Undead L.A. 1 (23 page)

I can't believe that was just a few months ago,
thought Donny.
So much has changed since then
.

Donny was used to things changing for the worse, especially after his father had left, but what happened at the end with Bram, well that was just plain fucked up. There was no other way to describe it.

Donny hadn't slept well because of the constant whirr of helicopters overhead. He woke up to find his mother sitting in her robe at the kitchen table, looking scared and anxious. Bram was pacing back and forth watching television, only there wasn't anything on it. The station had gone to the Emergency Broadcast System. It had a high steady beep like when the life support of a character in a television show goes all flat line. There were rainbow colored stripes on the screen and a message.

RED ALERT! STAY INDOORS! LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. THIS IS NOT A TEST.

“Donny!” His mother turned and saw him reading the screen. Bram dove for the remote, turning it off as quickly as he could. He used so much force that the back of the remote fell open and the batteries shot out, bouncing on the carpet and rolling to a stop at his feet. It had done the trick. The screen was now lifeless. It was too late though. Donny had already seen what was on it.

No point in closing the gate once the horse is already out
, Donny thought. His father used to say it all the time before he left.

Donny's mother got up and pulled him hard to her chest, smothering him with her breasts. She let out a small sob.

“It's going to be fine,” Bram said, trying to sound confident.

“
How is it going to be fine? We're trapped in here like rats.”

“
We live in a gated apartment building, Sarah!”

“
In the middle of a major city! How do we know one of our asshole Russian neighbors hasn't already let one of them in? Tell me that! How do we know no one inside the walls is already infected?”

“
Because we're going to secure the place and make sure that doesn't happen.”

“
When? Huh, Bram? Are you going to march out there and start telling people what to do? They're already looting in the streets! Are you going to risk your life?”

“
I'm going to do what it takes to take care of this family,” Bram assured her.

“
Why? You're not part of this family!”

Bram glared at her and Donny's mom withered under his gaze.

“That's the fear talking. You don't mean that. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.”

“
It's true,” she said, looking down. “You're going to run off the first chance you get. What reason do you have to stay?”

“
How about these two? You and Donny!”

“
He's not your son.”

“
He might as well be. Who put a roof over his head? Who paid for karate lessons and soccer uniforms and dental bills? Who taught him a skill? Who tried to teach him how to live in this world? You can't say he's not my son. I'm the closest thing he's ever had to a father.”

“
We don't need you,” Sarah icily replied, raising her eyes back up to meet his.

They stared at each other in silence, the unseen tension in the room building to a high-pitched crescendo. Donny started to feel himself pulling away again, but stopped it at the sound of Bram's voice.

“I'm going to go out now,” Bram said slowly, as if he was trying to keep from exploding. “I'm going to make sure the gates are secure. I'm gonna get a read on the situation. I'll be back. I promise.”

“
It's all right if you don't come back,” Sarah said, sounding defeated. Her head was bowed again. “We both knew what this was.”

She turned and marched to her bedroom, slamming the door. Bram stood in shock, still watching where she'd gone.

“Don't worry about it,” Donny offered. “She gets like that. It's cuz of what we went through with my dad and all.”

“
You wanna help me?”

“
You mean out there?”

“
Yeah,” Bram cheerfully replied. “Why not? I'm gonna need all the help I can get, especially if we have to fix or repair that gate. I'll need a skilled worker then, for sure.”

Donny beamed with pride as they left, shutting the door behind them. The gates of the building were shut and locked. An old woman sat on an overturned bucket and kept guard with a shotgun. It seemed that Bram wasn't the first to realize the advantages of where they lived, and want to defend it. Donny tagged along like his shadow all day, watching him interact with the other adults. They came up with a plan to leave the teenaged boys behind on guard duty while the rest of the men went out to scavenge for food, medicine, and water.

“These boys aren't old enough to defend themselves,” one of the neighbors complained in a thick Russian accent, “…much less defend our wives.” Not knowing all your neighbors by name was part of growing up in Los Angeles; people on this block kept to themselves for the most part. Over the years, Donny would see familiar faces and get to know people before they moved away. It was a transient city, constantly in motion like the shifting sands it was built on. No one was interested in putting down roots. And if you weren't staying, why bother to unpack at all or even get to know anyone? It would just mean losing more friends, as far as Donny was concerned.

“
They are stronger than you give them credit for,” Bram argued.

“
Are you willing to put your life in their hands?”

“
As long as Donny is with them, I am. I trust him with my life.”

Bram handed Donny a shotgun. He'd shown him how to load the shells earlier and warned him about the kick. They hadn't had time to test it out. Donny thought about how proud he'd been to be trusted to defend his home and be trusted with a weapon.

“This is insane!”

“
I agree,” Bram shouted over the man, forcing him to stop midsentence and gawk at him. “But what choice do we have, huh? We can either hide here and wait to run out of supplies, or we can take the 7-11 up the street – and any place else we can reach to grab our fair share. Our women and children are depending on us, so what do you say? Who knows, maybe we can make it up as far as the Ralphs.”

If they had made it to the store, there was no sign of it. Bram whipped the troops up with a rousing speech that day and they went forward as a force to be reckoned with. We could hear yelling and screaming by the time they'd reached the end of the street. Donny never saw Bram again. The Russian man, the neighbor, had come back infected and transformed. His weeping wife let him inside the gates, along with several other flesh-hungry zombies, which was how most of the residents had died. Donny had been part of the effort to force them all back out. He'd fired the shotgun several times that day, killing his first human being, or what remained of one, in the process. Fast Jeff was his downstairs neighbor. They'd always gotten along well, but had never really been friendly until that day. He'd been the one who helped Donny get the gate shut again – right after his friends, Jimmy and Gary, had shown up. They were just closing it when they spotted a gang of small children making their way up the street between parked cars. Farther up the street, moving between smashed cars and stepping over the remains of blood-soaked dead bodies strewn across the wide street, a horde of hungry monsters loomed. Fast Jeff had risked his life that day to protect those children, while Jimmy had tried to talk him out of it.

