The Zombie Letters (13 page)

              “Pull over, pal. I gotta barf.”

              “Fuck me, Daryl . . . you serious?”

              Daryl forced something else back and held his hand in front of his face as if someone had bare-ass farted an inch away from his nose. “You want lung butter all over your nice, new GT? Be my guest, man. Breakfast burrito is fixin’ to say adios.”

              “Oh, damnit!” Benny shouted. He quickly pulled the car over to the side of the empty road. They were only five miles outside of the city turnoff and another twenty minutes from downtown.

              The car was still rolling when Daryl opened the door and leaned out, letting loose onto the ground. The pilot nearly gagged looking at him. “Jesus that smells . . . what the fuck you drink, man? Gasoline?”

              “Nah . . .” he said, arching his back and violently spewing onto the grassy ditch. “They were fresh outta gasoline.”

              “Here . . . get the hell out of the car and get some air right quick,” Benny said. He slammed the car into park and grabbed the back of Daryl’s shirt to keep him from falling on his face. Daryl slowly scooted to the edge of the seat and stood up, arching his back. The sun was nearly up now. His pilot exited the car and joined him. “I guess it won’t hurt me to get some fresh air either,” Benny said, joining his friend at the edge of the state highway dropoff ditch. Benny looked into the breast pocket of his t-shirt and fumbled for his cigarettes. “Want a smoke?”

              Daryl didn’t respond.

              “Hey, I’m talking to you. You want . . .” he looked up from the soggy pack of reds he spilt beer on earlier and at his friend, who was staring off into a soybean field off the road . . . his brow shrunken in an utterly confused expression.

              “Daryl, what you staring at?”

Across the field, about one hundred yards from them, they could see a large group of people slowly walking toward the road. The light was still low and it was difficult to see them. “What the hell those people doin’?” Daryl said with a sickly hiccup.

              “I don’t know. Lets get going.”

              Benny smashed out his cigarette and kicked it into the ditch. He turned around to see a man crossing the street. Benny did not believe what he was seeing. The man shuffling slowly towards him was nearly skeletal. He was wearing a fireman’s uniform that had been torn open at the chest, revealing a nearly shattered set of ribs. The flesh was stripped from one side of his face . . . and everything else . . . showing a skull underneath, tinged red with flesh blood. The top of his head had been crudely removed as if it was ripped apart. There was nothing inside, hardly. Just an empty cavity with a small torn membrane inside about the size of a golfball.

“What in the . . .”

The fireman uttered a low, guttural growl. The man’s voice sounded like his lungs were filled with rocks that banged together when he made a sound. The strange man, now nearly at the car walked further, favoring his right leg. It was hanging there by mere strands of skin and muscle that looked like wet ribbons. The remaining muscle underneath glistened in the approaching morning light. His left eye, the one still attached looked so blank . . . staring into nothing - and everything - all at once.

“Daryl! Lets get the fuck outta here, man!” Benny yelled as he ran towards the car and attempted to jump across the hood to avoid the thing. It was now within arm’s reach. It lurched forward in a surprisingly agile manner and grabbed Benny’s arm at the bicep . . . firmly enough to break it. He could feel the bones in his arm snapping away from the tendons, splitting his upper arm bone in half. His wail of agony careened into the early morning like a train. The people across the field all turned their heads toward him

and they began to run.

The half-skinned face of the creature in the fire department suit brought Benny’s arm up to its mouth and sank its teeth in . . . ripping the skin off of his arm like someone would a piece of chicken. It tore away in one large chunk, exposing a protruding white bone. Daryl shot his horrified gaze away and reached into the car to grab the half-bottle of Everclear he had stashed under the seat. He tossed the glass bottle at the man chewing on Benny’s arm. Benny tore himself away and collapsed onto the ground. He didn’t make a sound. Grabbing the Zippo lighter out of his pocket, Daryl attempted to throw it at the horribly-mangled stranger and missed . . . hitting the
thing’s
shoe. It was enough, though. The Zippo clanked on the ground, still lit. It landed next to the attacker’s shoe and caught fire immediately. The man’s whole body was enveloped in seconds. The thing didn’t scream. It just continued to make that low-toned grumbling moan. It took three more steps and fell onto the tarmac.

“Benny . . . Ben!!” Daryl ran up to his friend who was now weakly attempting to get up. He moaned loudly as a man waking up with a hangover would. Daryl knelt down to assist his trusty pilot. They had to get in the car and get the hell out. Now. He could hear the approaching crowd of people. Their quickly-paced running footfalls were coming closer by the second. “Ben! We need to get the hell out!” Benny stood up and faced his friend. Deeply bloodshot eyes . . . the color of the oozing wound on his arm, burned with a look Daryl had never seen on a person before. Daryl whirled around to see how close the crowd was. He hadn’t noticed right away that they were all crowded around him.

The faces . . . the eyes. The smell of them.

Daryl Sloan pleaded with God. The first time he prayed in his life. Closing his eyes, he could feel two of them grab his legs and lift them up. Another two behind him grabbed his arms at the wrists. They held the silently praying man in the air by his wrists and ankles as Daryl uttered his first and last
amen.

There was no pain. The living sensations of both arms and legs left him. Before his sight disappeared, he opened his eyes to see his arms and legs being tossed into the ditch.

III

              “I am
not
going to lose out on an entire city’s water supply just because some moron fell asleep at the wheel. The reservoir itself is fine, so just close the spillway. I tested the water not five minutes ago and there are no contaminates. Checked it twice. Where the frick is Jenkins? He should have been back two hours ago.”

              “I tried calling, but no answer. You know how that old fool is. I’ll let you know when he calls back. I’m goin’ across the street for a bit of breakfast. Join me?”

              “Come here . . . taste this . . .”

