K. T. Swartz Read online

  Even the mask couldn’t hide the devastation, the absolute slaughter that one bomb had caused in such a confined space. Instead of one hall, there was now one massive, cavernous room, with exposed toilets on the right and blown over hospital beds, and drywall everywhere. Debris rained down from the upper floors; peppered the mountain of rubble. The Blood Bank was gone, nothing but a couple toppled over refrigeration units. Only dust moved. She skirted the mountain range, straddled the mangled remains of the glass frame, and slid her pack off her shoulders. Of the three units only two remained closed.

  Claw marks scored the inside of unit three, evidence of a frenzied feast. She opened units one and two and shoveled as many blood packets as her pack could hold. She cleaned them out. They were long since expired, but freshness wasn’t as important as the smell. She tied her pack off, slung it over her shoulders. The extra weight would slow her down but need outweighed caution, as speed did now.

  A body fell from the ceiling and landed with a stunted moan. Impact stirred up dust clouds. Her crowbar splattered his brains over drywall. She ran, didn’t wait for the drizzle to become a downpour. Drywall shifted, dust-choked moans escaped the mountain range. She jumped an overturned gurney; her flashlight beam bounced across the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. It refused to stay still, to light her path as she ran. She burst into the cafeteria, took the stairs two at a time. Gasping for breath, her knees shaking, she stumbled through the patient’s entrance and into the fresh night air.

  All was silent as the moon peeked over the distant horizon. For once, the evening sky was clear. A great blanket of stars wrapped the city in darkness. She bypassed the abandoned cars and trucks and headed for the bike-rack, where two bikes had been left behind, forgotten by their owners. With her crowbar, she popped the lock. Looked over her shoulder. Shadows jerked awkwardly through the door. A zombie shuffled from the patient entrance.

  No more time. She started pedaling for the city limits.

  ‘That was my first night in my hometown. All these miles I’ve come, the man I’ve lost, all because we thought we’d be safer in a small town. Turns out getting to that small town was even more dangerous than staying in a big city. I have absolutely nothing to smile about, and I certainly don’t feel giddy or excited that my plan worked, but as I biked along Lebanon Road, heading out of town, some measure of peace found me under such familiar stars. They’re the same stars I’ve grown up under. I know them, used to stay up late so I could study them through my telescope. Considering everything I’ve lost, at least I have one thing those zombies can’t take from me.’

  • excerpt from August 23 entry

  Safety:

  The once bustling car lot was now an empty car lot, with forgotten vehicles of all kinds parked where they would never be moved again. Kneeling by a two-door coupe, she looped her hose around her elbow and hand. The taste of gasoline still burned her tongue, though she’d sloshed out as much as she could. A lot of these old vehicles still had gasoline in them – well, not anymore. One vehicle at a time, she’d transferred what remained to several small gas tanks, before moving them to her temporary camp. This was the last one.

  She stood, stuck the hose in her pack, and walked to the towering metal and plastic sign still proudly announcing ‘Made in the USA’. No foreign vehicles in this lot. But car shopping was the least of her concerns. She uncurled a long coil of rope, took out a third of the blood packets. One by one, she cut open the tops and drained the blood into a plastic bag. With it half full, she stuck it into a leather bag and finished emptying the blood into it. The ends she tied into a slip knot, slid the rope through it. And tossed the other end over the sign.

  She cut a tiny slit through both bags. Hand over hand she hauled the blood bag high off the ground and tied the rope high around a telephone pole. For a moment, she stood and watched the blood drip like tears. Plop… plop… plop… until a small puddle spread across the concrete, dull red against grey. The puddle grew and slid down a slight incline in the concrete. She knelt, dug her knife and matches out of her pack. Shuffling feet had her frozen in place. A low guttural moan vibrated the air. She didn’t move, didn’t look behind her. In the reflection off the car’s body, a bloated zombie held up his hands. He stepped into view, still wearing his mechanics uniform. ‘Dave’ was his name, and Dave followed the only thing that called him from his stupor.

