“The Soulless” III

I’m on my feet, they’re all on Frank. I take the crowbar which is incased in ice. My hands feel bruised by the cold. I begin to knock at their heads, the ice chipping away, clipping my face and rolling around the roof. 

The rain left a sheet of ice everywhere. I’m slipping and falling, my knee cracks against the ice, the dead guys can barely stay up. Frank rises up with a hatchet and begins to hack away. Shoulder, neck, once more, head. Before I even realize it, I’m lying on the ground, covered in freezing sweat. I’ve become dizzy from breathing so hard. 

The door is completely busted, Frank determines we should leave the roof. I can’t argue. 

The only way down is through the building. 

“Are you ready?” He asks but I know I will never be. I throw my pack around my shoulder, smack the crowbar against the ground to remove the ice and nod. We walk through, he goes first, his gun ready.

We’re walking and nothing is happening. I hear the sounds of crying, rushing water, moans. Every hallway excites my heart. We slink down, trying very hard to be quiet. A zombie flies from around a corner, as Frank fights it off, I pull the hatchet from his belt loop. With one quick solid motion the blade slinks into the skull of the zombie. It falls over. I hand Frank the ax. We move onward.

We come to the lobby. I hate this lobby, on the wall there are old yellow and black photos of the landlord when he was a baby. The tiles on the floor are this virescent yellow, pretty much the ugliest color ever. The fact it’s splattered in blood, the zombies’ black shit, and a substance which appears to be, although I’m almost sure it isn’t, cottage cheese, does not help change my opinion about it. I’m so busy examining this fucking floor  I don’t notice the girl crying in the telephone booth. Frank nudges me and points. 

I know her, she’s the landlord’s 20-something daughter. She’s tall, with an inverted chest and stomach.

She notices us when we approach the telephone booth. She begins to scream, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard because I can tell she’s actually afraid. She’s broken and crying, her mouth is wide open, she’s drooling and curled up in a tight ball. The glass is covered in smeared, bloody hand prints and every time she sees them, she freaks out. She begins to point. We turn. 

Some fucker with a large, white piece of intestine hanging from its mouth is headed for us. Frank’s bullet slides through him like he’s made of crispy paper. Half his face is blown away with that shot, it just slips off. What is left is horrific, all his decomposing, red facial muscles. His eyeball all yellow and pussy. 

“They’ll be more, they’re bound to have heard it. I’m pretty sure they’re attracted to sounds.” Frank turns his attention to the girl. “Sweetie, it’ll do you some good to come with us.” 

She continues to scream, she pulls the door tighter and slides farther back into the booth, she starts to gag she’s crying so hard. She pounds on the glass walls and floor, I hear those things coming, I’m so fucking hot in this jacket. Frank won’t leave, he won’t leave the fucking girl. 

“Shit!” I scream, I can’t remember her name. I start to kick the booth in frustration. Sasha, Sonya. I don’t know, she’s Russian or something.  

“Please, Tom, this situation needs to be handled with sensitivity,” Frank says rationally. What the hell does he know? 

“Fuck that,” I tell him and wrench the door of the booth open. I grab the girl’s little wrist, she’s too weak and light to fight me. We exit just as those monsters come charging down the hall, they tear apart the little telephone booth, she would have died. 

The streets aren’t any safer and we make a dash for a car in the middle of the road. 

“Shit, shit, shit…” I hum quietly to my self as we dance through the road. The buildings surround us, the abandoned cars are scratched, dented, papers and garbage litter the asphalt. I keep spinning around. I keep seeing movement, but there is nothing there. 

Her name is Anya, I remember now, I’ve long since checked her off my list of fuckable. She’d never dig a short guy like me. 

Anya begins to collapse in my arms. I don’t know why I continue to hold her up. The car door is open, the keys still in the ignition. Frank’s driving. Anya is between us, dead silent except for her annoying sobs. I’m looking out the window. I hate all this. 

The police car is a smooth ride but nearly out of gas. We’re driving out of the city. I want to look away, but I can’t, even the most unfavorable scenes my eyes watch with a worrisome intensity. 

We’re at a slow crawl, there are cars blocking up the streets; Frank is a good driver. Sometimes the zombies run into the car trying to eat us. They’re like moths who whack their heads against a light bulb. Pat. Pat. Pat. They’ll do it all night and the next morning you’ll find them upside down on the floor. 

“Anya, are you okay? Have you been hurt?” I ask her. I’m trying to distract her, she’s still scared of the zombies. I want to tell her they are moths but they aren’t nearly as harmless, so I don’t. She doesn’t answer, she’s looking around the city. It is lifeless. It looks like a bomb went off. 

“This isn’t…” Frank begins. “Well, I don’t know where to go.” 

“It’s like we’re the only ones left,” I tell him, it’s that sort of feeling. I feel like we’re stranded. I feel stranded in the city I’ve spent the last  year and a half of my life. I suppose I always felt stranded, I never really knew anyone. But, there was always Anya at the front desk to smile at me when I came in. Or Haldor, the Norwegian meatpacker, to shake my hand and cry delightful things in a language I don’t understand. 

