Undead L.A. 1 (21 page)

He took another sip of coffee as he heard her gasp behind him.

Every second of this new life is a precious gift,
he thought as he watched the planes move closer their way.
All this time I've been wandering around like a zombie. For the first time in years I finally understand what it means to feel alive. I finally have something worth living for, and I'm already running out of time.

He let out a small, dismal laugh at the irony of it all, but the roar of planes streaking past directly overhead drowned it out.

*** *** ***

History remembers Los Angeles as a city where events and stories evolved

in their significance and were ultimately told and interpreted

through a multiplicity of perspectives and cultures,

like a solipsistic multiverse with not one version of events but instead many

different and equally valid degrees of truth and relevance.

***

Camp Zombie

Fast Jeff was in the back of the burned out Ralph's, a grocery store on Sunset, when they got him. They came and carried him away, kicking and screaming at the top of his lungs. The ragged band of young scavengers had spent the morning picking over the very last of the dry goods on the shelves, moving as quietly as the cockroaches scurrying along the floor. In the end, they'd determined most of the items weren't worth the packaging they'd been wrapped in anymore. Even though it had only been about six weeks since the start of hell on earth, the store had been ransacked so many times at that point that it was no good expecting to find something useful, yet they found themselves going over the place from top to bottom anyway, risking their lives for nothing. It was a sunny day outside and they had all itched for an excuse to go beyond the walls again – a kid can hide in fear for only so long, and they just couldn't help themselves in the end.

It's like checking the fridge over and over,
Donny thought,
even though you know your mom hasn't come back from the grocery store yet to restock it. You know for a fucking fact it is still empty, but something deep down in that alligator part of your brain makes you pull the door open one more damn time and just stare slack jawed into the cold, empty white belly of the beast.

Fast Jeff was a skinny kid, which is how he got his nickname in the first place. At twelve years old he was over four feet tall, but thin as a flagpole. He was a wiry fucker too; high strung like he was jacked out of his mind on coffee all the time, yet none of the other kids ever saw him touch the stuff. It had become a ritual for most of them to drink a cup of the instant crystals before going out on missions, since they needed to be awake and alert at all times once they got onto the streets outside of their camp. Coffee was one of the reasons why kids volunteered to do the runs in the first place; they wanted an excuse to get fired up on the bitter black sludge.

It's no Mountain Dew,
thought Donny,
but it does the trick fast.

They'd had no trouble as they made their way over to the store. It was strangely quiet for that time of day, but then again there was no way of telling what was normal anymore. They all just kept expecting to wake up one day and have the nightmare be over. Jimmy had pointed out a pit bull jogging up ahead of them a couple hundred feet, but it never even turned back in their direction.

Maybe the zombies have all finally died for real this time and gone to hell
, Donny’s thoughts raced. It put a smile on his face and made his heart feel both sad and thrilled at the same time to imagine the ordeal ending just as quickly and without warning as it had begun. They'd take their time stacking the corpses in piles and setting them ablaze with gasoline. They'd rebuild the world the way they saw fit this time around.
No more hypocrisy from old white men,
he laughed to himself,
and no more high school.

With no distractions to slow their progress they made it to the charred remains of the grocery store in record time, just under thirty minutes. Once they got inside, they'd combed it over aisle by aisle. They'd checked the back last, pausing by a hole in the building near the cardboard compactor before moving on to argue among themselves by the employees’ break room. Two wanted the break room checked; the others said not to bother. No one volunteered.

Those freaks must have been in there the whole time,
Donny thought, a sick feeling twisting in his unbelieving guts as he watched Fast Jeff being hauled back through the plastic that separated the front from the back of the store. Those monsters just lifted him clean off his feet without a sound. Donny had seen the whole thing like it was going down in slow motion. His feet felt like they were glued to the floor as he watched. One minute Fast Jeff was jerking his head back and forth on the lookout, telling the rest of the guys to hurry the shit up, and the next he was being lifted into the air like a prize pig at the county fair.

Do something,
Donny screamed inside his own head. He felt the baseball bat in his hands, but it was heavier than all the weights in the gym.
Don't just stand there and let them take him without a fight. At least yell or throw something!
Come on, man! There’s still time!

It was no use. He was so scared, he wasn't even breathing at that point. He could feel a tremble moving his left leg against his will. He prayed he wouldn't piss himself. He didn't have another pair of pants.

Why didn't we make sure the employees’ break room was empty?

Donny felt himself slipping out of the moment, moving against his will back to that place in his memory. It was a bad habit he'd gotten deeper and deeper into as time went by. One minute he was fully there, present and aware, and the next he was lost in his thoughts, not even an active spectator to what was going on around him. At best he was hidden somewhere deep inside himself, watching unpleasant things unfold – like a kid eating popcorn in the dark at the back of a big empty movie theater, watching a horror movie he'd snuck into. At worst he was daydreaming, frozen in place, a sitting duck just waiting to be attacked and put out of his misery.

Even Gary thought we should check it, but we were all too scared.

“
We gotta check it,” Gary had said when we'd come to the door in the first place. It made sense. There was blood smeared on it but it was old blood already turned that shit rust color, like it had been done a million years ago. Donny put his ear to the door but didn't hear anything.

“
It's quiet,” he said, “it must be empty. Not that you can always tell that way either, mind you. I'm not retarded. I get that.”

