Zombie D.O.A. (3 page)

It seemed impossible that he should be walking, let alone
be
alive, but I’ve heard of guys on drugs like PPC who
take
a
n incredible beating and still
kept going.
Is that what had happened? Had
Brad killed my
wife and
daughter
in
a
drug
induced frenzy?

He was only a few feet away
when I closed the
bathroom door on him. T
his guy was going to take some stopping and I needed a minute to think, to find a weapon.
He
crashed into the door, stepped back and
attacked
it
again. By the
forth charge the door started to splinter.

I searched
hurriedly
for something I could use as a weapo
n, but found nothing
except a plumber
’
s mate and a tube of Drano crystals.

Brad charged the door again and it just held. The next
hit
would
surely
bring him through.

I pulled down the plastic shower
curtain
with the idea of throwing it over him to disorientate him
while I made my escape. There was a
large bottle of Avalon shampoo
on the rim of the bathtub.

I grabbed
the bottle
an
d
quickly emptied it on the tiles in front of the door, using my hands to spread it around.

Brad made his final charge
and the door gave, his
impetus
carrying
him
into the bathroom. The minute his feet h
it the shampoo patch
they
slid from under him
and he was thrown into the air, landing on his back like a character
in a cartoon
.

I stood over him and brought my foot down slowly on the glass shard that still protruded from his ey
e. The sensation
as it slid slowly into his brain
should have sickened me, but it
didn’t
.
If I could have killed him a million times over it would not have been enough to sate the rage I felt towards this creature.
He twitched once or twice and then was still. And the whole time, that insane grin remained plastered to his face. 

In the end, as much as it hurt me to leave Rosie and the baby where they were
, I figured it was best
not to touch anything until the cops arrived. I had just killed a man, and while I had a good reason for doing it, my story sounded crazy, even to me. To a cop it might sound like a triple homicide, with me as the perpetrator.

I had to call the cops
and I decided to give Mrs. K
ranski another try. “Mrs. Kranski
,
” I shouted, banging
on the door. “Mrs.
Kranski, you in there?
I need to
call
the police
. There’s been an accident. Mrs. Kranski. Please
.”

This time the
old woman did answer. “Go away
,
” she hissed from behind the door.

“Mrs Kranski” I said. “My wife, my baby, they’ve been…hurt.
”

“Go away
,
” she repeated. “Leave us alone.”

“I’m begging you, my wife, Rosie, you know Rosie.”

“You think you’re the only one. Don’t you watch TV?
People are dying.
”

Now, Rosie
had
always
been
on reasonable terms with Kranski, but I never had an opinion
of the old lady
one way or the other. Except right now she was seriously pissing me off.

“Look, cut the shit old woman, I need
your
phone. Now. My wife is dead. You hear me. Dead. Brad, you know your favorite ten
ant Brad, he killed her. Now I
need to call the cops and I need your phone so either
you open this fucking door or I break it down. Are you listening to me, Kranski?”

“Are you listening to me? The phone’s not working. Are you deaf? Can’t you hear the sirens outside? When last you hear sirens like that? 9/11?
This is worse.
”

She
was right.  With all that had happened I must have shut the sound out, but now that I stopped to listen there were sirens. Lots of them.

“What’s happened?” I asked.  What’s going on?

“They’re everywhere
.”

“They? Who are they?”

“Go away. Leave us alone.”

I
n the end
,
I decided to move
the ba
by’s body back to our apartment. I
laid her
out on the bed next to Rosie, washed them both down and covered them with a fresh sheet. I had to do it.
I just couldn’t leave them
like that.

Whateve
r consequences came of it, what
ever
explaining needed to be done, whatever penalties for tampering with crime scene evidence I would deal with later. Right now I needed to take care of my
family
.

Besides I didn’t think the cops were coming any time soon.
I turned on the TV, but all I got was static on every c
hannel. It wasn’t entirely dead, though. Along the bottom of the screen there was an info bar, with a message running on a l
oop. It said, STAY IN YOUR HOME… STAY OFF THE STREETS…
DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR TO STRANGERS
…
THE POLICE
AND
NATIONAL GUARD
HAVE THE SITUATION UNDER CONTROL…

Outside the sirens seemed
to grow
more and more strident. I heard helicopter rotors, and screams and gunshots.
Something was hap
pening out there. Something big,
and
by the sound of it, something bad
.

There was a commotion in the street. I went to the window and saw a young w
oman being chased by a man in a greasy pair of overalls. He caught her by the hair and pulled her
to the ground
as she screamed. Then he seemed to bite into her neck while she
shrieked
in agony.

A man came out from o
ne of the houses over the road, a
pproached them and then shot the assailant twice in the
back of the
head. He then examined
the victim’s wounds.

While he was doing so, the woman grabbed hold of his arm and bit him. The man
shot her in the face then emptied his revolver into her corpse before staggering home clutching his wounded arm. 

Suddenly, our
usually quiet suburban street
erupted
in
to
chaos. People
started pouring from the
buildings
on either side of the road,
piling their belonging
s
and their families into cars. Horns blared and there were shouts and curses. A heavily laden SUV plowed into a sedan and the two drivers got out and flew into each other.

I decided to go
downstairs and try to find someone, anyone, who knew what
was happening.

At street level it was even more chaotic.
A crowd had gathered at the corner market and
was
being held at bay by the Indian guy who ran the store. He had a shotgun, but still
the crowd pushed in
,
throwing threats and curses.
Shots were fired and t
hings
got pretty quickly out of hand after that.

The crowd closed in on the shopkeeper and literally tore him to pieces with their bare hands. The man
had
probably
been
on first name terms with many of them. 
I heard the plate glass window shatter as the crowd surged forward.

In the midst of the chaos, I saw a guy I knew.
I
’d
first met
Dom Buchanan
one day at the supermarket. He was a fight fan and recognized me and we got talking about fights and fighters.

After that we’d shoot the breeze whenever we bumped into each other, not really buddies but
on good terms nonetheless
. We’d been to a Mets game together one time. And his wife Shelley and he had had dinner at our apartment. He
was an easy
-
going
type
, but today he looked to be on the verge of a breakdown.

“Hey Dom, wait up
,
” I said grabbing him by the arm. He yank
ed
his arm
free
, then looked at me as though seeing me for the first time.

“Have you seem my, son?” he said. “My boy,
Michael
, little red headed boy, about so high, have you seen him.”

“No, but…”

“I need to find my boy,
” he said turning away and disappearing into the crowd.

A looter ran past me with his bounty of
Captain Crunch and toilet paper. I heard a shot fired and a scream and then someone sobbing, “No, no!”

The crowd was beginning to dissipate. People carried looted provisions back to their cars
and homes
. A number of vehicles drove off at high speed and it’s a miracle there were no further collisions.