, looks pretty good. There's a fire escape outside the kitchen window so we have a way out if we need it."
Barbra and Jess followed Dave up and entered the apartment.
Dave was right, it was pretty good; a bit musty, but much better than some of the other places they'd walked into.
The door opened into a large living room with two bedrooms directly in front of them, a kitchen to the right and a bathroom to the left.
There was a love seat against one wall and a cheap looking Ikea standing lamp next to the door. Jess twisted the switch out of habit and was rewarded with a dry snapping sound, but no light.
They halfheartedly searched the kitchen for food or anything useful but found nothing.
They each ate some food in silence, and then Barbra and Jess made their way to the bedrooms while Dave set some glasses in front of the door and took his place as sentinel for the evening.
"Jekka..."
Jess smiled in her sleep.
She'd fallen back asleep again and they'd probably missed Brunch.
Oh well.
They could just order in or maybe see if the Brunch place had dinner.
It wasn't too strange to think that they would, was it?
She was pretty sure she'd seen them open after dark...
"Jekka...Barbra's dead..."
...she remembered seeing a neon sign in the window... a hand or something.
Maybe it was a fish?
She'd have to ask Dave.
"Jekka, we have to go before..."
Wait, the place was called Manus!
That's Latin for 'hand' so--
"JEKKA!"
Jess sat up and looked around the dim bedroom.
Dave was grappling with Barbra.
"JESS! FUCKING WAKE UP!"
Jess was alert and on her feet before she knew it, looking around the room for something, anything to—
Dave screamed.
Jess whirled around just in time to see Dave slam his fist into Barbra's face, sending her stumbling back into the wall. He then clutched his neck just below his left ear.
Barbra was slowly righting herself.
"Jess..." Dave grunted, "Let’s fucking go..."
He held out his right hand and she grabbed it.
They ran from the bedroom through the unfamiliar dimness of the living room and were just at the door when they heard the noise.
It sounded like a fist hitting a coffin full of glass bottles and for a moment, they simply stood, unmoving.
Then it clicked.
The glasses against the front door...
"All right," Dave started, "out the wind—"
And there was Barbra, tottering towards them, arms outstretched, chin and chest slicked with Dave's blood.
Dave glanced around the room quickly and grabbed the nearest weapon, the segmented standing lamp, from beside the door.
"I'm going to hold it off; you get the window open..."
That plan seemed to work for Barbra who began stumbling toward Dave. He cocked the lamp back and swung as hard as he could, base first, at her head. There was a metallic snap and an organic crunch as both the lamp and Barbra's skull broke.
Jess was frantically tugging at the window which wasn't budging an inch.
There was another, more insistent thump from the front door.
"Dave! It's not opening!" Jess nearly screamed.
"Locked?" Dave said in a clotted voice.
"Fucking idiot!" Jess said aloud to herself as she reached for the latches on top of the window. They clicked and one of the glasses fell over.
She raked the window up on its tracks and, thankfully, it stayed open.
Dave was looking down at Barbra, who was twitching minutely on the floor and another glass fell over.
"Close one." he mumbled, walking into the kitchen.
Jess was standing on the fire escape and looking down into the alley below where there was no sign of the things.
She helped Dave out as best she could and they unfastened the ladder which made a horrible screeching, clanging noise as it lowered.
They both made it down without incident and were just taking in their new surroundings when Jess gasped, "The fucking packs, Dave!"
He looked slowly up at the ladder when they heard the door inside open, shattering the rest of the glasses.
"Too late now..." he croaked.
It was almost dawn and, in the growing light Jess was able to get a look at Dave's neck for the first time.
It looked horrible. The flesh was shredded around the wound and, in the weak light, the insides gleaming wetly.
"Dave...are you..." asked Jess in a small voice.
"I'm in trouble, Jekka. She didn't severe the artery or we wouldn't be having this conversation, but I've maybe got an hour. I'm already fading..." he trailed off, looking down the length of the alley.
"Dave," Jess was trying to keep the tremor out of her voice, but she was failing. "Dave...I don't think I can...I can't..."
Dave turned back to her, the dazed, dull look gone from his eyes.
He grabbed her shoulders.
"Jess, if you don't, I'll turn into one of them and come after you, you know that! You don't have a choice!" He paused, "And I don't want to be one of them."
"Dave..." tears were streaming down her round, shocked face and dripping off her chin.
He silenced her with a small kiss and smiled.
"I'm not dead yet, Jessica. Let's find a new place before we deal with this."