“I… I know…” She says quietly. She seizes my hand. I look at her fair North Country hair and skin. Her skin is the color of butter, the nice butter my Ma used to buy from the Amish.  

“What do you know, sweetie?” Frank asks. I hate that sweetie crap. 

“My father’s camp, in the country. We could be safe there…” She says it so quietly I can barely hear. By the time she finishes, my face is very close to hers. She gives Frank very poor directions but he seems to understand its location. 

“Thanks, Anya.” He says her name wrong. 

“We won’t make it, Frank, look at the gas.” 

“Yeah, right,” he agrees.

“Hell, we won’t even make it out of the city.” 

“Yeah, you’re tellin’ me!” He yawns. He turns on the radio.

“…the situation has worsened since last night. We estimate some 20,000 of them walking around since the initial sighting,” says a reporter, “Again, we are covering the mass murder by flesh eating- what can only be described as– zombies.

“We are on live, twenty-four hours, during this emergency, giving people information about what they should do. Later, at noon, the President is scheduled to give a brief speech about the events.” 

“‘Course he’s safe. What the fuck about us?” I snarl. 

“Quiet, there,” Frank snaps and turns up the radio. Anya holds her stomach, her back curved over, she’s trying to block out the news report, it is making her upset. 

“For those of you just tuning it, since the initial sighting of seemingly possessed people attacking and eating their victims has grown into a small epidemic of sorts,” Continues the reporter in a low, dark voice. “The following major cities have seen the worst of these attacks: New Orleans, New York City, Los Angeles…” 

“Tell us what to do!” Frank demands as he turns around a corner, searching for a safe gas station.

The reporter does not, “I’m afraid that is all the new information I have at this time. We received word last night that these possessed people are subjects of a sickness that was released intentionally.

“The sickness is characterized by a black liquid dripping from the nose and mouth, they don’t seem to respond to pain and have a uncontrollable desire to consume human flesh, it is passed orally though a bite–”

Anya lets out a shriek and turns it off. 

“Anya, ” Frank says. “We have to know this! This is important!” When tries to turn it back on, I block his hand. 

“That’s enough for now, Frank. What good will it do us to know? We know what they are, we know what they’re doing, we know where we need to get. Okay? Let’s just get some gas and go.” I’m being really reasonable, it’s strange. I tuck my arm around Anya to comfort her.

We find a gas station, the whole city is swarming. The zombies walk the streets like average citizens. Frank parks. He rolls down the window and quickly moves to the roof of the car. Anya is in the way, so I push her to the side and quickly roll up the window. The zombies begin to thrust their hands into the open window, they stuff their faces through the divide, their black saliva drips all over the car, my arms and my face. Anya is tucked under the glove compartment. I take my crowbar and start to knock it through their skulls; the crack and crumble very easily. I finally manage to get the window closed. 

I hear Frank stomping on the roof, the zombies can’t get to him. They can’t climb, they’re reaching and snarling and knocking their hands on the glass, but, for now, we’re safe. 

“That stuff! On your face!” Anya tells me and she begins to wipe it off with napkins from the floor. I allow her, I see the concern in her teary, red, blinking eyes. 

“Okay!” Frank calls from the roof and stomps a few times. Anya seems distracted by the back window, I check, I see nothing. I drive forward, slowly, careful not to throw Frank off the roof. I crush the zombies beneath the car. It is beginning to smell like burnt rubber. 

“Good enough!” Frank yells again and I ease it to a stop. The plan is to bring the car to the gas pump, kill off the zombies while we fill the tank. It’s going to be harder than we thought. The zombies have seen us and they are swarming the car.  They’re pressuring every side except where I have squeezed the car up to the pump, but they are trying. 

“Anya. I’m going to have to leave the car, okay? Do you think you’ll be alright?” I ask. Her response is fleeing to her napkin nest beneath the glove compartment. 

I roll the window down.

Only half my body is out, as I reach for the pump Frank covers me by hacking with his hatchet at any of them as they come close. I work quickly, spilling the gas all over the street. I pray he doesn’t mistake my head for theirs. 

I’m shaking again. Again. More shivers. I hear Anya screaming, she isn’t making it easier. Her screams tear at my ear drums, they are a baseball bat to my concentration.  

I hear Frank yelling. I hear his hatchet split the skulls of the zombies. I hear them advancing, the crinkle sound like when thousands of bugs are together. They are crawling all over one another, every zombie in the area is rushing to this single point. The pump clicks, I throw the nozzle to the side. Frank slips into the window and rolls it up quickly, the tar-black ooze is sticking to everything. 

We back up and begin to drive away. 

“Hold it,” I say. When we are at a safe distance, I roll down the window just slightly, light several matches and toss them into the pool of gasoline that is rapidly forming.  

It lights up quickly. There is a ball of orange and black fire, a puff of heat.

“Shit!” Frank gasps as he floors the gas pedal. “Where were those when I needed a cigarette!”

The car speeds away, there is a high whistling sound and instantly the pumps of the gas station buckle. There is a sound like collapsing metal, the upheaval of pavement, the wrench of compressed air, then suddenly the apex of every pyro’s wet dream. The explosion. Maybe two hundred of those things, disintegrated. They are post-canabalstic ash. They are as harmless as pepper black moths, scattered.