An undead cat lay twitching in the road, unable to move. Its spine had been crushed and a fresh tire tread stood out in its burst stomach. On the sidewalk, something that might have been a dead crow had congealed into a puddle of tissue. Nose wrinkling, Alan steered his shopping cart around the mess, and the squeaky wheel squealed in protest. I glanced at the worms squirming in the bird’s remains and wondered again if they were alive or dead.
The quick breeze died down and the heat returned—as did the stench. We stayed aware; kept looking over our shoulders. The wheel on my shopping cart kept going crooked, making it a real pain in the ass to push. Every time I hit a stone or piece of broken glass, I had to shove extra hard. When we came across a cracked and rutted section of sidewalk, I wheeled the cart into the street. As we passed by a sewer drain, I noticed a severed head lying against the curb, right over the grating. A few flaps of flesh hung below the chin, but that was it. Water swirled past the head, trickling down into the drain. As we watched, a black tongue slithered from its mouth like a slug. The blue eyes turned up to watch us pass.
“Should we kill it?” Alan asked.
“It’s already dead.”
“You know what I mean.”
I shrugged. “Why bother. It can’t hurt anybody. It’s just a head.”
“Fucking creepy.”
“Yeah.”
“How long you figure it can survive like that?”
“Until it rots away, I guess. It doesn’t have a stomach or anything. But look at it. I bet if we stuck our fingers down there, it would snap at us. Whatever this disease does, these things operate on instinct. Kind of like a shark. All a shark does is swim and eat. All these things do is walk and eat. It can’t walk anymore. But it’s still hungry. Bet it stays hungry until its brain dissolves.”
Alan stared down at the head. “Wonder if they think.”
I didn’t reply, because I didn’t know. Alan cocked his foot back and kicked the head like a football. It sailed off into the night. There was a wet splat as it bounced off the hood of an abandoned car.
“Field goal.” Alan grinned. “I should play for the Ravens.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this stuff home while the coast is still clear.”
We’d gone two more blocks when it happened. Alan was armed with a sword. He’d picked it up during a vacation in Tijuana. It was a cheap piece of junk, but he’d sharpened the blade and practiced with it in my kitchen. Before they all rotted, he’d gotten pretty good at slicing cantaloupes in half, but he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to try it on a zombie. I was carrying a pistol. I don’t know what kind. As I said, I was never much of a gun aficionado. During the dealership robbery, I’d used a Ruger.22 pistol, purchased hot downtown. Bought a box of ammo to go with it. I’d thrown both into the harbor afterward. When things broke down a few weeks later, I’d wished I still had it. This new gun was a revolver. I knew that much. Didn’t know anything else, except that if I pulled the trigger, I’d shoot something. I’d been calling it a pistol, and Alan had tried correcting me, saying it wasn’t a pistol, but a revolver. I didn’t see the difference. Didn’t care, either, as long as it worked. I’d picked it up off a dead guy lying in the middle of the intersection. We’d come across him on our way to the grocery store. After some experimentation, I figured out how to get the cylinder open. There were four bullets inside.
Like Alan and his sword, I hadn’t had to use them yet.
Until that zombie bitch shuffled out of the bushes…
Here’s the thing about zombies. You can get the fuck away from them easily enough. They’re usually quiet, but they’re also slow and stupid. You see them coming, so it’s real easy to run away. And like I said earlier, even if you don’t see them, you can usually smell the fuckers. Ever smell roadkill? It’s the same thing, except mobile. But that night, the breeze kept shifting. First it would blow off the Chesapeake Bay and away from us. Then it would switch, but that was no better, because the stench of decay would get so strong you couldn’t tell if it was a zombie approaching you or just the city itself—a giant graveyard full of rotting corpses.
We passed by a small row house with a withered, brown hedge out front. The windows were broken. The aluminum siding was splattered with gore. The zombie must have come from behind the hedge, because that was the only spot to hide. We didn’t see her, didn’t smell her, until she’d latched on to Alan.
He was behind me, talking in hushed tones about getting out of the city and heading for the wilderness—the woods in Pennsylvania or southern Maryland. Maybe even down to the outskirts of Ocean City, around some of the more desolate beach areas. I was against it. Thought we should just stay inside my place. We didn’t know shit about what was going on elsewhere. What if the woods were full of infected animals? I waited for Alan to reply. His shopping cart coasted past me and out into the street. At the same time, he started screaming.
I let go of my cart and whipped around. The zombie clung to Alan, scratching and biting. This close, her stench made me gag. She wrapped her swollen, rotting arms around Alan like an exuberant lover and then clambered onto his back. She held on tightly. He buckled under her weight, but managed to maintain his footing. Her feet dangled off the ground. She wore no shoes or socks and her toes were caked with filth.
Alan dropped his sword. It clanged onto the pavement. Panicked, I could only watch as he hunched over, beating at the harpy clinging to his back. The creature moaned and he shrieked. Her cracked fingernails raked at his arm and neck, ripping his skin. She leaned forward and her teeth snapped shut on his cheek. The dead woman jerked her head back and Alan’s flesh stretched like soft taffy. Alan screamed again, and even in the darkness I could see the blood welling up inside his mouth. His skin stretched even farther, pulled taught, and then tore. His flapping cheek dangled from the zombie’s clenched teeth. His screams turned into a gurgle. Other than her brief moan, the corpse didn’t make a sound.
It was then that I remembered the gun. It had been clenched in my hand the whole time, but I’d been so fucking overwhelmed with shock and fear that I’d forgotten about it. The zombie’s head was thrown back away from Alan’s left shoulder. She was chewing the piece of meat while he thrashed and spun. Blood streamed down his neck, soaking his clothing. His skin looked garish and pale, and I saw his teeth and his tongue flopping around in the ragged hole. Amazingly, he didn’t collapse. He kept beating at her, making gargling sounds in his throat. When he spun around again, I raised the pistol. The zombie’s head darted forward for another bite.
I stepped close, put the gun against her forehead and pulled the trigger. At the same time, I turned my face away, closed my eyes and kept my mouth shut tight, pursing my lips together so that no blood would splatter into my mouth. The pistol jumped in my grip. There was an explosion. Over the zombie’s stench, I smelled burned hair and gun smoke.
The zombie went limp, slumped, and then slid to the asphalt like a sack of cement. Alan collapsed to his knees. He tried to scream again, but the sound was garbled. He sounded like a wild animal. His eyes rolled up at me, wide and horrified. Sweat and blood covered what was left of his face. He tried to speak, but I could barely understand him.
“Shloo eeee…”
“Oh, fuck.” I backed away from him. Alan was dead. Even if I managed to stop the bleeding and somehow patch up his face, he’d been bitten. Hamelin’s Revenge was already coursing through his veins. He’d died the moment she broke the skin.
I heard the sound of tinkling glass from a nearby alley. The zombies were on the move, attracted by the gunshot.