Surviving Beyond the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

     We both reflexively looked over at Taylor and Christina as they started another game of twenty questions.

     “She’s lucky to have him,” Kat commented.

     “They’re lucky to have each other,” I added. “And I’d sure as hell like to keep it that way. So if you’re done running off, I hope we can go back inside and talk about what to do next.”

     Kat chuckled and answered, “Yeah, I’m kinda tired of running off, so sitting down might be nice.”

     “Why don’t you take Christina inside? Taylor and I will be right there.”

     Kat opened her mouth as if to ask something, but instead glanced quickly over at the motionless shell. “Okay.”

     “Can we play a game?” Christina asked as soon as she saw Kat approaching.

     “Sure, we can,” she answered, leading her by the hand out of the hallway.

     Taylor and I turned to the gruesome task at hand. It had been some time since we had spent those weeks clearing shells out of the apartment building. Surprisingly, it was not the grisly sights of the period that came to my mind. Instead, my memory became filled with laughter, working together, and the unbeatable sensation of ice cold beer. A totally inappropriate grin stretched across my lips.

     I sensed Taylor’s eyes staring a hole into my cheek. Eventually, I turned toward him. “What?”

     “I’m wondering why you’re smiling. I mean, when I think about getting near that guy, I wanna puke more than smile.”

     “Yeah, I know what you mean, but I was remembering how we cleared these things out of the building with Lawrence and Kelly.”

     Taylor’s face tightened at the mention of the name.

     “Fuck Kelly!” he responded, and looked at me, unsure how I would react.

     “Yeah, fuck Kelly!” I echoed and nodded.

     He smiled and said, “Well, let’s get this shell some place outta the way.”

     “After you,” I moved aside to let him closer to the shell.

     The odor had been there the whole time, but as I moved near the shell, the power of the odor became overwhelming.

     “Aww, man!” Taylor shook his head. “How can something reek that bad?”

     I also shook my head as I got close to the shell. “Damn, it smells like something died in here!” I laughed at Taylor. “Did you take a shower today?”

     The young man stared down at the shell, holding his nose and concentrating too intently to respond to my question. I walked next to him.

     “He smells like he shit his pants when he got killed,” Taylor said absently. “So this is…was Kat’s friend. What are we gonna do with him now?”

     “Well, we need to get him outside, I guess,” I answered as I looked down at the huge body. “But I’m not sure how we’re going to get that done.”

     “Why not roll him down the stairs?” Taylor offered. “Or out a window?”

     “Out the window would probably be best, but I’m not sure if any of them open… Wait! There is one in my boss Carole’s office!”

     I started to trot off toward the office but stopped. “You probably ought to come with me.”

     Taylor looked up from the shell and followed me without a word.

     At the sound of our footsteps, Kat stuck her head out of the kitchen door and looked at us but said nothing before retreating.    

     In Carole’s office, it took me a minute to remember which of the windows opened. I found it at the lower right corner of the glass wall behind the big dark oak desk.

     My heart sank when I noticed the size of the window. “Damn, that window’s going to be way too small to get the body through.” I looked at Taylor with a forlorn expression. “Oh well, I guess we’re bouncing the body down the stairs.”

     The young black man regarded me with some confusion and perhaps irritation. He went over and slid the window fully open. Before taking hold of the movable portion of the window, Taylor looked over at me with a crooked grin. He turned back to the window and began shaking the panel of glass. After a short round of vigorous activity, the panel came off in his hand.

     “Okay, now it’s big enough,” Taylor announced smugly.

     I smiled and replied, “Yes, it is. Now for the nasty part.”

     Neither of us looked forward to moving that big shell and stood there looking down at it for a long time.

     Finally, I bent down and said, “Well, it’s not going to get moved by staring at it.” I grabbed one of the arms with the idea of turning over the body by pulling it. That proved to be a big mistake.

     As soon as I yanked on the arm, the shell rolled toward me and released a fresh burst of the stench. The odor seemed a combination of shit, sour milk, and something rotten. It took my breath away and burnt my eyes. I turned away and gasped for air.

     “How can something we saw moving around a few minutes ago reek so goddam bad?” I asked no one.

     Taylor had his hand over his mouth and simply shook his head in response.

     I looked down at the bloated, bruised bloody thing at my feet and got hit with a pang of disgust. But there was more. I still didn’t remember this fat son-of-a-bitch too well, and that, for some reason, made me angry. I continued to stare at the motionless body as if there was something to be discovered there. My rage grew and brought images from the past few months.

     At my feet, I saw a scene from the airport coffee shop with the slaughtered waitress crawling across the floor leaving a trail of blood. Next came the doctor on television talking to the camera for a few moments before being overcome by a mob of shells. Finally, my wife Bonnie’s face appeared, except it somehow seemed different than the face I remembered so well. The thing glared out from the place where it slumped over, pinned between two cars. At that moment, I understood the source of all my rage. That fat bastard and those like him had been responsible for all of the good people that died and became something evil.

     “Owww!”

     My foot collided with the shell’s head. The pain of my smashed big toe brought me back to awareness. The blue running shoes I wore were not the best choice for kicking a dead body. My kick left a sort of skid mark on the side of the shell’s head and a throbbing toe.

     “Every time you hit that thing the stink gets worse!” Taylor cried. “Can’t we just move it slowly and carefully?”

