Silence of the Apoc_Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse Page 11

  Alex flipped through channels until he found the local news, which featured an excerpt from a syndicated news channel.

  “As Romero Syndrome continues to spread on the West Coast, a new discovery has been made concerning the virus’ method of transmission,” said the female journalist. “Believed until now to be transmitted by bite alone, a recent incident reveals the disease is far more contagious.”

  Her soothing voice calmed Alex’ nerves. He leaned back in the chair and found himself grinding his teeth, eyes closed, focusing on the woman’s voice.

  “Los Angeles resident Thomas Hardaway was defending himself against undead resident John Hugo when both fell from a second-story crosswalk onto a concrete walk beneath. Upon impact, Hugo suffered a compound fracture. When Hardaway fell upon Hugo, the exposed bone pierced Hardaway and infected him within minutes, as seen in this footage captured by a bystander.”

  Alex ceased grinding his teeth and opened his eyes.

  “Teeth,” he said and gave them another grind. “Bones.” He smiled. “Teeth are bones.”

  The malignant machine’s gears turned inside his poisoned brain, oiled by a viscous flow of imbalanced chemicals. He leaned forward and open the web browser’s search engine on his computer. He typed:

  Zombie teeth.

  Nearly 900,000 results came back.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to calm down, you can fix that ding you made in the wall,” said Mrs. Owen.

  He spun around to find her standing at the threshold with a gray plastic bucket and putty knife.

  “I didn’t do anything to the wall,” he said and spun back around to use the computer.

  “You threw your phone at it. Don’t you remember doing that, Alex?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t throw it that hard.”

  “Alex, look at the wall.”

  He stopped scrolling through the search results with an annoyed sigh and glanced at the wall. “What? I don’t see it,” he said and continued scrolling.

  She returned an equally annoyed sigh and walked to the wall and pointed at it with the putty knife. “There, Alex. Right there,” she said, poking the spot with the knife three times.

  “Hey! Don’t do that, you’re making it worse!”

  “What? Now you can see it?”

  “Yeah, but why should I have to fix it? That’s why I pay rent.”

  “You pay rent to live here, not for me to fix everything you break. But if you don’t want to fix it, I can just raise your rent $25 a month to help pay for all your damage.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “I can and I will,” she said, holding out the bucket and putty knife for him to take.

  He stood there, breathing heavy, then snatched the tools from her.

  “I’ll be back in a while to see how it looks,” she said and exited the room.

  He looked at the small bucket and read the label aloud with clenched jaws. “Spack-O-Line. Pre-mixed putty for dents and dings. No water necessary,” he finished, his jaws relaxing into a smile. “Sounds like a jingle.”

  He removed the lid and dug the putty knife into the bucket while singing his improvised melody. Within a few minutes of scraping and spreading he had the spot repaired.

  The door opened again. Mrs. Owen approached and peered over his shoulder.

  “So, dummy, did you do a good job or do I have to raise your rent?” she said, her hands on her hips.

  He turned around and smiled. “I did a great job, Mrs. Owen. Do you know what else I can do, really good?” he asked.

  She shook her head and scowled at him. “No, wise guy. What’s that?”

  “This!” he yelled and jabbed the putty knife between her collarbone and neck.

  “No, Alex!” she pleaded.

  A stream of blood shot onto the wall when he pulled the knife out. He stabbed her again in the throat. Another stream of red sprayed the wall.

  “Please,” she gurgled. “Stop!”

  “What do you think of that, you old bitch? Is that good enough for you?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the blood-spattered wall. “Oh, look. I messed up the wall again. That’s all right, nothing a fresh coat of paint won’t fix.”

  He stabbed her again and again until he and the entire wall, minus his masked shape, were red with her blood. Trickles fell from the masked head and shoulders and proceeded to fill the blank void.

  He gazed at her body, covered front and back with three-inch puncture wounds. Her eyes and mouth were frozen open. He stared into her eyes, nearly rolled behind her eyelids. He exhaled and laughed.

