Last Man Standing (Book 1): Hunger (9 page)

The field is full. Bursting with people, with barely a blade of grass to be seen among the thronged crowd. Old people. Little kids. Husbands. Wives. Families. Thousands of them stretching as far as the eye can see, just sitting there as if this is a regular Saturday afternoon. As if they're here for a picnic, and they're about to fire up the barbecue and toss a football.

And barely a soldier in sight. Just a few guys in fatigues overwhelmed by countless civilians. Not a single APC. No Humvees. No tanks. Not even an old Willy's Jeep.

These people are sitting ducks.

They're all going to die.

Food?

Arnold rolls himself from the body of the driver and lands awkwardly in the gap between the seat and the door. His body doesn't seem to be responding to his commands quite as well as it did just a little while ago. Everything feels a little... creaky, like old, rusted hinges. There's no pain, though. His body just feels numb.

His head is foggy, too, like everything has gone a little soft and fuzzy around the edges. Everything apart from the hunger, that is. And the rage. Both are painfully sharp, like needles digging into his brain.

He rests his back against the door and watches the body for a moment, like a cat watches a dead mouse, waiting - hoping - for it to start moving again. His fists open and close, ready to launch into it once again at the first twitch.

His heart isn't really in it now, though. The body had seemed so attractive just a few moments ago, with its yelling and squirming, back when it had been... different. It had been irresistible. The noises it made sent Arnold's brain fizzing. The way it tried to scramble out one window as Arnold climbed in the other both excited and enraged him. The sound and movement were like catnip. He just couldn't resist reaching out and grabbing it, catching it by the belt of its pants and pulling it back into the cab. He couldn't resist pounding until it stopped struggling. It was... satisfying.

Now, though? Not so much. It just lays there like a rag doll. Still. Grey. Dull. Arnold reaches out and touches it, hoping against hope the movement will start again. If it starts again maybe he can take a bite this time. It seemed so enticing just a moment ago, but now the body holds little interest.

Still it refuses to move.

And still.

Still nothing. This is getting boring now.

Moldy bread.

The random synaptic misfires that pass for thought in what's left of Arnold's mind dredge up a dusty old memory, back from... back from before, the other time. The memory plays out in his head like a foreign movie without the subtitles. He doesn't really understand the nuance, but he can just about grasp the general drift.

He's standing in a dark room, carefully, quietly reaching for things. Bags. Jars. Knives. He's putting something together in the darkness by feel, remembering where everything is kept. He moves slowly, trying not to make too much noise. Two slices of bread with something between them. Tasty. He's been looking forward to this for hours.

He lifts the thing to his mouth and takes a big bite. Chews. Chews again, then stops. Something tastes wrong. He reaches out to the wall and pushes something, and suddenly the room is painfully bright. He squints his eyes for a moment until they adjust to the light. He looks down at the thing in his hands, and suddenly he understands the problem. The bread is covered in gray and green patches of mold

Mold is wrong. Doesn't belong there. Shouldn't eat.

It's in his mouth, wet and mashed up and sticky and disgusting, pressed into the gaps between his teeth. Stuck in the crevice where a molar cracked and rotted to the root years ago. Deep in there, where his probing tongue can never reach. Where only a toothpick can free it. He gags, bends over the counter and spits the wet, mashed glob onto the white surface, but he can still taste it. He can still feel the texture of the mold, sticking to him like a sheet of rice paper pressed against the roof of his mouth.

He gags again, but this time he feels the vomit rise up his throat, hot and stinging. It splashes on the counter and the liquid brings with it thick, wet chunks that stick in his throat on the way up. Something goes the wrong way and lodges somewhere deep in his sinuses. He can smell it. He tastes it in his throat. He can
feel
it there, coating his tongue. He presses a finger against a nostril and snorts, trying to dislodge the chunk stuck deep in his nose, but it only makes him retch even harder.

He tries to make it to the basin before the next wave arrives, but he doesn't move quickly enough. Another retch, and the fresh puke joins the rest with a sickening splash on the countertop. Above his gasps he hears the dull, wet spatter of liquid dripping from the counter to the linoleum below. Thick, acrid bile burns his throat as his vision swims through tearful eyes, and a bubble of spit and puke bursts on his lips as he gasps.

The movie stops playing, and now Arnold understands. The thing next to him is like moldy bread. He thought it was good, but it's not good. Not now. Now it's gross. Gone bad. Don't eat. Only eat the fresh ones. Only eat the ones that move.

He lashes out and pushes the body further away, suddenly disgusted with it. It slumps against the door of the cab and the head dangles out the open window on its broken neck, like a baseball glued to a Slinky.

