What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Zombier (2 page)

“Yes, sorry. I wasn’t very well.” I could not eat Sarah. I shouldn’t even think about it.

“I see! You look like a walking corpse.”

“Well, actually...”

“Anyway, listen. Do you mind if I come in? You know, the notes...”

“Sure, sure, come in. I’ll bring them right away...” So typical; she only thought of the notes. If it wasn’t for them, I’d still be there eating up my chickens. And once the chickens were gone...?

Now, a little note about my house. Not that I’m much into architecture and interior design, but with grandma half eaten in the living room... The outer door opens onto a hallway; on one side is the living room – closed door. On the other, the kitchen – just polished. I led her into the kitchen while I went upstairs to take the notes.

Random chat on the stairs.

“Have you already had lunch? Sorry I came at this time...”

“Oh, yes. No, I mean. Not yet. I was just about to...”

“I’m sorry to intrude, but weren’t you living with your grandma?”

“Oh, yes. No, I mean. She’s out feeding the chickens...”

“And she leaves them free in the garden?”

“Uh...?”

Note on the house number two: the kitchen has a second door that opens onto the court. A door that I left wide open.

A scream.

I went down headlong – I wonder what would happen if I break my neck... I reached the kitchen and the chickens were all there, flocked together on the door, mangy and covered with blood, with dull eyes – the ones that still had eyes. I was just gone for two minutes!

In my mind I tried to reconstruct what happened: I bit a chicken, I infected it, and it became zombie and attacked another chicken, this a third one and they happily slaughtered one another, entering the wonderful world of the undead.

And now they were there, hungry for living flash and trying to peck at my guest’s calves. Some of them even reached the table and made inhuman cries – they’re chickens you would say – but like a more guttural cackle, something that gave the goose bumps even to an already-zombified zombie.

I grabbed the broom and started to deliver blows everywhere while Sarah was covering behind me, her back to the hallway – keep that in mind. I was hitting chickens like crazy, starting a new sport halfway between baseball and hockey.

Somehow I managed to chase them all outside and close the door. A few bodies remained on the marble tiles, but with their heads crushed, unable to rise again, with blood and feather scattered – still life with chicken.

We sighed with relief. At least until Sarah started screaming.

From the hallway – and in the meantime my brain arrived at the conclusion: I’m contagious – the newly undead grandma stood up with half her neck and the ancient flower pattern dress stained with blood like at a slaughterhouse, and grabbed the still-alive Sarah, trying to eat her up.

While I was thinking that maybe grandma wasn’t as awake and conscious as me, I was already hitting her head with the broom and all my strength – remarkable, I noticed – with the only result of breaking the wooden panhandle in half, leaving grandma happy and free to sink her teeth into Sarah’s shoulder. Poor sweet Sarah – sweet, she must be delicious...

“Stop, grandma! It’s my future wife that you’re eating!” And in a moment of rage I shoved the end of the panhandle between her jaws until I pierced her brains. She really rolled her eyes and then dropped down dead. She didn’t move anymore; poor grandma.

Sarah stared at me with wide open eyes, reaching with her hand for the wound that was unstoppably splashing blood. She bent on her knees, frightened, gasping, and unable to make any sound. Then her eyes, too, rolled back and she fell to the ground.

I dragged her into the living room and then I put her comfortably onto the couch.

Her heart stopped a while ago.

Now I’m waiting for her to wake up.

I wonder if there are other zombies in town. If not, maybe this time I had the good chance of finding a girlfriend.

As for the hunger, we’ll think about it later.

And in those days men

will seek death

and will not find it;

they will long to die,

and death flees from them.

(Revelation, 9:6)

May 20
^th
, 2011 – 7:00 p.m.

When Charles came back home, he was sore.

It had been one of the worst days he ever had. At the machine shop where he worked, there had been an accident, and one of the workers had been crushed by an SUV in reparation because of the failing of the scaffold.

