Undead L.A. 1 (34 page)

“Something’s wrong,” he said in a small, quiet voice.

The thought to turn and run struck me but I felt rooted in place, unable to turn away. I knew we would never make it anyway. We were surrounded by people on all sides, boxed in almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the wriggling masses. A tiny voice inside of me said a prayer, hoping that if we just stood still long enough the insanity would sweep past us and leave us untouched. A sinking feeling filled my guts, and I knew it wasn't going to happen. We were staring at our approaching deaths and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

Brian turned me toward him and planted a kiss on my lips. It didn't matter that I'd hurled just moments before. Nothing mattered really, not in the face of what was heading our way. I remembered that I had mints in my pocket and pushed him back.

“
Wait,” I said, as he tried to kiss me once more. “Let me freshen my breath.”

We both took a handful and began chewing them as fast as we could. There was a deep sense of urgency to our actions. This was it and we both knew it, our last chance to feel some sense of intimacy before our lives were snuffed out like candles doused with seawater. There were so many regrets I had, so many things I still wanted to do with my life, but I didn't have time to worry about them at all. All I had time for was one last kiss.

Brian was ripped from me before I had time to savor the moment. I opened my eyes to see him being carried away by a mass of blood-soaked men and women. He looked like a skinny brown twig swooshed away in a sudden downpour. He screamed out at the top of his lungs, futilely waving his hands around like white surrender flags. In seconds he was gone, slipping beneath the pack of bloodthirsty killers and being piled over like a fresh kill. His harrowing screams rang out one last round, then fell silent until there was nothing left to hear but the sounds of low growls, the tearing of flesh, and the gurgling of his gooey liquid center leaking out like some kind of molten dessert cake for psychotic cannibals.

A roar sounded behind me and I wheeled around in fear, my nerves rattled, fresh adrenaline painfully coursing through me. That's when I saw the man I knew would take my life coming toward me like the Angel of death. He was young, not much older than your average high school kid, but his already ropy muscles protruded from somewhere underneath his dusky skin. Thick black hair stuck out from the bottom of his chin like shiny thread. A large gash in his forehead caused black blood to dribble down between his milky eyes, only to congeal in the hot sun. There were large chunks of flesh ripped out of his forearms that reached all the way down to the exposed white bones underneath. I opened my mouth and screamed.

“NO!”

But it was already too late. With an iron grip, he seized me by the sides of both of my arms. I felt a trickle of hot fear shooting down my leg and puddling into my left sneaker as I lost control of my bladder. I was physically shaking, my spiking adrenaline levels turning my limbs into useless quivering obstacles. In one swift movement he opened his terrible mouth, bringing his face forward and toward me with deadly intent. I screamed as loud as I ever had in my life, knowing it was hopeless, but not able to do much else. He lifted me off the ground until my feet kicked wildly at the air. One of my shoes came flying off in the process, but that was the least of my worries. His face was approaching my breasts. For a terrifying moment I imagined that he would chew right through me, but at the last second he tilted his head like a teenager learning how to French kiss and clamped down with his dirty mouth full of jagged teeth on the meat of my right arm.

Shock flooded my system as I felt the teeth gnawing into my skin. I felt cold now and totally numb. I was aware that this strong kid had just torn a chunk of my arm away with his teeth and was now chewing on the raw meat, but I still didn't feel anything. A loud explosion rang out behind me. I was still suspended in the air, shivering with fear, unable to make a sound. The man-child holding me turned toward the sound of the commotion. In an instant he hurled me to the ground, discarding me like fast food for something better. I hit the ground hard, my limp body splayed out as if I was already dead. My head collided with the asphalt and there was ringing in my ears, but still no pain. I took shallow breaths as I stared up at the brilliant sunset above me, doing my best to block out and ignore the mindless animals around me engaged in vicious cannibal acts of savagery.

My head tilted to the side and I saw that the pile of people who had taken Brian away had finally dissipated, moving on to fresh meat. Brian’s feet seemed to sporadically twitch. A thought drifted through my mind like the forgotten lyrics to an old song.

What if he is already dead and gone? What if what you are seeing is just the start of him reanimating, like the others? That would mean you are dying, too, right now. Soon you will be one of them, just like the man who killed you.

It was an ugly thought and I tried to push it out of my head. It had all happened too quickly. I wasn't ready to die. I wanted answers. I wanted to know what had happened and why it had been allowed. I wanted to hit the pause button on reality, get up and dust myself off, and go home. I would leave the trucks. I could always come back and get them. More than anything in the world I wanted to be home with my aging father and my sister Rosario and my beautiful new niece.

“No,” I managed, my voice sounding low and sick. Beads of sweat began to pour down from my forehead. I had hot and cold chills, but I was no longer in shock. I could feel the throbbing pain in my arm along with the flow of warm blood leaving my body. I'd had a bad fever when I was in the 3
rd
grade. My father and sister had gone off to run the truck, but my
Abuelita
had stayed with me. She used warm washcloths on my forehead and sang to me in Spanish until the fever broke. I was so scared that I was going to die. I'd never felt that awful before. More than anything I worried that I would never see my family again. That same feeling now crept into me, filling me with dread to the core.

“
I don't want to die! Please, not yet!”

Using every bit of determination I still had at my disposal, I managed to roll onto my side. There was a hand digging into my side. I lifted it to my face, realizing in horror that it was some stranger’s hand. The fingernails were well manicured and the wrist still had an expensive mans watch ticking away on it. There was course hair on the tan skin of the remains of the arm, and the limb ended in a jagged mess of bloody torn skin sporting protruding veins. I threw it away into the passing crowd, which now moved like a slow river made of amber as more people like me arose from the ground and began moving in the direction of the courthouse.