  He clawed at the metal pillars suspending the blood bag high over his head. Tiny droplets of blood splattered his face. His moans became insistent. She set the knife down, lightly squeezed the matches to keep them from rattling. Another moan came from the other side of the car. Only her eyes moved, locked on the name tag: ‘José’. José’s footsteps dragged across the concrete, leaving behind a smear of black fluid. His right shoe was gone; so was most of his foot. Just a naked stump that shifted awkwardly when he put weight on it. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  A slight breeze kicked up small, curling puffs of dust and dirt that blew across the concrete. Dry leaves rustled, but neither José nor Dave tore their eyes from the blood bag. José smeared the puddle at his feet and coated his rotting fingers in it, until the blood and his blackened skin resembled cooked hamburger meat. He crunched down on his fingers. Skin tore; bone snapped. José bit off his hand, devoured the blood before smearing the puddle too thin. Dave grabbed him; the scent of gore mingled with blood.

  She looked away, but held herself still, although her toes began tingling from a loss of blood. She was going to have to move soon or risk her foot going numb. Matches still in her hand, she touched her fingers to warm concrete. Shifted her weight forward just a bit. Behind the car, cloth snagged, with a wet slap of something striking the ground. A single hand dropped down in front of the car’s bumper. Bony fingers skipped across concrete, to flop down beside the other hand. Prostrate on the ground, the zombie dug in fingers worn down to the bone as it pulled itself forward. Thinning hair framed a face pockmarked with holes. Half the jaw and teeth were exposed as the female’s eyes swung toward her.

  The foulest stench of rot and decay filled the air. No legs followed the zombie’s torso. A fresh tear had her intestines trailing behind like a jellyfish’s tentacles. The female stared at her; her irises were white, cloudy. Blind pupils swam in eyes so fetid all she had to do was poke them and they’d burst. No sound rumbled from the undead’s throat.

  José stumbled over his stump of a foot; toppled into the metal pole. His skull bounced off it with a sickening crunch. The female’s head swiveled his way. She pulled herself toward them, but the trail of festering gore she left behind robbed her body of movement. Her elbows shook with the effort of supporting her weight. And she collapsed, her arms outstretched in mournful begging. The exposed bone of her fingers tapped weakly on concrete, but couldn’t compete with Dave and José.

  Starving dogs couldn’t have made better moans. All the while blood dripped slowly from the bag, tiny kisses that drove them mad. They clawed and slapped at each other, tore at the air, as if pulling on it would lift them higher. And still, the female’s fingers tapped away, an incessant metronome of bone.

  May lifted her bag from the concrete, the matches still tight in her grip. And slipped away from the starving zombies. All across the car lot, the shambling dead were coming. Without eyes, they stumbled, their path made more difficult by the cars in their way. But with their ears, they followed the only sound that mattered. No matter what lay before them, they bumped and shuffled until they worked their way around it.

  The blood bag had only been up maybe fifteen-twenty minutes and already they flocked to it. Over the next few days, from a distance, she would watch the three bags she would hang outside the city limits.

  ‘I needed the time those blood bags bought me. It was a strategy my husband and I worked out early on: set up three blood bags on the outskirts of town, and let them sit for several days, while the smell attracted as many zombies as possible. After that, it was a bit safer to move around, collecting what we needed
to set up a few permanent residences around the city. I still keep a list of supplies, the types of stores we hit. Only when we had everything we needed – no matter how long it took us – could we truly begin the reason we stopped in these small towns.’

  • excerpt from August 24 entry

  She slunk across the car lot, staying low, hugging the lines of cars, until she reached the main building that butted up against a low rock wall. Behind that, and further up the hill, was a factory. She grabbed her bike and pedaled for the Danville bypass, then headed around the county school and across train tracks. On the train station’s platform she stopped, put the kickstand down.