One end of the alley was a brick wall, topped with razor wire and the other ended in a gate. They made their way as quietly as they could and paused for a moment at the mouth of the alley.
They could see the tail end of the horde that had entered the apartment just entering the building now.
"God, there must have been fifty of them..." Dave breathed.
They opened the gate slowly which, for a wonder, didn't make a sound and were about to make their way up the street away from the zombies when Dave stumbled and fell against a cluster of trash cans.
The noise was explosive in the early morning silence and less than a second after the noise had stopped, the moaning began.
Jess saw the last form that had entered the building pause, turn, pause again and then come shambling out into the bluish street.
The others were following it.
"Dave!" Jess shook him.
His eyes fluttered, opened, looked into hers.
"You gotta go..." he whispered.
"No! You said that you had—" Jess was very edge of the precipice.
"Might have been wrong...might have nicked the artery after all..."
Jess felt like a sunbather who opens her eyes just as the shadow of the tsunami engulfs her; paralyzed, unable to think or even comprehend the enormity of what is about to happen.
"Dave..."
His eyes slipped shut.
She had just enough time to trip behind a Dumpster at the mouth of the alley as they fell on him.
The last conscious thought Jessica had was:
at least I can't see...at least they're in the way...and I think he was already d—
Then Dave shrieked, an unending eruption of sound that told Jess her world had ended.
Jessica began to scream in response.
Their screams merged; his of agony, hers of terror and utter, abject loss.
There's something to be said for the human mind. How elegant. How multifaceted. How awe inspiring. It has the potential to create the most beautiful art, the most intricate formula, to be as complex as a galaxy and as unique as a snowflake.
It also has the potential to run binary.
Black or white.
On or off.
Fight or flight.
Underneath all the trappings in which society has swaddled the human mind, there lies the true Human Nature.
The killer, the survivor, the beast.
It was witnessing this horrible act of violence that finally cracked the facade, which had grown thinner and thinner as the world slipped faster and faster down the jagged slope into the Abyss. Seeing the person she loved most in this world torn limb from limb while these demons feasted on his still living, still breathing, still screaming body had shattered the veneer meticulously built over the past three decades.
What was left was not some cute, inoffensive woodland creature.
What was left was Hell Itself.
And It wanted vengeance.
Jessica stopped screaming. The tears stopped coursing down her face. She rose and looked around her, as if for the first time. The creatures in front of her were busying themselves by stripping the last remnants of Dave from what was left of his frame and did not take notice.
If they had, even these unfeeling, uncomprehending monsters may have known fear.
Jessica's eyes landed on the tangle of bodies which marked Dave's final resting place. She uttered a grunting bark that was just masked by the groaning, snapping noises coming from the zombies in front of her. She then drew in a breath and loosed a bloodcurdling noise, barely animal, nowhere near human. The things paused, looked up and beheld.
Before they even had a chance to totter to their feet, she was on them, tearing with her hands and teeth like a rabid dog. She didn't even register what she was slashing and biting at and in a matter of seconds, the seven zombies that had heard the trash cans and ended Dave's life (and, in some terrible way, renewed hers) were nothing more than seven piles of limbs and rags and muck.
She stood in the center of this massacre covered in gore and gobbets of red jelly and white, green and purple flesh from head to toe, the foul meat she'd torn from their forms sliding from her mouth onto the ground (for some part of her knew, even in this state, that to ingest any part of their filth would mean agonizing death). She turned and saw the rest of the groaning monsters begin to stumble out of the building back onto the street, roared like the Apocalypse and charged at them.
She hit the first one, which was standing in the doorway, with her entire body and, because of sheer momentum, knocked it and the dozen or so that lined up behind it like necrotic dominoes over in a row. Then she descended upon them like a buzz saw, morsellating their putrid, leathery bodies with every ounce of her being. Her rage had brought her to the foot of the stairs where she caught sight of another throng standing at the head of the staircase. It was over in a tissue and bone filled instant. And then she was at the top of the stairs, looking into the apartment which had served as the merest bit of respite for the past hours and contained the remainder of the horde that had caused such turmoil in the last few minutes.
Jessica caught sight of Barbra toward the back of the mob.
Her shriek was soul rending and nearly tore her throat to bloody ribbons.
She saw only Barbra, the cause of this tragedy, this cataclysm.
Jessica clawed her way through more than thirty undead bodies and, less than a minute after catching sight of Barbra, was standing before her.