              “What?”

              “Water tastes funny. Come here . . . little aftertaste. See?”

              “ . . .”

              “Hey, you alright?”

IV

              He was the best lover she’d ever had, although she had only a bit of experience. Three guys was enough to be a fairly decent judge of a man’s sexual talents. She thought so, anyway. Only twenty years old and she was already making a list. No wonder older woman go batshit. Mario could fuck, that’s for sure. He was a hell of a lot better than Robbie, Salvador or Dyson. Mario understood. Making love is okay and everything, but women want to be manhandled . . . to feel how animalistic these big, hairy, hung creatures can get. Every woman at her core is fundamentally this. Even the most prudish and stuffy girls simply want to be fucked like a whore. Grab my hair. Slap my ass. Make me swallow it . . . then make me some fucking breakfast. After I eat, I’ll let you put it in my ass if you ask nicely. Or don’t ask. I like that better.

              “No, babe I have to go. Got that meeting at work today.”

              He took his hand off of her breast, giving her his best pouty-face. “One more? For posterity?” he said as he lay there naked in the light of the rising sun.

              “Oh, Mario Silva. You
are
an animal, you know that?” she said, giving him a kiss on his hand and walking her bow-legged body to the bathroom.

              “And you, Miss Blair?”

              “Don’t call me that, it’s creepy. My boss calls me Miss Blair. He’s one of those old perv-o’s that assigns girls to sit up front in meetings so he can look between their legs. If they have a skirt on or not.”

              “Okay,” Mario said, sounding defeated. “Hey, Catherine?”

              “Yeah?” She reached into the shower and turned on the water. It hissed to life after a pipe groaned and protested somewhere under the floor. The house was pretty old. The house does that.

              “See you after work?”

              “I have classes on Mondays, you know that. Call Natalie. I’m sure your fiancé would like to see you today. Take a shower with me, wild-man?”

              He smiled. “You go ahead. I gotta pinch a loaf.”

              “Your elegance astounds me,” Catherine said as she got into the shower. She playfully gave her soon-to-be best friend’s husband a playful little ass-wiggle as she stepped inside.

              Mario’s legs were still weak from their two-day romp. He felt as if everything was drained out of him. That girl is insatiable. He walked into the bathroom, smiling at the sound of Catherine’s whistling. Mario stopped in front of the bathroom mirror to pop a zit. Twenty-three years old and still getting goddamn zits. “When you get off work, send me a text and we’ll grab a bite to eat, ok?” he said, inching closer to the mirror with his fingers viced around an eventual pot-mark. Catherine had stopped whistling . . . now uttering weak, dry-sounding gasps. It was a moan he knew well now. “Having fun in there? Didn’t get enough? I’ll be sad if I go in there and find you cheating on me with the shower massager.”

              “Ma – mm . . . Mari . . . uhhhnnnn.”

              Mario walked to the clear shower door. Catherine was standing motionless, facing the far wall . . . her back to him. From the view outside the distorted shapes the glass gave him, he could see that she was swaying slightly with her arms at her sides. “Catherine?” he said as he pulled the door open. She didn’t move. “Baby?” He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and turned her around. She had bitten off her bottom lip . . . all the way to the top of the chin. Her teeth, now exposed, had hanging strands of skin stuck in between them where she had been chewing on it. Her eyes widened into a horrified expression and looked at Mario like a person who had experienced enough to lose her mind. Her eyes pleaded with him somehow. Extending her shaking closed hands to him as if to give him something, she looked down with her now extremely bloodshot eyes. A solitary tear fell down her cheek. She opened her hands and showed him what she had hidden. Her tongue, still moist and alive.

V

              At the moment Daryl Sloan prayed to his god and Catherine Blair had her last orgasm, Doctor Nathaniel Winters scanned himself into the Mercy Regional’s city morgue. Any man in a white coat wouldn’t be questioned walking the halls at four twenty-two in the morning. Even on the lower level. People around there can sense a doctor. They all walk, talk and carry themselves a certain way. Nathaniel didn’t need to be too covert. This was only going to take a minute. The badge belonged to a pretty-looking doctor if he’d ever seen one. Kind of a milf . . . one he wouldn’t have minded having a go with if he weren’t married. Doctor Milf got it easy compared to what the rest of the city will endure. Her body was inside the empty Human Resources office. Nathaniel slit her throat with a straight razor when he passed her in the hallway. HR wouldn’t discover the body until at least eight o’clock when the office opens. By then, it won’t matter in the slightest.

              Nathaniel scanned the card and quickly dispatched the two surgeons inside with the tranquilizer gun he took from the lab. It was the gun they used to take down gorillas. Poor bastards. Their hearts stopped before they hit the ground. Doctor Winters immediately walked to the cadaver storage units . . . sliding the slabs that lined the outer walls open one by one. All seventeen filed bodies, plus the bloated and purple man on the autopsy table. All of them needed to be out and in the open.

              The hard work was already done. Hospitals are required to have above-ground sprinkler systems. There are so many lives walking a fine line in those buildings. They do that if in the event something went haywire with the sprinkler systems, people wouldn’t have to dig two feet down just to fix it.

              The Lynn003 drug thrives in water. Moreso than any other version. One gallon was all it took to contaminate the entire sprinkler system’s water supply. Nathaniel casually walked out of the morgue and stepped out of the rear emergency door. An alarm immediately sounded, but it was simple to locate the key. Nate already had it. It had been attached to the bleeding woman down in the HR office. He walked to the car . . . just a short sprint from the door. He had never made a Molotov cocktail before, but when he tossed it into the propped doorway, it shattered against the wall in a brilliant burst of orange and blue flame. As Nathaniel Winters sat inside the car, he could hear the overhead sprinklers starting to hiss to life.