“We can't leave them! They'll be dead in minutes.”

“
That's not our problem now,” Jimmy screamed hysterically. “There is nothing we can do.”

“
What are you talking about? That could be us over there.”

“
But it's not!”

“
Their blood is gonna be on our hands, man. Can you live with that?”

“
If you open up that gate we're all going to die, including those snot-nosed kids.”

“
Open it up,” a low voice growled. We all turned to see Gary staring at us, shotgun in hand, a dark look of determination etched into his face. “Do it!”

It was the first Donny had heard him speak, but it wouldn't be the last. From that moment on, Gary was in charge. He became their
de facto
leader, the one they went to with all their problems.

“
Come on, Gary,” Jimmy whined, looking dejected.

“
We're going to do this shit lickety-fucking-split,” Gary said, dropping to his knee as he revealed the plan. The rest of the kids quickly followed suit. They were glad to have someone else in charge; glad to be told what to do. “Donny, you try to get their attention. Jeff, you run out and help the slow ones. I've seen you in gym class, out on the track. You move fast. It shouldn't be a problem for you. I'll stand watch at the gate with the boom stick.”

Jimmy sneered at Gary's
Army of Darkness
reference but his face quickly returned to its usual slack stupid expression when no one else seemed to get it.

“
Do you know how to fire it?” Donny wasn't trying to fuck with him. He just remembered Bram telling him about getting the back end of the weapon nestled all the way into his shoulder, about how the kick would hurt at first but that he'd get used to it in time.

“
Shit, yeah,” Gary said. “I grew up in Alabama. Used to go hunting with my old man when I was five years old. First time I fired a gun I was eight. Pops got me my own rifle by the time I was twelve. Trust me. I got this.”

Gary smiled and Donny smiled back. It felt good to hear that someone knew what he was doing, even if it was all just bluster. Times like that, you didn't care if it was really true or not. All that mattered was the illusion that shit was going to work out. Otherwise, you'd never get the balls up to try anything. You'd just shit with your legs shaking, crapping in your pants wondering what to do.

“What about me?”

We all turned and stared at Jimmy. He looked red faced and guilty and put out all at the same time.

“I wanna help but I am not going out there on purpose.”

“
Once the little kids get inside,” Gary said, “it's your job to keep 'em in here. Don't let them back out. The last thing we want in this situation is a clusterfuck. Got it?”

Donny had no idea what a clusterfuck was, but it sounded bad. He nodded along with the rest.

“Good. Now let's get this over with.”

The plan went off without a hitch. Jimmy and I both got the kids attention by yelling and screaming. We also got the attention of our unwanted visitors at the end of the street, who made an angry beeline right toward us the minute we started shouting and waving our arms. The kids darted right through the apartment building gate and went way inside. Just as Gary had predicted, there were stragglers. Fast Jeff moved in quickly and grabbed a child who had lost his sneaker and fallen in the street. He picked the screaming kid up and ran as fast as he could, just clearing the entrance before Gary let off the first of two shotgun blasts. The zombies were now flat out running in our direction. Gary had taken out three of them with his efforts, and with Donny’s help pulled the gate shut just in time to keep the rest of the monsters out. Denied their meal, the undead scratched and howled and threw their bodies against the metal mesh, but it held. The living were safe, tucked away behind the security gate.

I can still see their faces,
Donny thought.
Their dead eyes all flat and lifeless like a Great White on Shark Week. One man looked like he'd been attacked with a cheese grater. Some were missing fingers. And that smell, ah shit man, that god-awful fucking stench of death and decay. I will never forget it!

In the weeks that passed they'd formed a work schedule, dividing up the labor. The kids took over one of the empty apartments. They laid out sofa cushions and slept together in a circle on the floor. The water still ran, but they had no electricity so they had to use candles. They dug up a fire pit in the middle of the yard between the apartment buildings and used it to cook food at night. Everyone shared. That was the rule. No fucking hoarding! Anyone caught hiding food or holding back would be forced to leave. Gary set that rule the first night while he still had the shotgun in his hands, before we ran out of ammo. He sent packs of us searching apartment to apartment, gathering resources and making sure no one was cheating. The adults took to calling Donny and his friends 'the flies' with Gary being referred to as their 'Lord,' but they didn't try to make waves. Everyone more or less fell in line with the men gone.

Donny's mom refused to come out of her bedroom. He'd bring her food from the rations pile once a day, but she barely picked at it. Instead, she just stared at the wall and silently cried. She'd withdrawn into herself so much that Donny wondered at times if she even knew he was there. There was a diabetic who lived on the lower floor near the gates, but he died in the first few days.

Insulin shock,
thought Donny,
whatever the hell that is.

They started calling the apartments
Camp Zombie
, because of the constant stream of screaming little kids running around. The whole atmosphere was like an endless summer camp. It just made sense. In the first few weeks the zombies came right up to the gates and leered at us. Some roared in anger, thrusting their bodies teeth first at the metal bars over and over again. Others drifted idly back and forth, roaming around the front of the buildings like restless insects tirelessly searching for a way in. The little kids soon made a game out of it, poking them with sticks and taunting them with food. They began to dare one another to stick a hand or foot out of the gates for a few seconds at a time without being caught. The bravest among the runts, li’l Kevin, held his leg all the way outside for nearly five seconds. After a few weeks, the dead people just began to wander away on their own.