  Of all the places in Danville, the station felt emptier than anywhere else. No bodies moved in the shadows between cars, nor did they shuffle past the windows in the station. Only the wind whispered through metal. She left her bike there and walked the circumference of the station. Just above the roof was the bridge overpass leading to Main Street. She climbed up on the station’s railing, grabbed the roof, and scrambled up. The rough shingles burned her fingers but she climbed to the highest point, barely three feet from the concrete bridge. Leaving her pack there, she jumped the gap.

  Arms flung out, she slammed into the bridge; her toes scrambled for a hold. And boosted her up and over. From both directions, cars and trucks choked the bridge. Debris from the passing seasons rolled around the tires, across the sidewalk. Right in the middle of both lanes, a car and truck had run headfirst into each other, cutting off the flow of traffic like a tourniquet. In the car, something moved. She pulled out her crowbar. Out of the corner of her eyes, a shadow shifted in the opposite direction of the sun’s rays.

  Grasping fingers reached out for her. She slammed the crowbar into the zombie’s forehead. Bone fractured. With a wet, slopping sound, it sank to the ground. She backed up to the concrete railing and looked around. They were coming. Hungry and attracted by the sounds of fighting, their foggy eyes pointed her way, they bumped into the cars and trucks. She climbed onto the railing, jumped the three feet to the roof. Snatched her pack up.

  The gap wouldn’t be wide enough to stop them, and even if it did, they’d only fall onto the concrete below and keep her from reaching her bike. But maybe falling wasn’t a bad thing, not if she timed things right. She hunkered down, standing where the roof sloped to the ground. On the overpass ledge, they gathered. She counted them, and they all moaned incessantly. Fingers dragged at the concrete, left black streaks behind as their hunger urged them forward. Her hammer in one hand and her crowbar in the other, she hopped down to the platform. Behind her bike, the first zombie slammed into concrete with a sickening thud. Shock didn’t faze it; her hammer punching a neat hole through the back of its skull did, just as another landed headfirst onto the pavement. The splatter went in all directions, an abstract starburst around the corpse.

  Two fell, one right after the other, and they landed within easy reach of her crowbar and hammer. Their skulls split open. A shadow fell over her. She gasped, felt the vibration from the zombie’s landing. Fingers grabbed her pant leg. Teeth crushed her boot to her ankle. She speared the zombie through the head with her crowbar. In rapid succession, three more fell like fat, bloated raindrops. Rotten bodies wrapped in thin skin burst on impact. Only one stood.

  She slammed her hammer and crowbar into the zombie’s skull. The remaining four slid over the ledge. The train station’s roof caught one zombie under the chin. Impact peeled his skull straight back, as if it were a banana peel. Without his head and some of his spine, his body landed with a wet thump. The last three stumbled to their feet, but only two stayed upright. She lunged at one, driving the pointed end of the crowbar through the nasal cavity and into the brain. As the second closed the distance, she swung her hammer like a baseball bat. Vertebrae snapped. His head lolled to the side, but he still reached for her. She back-pedaled, swatting his hands aside. One more hit from the hammer knocked his skull from his shoulders.

  His body dropped; his head rolled away. She stood, gasping for breath. A faint moan filled the air. The last zombie lay on her stomach, fingers dragging at the ground. She grabbed her crowbar and buried it in the prostrate zombie’s skull. Arms outstretched, the zombie relaxed. She leaned her head back, closed her eyes. And just sucked air into her lungs.

  ‘Maybe I was an idiot taking on so many, but the risk I thought was worth it. Over and over I’ve seen other people just run, only to be overtaken later, when exhaustion hit. Zombies only stop moving when their brains do – or when they are too damaged to continue. All that is needed for a human to die is to be winded.

  As I stood there under that overpass – the one I’d driven over so often when I was younger – I couldn’t help but smile, then laugh. My giddiness was an infection just like the one that wiped everyone out. I’d just witnessed zombies fall off a bridge and die in the most gruesome ways possible. I wish I’d seen this fight from a distance, because it must have looked ridiculous.’

