Rotten (2 page)

“It may be a virus, Professor, but it’s more like rabies than the flu,” Highland said.  “Come look down there and tell me if that looks like the flu to you.  You know with the flu you’re feverish and tired, you’re not running down the street tearing people’s guts out.  And you sure as hell don’t get up after your guts have been torn out!”

The professor stared at Highland for a moment and then dropped his chin on his chest and held his head.  I felt bad for him.  He’s an educated dude and this was far outside of his realm of thinking.  His world backed up against early American writers - George Romero, king of all things zombie, didn’t earn him his Master’s degree - and I’m pretty sure he never had to write a paper on
The Night Of The Living Dead
. 

“We can do this.” I walked to the window with my mop, forcing confidence I didn’t feel, and knew I looked like an idiot from some B horror flick, you know the one that usually dies, and said,  “Highland’s right.  We need to observe and figure it out.” 

“They’re zombies, Sully!”  Princess yelled and we all grew still.  I wondered if the horde below had heard her.  Rotten ran to the window and looked down, while Highland and Moonshine leaned closer to the glass.  “No more Professor this or Professor that.  He’s fuckin’ Sully and I was screwing around with him in my senior year of high school.  You know that, Dove.”

“I knew someone, I just never caught the name,” I said honestly and nodded my head.  “Sully, it is.”  I turned to the guys.  “Did they hear us?”

Moonshine shook his head.  Rotten looked for another moment and turned.  “I don’t think so,” he said.

Highland watched for several more seconds and then said, “No.  I don’t think they heard.”  He rubbed his chin and twisted his head in the way a cat does when it’s trying to figure something out.  “What do we know about them besides the fact that they move fast?”

I thought back.  My memory of the last hour was hazy.  We had been standing in the alley behind Club 13 and were just getting ready to step inside when the professor walked up.  Princess’s demeanor changed immediately and I noticed and didn’t know why.  Shit, I didn’t know HE was the guy who broke her heart so badly that she dropped out of school right before graduation.  She never gave me a name. 

Anyway, we stood there awkwardly for a moment in a jam on the stairs and Moonshine cracked a joke about Sully hitting on college girls.  We all laughed, even Princess and we were still laughing, although uncomfortably, when Sully tried to get around us to reach the door.  Moonshine moved up the stairs to give him room and just as Sully reached for the handle a girl ran up screaming.  I’d seen her in school once or twice, but I knew her from the gallery Princess had opened down on 5
th
Street.  

“Heather!  What the hell?” I yelled, because what the hell? 

She tried to speak, but couldn’t.  She pointed toward the back of the parking lot.  The lot was lined in old cedar trees standing fifty feet high and blocking the view of the projects on the other side. 

“Heather!”  Rotten grabbed her shoulders and looked back to where she pointed.  “What?”

She broke away and grabbed the door handle.  She pulled and when she did, Penelope came falling through the opening.  Now I shared American Literature with Penelope in Professor Kingswood’s one o’clock class and was quite surprised to see her jump on top of Heather and pull out her intestines. 

“What the fuck?”  Moonshine screamed.  “Go, go, go, go!”

We ran.  Suddenly I was back in Highland’s basement watching zombie movies, smoking weed, and drinking moonshine, but this time it was real and I didn’t have a buzz.

Moonshine grabbed Professor Kingswood and shoved him toward the alley.  “Run!”  Sully ran behind us, gaining ground, and passed Rotten in the lead. 

“Where?” Sully yelled.

“Go, go, go, go!” Moonshine responded. 

We ran up to Bay Street just as the glass in the front of the bar shattered and bodies fell on the sidewalk. 

“Right!” Rotten yelled and led the pack again. 

Sully fell in line beside Rotten and Princess, Highland and I had taken the back, while Moonshine pushed to the front of the line and yelled, “Move!  Go!” 

As I said the memories are vague, but as we crossed 3
rd
Street a man ran out of the tobacco shop and tried to grab Moonshine by the throat.  The man was barefooted and dressed in a cotton robe and boxer shorts.  He ran at Moonshine, his hands outstretched and his mouth open (I swear I think he was drooling), but Moonshine saw him coming.  He ducked low and caught the near-naked man in the stomach with his shoulder, flipping him on the concrete and stomping his booted foot on the man’s throat.  “Go, go, go!”

Rotten took the lead and then we were on the block of the government subsidized apartments.  The apartment buildings lined both sides of the street and there was no way to see into the twenty-four dark openings that defined their front porches and led to the sidewalk we were traveling.  Rotten ran in the middle of the road. 

A young pregnant woman jumped from one of the porches as though she was a cricket on hot asphalt and appeared at Princess’s side.  “No you don’t!” Princess elbowed the girl in the jaw.  “It was supposed to be a good day.” 

The heavily pregnant girl fell on the blacktop and struggled to get to her feet around the huge belly.  Princess kicked her in the head.  “Go!”  We ran.

A few steps later a kid rolled out so fast in a wheelchair I was amazed that the thing didn’t topple over.  He launched his broken body in Rotten’s direction.  Rotten extended one hand and caught the kid in the chest.  The kid fell hard against the curb, crushingly hard I should say, and we ran on. 

A couple steps later an old woman did a back flip and ended up right in Sully’s path.  Sully stopped so suddenly he fell on his ass and the woman descended on him; I kicked her in the throat.  She was frail, I outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, if not more, and I heard her neck snap.  Highland pulled Sully up and we ran again. 

“Right!”  Highland yelled as we approached the corner.  Rotten turned and we followed.  Highland dug in the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a key, and took the lead.

About half a block up, he slammed into a metal door, ducked low, and slid the key home.

