I, Zombie (24 page)

It must’ve been snowing at night for so much to accumulate.
Lewis hadn’t felt a thing. His skin was too numb to know anything was coming
down at all. He did hear some crunching when he came to now and then, as he
circled within the walls that had trapped the living. But in his groggy
half-sleep he had figured the sound for more of the broken glass that littered
the scene of yesterday’s fight.

It almost made him feel home again, seeing the snow as the
sky brightened. It was the sort of day he loved to spend on the water, those
early morning hours when the sea was flat as glass, when the only breeze was
the one he made with the throttle, and when the sun didn’t rise so much as the
clouds lightened from coal black to ash gray.

Home. Homer, Alaska.

No matter how badly he’d like to be there, Lewis knew he
never would again. He was trapped. They were all trapped. High walls of steel,
cars jumbled up, buses and dump trucks. There would be no call for stooping
down and squeezing out of that block-sized arena. No way to the other side of
that hastily constructed fence. Lewis had it worse than those damn Mexicans.
All they had to do was scale a wall, crawl through some grass, go for a swim,
and they were pretty much free to live wherever they wanted. They weren’t
pinned like this.

Damn Mexicans.

Lewis couldn’t feel his feet. His shoes were soaked and
frozen solid, his toes little cubes of ice. He would love to have wept for his
feet, which must be ruined. Frostbitten. Falling apart. Probably worse than his
arm, which hung open and gathered snow. His flesh was gray, two fingers bent
backwards, and all he wanted was to go home. He wanted to see his kids. See
Darnell. What the fuck had he done with his life?

Killed a bunch of fish. Made more money than he needed to.
He could’ve stopped going out if he’d spent it smarter. If he’d invested. But
it was always there for the taking, just a few nights out with his crew and
he’d come back with enough to pay the bank, fill up with diesel, sit at the bar
a few nights and check out asses and down beers.

Lewis couldn’t feel anything. Not his body. But he felt
something else, something besides the regret. He felt sad for the way he used
to get a kick out of seeing them Mexicans get rounded up. Goddamn, there was
enough fishing out there to do. He made more than he needed. Enough to waste.
What he shoulda done is spent more time with his family.

The snow was a few inches deep. Enough to cover the bodies
scattered in the streets. Fires were burning out of control in the buildings
overhead, survivors overrun by the undead who managed to worm inside. The
remnants of this last bastion of humanity were rising in the form of gray
smoke, billowing up to touch the sad sky, a stream of ash rising like a river
to a broader sea.

The world below, meanwhile, was turning white, getting its
skin back. And across the confines of that city block, there shuffled dark and
grisly shapes. Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, who knew what else. They were
all starting to look the same to Lewis, anyway. Same deadened skin turning
shades of pale gray, same collections of wounds, of gashes and cuts, same
tattered clothes and scraps of fashion, just one river of tottering undead with
their arms out, mouths open, eyes wide and unblinking, the snow dusting their
hair and hiding their hurts.

One mass, Lewis thought. All the damn same. And goddamn, all
he wanted was to go home, to be with his family. But he couldn’t. There was no
river to cross, nothing to crawl through. He was more stuck than birthright,
forced to live where his feet were pinned. He thought of all the fish he’d seen
flapping on his deck, eyeing the scuppers, no chance in hell of ever getting
over the side. He thought of all the times he’d felt that twinge, just a pause,
to knock a fish with his boot, to send it back into the water to be with its
family, but he never did. He was a man with a knife and metal gloves standing
on that deck. And he never did.

Part VI

The Swooping Birds
that Caught Her Eyes

48 • Jeffery Biggers

The jets were flying low. They rumbled down the Hudson,
booms and echoes like thunderclaps amid the walls of glass and steel, and
Jeffery was reminded of that September morning so long ago. He’d been a boy,
cutting class because it was too beautiful outside, when he’d heard the roar of
the jet overhead, a distant grumble, acrid smoke filling the air for days and
days.

Most of the pack ignored the whine of the turbines, but it
triggered a deep memory for Jeffery. It was the sound of deployment, the noise
of good men and women ferried off to another life. It was stub-nosed C-130s and
C-5As that left with children and came home mostly empty. Only the bags were
full. Laid out on the deck. All black. The color of grief. Plastic zippered up
tight.

His head lifted, some primal fear network still intact,
still pulling the puppet’s strings. Navy gray slid across the brilliant blue,
contrails of speed and the cool atmosphere streaking from wingtips. The lead
jet was in a dive. Jeffery remembered jumping out of a plane a long time ago.
He remembered thinking the chute wouldn’t open, that he would plummet to his
death. He remembered calling his mom from camp, still breathless, her so proud
of all the places he was going, the things he was doing.

He only told her about the good places. The good things.

The landing gear was open, hatch doors like little fins on
the plane’s belly, clear as day. Nothing sticking out.

Jeffery remembered flying home—he remembered the party they
threw. All his mom’s friends had crowded around. They grabbed his biceps and
patted his stomach, squealed and told him how handsome he was, showed him their
phones, pictures of their daughters.

He had smiled and eaten off his paper plate, standing up,
telling himself to eat slow. No mortars would scream into the mess tent. He
wouldn’t have to drop what he was doing and find his rifle. Smile and eat. A
woman twice his age told him how pretty his eyes were. How the military done
him good.

He had nodded, didn’t tell her what his eyes had seen. Five
miles driving a jeep, an arm in his lap, a friend laid out in the back seat,
wondering all the while if they could put it back on. Ears still ringing, but
the screams of anguish that would echo forever. Like that buzzing you get when
you’re going deaf to a sound. Going deaf, but there it was anyway. And no
digging could get it out.