  Her eyes rolled forward, fixated on him.

  He gasped and dropped the putty knife.

  “Alex?” Mrs. Owen called.

  He saw her reflected in the putty knife on the floor. He turned around and found her standing in the doorway.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Is that good enough?”

  She approached the spot and rubbed a finger over it. “It will do,” she said.

  He placed the lid back on the bucket of Spack-O-Line and handed it and the putty knife to her.

  “Thank you. And next time, don’t let your anger get the better of you,” she said and left.

  He stared at the empty doorway with a twisted smile. “But anger is the best part of me,” he murmured.

  ***

  Alex killed the headlights on his car. The two lit windows and a parked car in Carrie’s driveway declared she was indeed home, so he parked on the curb two houses away, turned off the engine and exited his car dressed entirely in black.

  He made his way to her driveway, careful not to make a sound. The streetlamp provided just enough light to see inside the trashcan and sift through its contents.

  “I knew it!” he said, loud enough to garner another light turned on.

  He ran around the dark corner of the house to avoid being seen. He waited a moment before peeking around the corner. The light was off. He wasn’t sure if he had imagined it or not. He returned to the trashcan, and after collecting two pocketfuls of refuse, he scampered off.

  ***

  Carrie sat up in her bed reading a book by lamplight.

  Her cell phone rang.

  Instinctively she reached over and answered, immediately regretting she had not read the number.

  “Hi, Carrie. Alex,” he said, his crackling voice reverberating in a wide, walled space, accompanied by a cacophony of sounds.

  “Hi, Alex. Where are you? It’s really noisy,” she said.

  “Oh yeah. I’m at the bowling alley.”

  “The alley’s open this late at night?”

  “Sure. It’s where all the worldly people hang out.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Look, it’s late. I need to sleep.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask you a question before you hang up.”

  She sighed. “What, Alex?”

  There was a long pause. Disturbingly so. “Do you still have it?”

  “Have what, Alex?”

  He refrained from mocking her. “It.”

  She huffed. “It, what? Just say it.”

  “My gift to you. You know. The butterfly.”

  Her heart skipped. Why would he ask that? “Of course.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Did he know? She swung her legs out of bed and stood. “Yes, I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Over the phone, she heard a crashing, clashing sound. It was distorted by the cell phone’s varying signal.

  “What was that?” she asked, her legs carrying her step by step, inevitably toward the bedroom window overlooking her driveway.

  Another disturbing pause. “That was the third strike. Gobble gobble gobble.”

  She was unsure what to say. “Congratulations?”

  His nasal breathing silenced the noise of the room. “Yeah. You have a nice life,” he said and hung up.

  She put her face to the window and looked down. The trashcan sat uncovered, the lid leaned
against it, and the plastic bag open. Her heart raced. Panic seized her.

  She glanced up and down the street for any sign of him or his car. Finding neither, she ran downstairs and made sure the doors and windows were intact and locked.

  She made her way to the kitchen and looked out the dark window where the glass butterfly had so innocently flitted over her sink. She glanced at the counter on her left, where the knife rack sat.

  She reached for the handle of the largest knife and slid it from the rack.

  ***

  She sat up in bed, clutching the knife, staring at the bedroom door, listening for any disturbance outside the fragile cocoon she called safety. Privacy. Nothing was sacred to the venomous black spider she had let into her life.

  She prayed for forgiveness for not trusting God. For wanting to drive the knife through the fat abdomen of the sick, confused spider. For wishing Ben lay beside her, ready to protect her, to hold her.

  She cried herself to sleep.

  ***

  “Here’s your double-shot espresso,” said the teenage cashier.

  She held the coffee and change out the drive-through window. Carrie reached beneath the swiveled visor to take the cup and signaled with a raised palm for the cashier to keep the change.

  “Long night?” the cashier asked, only seeing Carrie from the nose down.