That's when Jimmy, the wise ass that he always is, took the flat of his hand and slapped the door hard next to Donny's ear. Donny jumped about ten feet in the air, hitting Jimmy's hand as he pulled it away. Jimmy was laughing so hard his whole face turned bright red, and he nearly fell over clutching his sides.

“That's not funny you fucking asshole,” Donny screamed at him, but he just kept busting a gut laughing his damn head off. Donny could feel the adrenaline spikes shooting through him making his insides freeze hard with quivering fear, only to be followed by a surge of hot anger. He balled up his fists, willing himself to take a swing at the much bigger kid. Jimmy didn't even bother to cover his face.

He's not even worried
, Donny thought.
He doesn't think I have the balls to do it
.

Donny swung at his head, but in his rage he missed it completely. He pumped several times at the back of Jimmy's head with his small fists, but Jimmy just ducked and Donny’s fists whooshed silently through the air hitting nothing. Finally, in a burst of raw emotion, Donny cried out and brought both his fists down hard on Jimmy's back, but that only made Jimmy laugh harder.

“Hey,” he laughed. “What are you trying to do? Tickle me to death?”

“
Fuck you, Jimmy,” he ranted again before Gary put his hand on Donny's arm, signaling for him to calm the shit down.

“
Enough,” he said. “One of us has to go in there and check it out.”

“
It ain't gonna be me,” Donny protested, his heart still thumping hard against his rib cage from the prank. “Make fucking Jimmy do it.”

“
Screw that,” Jimmy said. “Fast Jeff should do it. He can be in and out in seconds.”

“
No way,” Fast Jeff said, shaking his head.

“
Why not?”

“
I'm not getting trapped in a tiny room with a bunch of creepy dead fuckers trying to eat me for lunch,” Fast Jeff replied. His eyes were running a marathon in his head at the idea. They shot back and forth like he was watching a tennis match.

“
That's what I'm talking about,” Jimmy shouted. “They'll never catch you because you're too fucking fast, you idiot.”

“
Being fast don't mean shit when you're stuck in a room,” he argued back. “Besides, it's the hungry ones you gotta worry about the most. They’re the ones who move all fast and shit. If there are people back in that room, they ain't had nothing to eat but each other for a long time. They're gonna come flying out of there like bats out of hell the minute we open that door! Then we're all fucked!”

He was right and they all knew it. One by one they turned to Gary, their unofficial leader, as always expecting him to make the call for them.

“Whadja think, boss man?”

“
I think you should shut the fuck up for two fucking seconds,” Gary growled, shooting Jimmy a look that knocked the smile clean off his face. No one said a thing. They all just stood there like idiots waiting to see what Gary was going to do. He'd been in a worse mood than usual lately and it was hard to tell just what would set him off. None of us had been sleeping much. We were running out of food. We were eating mostly dry Ramen noodles, about a pack a day. If we didn't come up with some new food rations we could be forced out of the safety of our camp. We might even have to fight off another group of survivors for resources. We'd seen scavengers coming up from West Hollywood and knew there were still people up that way as of the week before.

“
No one touch it,” Gary said at last. Donny sighed loudly, relieved he wasn't going to be ordered into the room against his will. Gary was pretty big. When he gave them a job the kids just did it. They didn't argue, but he let them complain. Donny was certain that whatever was on the other side of that blood-smeared door was nothing less than the stuff nightmares were made of, before demons poured them into your ears at night.

Like glowing red eyes under your bed
, thought Donny,
or the creeping feeling of terror that locks you in place while you stare in horror at your doom coming to carry you away.

“
What if they come through the door?”

“
They can't open doors, stupid,” Jimmy shot back at Donny. “They don't know how to use their thumbs anymore.”

But his predicted safety had been wrong. Zombies didn't need to open the door. All they had to do was lean up against it, using their collective weight, and eventually the pressure had caused the lock to pop open. All it took to draw them out was our loud arguing. The sound brought them out of their stupor, transforming them from hibernating sloths into fast and deadly killers.

It's not like it was an industrial strength doorknob either,
Donny thought.
No one was planning on having it withstand a thousand pounds of sustained pressure. It was the employees’ break room, not a military installation for Christ sakes.

Donny wondered why he hadn't said anything before. He'd worked with his stepfather during the last normal summer doing odd jobs and learning basic carpentry. His mom said it kept him out of trouble and it was good to learn a skill, but Donny hated it, at least at first.

Bram
, Donny remembered, scoffing at the time.
What kind of name is Bram for a guy? He should call himself Dracula instead. He's like a blood sucking parasite that's attached itself to my mom and won't let go.

Bram was always trying to win him over with small talk, trying to be his buddy. Donny wasn't looking to be pals with the loser his mom had settled on. Everyone was so worried about how he'd taken the news that his dad had run off on them, saying that he needed counseling so he could talk about his feelings. The last thing Donny wanted was any of that touchy feely shit. He just wanted to hang out with his friends and act like everything was normal, instead of living under a microscope twenty-four-seven.

Donny guessed that the doorjamb was just made out of wood and never even reinforced. The strike plate was probably a sliver of cheap metal and the pawl was most likely made out of hardened plastic made in China.

Or USA
, Donny chuckled to himself. He'd heard the Chinese named an island ‘Usa’ so they could label all their products as “Made in USA” and still get them passed through customs and onto Wal-Mart’s shelves. He never knew if it was true or not, but it sounded about right to him. He remembered when his real dad used to go into angry tirades reading the newspaper over breakfast – before he up and disappeared one day.