Blood Soaked and Contagious (2 page)

“Regardless, there are zombies and there is a virus. There has to be a relationship, because wherever one appears, the other is soon to follow. Right? Some people are immune to the virus, and they’re generally left alone by the zombies. If you contract the virus, sure as the sun rises, you’re going to be zombie chow.”

He stared back at me, this youngish scrawny fellow. What he did not do, however, was hold up his end of the conversational bargain. That’s the social exchange in which I give you a piece of my mind and you give me a piece of yours back.

“You already know that the zombies will find you. They’ll kill you. Killing someone their way generally involves eating the liver and kidneys and sucking the blood out of the victim’s arteries like a copper-flavored milkshake. At some point, days or weeks later, the poor schlub will rise from whatever grave he ended up in and join in the bloody festivities.” He just kept looking at me, almost as though he didn’t speak any English, and he made no move to agree, disagree, or shush me. Emboldened, I continued.

“Now, say they get you... and with any luck, I mean this from the bottom of my heart, someone will bash your head in or set you on fire. One or the other would be sufficient, but it never hurts to be sure. For my personal preference, head bashing is best because you don’t have to cope with a bacon-smelling fat candle that walks around, catching other things on fire before it finally falls over.”

My brain rummaged around, grabbing at random things, in hopes of making a cogent point. Your average, motivated person could wreak all kinds of havoc on a zombie, and they’d do their damnedest to keep coming. The only real way to stop it is the classic way: destroy the cranium, pulverize the brain, and there will be one less walking horror in the world. Why? The brain appears to be the one thing the virus can’t or won’t regenerate when someone dies the first time. It certainly won’t regenerate if there’s nothing left to regenerate in the first place.

Anyone infected with the contagion will reanimate when they die. But if their brain is not intact, all you’re left with is a body in a coffin that can’t finish regenerating because there’s no air for the body to breathe. Now, if a brainless body manages to come back to life prior to being interred, you have a critter that wants to hunt but can’t really manage the proper sequence of movements.

All you have to do for them is round them up and burn them. Easy. Their cousins that reanimated with their gray matter intact, however, are a different story. Those have to be killed in a much more active fashion because they’re willing and able to fight back.

It would also be simpler, of course, if they weren’t so personable.

I pulled myself out of the alcohol-induced reverie, and addressed my companion.

“Dude, I can’t tell if you’re getting any of this at all,” I waggled a finger at him while I contemplated beer #3.

“Look, sit here with me in this dingy-ass suburban cantina and imagine this scenario. And I mean ‘dingy’ in the sweetest possible way, mind you! I think it will clue you into what I’m talking about.” The owners nodded at me, but this dude just kept staring like I had slugs using my nose for a love hotel. I wasn’t going to let him win this game of civil inattention.

“All right, say: your little sister comes back as a zombie. That’s tragic, and I’m very sorry for your loss. Here’s the ‘but.’ The creature that used to be your hot Lolita of a sibling still looks, talks, and acts very much like you would expect her to.” I just kept right on going despite his lack of response, working toward my degree in dramatic monologues...

“She still knows where you hid your porn. That time at the carnival when you swallowed the goldfish she had just won? She remembers that, too. You’ll find her memory has crystal clarity and her mouth has no internal editor whatsoever.

“Did I mention there’s no expression in her eyes anymore, she’s got a deathly pallor, she’s incredibly strong, and her cute little fingernails are four inches longer and about 20 times thicker than before?

“Oh. Sorry...

“Well, Little Heidi, who now remembers everything down to the smallest detail thanks to the virus, as sure as the sun will rise, is now coming after you because you’re infected, too. She’s adorable, deadly, and will not stop until she’s dined on your innards. Just to put the polish on that, she is absolutely willing to do and say anything that comes to her ravaged mind in order to manipulate you into being an easier target.

“Nice!

“‘Tommy! These evil zombies are defiling my virginal, Aryan body! Ooo! Ack!,’ she might scream from beneath your window some night.

“‘And I bet you’re up there yanking on your gristle because it gets you so hot. You’re an evil, nasty big brother. Come down here and show me how nasty you are! Heidi wants your gooey drippings!’

“You’re looking a little pale around the edges, my new friend. I didn’t hit the nail on the head by accident, did I?” There was no way to know if I’d managed to pull something true from the fabric of uncertainty. That being the case, all I could figure was that my honesty was rippling around the recesses of his heart and giving him a nasty case of gas. I continued.

“You are so screwed! Take a few deep breaths. That’s really the best thing you can do after someone has shared horrible truths with you. Good. Good.

“I should tell you, if you manage to cripple Little Heidi, you have to deliver the cootie grace as soon as you can after that. The reason is pretty simple. She’s calling you every name in the book, tossing every secret you’ve ever had around as loud as she can, and is probably trying to seduce you at the same time.

“After all, her brain is intact and she knows every weakness you’ve got. I guarantee that she will exploit everything in order to keep you from finishing her off, because she has not lost sight of the original goal: kill my brother and eat him. All she wants to do is stay alive, even if she’s been crippled by your attempts to save your own life. She won’t heal super quickly or anything like that, but at least she’ll be able to live until she can hunt again.

“God forbid that you have this little confrontation in public. Can you imagine how insane it would make you to have to listen to that for any length of time or to see the faces of other people as they listen to the litany of bizarre excess spewing from her mouth while you delay in finishing her off?

“Then again, it is possible that she’d take another route entirely. She could scream in a high-pitched, childlike voice. It’s classic and might even work. How long do you want to listen to something like that?”

Apparently, he didn’t want to listen to that at all, because he tossed his cookies all over the floor.

“That, my vomiting friend,” I said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder, “is why you kill them as quickly as you possibly can.”