  Carrie flashed half a smile and put the car in gear. When she pulled out from the covered drive-through, the harsh morning sun poured into her car. She swiveled the visor right to parry the sun’s blinding assault.

  After a few turns, she pulled into the underground garage, gathered her things and exited her car. She pressed the UP button on the elevator and waited. When she glanced down at her feet, she froze.

  There at the elevator doors sat fragments of orange and black glass, the remnants of the butterfly Alex had given her. She couldn’t help but continue imagining him as a spider, his red hair an hourglass against his black soul, and she, the broken butterfly pulled into his mad web.

  She felt his intimidating venom seep inside. It flowed from the back of her mouth, down her throat, into her glands. She wrapped her first two fingers around the head of the largest key on her ring and gripped it tight.

  Her eyes shot left and right and back, ready to defend—no—attack if provoked. She jumped when the elevator doors open. She looked inside, even up at the car’s metal ceiling before entering. The doors closed behind her.

  ***

  “Keep it down in there!” Mrs. Owen yelled in front of the door then pounded it with her fat hand.

  The blaring noise Alex called music rattled the framed family portrait mounted on the wall. The wilting plant on a nearby end table vibrated helplessly in its pot like a condemned prisoner in the electric chair. Mrs. Owen frowned when she saw a single brown leaf shake loose from the plant.

  It dropped, lifelessly for a single moment until it landed on the table, where it returned to life, reanimated by the music’s heavy vibrations. A diet lacking Vitamin Mozart and a steady stream of poisonous heavy metal pumping through its veins was surely the cause of its demise.

  When the volume didn’t decrease, she pounded on the door again. “If you don’t turn it down I’m calling the cops!”

  A moment later the volume lowered by a half.

  “Gets him every time,” she said with a smile as she put one swollen leg in front of the other. She gently scooped up the dead leaf in her palm and walked slowly and laboriously down the hall, her face clammy with perspiration.

  ***

  Alex sat in the swivel chair, still in his green scrubs, reciting a poem by literary genius Tyrone Greene.

  “C-I-L-L my landlord,” he said, holding Carrie’s photo in front of a styrofoam wig head on his desk. He applied enough downward pressure on the head to keep it from moving and fastened Carrie’s photo to it with the strained squeeze of his staple gun’s trigger.

  He retired the staple gun to a wall-mounted shelf to the right of his desk, where several books on medicine and anatomy sat.

  “C-I-L-L,” he repeated with a laugh, then swiveled to face his monitor.

  On his web browser were several open tabs. He bounced back and forth from page to page to page. The first featured a news article on the current epidemic, plainly referred to as the “Zombie Holocaust.”

  The zombie genre, having long been ingrained in popular culture internationally, had made such terminology commonplace. Whether it was someone under the influence of Haitian voodoo, a man high on bath salts, a biological experiment, genetic disease, or the evicted residents of hell itself, a zombie by any other name was still a zombie.

  He skimmed the text, reading under his breath. “Subjects initially experience confusion and eventually turn rabid to the point of attacking and feeding on uninfected subjects. The infection spreads from Subject A to Subject B through any bite or scratch strong enough to break the skin. Less common infections occur whenever contaminated body fluids come in contact with the exposed mucus membrane or orifices of Subject B.”

  “Life imitating art,” he mused, then moved on to the second tab of his browser.

  The site, usbiohazard.com, boasted “HIGH-GRADE MATERIAL HARVESTED FROM ZOMBIES FOR YOUR MEDICAL RESEARCH.” He scrolled down the page and entered the number 2 in an empty box next to the product label HUMAN TEETH x1 lb, then clicked ADD TO CART. Having met the minimum purchase requirement, he was presented with a new screen that read:

  “TO PURCHASE MEDICAL WASTE SUPPLIES FROM THIS SITE YOU MUST POSSESS A VALID MEDICAL LICENSE OR CURRENT STUDENT ID FROM AN ACCREDITED MEDICAL UNIVERSITY. PLEASE ENTER YOUR INFORMATION BELOW.”