     I nodded and carefully took one of the arms while Taylor took the other. As soon as we began tugging to drag the body, the torso came forward with surprising ease. In a dark episode of slapstick comedy, the two of us nearly stumbled over after the unexpected give and slowly turned to look back at what had happened. It was not possible to be prepared for the horror to be seen.

     The shell had split in half, spilling its contents. The strings of intestines trailed off and the pale spine stuck out the back. The dark blood flooded all around. The two of us took in the scene, looked at one another, and promptly spun around to puke. 

     Nothing else besides emptying the contents of my stomach mattered for the next few minutes. Eventually, I finished up and turned slowly to see Taylor, still on his knees heaving. I considered walking over to offer some encouragement. However, I have never found encouragement offered in times of vomiting to be beneficial, so I simply waited for him to finish. 

     After a few minutes, Taylor stopped. He took a deep breath and turned toward me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that...I…don’t…”

     “Don’t worry about it. I did the same thing,” I answered. “This shit is nasty!”

     He grinned and nodded. “Yeah, that shit is definitely nasty.”

    “Let’s get it over with,” I announced with as much enthusiasm as possible.

     Clearly, our fat friend was not going to survive the trip from the hallway to the office. We found an old paint tarp in the storage closet, which we spread next to the shell to serve as a collection plate for spare body parts. Once we had gathered any stray organs, we rolled the torso onto the tarp and pulled the whole thing toward the office.

     Once we got near the kitchen, I went over to talk to Kat.

     “You really don’t want to see this,” I said. “That thing’s in pretty bad shape. Better if you stay inside the kitchen with Christina, okay?”

     “Yeah, I will.” Kat smiled, but it crumbled almost immediately.

     “It’ll be okay, Kat.” Christina took her hand and led her away from the front of the kitchen.

      We quickly covered the remaining distance to Carole’s office.  

Chapter 2

     Taylor and I tugged the tarp to the area below the open window. I was embarrassed by how winded I had gotten from the effort of moving the thing out of the hallway. I felt a little better when I saw Taylor drop down to sit on the floor next to me.

     He sat with his back against the wall a few feet away from the tarp. After a brief moment in that position, the young man looked over at the shell and wrinkled his nose. He made a show of moving further away from the tarp and its contents.  

     “I seriously do not understand how one guy can make such a bad smell!”

     “Well, I have no answer for that. All I know is that this thing will smell much better once we get it outside,” I answered, getting to my feet. “So let’s get this thing outside.”

     Taylor stood up and came over to help me lift the tarp up to the window. It took some work, but we finally got the tarp and its contents ready to push through the window. The only goal either of us had was to get everything outside the building as quickly as possible. This probably explains why we were not aware of Kat until she spoke.

     “Hold on a second,” she said as she stepped up to the tarp. “I’m not sure who this is, but it sure the fuck isn’t Paul and shouldn’t have his watch.”

     She took the watch off the shell’s wrist and turned away from the tarp. Her steps slapped the floor as she marched back to the kitchen and Christina, who waited in the doorway. Without missing a step, Kat took her hand and led her back into the kitchen.

     Taylor and I grinned at each other before turning back to our gruesome chore. We got on either side and bundled the cloth to hold its bloody contents. It may not have looked graceful or well-planned, but we managed to get the soggy old paint tarp up to the window’s ledge. The large bundle rested, sagging over the ledge.

     “Say goodbye to our friend Paul,” I said.

     “Later Paul,” Taylor answered with a chuckle.

     Without waiting, I gave the bundle a shove. It became immediately clear that I should have thought a little more before taking action.

       Rather than spilling its contents out onto the alley next to the building, the bundle vomited its contents in a long stream along the wall. The stench was overpowering.

     Taylor stumbled around with his sleeve over his mouth and nose. After a moment, I did the same.  

     Kat and Christina came trotting out of the kitchen.

     “What is that fucking stink?” Kat yelled.

     I gave her my look of disapproval which went mostly unnoticed. “We got the body outside, but the smell seems to be everywhere. Your buddy Paul appears to have had an extreme body odor issue.”

     I felt like crap as soon as I mentioned the name, and Kat sealed the feeling by starting to cry.

     Christina held her nose and made cross eyes at Taylor who returned the expression.

     “Well, isn’t there something you can do?” Kat quietly asked, sniffling.

     “Yeah, isn’t there something you can do?” Christina echoed in a pinched-nasal voice.

     Leave it to a kid making funny faces and voices to lighten the mood. Neither Kat nor I could remain serious with the high-pitched voice and the crossed eyes. Pretty soon we were all giggling and crying from the smell. Given the surroundings, it was certainly a strange reaction. Then again, perhaps that is precisely why it seemed so good to be enjoying a simple laugh.

     We headed into the kitchen and closed the door in a feeble attempt to escape the odor.

     After the laughter, Christina and Taylor were hyped up and acting silly. I expected Kat to say something sarcastic, but she appeared to be enjoying herself as she silently observed their play. I was doing my best to enjoy the distraction before turning my focus back to matters of shells and our future.

     After a couple of minutes, I moved over to talk to Kat as Taylor and Christina were engaged in a new game of twenty questions. “So do you have any thoughts on our next move?”

     She looked at me with her head tilted slightly to the right as if judging my sincerity. “Well, I haven’t really thought much about it, you know. Ever since Paul left, I’ve just been caught up with hoping he’d come back.” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing, “Now that I know he’s gone for good…uh…guess I hafta change my outlook.”

     “The way the world has changed I suppose all of us have had to do some outlook adjusting.” I smiled. “Now the thing to do is figure out what’s next.”