It's still too close for comfort. Arnold doesn't want to be trapped in here with it a moment longer. He's...
scared
isn't quite the right word, but it's close enough to describe the confused stew of instinct, impulse and childlike emotion running through a brain that's operating on little more than the stem. He twists his body to the right and sees the door he entered through. There's some sort of catch on it, a black steel stick jutting out from the shiny yellow door. Some dim half-memory tells him he could use it to make the door swing open, but he seems to have forgotten exactly how that would work. No matter. The window is open. He can still think clearly enough to know he can squirm through the gap to escape just as he squirmed through it to enter.

It seems a little more difficult this time. He moves more slowly now he isn't so excited, and his clothes keep catching on things. It takes a long while, but eventually he gets enough of his weight over the edge of the window to tumble out and fall back to the street. He lands on his shoulder and hears something snap, but still there's no pain. He's just numb.

Arnold stands slowly, using the side of the earthmover for support. He can't really turn his head to the right now. When he tries he feels like there's something blocking him. There's something wrong with his right foot, too. He looks down and sees pink and white bone just above his ankle, jutting out from the side like a sharp blade. The foot is bent inwards, and his weight rests on its side. He can still walk, though. After just a few clumsy steps the bone has torn through enough skin that he can rest his weight on the pointed tip. It crumbles a little, but soon enough it seems to smooth to a decent stump. The foot drags uselessly behind it like a sad, deflated balloon.

Up ahead he sees another body slumped against a car. Small. Dressed in oversized fatigues, the chest and face caved in, and the light brown desert camo scheme of his jacket darkened with blood. Arnold curls his lip in disgust and makes sure to stay well away from it. Moldy bread. Bad. What a waste. He's hungry now. Famished.

He bumps up against something hard and turns quickly, ready to fight. It's a car, the roof crushed down almost flat. Another memory tries to break through, but this one doesn't come with a movie. It's just a vague hint of a thought, like a dream that seemed so vivid just a moment ago but now slips just out of reach. Something about this car was important, but it doesn't look like there's anything of interest there now. Just a little smear of blood down the side of the door. It doesn't look appetizing.

There were more here. More... what's the word? People. They were in the car. He dips his head beneath the bent door frame and peers into the wreckage curiously, but the broken seats are empty. They were here. He knows they were here, but now they're not here. His mind no longer has a firm grasp on the concept of time, but the randomly firing mass of flesh still works well enough to tell him that the people must have gone somewhere since he last saw them.

But where?

His head jerks up at a distant sound carried on the breeze. Some kind of high pitched feedback squeal, somewhere far away. He turns his head this way and that, trying to home in on the noise. It seems to be coming from everywhere, bouncing through the streets and echoing off the walls. There's no way to tell—

No, wait. There it is. It's coming from somewhere ahead. Through the broken line of cars and down the long, straight road. Whatever it is it's coming from that direction. That's where he has to go. He can feel that fizzing sensation return.

His head spins around at another sound behind him, but he quickly sees that it's nothing to get excited about. It's just another one of them. Hungry. Angry. Excited. Can't eat it, though. The smell isn't right. Another one appears from behind a car, and then another off in the distance from around a corner, far behind. They all heard the sound, and they're all moving in the same direction. Some can move faster than him. Some aren't so broken. Some don't have to drag a useless foot behind them. It makes him angry to see them walking faster. Jealous. The other ones might get there before him, and all the food will be gone.

He sets off as quickly as he can move, dragging himself towards the distant sound. It's stopped now but he remembers the direction it came from. All he can hear now is the slow, steady click and grind of his bone against the asphalt, and the low, curious groans of the others quickly catching up to him.

He's excited now, but he doesn't know how to show it. His mouth doesn't seem to work like it used to. He wants to speak, but all he can do is groan.

No matter. He'll get to eat soon.

I can't help but think of 9/11.

I remember I'd turned eleven years old a few days earlier, and my party had marked the end of a long, glorious, lazy summer. The school year had officially begun the previous day, September 10th, but my first day back been postponed for a week thanks to some emergency with the plumbing in the cafeteria. I didn't really give a damn about the reason, I was just over the moon to get a bonus vacation week. It felt like magical extra time had been conjured up out of thin air, just like when as an adult you wake up thinking it's time for work, then feel that soft, warm little thrill when you look at the clock and realize you still have two more hours to sleep. It was fucking fantastic. One more precious week of waking up late and watching cartoons in my pajamas

Unfortunately my mother had other plans. She had to go to work, and since couldn't find a sitter on short notice I was packed off to my great uncle's deli on Fulton Street, a weird little place that stank to high heaven of pickled beets and, forever creeping from the little cubby behind the stock room, stale cigar smoke. Mom said a week of honest work would be character building, much more valuable than anything I'd learn at school, and she was right. By the start of my second day I'd already learned an important life lesson: the smell of pickled beets and old cigar smoke makes me gag.