Of course there was no recognition in Barbra's clouded eyes, how could there be? But Jessica wasn't here in the same way she had been five minutes ago.
Barbra saw only meat and Jess saw only enemy.
She shot her hand out, lightening quick, and tore Barbra's jaw from her face with a sound like a chicken being ripped in half.
Jessica felt the vibrations go through her body and liked it.
She dropped the jaw on the floor and began to systematically tear Barbra apart: her hands, arms, ears, eyes, head...it was the truest form of catharsis she'd ever experienced.
After utterly dispatching with Barbra, Jess fell, unconscious, to the floor in a slurry of undead bits.
When she woke, the sun was shining bright, making the fetid meat in the room produce an almost physical stink. She rose shakily to her feet and stared about her at the chaos she'd created. Then she began to weep, her small body pulsing with the sobs that escaped her. She half sat, half fell to the slick floor and cried, her tears cutting clean tracks through the crusted ichor on her face.
Dave was dead.
They were all dead but her.
The world was dead and it only kept spinning because it hadn't yet realized the fact.
After a while, she stopped crying and took in a deep, cleansing breath.
At least she wouldn't have to be a part of this farce much longer.
She looked down at herself and saw the dozens of tiny cuts and scratches covering her hands and arms.
How long had Dave said this stuff takes to change you?
She couldn't remember, not that it mattered, she wasn't going to sit here and turn into one of those things, feeling herself die and be reborn as some hideous cannibal. She slowly staggered to her feet again. Her body ached all over and her mouth tasted of unspeakable foulness. She reached the sink and washed her mouth out with the rust tasting water from the tap. She rinsed her hands, arms and face in the cool water and stood for a moment, dripping and just staring.
Then she nodded almost imperceptibly, walked over to the oven and turned the knob. The faint hiss told her there was still gas in these pipes. That was good. She found their abandoned packs in the bedrooms and located the pack of matches at the bottom of Barbra's.
Barbra had been a smoker.
An asthmatic smoker.
Brilliant.
She made her way back to the kitchen and closed the window. The air was already taking on a wavy quality. She went back to the bedroom she'd spent her last night in and changed out of her filthy rags into a clean shirt and pants. Back in the living room she dragged the love seat over to the kitchen and placed it diagonally against the cabinets under the sink and the wall with the window set into it, forming a small barricade. Then she made her way carefully through the abattoir in the living room, down the slimy stairs and outside.
She saw a small group of the things milling around at the end of the street, looking up at a pigeon perched on a lamppost and another larger group further up the street. None of them had seen her so she just sat, feeling the sun, warm and fresh, on her battered body for a few quiet moments. Eventually, she opened her eyes, and stood, taking note of the stiffness that was settling into her bones and muscles already.
She walked down the street, moving at a fast walk past the small group focused on the bird until she was in between them and the group further away.
Then she yelled at the top of her voice.
Slowly, very slowly, the group at the lamppost and the larger group began to stumble towards her, moaning and clutching.
Within five minutes she'd managed to attract about a hundred of the things, always being sure to stay well in front of the horde and well away from any tight spaces. She led them back to the apartment, the stiffness slowly turning to numbness throughout the trek.
Finally, she'd led the majority into the apartment building. They filled the entry way, the hallway, the stairs and the living room.
She took her place behind the love seat, still a good ten feet from the nearest one and went for the matches on the counter, knocking them onto the floor. She sat down, tried to pick them up again and failed. Her third attempt was successful. She looked around the room and everything appeared underwater; whether this was the gas or her vision, she wasn't sure.
She opened the matchbook and tried to tear out a match, but she couldn't make her fingers close on it. Her index finger did what it was told, but her thumb just twitched feebly.
"No..." she croaked.
She took a deep breath, which caused the world to strobe in purple and black, and tried again, but this time the thumb only trembled the faintest bit.
"No...no..." she said again.
She suddenly clamped her teeth down on her tongue and the world instantly flared with color.
As she tore the match out and flipped the pack over, she registered that her blood didn't have the rich, vital, iron taste it usually did.
She scratched the match against the rough strip but it wasn't hard enough.
The world was turning purple and black again.
Jessica bit her tongue once more, much harder this time and felt part of it separate from the rest.
It lay in her mouth like cold rubber and she choked it out.
She wasn't bleeding anymore.
Her stomach knotted painfully and as she pressed the match head to the strip one last time, she was swallowed by their shadows.
"No...Dave...n-"