I saw Brain starting to stand up, but before he could push himself up he fell back down and began shaking again.

He's alive,
I thought with excitement.
Maybe we aren't going to die after all. We've survived!

The thought alone was enough to propel me back to my feet. I scurried toward him, unstable on legs that no longer wanted to listen to me. I chalked up their stiffness to the impact of the fall I'd just taken. I opened my mouth to call his name, but what came out made no sense. A dribble of blood rolled off my tongue as I realized I'd accidentally bitten through my lower lip trying to get up. I hadn't even noticed.

I held my damaged left arm with my right hand; slick red blood poured through my fingers. It was no use. I was going cold with shock and blood loss. I had trouble focusing my eyes. I could feel the start of a migraine coming on. Brian was curled up in a ball at my feet. His body was wracked with violent seizures and white foam drooled out of his mouth. In the chaos he'd lost his left ear. Blood drooled down from the side of his head and onto his torn shirt. His eyes glowed a menacing red.

He stood up and growled at me like a hungry wolf left to scavenge in an icy wasteland. There was no trace left of the brilliant, magical man I'd been falling in love with. He unexpectedly lunged toward me and drove his hand into my stomach, piercing the skin and forcing his way into the soft mess of my intestines.

The pain was intensely overwhelming and I cried out in shock. I put both hands on his shoulders and tried to drive him back, but it was no use. I could feel the strength seeping out of me as he rooted around in my guts, searching for something. An unbearable pain tore through my chest as he grabbed a fistful of my insides and yanked them out. He held them up triumphantly in front of my face and licked at the bloody entrails like they were a delicacy. The last thing I saw of the world as I collapsed onto the dirty, cigarette strewn asphalt of downtown Los Angeles was Brian taking a bite out of my still beating heart.

I'm coming Abuelita
, I thought as the light left my eyes and the pain left my body.
Tell the others I'm almost home.

*** *** ***

They came to drink in the year round sunshine,

each hoping to get their small taste of the elusive California Dream

once popularized by the entertainment industry

and the corporate media conglomerates.

Many of them lost their lives

within the first 24 hours. The few remaining survivors,

consisting of less than 5% of the original population, largely came

together to form groups capable of defending themselves

and engaging in guerrilla warfare

in an attempt to lock down the rapidly dwindling

essential resources and restore social order.

***

Dogtown Locals Union

The windows were thin as rice paper in the apartment on Clubhouse Avenue. We were two blocks from the boardwalk and the glistening waters of the Pacific. The frigid ocean wind easily pushed its way in, bringing winter chill with it like a cold breath moving over my exposed skin. The windows would rattle when motorcycles ripped up Pacific toward the Circle, which happened every ten to fifteen minutes like clockwork. The narrow streets made the sound rumble like unholy thunder, setting off car alarms for blocks, sending echoes through the hauntingly desolate alleys.

There were always loud noises in our neighborhood. You learned to block most of it out. Homeless people threw their heads back and wailed in anguish at the moon in the dead of the night. Helicopters tore past overhead without warning, flying low and fast, setting the hairs on my arm on edge and violently shaking the windows. Drunk couples wandering back after Townhouse or Nikki's or Hama Sushi had closed often stopped next to my bedroom window to argue at the top of their lungs. If they lit a cigarette in between hurling insults and accusations I was able to smell it with the windows shut, like they'd gone ahead and sat at the foot of my bed and fired up their cancer stick. It was just a part of life living in Dogtown. Things had always been like that, one way or another.

At sixteen I was basically an emancipated minor living with my half brother, Caesar, who at twenty-two was just a few years older than me. He'd picked the place because it was as close to Breakwater as we could get, where a two-bedroom apartment still cost nine hundred bucks a month. We'd grown up just blocks from here in the hood, the gang zone of Venice, where every available surface bore the famed moniker V13. It was spray painted on walls and bus benches, etched into glass, and even knifed into the rows of lollipop palm trees up and down the blocks, proclaiming their absolute rule.

Caesar taught me to surf, taking me to the Venice Pier and Rat Rocks and eventually Breakwater where it was always crowded. We didn't look that much alike but we had the same exact 'fuck you' attitude and people quickly learned not to pick on me for fear of earning Caesar's wrath. We shared a mom but had different and equally absent fathers. That's why we took to relying on each other.

Our mom wasn't around much either, to be honest. She was my age when she had Caesar and less than his age when she had me. She was never really cut out to be a mother if you know what I mean. She was always working or dating some new guy, trying to get him to marry her and take her away from her shitty life. Eventually the guy would bolt and she'd blame us for it, going between bouts of depression and drunken binges where she'd tell us that this wasn't the life she was meant to live. Yeah tell me about it, right? Mom was pretty dramatic. I should be mad at her, but I'm not. It's hard to explain why; you just had to know her. She was really like a big kid at heart. Caesar took everything she did personally, but I grew up knowing better than to rely on her. You can only be forgotten after school so many times before you stop believing the excuses. By the time I was ten I'd stopped even caring. I spent most of my free time surfing or getting online to memorize girls Facebook pages. I didn't need her, or anyone else, for either of those things.

Caesar, on the other hand – he was all twisted up inside over her. He would try everything to get her to spend more time with us. When begging and guilt didn't work he switched to stealing from parked cars and skipping school to get high. The guys he hung out with were borderline sketchy to say the least. I wouldn't say they were gang members, but they were definitely some kind of crew. Most of them were in and out of jail for small stuff, doing a few weeks at a time and coming back to get in more trouble. Caesar was constantly up to his neck in shit too, but I'm still convinced that was just because he was trying to get our mom to act like she gave a fuck. He even picked a fight with one of the old dudes mom brought home one night, hiding behind the front door and punching him in the back of the head when they came in.