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.