They had patted his stomach and asked him how many sit-ups
he could do. Was he going to college? Jeffery had wanted to lift his shirt and
show them. Not his knotted muscles but the scars on top. The white fingers of
flesh where the doctors had saved him. Look, his mom had the Purple Heart, the
trophy of his wounds there over the mantel. Look. Because even she hadn’t seen.
No more playing in the yard with his shirt off. Nothing to see here.

It wasn’t the landing gear that was open, Jeffery saw. This
was a different plane. Something else nosed out of that hatch and dropped away,
and he knew, with a horror that matched the last weeks of his life, he knew
what they’d calculated.

It was a heavy bomb. It didn’t wiggle, didn’t succumb to the
fickle air. There was no second-guessing its intent. A city in exchange for a
continent. He remembered decisions like that. We’ll give up this town if it
means winning the war. Level the streets so there’s no place to hide. A town
for a country. Until there weren’t no towns left.

Turbines screamed as the pilot pulled away, a jet arcing up
while a bomb slid across the blue sky. It fell forever. Jeffery’s body remained
still, that monstrous side of him seeming to understand, to hear his thoughts.
It was almost over.

When it disappeared behind the buildings, there was a silent
pause, the fear of a dud, of nothing.

And then a flash of light shining through the streets and
filling the sky, a billowing bubble of white rising up, a cascade of shattering
glass and toppling steel.

Jeffery braced himself in that hollow head he’d been a
prisoner in for too long. He watched the destruction roar faster than thought
itself. He had but a moment, standing between towers of hope and despair in the
shadow of his father’s work—a moment to be thankful that the end was near, that
the fire would come to take him and his brothers as well.

49 • Michael Lane

Michael was going to hell. He could feel the inexorable flow
downward, gravity and sin tugging on his heels, pulling him toward the center of
the earth.

From the apartment to the streets, and now he was about to
join the crush that flowed beneath them. He had crawled westward from his
shithole neighborhood near the East River and into Tribeca. Neighborhoods that
had been worlds apart now looked the same to him, all seen from pavement level.
Cars lay scattered, abandoned in the middle of the street, doors left open,
hazards blinking, obstacles it took forever to drag himself around. Newspapers
tumbled across the pavement like flightless birds to attack his face. They
spread themselves across the wrought iron gates and fences that protected
walk-ups from the infected sidewalks. They gathered against the gutters in
origami nests until a brave soul—the sports page or classifieds—tore off and
flapped to freedom.

Shopping bags had better luck. Except for those caught on
coils of razor wire, they fluttered up on the breeze like jellyfish pulsing
through the air, torn handles hanging like tentacles and stingers.

Michael had pulled himself along for days. He couldn’t
remember why he was doing this, but couldn’t seem to stop. It reminded him of a
former life, getting up and doing things that made no sense, hating himself,
hating his routine, the eternal disgust, and no ability to break free.

He used his palms to lift himself. Pushing down and then
bending his elbows made him flop forward a few inches. There was hardly any
pause before he did it again. Over and over. The flesh from both hands had been
ripped away. Bone made clacking sounds on the pavement. Several of his fingers
were bent back and pointed unnaturally toward the sky.

Groups of walkers passed him by now and then. They all
grunted and groaned to some degree, weak sounds of agony from those dragging a
broken leg or suffering a gaping wound. It was the accordion squeeze of organs
like great bellows, wheezing and rattling as they chased down anyone still
clinging and surviving, anyone with meat still worth taking.

A pregnant woman in a tattered green dress had made an
especial racket. Her groans rose above the others, a noise among the inhuman
sounds that stood out for being … human. Michael had watched her as she passed
him by, the back of her dress torn open, her underwear riding up, half of her
ass hanging out, skinny everywhere except for that bulge of a belly.

He had lost contact with the woman after a block or so. She
had drifted uptown on some scent Michael couldn’t nose, moving faster with her
waddling stagger than he could ever hope to on his belly. He had followed a
different scent, one that pulled jostling masses down flights of stairs, into a
station, nearer to hell with every painful pull and lunge forward.

And it wasn’t his addiction taking him there. He didn’t
think any god would punish a man for being happy, for victimless crimes. No, he
was on this inexorable crawl into the pits of hell for all the things his
addiction made him forsake. It wasn’t eating his mother, the smear of her
trailing behind him for blocks and city blocks, leaking out his cuffs in oozing
trickles . . . it was the way he’d cared for her all the years before.

Michael finally understood this as he reached those subway
steps and began dragging himself down, another finger popping up to point at
the heavens. He finally understood as he slid on his belly and the birds swooped
down, as flames rushed down the streets, his torment and fiery hell not eternal
at all.

50 • Gloria

The darkness had a smell. It was the wet of rot, of cool air
trapped and festering, the odor of mud, of standing water, accumulated waste,
and damp fur. Piercing it all was the intoxicating scent of cooked flesh, a
zombie perhaps who had fallen on the third rail back when it still had power.
An impenetrable cluster of gnashing mouths worked on the remains of this
accident in pure desperation. Hunger had driven those who’d stumbled
underground to eat what on the surface would be less tempting. Gloria and the
rest of the blind and groping column passed these pathetic souls by and
followed the sounds of rats.

Their squeaking filled the dark subway tunnel. It reminded
Gloria of birthday parties as a kid. It was the chirp of balloons rubbing
together, short outbursts from tiny lungs, a jittery stampede beneath this much
slower, plodding, and rotting one.