The big vehicle had smashed his skull, and the unfortunate one had died instantly.

And then all the stuff: ambulance, police, blood.

And all those questions, because, of course, it was Charles that had handled the scaffold. It was him that should have controlled everything was functional. It was him that
yadda yadda
.

He flung the keys in the ashtray of the entrance, and they bounced out ending onto Aunt Adelaide’s antique wooden piece of furniture.
“Be careful not to scratch Aunt Adelaide’s dresser!”
he repeated to himself with a falsetto voice. “Fuck to Aunt Adelaide,” he muttered with rage.

“Charles? Are you home?” the squeaky voice of the old woman came from the first floor. She was probably watching her usual soap opera instead of coming down to make dinner. Damned old woman.

“Yeah, I’m home, Mother,” he snarled.

The old woman leaned on the landing, gray and greasy hair, her flabby flesh wrapped in an awful patterned dress. “Did you stop by the drugstore?”

Charles sighed tapping his hands on his thighs. “No, Mom, I forgot about the drugs. It’s been an awful day…”

“You know I need the callus preparation!” squeaked the old woman.

“I’ll buy it tomorrow, Okay? It’s been a shitty day. Anyway, when are you going to make dinner?”

The old woman stepped on the edge of the stairs. “Don’t you dare to use that tone with your mother! You know I need the preparation. These calluses are killing me. I’m old, you know, and I can’t go shopping to the corner if my feet ache.”

Charles ignored her and walked into the kitchen; he opened the fridge. A few moments in contemplation, then he went back to the hall. The old woman still on top of the stairs. “The fridge is empty! Are you saying that there’s nothing to eat tonight? Holy shit, Mother. I’m not in the mood for going to the store.”

“I told you a thousand times to speak clean with me,” the old woman went mad, a flush of crimson to her cheeks. She got on the first step waving his threatening finger. “I said…” and then her pink hairy slipper betrayed her.

She slid on the second step, and her leg flew away, lifting for a moment her skirt on her fat thighs. Her prominent butt bounced on the hard marble and made her fall. On the attempt of turning back to retrieve her balance, she rolled on the side, sliding down like a crazy bowling ball, until the end of the stairs.

Crack.

She landed with her limbs misplaced and her neck in an unnatural position. Her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

“Fuck!” murmured Charles.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He approached slowly, touched her with his foot. She didn’t move.

The old lady was gone.

Fuck.

Holy shit. I’m free.

No more callus preparation, no more slipping the nylons on that flabby hams, no more curlers in that dead hair, no more commissions and visits to the doctor and the dermatologist and incontinence pads that turned off every chance of picking up the girl from the shop.

Charles, in the silence of his house, burst in a sullen satisfied laughter.

“Tonight we dine out!” he announced, to no one in particular.

He took back the keys, paying attention to make a long scratch on Aunt Adelaide’s dresser, and went out.

For the occasion, he picked up a restaurant downtown, because it was a big day.

He stopped for a few drinks in a bar, until almost midnight, when the sleep started to take over and the stress of that absurd day turned into tiredness.

He came back home staggering, and burst open the door, a little high, mumbling: “Mother, I’m home!” and then laughing hysterically.

He turned on the light in the hall, and the stairs were empty.

The drunkenness disappeared suddenly.

The old woman was dead. He saw her with his very eyes, her glazed stare and broken neck, and she didn’t move anymore.

And now the body was gone.

Was she still alive?

A growl came from the kitchen. Like the sound of a wild animal.

A dog came in and dragged her there to eat her up. No, nonsense, how could a dog come into the house? He was sure he had locked the door; the windows were always sealed because the old woman feared the drafts, and so what happened?

He approached with caution and turned on the switch of the kitchen.

The neon light wobbled a few seconds.

And she was there, standing on a twisted ankle, her head tilted to the side in an impossible position, pale like a corpse and still... alive?