I was sneaking in a quick nap on the toilet when Flight 11 hit the north tower, really stretching out that first crap of the day as long as I could, hoping my uncle wouldn't knock on the door and make me help out in the store. I'd been in there for twenty minutes when I heard a dull rumble and felt the room shake a little. I remember the mirror trembled on the wall, and my reflection blurred for a moment. I had no clue what was going on, of course. No one did, not when it started.

At first I thought a transformer might have blown somewhere nearby. That was usually the answer to any mysterious explosive sound, much to my disappointment. Whenever I heard something potentially exciting I'd always rush as quickly as I could out to the street, hoping I might be lucky enough to find myself faced with a gory car crash or a cool fire, but it was always another damned transformer, overtaxed by the summer heat.

This time was different, of course. By the time I got down to the street there was a confused crowd gathered around. The traffic had stopped in the street, and people were out of their cars and looking up at the sky to the west where a thick, dark shroud had already started to draw over the city like the ash cloud from an erupting volcano. This
never
happened, not in New York. Even if one of those city-sized spacecraft from Independence Day really did hover over the city people would barely break their stride. New Yorkers don't stop unless they're on fire, and even then it'd have to be a big one.

I started to run without thinking. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I knew this was exciting. Finally something interesting was going down, and I was there to see it. By the time I reached the Hilton on the corner of Fulton and Church I knew this was big, and when the north tower finally hove into view my sprint slowed to a jog, then a walk. Then I just stood there and gawped, like everyone else.

You'd have to have been there to really get how it felt. It was just... confusing. The streets were packed with hundreds of people who'd been attracted by the noise. Thousands. Some stood there and watched. Others tried to get as close as possible. A few ran as fast as their legs could carry them in the opposite direction. People kinda laughed and shook our heads at those guys, because... well, if you run away you're not a real New Yorker, you know? Nobody wants to be thought a tourist. Certainly not me, Brooklyn born and bred, always eager to make it clear that I was a true city boy.

At first it was all a little lighthearted, believe it or not. A couple of people were making dark jokes about... I don't know, something about the Merrill Lynch annual company barbecue. I don't want to make these people sound awful, but you have to understand they didn't have a clue what was going on. Of course they wouldn't have cracked wise if they'd understood what was happening. And again, these were New Yorkers. You don't last long in the city without developing a strong grasp of gallows humor

The jokes stopped when the south tower was hit.

I couldn't see much from where I was standing. The Hilton blocked my view of the south tower, but everyone on the street heard the impact even if they couldn't see it. We suddenly knew that this wasn't a regular fire. This wasn't just some
how was your day, honey?
story people would be telling over the dinner table. This was serious.

Whispers started to pass back through the crowd. Some people nearby said they'd seen a plane through a gap in the buildings, and a couple of minutes later a cab driver said the radio was reporting that a light aircraft had hit the north tower. Those around him corrected him at first, telling him he must be confused. The guys on the ground were saying they'd
just now
seen a plane, right before the south tower erupted in smoke and flame, but the radio seemed to be talking about the first explosion. There can't have been two planes, right?

That's the way it went for the next hour or so. It was just a huge game of Telephone, rumors passing through the crowd as we all watched the towers burn. After a half hour of confusion and fear news of the Pentagon attack rippled down the street. That one came straight from the radio and the TVs playing in the cafes and delis along Fulton, so we assumed it was legit, but other rumors couldn't be so quickly confirmed. There were whispers of an explosion outside the White House, and another at Sears Tower. Someone mentioned something about an attack in London, or maybe Paris. A woman beside me managed to get through to her sister on the phone, and she said there were more planes in the air headed for the city. It was just endless. Rumor upon rumor, rippling through the crowd and carrying waves of fear and confusion along with them.

That's just how I'm feeling now, almost two decades later, standing in the middle of a crowd of thousands in Prospect Park, clutching Kate's hand for dear life. Nobody has any solid information, but in a situation like this rumors flood in to fill the vacuum.

"I've got no bars, is anyone getting any bars?" a guy in a torn suit in front of me calls out. A few around him shake their heads, frowning with concern at their useless phones as if the lack of signal is a greater tragedy than the hordes of murderous creatures roaming the city.

"My sister said the army's taken back Manhattan up to Central Park," a woman claims, waving her phone in the air as if it amounted to proof. "I just got through to her before the signal died."

"Bullshit," grumbles a wiry old man, pointing his cane at the woman. "My son was on the payphone, and he says the news said there's nobody left alive in the city."

The guy in the torn suit takes a knee in front of the old man. "When was this, sir?"

"Just now!" he proclaims. "Ask him yourself, he's right there. Hey, Ron!
Ron
! Come over here and tell 'em what you told me."

The old man's overweight son looks up from a conversation with a young woman and turns in our direction, then slowly makes his way over to us, red faced, overexerted by the short walk.

