Zombie D.O.A. (5 page)

Rosie looked up at me and smiled
and
even in the half-light her teeth looked somehow like those of a carnivore and her eyes
had the faraway look
of a
veteran junkie
.

“There you are you, goose
,
” she said in a voice that wasn’t quite hers. “Come over here and meet your
daughter
.
She’s called Ruby, like we agreed.
”

“Rosie” I said “I’m so sorry…”

“Oh, honey” she said “Don’t be. I’m just so hungry and I wish you’d
come
over here and kiss me and hold our
daughter
.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, sugar.”

“Oh
,
but it is honey bunny. I need y
ou
.
“

She drew out the word
“
need
”
and ran her blackened tongue over her oversized teeth.
The
n suddenly she screamed and ripped the baby from her. “Yikes, fucking little
bitch
. I look like
meatloaf to you.”

The baby had bitten deeply into her breast, almost severing the nipple. But that wasn’t the wors
t of it. T
he gaping hole in her
stomach looked putrid
,
and
the viscera that hung from it resembled fat, parasitic worms.

She rose slowly from the bed, the smile of a corpse playing on
her lips. “Come here sweet meat,
” she said. “Come to mama.”

“Rosie, I
…
”

“Ah
,
pork chop
,
” she said and moved in.

I swung the boxing trophy without thinking, and it caught her solidly to the side of the head. Rosie was sent backward into the bathroom, landing flat on her ass and sliding till her back crashed
into the
tub.

She was up in a flash and came at me, nails flailing. “You son of a bitch
,
” she screamed. “I’ll kill you.”

But I was through the door and had it closed before she could get to
me. I held onto the handle while
she pounded on the door and screamed obscenities.

When we’d moved into the apartment two years before I’d taken all the keys from the internal doors and dropped them into a storage jar. Now I had reason to curse that decision.

I looked around for something that cou
ld be used to bar the door. The sideboard was about six feet away and I didn’t think I could reach it without releasing the door handle.

The only o
ther options were to let
go and hope to
make it
to
the fr
ont door before Rosie got to me, o
r to let her out and somehow try to
fight
her
off
.
That would
probably
mean I’d have to kill her, and
despite what Rosie had become, I
didn’t
know if
I could bring myself to do it.

I decided
to make a try for the sideboard. I
turned and rested my back against the door,
and
slid down on
to
my butt.
I figured I could keep some pressure on the door while hooking the sideboard with my feet and pulling it closer. Then I’d somehow force it under the door handle to keep Rosie
locked in
while I decided what to do.

Rosie meanwhile had given up on cursing and was back to trying to convince me with a barrage of sweetums, and snookums and honeybuns.

I was flat on my back and just about to hook th
e sideboard with my legs, when Dom Buchanan
walked
into the apartment. He looked dazed, shell-shocked, and wal
ked with a shuffling
gait,
dragging what looked like a badly fractured leg
.

I
t
also
looked like he’d taken a shot
gun blast to the face. Half of it was missing
and
the other
half
scarred with bloody pockmarks.
Air whistled from his
exposed windpipe in steady, measured breaths. His shirt was ripped, exposing the
b
lood soaked t-shirt underneath
. He carried
a
revolver loosely, almost absent-mindedly
,
in his hand.

He
shuffled
further into the apartment,
surveyed the room,
and sniffed the air
like a predator scenting prey or danger. He seemed
not to notice me
, which was a good thing. I was flat on the floor and if h
e’d decided to attack right then
, I was
done for
.

Slowly I curled my feet under me and got myself into a
position where I could
move
quickly
if I needed to.

I’d managed to get into a
half-
knee
ling position when the cell phone
, Rosie’s phone, started ringing
in the bedroom. “Don’t answer that!” I heard
her
shriek
, and then she screamed like an injured beast and
attacked
the door.

Dom swung
his head
languidly
towards the sound and that’s when he noticed me.
Somehow his ruined face managed the semblance of a
grin
and he
lurched
towards me
with surprising speed
.

At that moment Rosie finally forced her way into the room and charged headlong at Dom,
catching him in the midriff and
sending
him to the
ground
.
The gun was knocked from his grip, went
s
kidding across the floor, and came to rest under a chair.

I scrambled to retrieve it while Rosie and Dom struggled on the floor. Rosie had the upper hand and s
traddled
Dom, screeching like a b
anshee and tearing at h
im
with her nails.
She began throttling Dom then leaned forward and sunk her teeth into his ruined
face. There was a crunching sound
and then a rip as
Dom’s nose was torn off
.

The thing that had once been Rosie looked towards me with her insane, bloodied face, the nose visible in her mouth for a second before she woofed it down. Then she returned to working on Dom.

I walked up behind her
,
closed my eyes,
and fired a single shot into the back of her head. 
Rosie slumped forward pin
n
ing Dom to the ground
. While he struggled to free himself I
aimed the gun at him and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell o
n
an
empty chamber. I pulled again
and again
with the same result
-
the gun was empty.

I dropped the revolver to the floor in disgust, picked up my
boxing trophy and
slammed it into Dom’s
skull
. I didn’t stop swinging until his head was
pulverized into
a bloody grey jelly and the
n
I fell on the floor and sobbed like a
jilted teenager
.

Afterwards I
dragged
Dom
’s body
into Brad’s apartment
.
Then
after some thought
I
moved Rosie in there too.

When I got back to the
apartment,
Rosie’s
cell phone was ringing again. It had woken the baby and she was throwing a tantrum. I ran into the bedroom and found the phone wedged between the headboard and mattress.

It was Blaze. “Chris” he said. “T
hank fuck, I‘ve been trying to
get you for hours. You okay, man? Is Rosie okay? What’s that noise in the background? Is that a baby crying? What the…?

“Blaze, Blaze, slow down. Do you know what’s going on? How’d you get through to me? All the phones are down.”

“Well
,
I got fifteen of the fucking things, innit
.”
Blaze said in his British accent that
had
always sounded slightly
fake
to me. “This is the last one that works but I don’t know for how long, so shut up and fucking listen, alright.”

“Yeah
.”

“Now listen, I don’t know a lot, but here’s what I do know, stay off the fucking streets, okay. There’s a shit storm going on down here. Police, army, national guard, the shebang. It’s out of fucking control, man.”

“What is this shit? Does anyone know?
”

“You haven’t seen on the TV?” I adm
itted that I hadn’t. “Well, don’t both
er. Turned it all off now haven’t they. Wouldn’t want a panic?” Blaze laughed and broke into a coughing fit.