From her mouth came a hoarse and guttural panting, like she was trying to say something, but she’d forgot how to articulate the sounds.

“M... mother?”

The old woman opened her mouth trying to emit a scream and jumped, a sprint unthinkable for a woman that age that had always moved difficultly. She ended up on top of him, with all her dead weight, flinging him to the ground.

She plunged her teeth in his neck, biting with an unusual and fierce greed, ripping out his jugular, splattering a squirt of blood that stained the walls and the old lady’s face while she kept devouring his son’s body.

When he stopped moving, the mother left, like she’d felt that there was nothing more to do.

She stood up with clumsy and slow movements, went past him and headed to the entrance, ready for other lives to claim.

* * *

May 21
^th
, 2011 – 01:00 a.m.

In the empty and silent kitchen, the body of Charles twitched. First, he stretched his fingers, then his limbs started to work again. He gurgled from his ripped throat.

With a push, he rolled to the side, and, leaning the hands on the ground, slowly stood up. He, too, walked toward the outside, following the trail of the smell of the livings.

“I say it’s the spores,” whispered Stanford while spying through a crack between the boards that barred the window. He was short on breath behind his surgical mask.

Cooper made a snort in response; two black eyes of a face covered by a checked scarf approached to carve out a view on the street.

“I say they are in the air, and you breathe them. They enter your brain and from that moment you are under their control,” continued Stanford. “Fucking mushrooms.”

Cooper watched the people on the street; they walked slowly, randomly, dragging their feet. White spongy outgrowth sprouted out from their open mouths, from the nostrils, from the ears, even from the eyeballs.

“They grow so damn fast,” Stanford moved away from the window and leaned against the wall, sliding toward the ground. “We must protect our breathing ways. We need something more efficient. Gas masks... yes, those would be perfect. Any idea where we could find them?”

Cooper shook his head and sat near him.

He took out a paper bag from his pocket and extracted a half-eaten sandwich. He gave a big bite, starting to chew ravenously.

“Nervous hunger, my friend,” noticed Stanford.

Cooper took out another sandwich from the bag and offered it to him.

Stanford stretched his neck. “What’s inside?”

Cooper swallowed. “Ham and
mushrooms
.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Don’t listen.”

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

At the light of the gas lamp, Tommy’s eyes spy to the side, toward the front door.

“I said don’t listen.”

Mom grabs his face and gently turns it toward the table of the living room.

From outside come the moans and that relentless sound.
Knock. Knock. Knock.

Tommy squints and shuts his ears.

Broken glass noise.

A hand makes its way through the planks that bar the window. The boy stares at it with wide open eyes. Petrified and ravished.

The hand flounders in the air trying to catch something that isn’t there. A finger is twisted backwards, bent in an unnatural position. The nails are broken, ripped off the flesh; they stay lifted like beetle wings. The skin is dirty with blood, somewhere rent, the flesh split to reveal the tendons of the wrist. And the arm that pushes, pushes more and more to make its way through the planks. The wood skins it, but that thing doesn’t care. None of them cares. They can’t feel pain; the only thing that guides them is the hunger. An insatiable, senseless hunger.

Mom grabs the rifle, chambers a bullet, and aims. She fires through the hole where the hand emerged. One shot, two shots, three shots.

Bang bang bang.

Blood splatters in the semidarkness and falls on the stained carpet. The hand disappears; it’s gone back outside in the world of the dead.

Mom, as quick as lightning, takes a piece of wood from the stack near the chimney pot, grabs the hammer and some nail from the toolbox. She presses the wood on the crack, aims, and starts hammering.

Bang bang bang.

Before they could be back and try to enter again.

A sigh. Mom wipes her forehead, then turns toward Tommy, with hammer still in hand and her hair all messed up. She’s got a stain of dirt above the eyebrow, but she doesn’t even notice. Her hands are ruined from handling raw wood, weapons and tools, but she smiles at her son.