I probably would have kept going even after he upchucked because beer (for some reason known only to God) pulls down the panties of my good sense. But Marvin, the bartender, gave me an ugly look and a gentle suggestion.

“Frank, get the fuck out before I slap you upside the head with a baseball bat.”

He didn’t get any sweeter when I gave him my “you’ve wounded my heart” pout. I suppose that’s what you get from someone who used to be your landlord. Truth be told, that’s probably why I didn’t hang out in his place very often. He’s a good soul, but we’d shared some really fucked up times together.

I got up and walked outside. A reasonable number of Coronas and being the bearer of bad news ruins the comfortable environment of any local watering hole. With any luck, Marvin and Shirley will let me come back in a few days. You have to let the memory of some things fade a little bit, but they know I will tell anyone and everyone The Way Things Are at the drop of a hat. Blunt, cynical commentary is a dying art.

Then again, I’m a wonderful customer to have, and that goes for any establishment. I pay my bill virtually every time, and I am always willing to take out a pesky zombie. Zombies, on the other hand, do not pay, ever, and tend to murder your clients in the most unfortunate ways.

I do have a certain gentle abrasiveness about me, but I like to think that is part of my overall personal charm. Then, like the Lolita Zombie Sister, I also have a tendency to say exactly what is on my mind without considering the possible consequences. Happily, no one to date has decided that it merited killing me, in or out of bars and restaurants.

My reputation for being Johnny-On-The-Spot for Undead Pest Removal does a lot to overcome my quirks in public places. No one wants a zombie farting around in their establishment if they can possibly avoid it. It isn’t just the murdering and feasting—there’s also the smell. The walking dead do not, as a rule, give a flying politician whether or not they’ve bathed since they came back from the Big Quiet.

Zombies call death “the Big Quiet.” Some say they remember dying, the parts after the explosive agony of being eaten alive and bleeding out. They say there’s nothing there, Out There, and that there is just this big quiet blackness that swallows you. If you can believe the walking dead have a religion, this is as close as it gets.

The scripture would be short.

“In the beginning, there was life and it was a random pattern of good events and bad events. In the middle, there was dying in a very nasty way, assisted by unfortunate mobs of undead cannibals. At the end of the middle came Death. Death was big, silent, and black. In the end, there is life after Death. That will also be nasty, because you have to eat your fellow man to stay alive.”

Like I said, a very short scripture. Their idea of a worship service probably wouldn’t be all that wonderful, if you consider that the only thing that really gets them going is eating people.

I just wanted to stand there, drinking in the afternoon sun. This section of Route 29 in Arlington is quiet that time of day. At least, it has been since a good-sized chunk of the population started croaking, coming back to life, eating their neighbors, and somehow forgetting to show up for their fulfilling IT and government contracting jobs every day.

They declared martial law during the start of the Emergency, but much of the enforcement slacked off around non-critical areas. The suburbs, for the most part, were classified as non-critical. Even so, in this neck of the woods, you’re more likely to see a stream of urban camo-painted vehicles, driven by various members of the Armed Forces, rather than morning commuters. When I was younger, we’d hang out on the way to school and beat the steaming poo out of one another while counting Volkswagens. These days, you shouldn’t play games like “Punch Buggy” with military Humvees, because there are more of them moving around than commuter cars. That game nowadays always devolves into a fistfight and a kid gets his nose broken. And I dislike screaming children.

However, once in a while, the kid is screaming because Mom and Dad are about to force them into a corner and bite their ears off. Like today. I heard the noises before I decided to stroll up to the burnt-out McDonalds to confirm what I suspected.

Yeah.

Dad, I guess, had backed his son into a box of mostly melted Happy Meal toys and was doing his level best to eat the kid alive. Shit.

“Pops! Back off the youngster!”

The man, covered with gore, looked up and out across the wilted plastic seats in the remains of the dining room and smiled at me.

“Don’t you see, this is just a little family squabble—nothing to worry about. Fuck off, Chester.”

I had a hard time believing that, watching the little boy writhing underneath his hands.

“My name isn’t Chester, and I’m not going to let you munch on that kid.”

Dad wasn’t one to waste time. He stood up and hurled himself through the distance that separated us. I’ll admit that, in retrospect, he had one of the best Angry Zombie Growls I’ve heard. What he didn’t have was any clue about human body mechanics.

Faster. Meaner. Claws. But just as stupid.

Charging someone with your arms spread wide, foaming at the mouth, and at full speed is not smart and won’t prepare you for someone who charges back at you.

I ran straight at him, popped the Man Scythe out of the Kydex rig across my back, and snapped the blade out as I moved. To his credit, Dad did not flinch, stop, or do anything else that would have made my day more unfortunate. He just kept coming like a pasty-white, scrawny, undead linebacker.

I planted my leading foot, which checked my forward motion, and collapsed to one knee while pivoting. His arm went right over my head. I came back to my feet, following his motion so that we faced the same direction. He was still in range.

Swing, batter!

The Man Scythe is a compact, folding, melee weapon that is based on a single-handed scythe design. If you’re a martial arts fan, you’ve seen a kama before—it’s a folding kama on steroids.

The frame is milled titanium, with a synthetic rubber grip for traction and shock absorption. The blade is three-quarters the length of the entire weapon, and it folds out into position with a flick of the wrist. A slot in the titanium forms a tongue that snaps into place under the blade, keeping it open for use and does a good bit to keep the blade from folding back in when you least want it.

I had this one made for me. No bullshit off-the-shelf models, as if anyone could mass-produce a thing of beauty like this. The blade is hand-forged, laminated steel, selectively hardened, with a hamaguri (clam) edge profile, as sharp and strong as a samurai sword. Don’t ask me what it cost to have it made—I may never be able to erase that debt.