“It’s a gig,” he said, as we fell inside and he locked the door behind us.  “Going to be a rave here next week.”  He led us up the stairs.  “Don’t judge me, it pays the bills.”  I didn’t mention that Highland does lights and sounds for raves, did I?  That’s because I didn’t know until that moment, that’s the thing with Highland, you just never know. 

“That’s all I can say for sure, they’re fast,” I said.

Highland rubbed his chin and looked back onto the street.  “That’s not much,” he muttered. 

I shrugged and yawned.  Hell, it was the middle of the night, or at least it felt like the middle of the night.  I was suffering my typical depression and hadn’t had enough sleep, not that I had ever had enough sleep.

“This is what I think,” Highland said, turning from the window.  “We sleep in shifts.  Rotten and Dove will take the first watch.  Princess and Moonshine, the second, and I’ll take the third.  But I want you guys to pay attention, make notes if you have to.  I’ll wake you guys in the morning and we’ll talk.”

“What about Sully?  He doesn’t get a shift?” Moonshine stared at the man.

“Not until he understands it isn’t the flu,” Rotten said.  “Hell, he might open the door and offer them aspirin or something.  He can’t be trusted.”

The others moved off to stretch out on the floor, Princess snuggled up against Moonshine far away from Sully, and Rotten and I stared down at the street.  It was quieter; the screaming had all but stopped.  He elbowed me and pointed at the corner, I turned to see a man rolling as you might see a child rolling down at grassy hill.  He rolled quickly like the street was on an incline instead of being completely level.  Rotten and I glanced at each other without speaking, and turned back to the window to watch the man roll past.

“You saw the video of that guy jumping over rooftops and down on cars and back up onto the roofs again, right?” he whispered.

“Yeah, like five times,” I said.  “Weird shit.  And all the other weird stories we’ve been hearing for a month now.  You’re right.  We should have seen this coming.  Hell, we’ve been watching zombie movies forever.”  How many times had we gathered in Highland’s basement for
The
Night Of The Living Dead
marathons?  And what about
The Omega Man
?  I know we watched that one a good thirty times, and I had such a crush on Charlton Heston when I was twelve. And the last time we’d all been together it was to watch
Zombieland
at Rotten’s place.  We should have known, but we were caught up. 

I was caught up in life, busy getting my heart broken over and again, trying to keep up my grades up in school, and dealing with my depressive nature which took a lot of work on my part to ensure I had time to lay around and feel sorry for myself.  I was lucky that I didn’t have to worry so much about the future.  I’m a trust-fund baby.  My Grandpa invented a doodad that is used in computers and he got rich.  And as I am one of his grandchildren, he set me up - college education, room, board, and food paid until I graduate – then squat until I turn thirty-five.  I intended to make the most of my very liberal education, and I figured I had all the time in the world.  And hell, the way it was looking I might not graduate until I was thirty-five.

Princess was busy running her gallery where she sold art, her own and others, and vintage clothes, jewelry, and furniture, or whatever she found on her excursions to thrift shops and antique stores.  The gallery was downtown, close to the river where the property was run down and cheap, and she lived in the small apartment in the back.  She lived bare-boned and often turned up at my apartment around dinnertime. 

Rotten was a musician and divided his time between music and conspiracy theories.  He didn’t have to work as he came from old money and received a monthly stipend that more than covered his simple lifestyle.  His parents, who had also never held jobs, were new age hippies and traveled the world spreading their brand of love and light. 

Moonshine was probably the most normal one of us and that kept him pretty busy.  He worked in a giant hardware store where he sold wood and wood accoutrements.  Moonshine was a hunting, fishing, motorcycle riding, and baseball loving good ole boy.  He was a guy’s guy, a jock, and it seemed his friends and adventures were limitless, but he still made time for us.

And no one really knew what Highland did, not really, his life had always seemed like a big mystery to us.  Okay, we knew he did light and sound shows, we knew he still lived in his mom’s house, and that he could get anything you needed and only charged you if it passed the fifty buck range.  But Highland was quiet and you just never felt like you really knew him. 

Rotten had known the apocalypse was coming, but the rest of us had forgotten the pacts and rules we made as children. At eleven, we knew the zombie apocalypse was going to happen.  At twelve, we had plans – serious plans.  At thirteen, we’d meet at midnight, or whenever we could sneak out, at the corner of Atworth and Sumner and act out our plans.  At fourteen, we still got together and watched the movies.  At fifteen, we were different - we grew up and put away our childish notions.  

“We should have known,” I whispered.  “But we forgot.”

Rotten nodded his head.

We woke Moonshine and Princess a couple hours later and stretched out on the floor beside each other.  I tried to sleep, but my mind found it hard to settle.  That had always been my problem, I thought too much.  I had been told over and again in my youth that I shouldn’t think so much, but really, how do you change that?  I was a wonderer.  Not much of a social creature unless a subject I could discuss was broached.  That’s why I still kept in touch with these old school friends - I fit in.  It was rare in my travels, even in the classes I chose to take, that I’d find people who could even consider the alternative ideas of life and the meaning of it, much less discuss them.  These old friends were odd, but they were family, and I trusted them. 

I thought about the guy rolling hundreds of yards as though it was a few short feet.  His bones and joints were thudding against concrete and yet he smiled.  A few feet is all in good fun, as I remembered some drunken nights in my sophomore year and the hill in front of the fraternity house of Sigma Phi.  Six feet after too much beer is fun, but a hundred yards on hard pavement is demented.  Sully said it was a brain-swelling virus, a flu.  He compared it to meningitis.  But I’d never heard stories of people with meningitis tearing out people’s guts.  And frankly, seeing Penelope rip into Heather was worse than all the zombie movies I had ever seen, and I know Highland was just as freaked, especially since the spray of the initial wound hit him square in the middle of his white shirt.