"Umm," he says, catching his breath. "Yeah, so Fox says they lost contact with D.C. about a half hour ago. They don't know where the President is."

"No, you idiot," the guy's dad scolds, "tell them what's goin' on here."

"Oh right, right," he replies, ignoring the insult. "New York is
gone
." He waves a hand in a slicing motion. "Just... gone, all the way up to, like, Yankee Stadium or something. They sent a traffic chopper over the city and it's just overrun. Corpse city." He lets out a nervous laugh and a woman beside him gasps, reaches out and claps her hands over her kid's ears.

"Jesus," she sobs tearfully. "My husband's in Manhattan. Can you show some damned respect?"

"Umm, sorry ma'am," the guy replies, cowed.

The first woman waves her phone again. "That's not true. My sister just said the army's at Central Park, pushing north."

"What, your sister told you?" the fat guy snorts. "Who are you gonna believe, your sister or Fox News?"

"
Duh
. My sister. Those assholes at Fox are probably just trying to get a bump in the ratings. They'd
love
it if New York was ruined. I bet—" Her voice is drowned out by a painfully loud high pitched squeal as someone switches on the PA system. The sound continues for a solid five seconds before someone pulls the plug and the agonizing feedback cuts out.

I pull Kate away from the group by the hand and lower my voice as we pass through the muttering, gossiping crowd. "OK, we need to get the fuck out of here right now. Let's go."

She tugs back on my hand, drawing to a halt. "What? Why? We're safe here, right? Why the hell would we go back out there?"

I shake my head and lean in closer. "Look... OK, you can't react to what I'm about to say, OK? I don't want to panic people." I drop my voice to a whisper. "That kid back there, the soldier? His gun was loaded with blanks. He said they don't have enough ammo to go around. These people can't protect us."

Kate shakes her head in disbelief. "What are you talking about? Who told you this?"

"He did. Karl, the kid. He said there's supposed to be an army unit coming up from Fort Dix to secure the safe zone, but they never showed. All they've got is a few reservists and a couple of cadets. This isn't a safe zone. It's all just..." I wave my hand around, searching for the right word. "Theater. It's a fucking
buffet
. Just a few old guys and kids playing soldiers, trying to keep people calm. They can't keep us safe." I look across the field at the thronged crowd. "And look at these people. Look how unprepared they are."

Kate looks around and shrugs her shoulders. "What do you mean?"

"I mean look at these guys." I point to a young family sitting in the shade of a tree nearby. They have a suitcase open before them, their hastily grabbed belongings piled inside. "Look at their stuff. There must be a dozen pairs of heels in that bag. And what's that, an Xbox? Seriously? No food. No water. No weapons. No warm clothes. Just... stuff. Random crap they don't want to get looted. They think they're going straight home once this all blows over, but they're
not
. Those things are coming,
soon
, and even if they don't find us this bunch of morons will tear itself to pieces when they realize there's nothing to
eat
. If FEMA doesn't arrive with water purifiers there'll be nothing to drink, either. They're not prepared for this. Hell, neither are we, but at least we understand how deep in the shit we are."

I nod my head towards a skinny, tearful hipster kid sitting cross legged on his own, clutching a cotton Whole Foods grocery bag to his chest. Peeking from the top I can see dozens of vinyl sleeves.

"Jesus, look at this asshole. Does he thinks he's gonna fight off a bunch of infected with his limited edition Smiths album? Where are all the fucking guns?"

Kate stays silent. We've often argued about the need for stricter gun control - her for, me against. I agreed with her that it was pretty pointless to keep one for home protection, but even though I'm one of those knock-kneed lefty wimps the NRA people laugh at I always insisted they were necessary for just this kind of situation, when the shit hits the fan and law enforcement collapses.

Kate thought that was a crazy idea. Her late father had been a cop, and she couldn't wrap her head around the concept of a world in which he and his kind wouldn't be there to protect us, or might even work against us. A cop had tucked her in every night as a kid, and the idea that the uniform meant anything other than absolute safety just didn't fit with her world view. I could never figure out a way to convince her that the society we knew might not last forever.

It didn't help matters that her dad had been shot and killed in the line of duty when she was twelve. A bodega robbery gone bad. Wrong place at the wrong time. Her opinion on guns was fixed for life on that day.

Just a few months ago, a couple of weeks after she moved into my apartment, I told her we should buy a handgun just in case. Just as last ditch insurance, to be kept locked securely in a glass case marked
break only in the event of the apocalypse
. I told her we could keep the ammo right on the other side of the house. Hell, we could keep the gun in pieces, scattered around the apartment like a damned jigsaw puzzle so it was impossible it could ever be used by accident. She gave me an ultimatum: I could live with her or I could live with a gun, but not both.