  • excerpt from August 24 entry

  She biked away from the kill zone, along the tracks, to an elementary school her cousin used to go to; the playground swings squeaked in the breeze. She slowed, put her foot down to stop. As a kid, she’d played on those swings, climbed the monkey bars. She’d taken gymnastics there for a little while. And an urban legend was told that lightning had struck the school’s old clock tower and stopped its hands. She kicked off the gravel lot. Rode through town, to Maple Avenue, to a Chinese restaurant with a sordid past. Another small town legend said the mafia really owned it as a front. Maybe there was truth to it, maybe not, but that place – no matter how dead it appeared – never closed.

  Through the windows, shadows moved. She kept pedaling, to a railroad overpass. The exposed beams were the perfect place for another blood bag. Same as the first, she filled it up, cut the slit in it, and hung it high. Her pack felt a little lighter on her shoulders as she biked up the rise, away from the moans just starting by the Chinese restaurant. She rode past the expensive part of town. Slowed and stopped, looking at the large homes. A quick duck in and out would fill some of her supplies.

  But she shook her head. As Jeremy had so often said, never deviate from the plan that works; safety first. She started pedaling, headed across State Highway 2168, to avoid the subdivisions. Dusk was only a couple hours away, and she still had one more bag to hang. In the north, east, and western parts of town, she would hang them, because all the restaurants and grocery stores were south. If she wanted to survive, she had to draw the zombies away from those stores she needed.

  She stopped by an old radio station on Shakertown Road for a rest. Drained a bottle of water as she slumped down against the only tree close by. If she closed her eyes, just listened to the wind through the leaves, she could almost pretend nothing was wrong with the world. Ignoring the oddity that she was alive and at a place she’d only ever passed, this could have been like any August day. Ridiculously hot and humid, a few black rain clouds in the sky, and no worries. Good ol’ Kentucky weather.

  With a sigh, she climbed to her feet. Her legs felt like jelly, even after the stop, but with the weather about to change, she had to hurry – had a long way to go before she was done. She pushed off, followed the road into town. So many vehicles crowded the street, as if everyone thought it was a good idea to just park there instead of in their driveways. She avoided them, headed down Lexington Ave, where even more cars crowded the street. And that was the beauty of a bicycle. It wouldn’t get stuck in a jam.

  Trees with heavy bows hung over the rusting hunks of metal. Mindless bystanders stood in the street, on the sidewalk, and on the front porches of some of the homes. She pedaled around them, the only sound the chain cranking over the bicycle’s gears. A few heads turned but she kept moving, didn’t take her eyes off the street, off the zombies in front of her. The ones behind were no longer a threat and wouldn’t be for awhile.

  She rode in silence, with only memories for company, and they weren’t very exc
iting memories either. This street was so familiar. There was the house built in the 1800's she loved – had at one time wished she had the money to buy – and there was her high school for years, where she met her husband for the first time. He was beautiful and wild, one of those rare people who moved among cliques like a fish through water, while she was the quiet kid in the back of the class.

  The cemetery where her grandparents were buried was off this road too, a quiet place with old, towering trees and grey headstones. When she ran cross-country, the cemetery was her favorite place to run. Now, the front gates were locked, so she went right on by. And found herself veering more toward Main Street, because one store sat heavy on her mind.

  ‘The best bakery in town was no chain. For as long as I can remember Barrett’s Bakery has been on Main Street; it sat between an old vinyl record shop – now apartments – and a Catholic church. The store only took cash and they were open only until one, but never had I ever smelled anything so warm or tasted anything so sweet in my life, as if ‘fresh’ and ‘bliss’ had been kneaded into each donut with loving care. My favorite was the cinnamon swirl donuts, with their centers just slightly warm and gooey. Barrett’s donuts melted in my mouth. A dozen just wasn’t enough, because I could eat them all in one sitting.