  After he provided his student ID and the site verified its authenticity, he was given a 25 percent discount and allowed to check out. He pressed the PROCEED WITH ORDER button and soon his purchase was processed.

  He closed the tab and opened his email provider, finding the Order Confirmation in his inbox. He closed that tab and returned to the final page, the Anarchist Cookbook. He saved the web page to his hard drive as a text file, closed the proxy server he used to mask his IP address, then as an added precaution deleted all his browser’s data.

  “Only one more thing to X out of,” he said, and he retrieved a red Sharpie from a coffee cup full of pens. He held the styrofoam wig head in his lap and drew a large X over Carrie’s photo.

  He reached behind him to the open pizza box on his bed and grabbed a cold slice of Supreme pizza. He took a large bite and wiped his oily fingers on his trousers. A small piece of green pepper stuck to his short, unkempt beard.

  “How’s that for closure, bitch?” he said, speaking with his mouth full, to Carrie’s image.

  ***

  The metal oven door creaked open, ready for the next pizza. The fit, young man in tee-shirt slid the large, stone pan carrying the pie into the oven, then pulled the one above it out and placed it on the countertop. He slid the pizza off the stone pan onto a silver metal pan and placed it in the order window.

  With a tap of his hand, the order bell rang. He bit the large oven mitt off one hand and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his other arm before removing its glove with his free hand.

  “Pizza’s up,” his voice boomed as he turned around and grabbed a ball of dough to make another crust.

  The aromas of tomato sauce, oregano, grated Parmesan, crushed red pepper, bubbling cheese and crust baking brown were all swirled together by the spinning blades of the ceiling fans and carried throughout the dining room of Pizzacato’s.

  Beside each booth were framed black and white poster-sized photos of early Hollywood celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, the Brat Pack, and the obligatory homage to the mafia films of Coppola and Scorsese. Above the booths were stained glass lamps casting soft light perfect for any mood.

  The equally soft music piping through the sound system alternated between Italian folk songs and opera, providing the perfect ambiance.

  Ben and Carrie laughed, making small tal
k across from each other in a red, leather-cushioned booth. Though the wide booths easily seated six, the pizza joint was only half full, giving diners their choice of tables. The bar, on the other hand, had few vacant stools.

  Eli, a bald-headed mountain of muscle, laughed it up with the regulars while doling out drinks. If the full tip glass was any indicator, he did a good job of it.

  Televisions on either corner of the bar displayed separate sporting events, eliciting periodic boos and cheers from tipsy fans. The two remaining televisions featured weather and national news in the dining area.

  Carrie watched the broadcast of a recent attack. The zombie, its ethnicity hidden by the pale hue of infection, had its face digitally blurred to protect its former identity.

  “Family members of infected individuals have already brought several lawsuits against news agencies worldwide for showing their relatives without a formal conviction or authorized consent,” the news anchor reported.

  “That’s civil rights for you,” said Ben, not even turning to watch the screen.

  The zombie, male by gender but occasionally dubbed “it,” by the female news anchor, approached two Hispanic men standing their ground. The men took turns retreating backward to confuse the zombie, but eventually, the six-foot thing grew tired of their tactic and rushed the shorter, stouter man.

  A black square covered the victim’s head as the broadcast continued to censor the graphic content. The taller man circled around the zombie and eventually pulled him off his companion long enough for a state trooper in beige hat and uniform to come into frame brandishing a firearm. He motioned for the unscathed man to step back and then fired several rounds into the head of the zombie, dropping it to the street completely dead.

  “Think that will ever reach us?” Carrie asked.

  Ben sipped his Dr. Pepper through a straw. “Not if they quarantine it,” he answered. “Unfortunately, the bleeding hearts will keep crying foul, and Congress will drag its feet until it’s too late.”