Zombie D.O.A. (2 page)

“Hang in babe, hang in, I’m gonna get you through this,” I said, the
n
shouted out, “Someone call an ambulance, Mrs
Kranski, call 911, we need help!
Mrs Kranski!
” 

I suddenly remembered t
hat
my neighbor,
Brad
,
worked at Lenox Hill
and might know what to do. “Brad!” I screamed, “Brad, get the fuck in here, we need
you
r
help.” 

Rosie’s fingers tightened o
n my wrist and I looked at her and
just knew she wasn’t going to make it, not even if the ambulance arrived this very minute, not even if the world’s best surgeon was cradling her head instead of me.

I started to speak, but she widened her eyes as if to tell me not to
, and she said, in a whisper
, “My baby
.”

“Yes hon,
” I said, “I’m going to pull you through this. You and the baby
, you’re going to be okay.”

Inexplicably,
Rosie
smiled
at me. A knowing smile, that said she knew
I was bullshitting. Then she lif
ted her hand a
nd
put a finger to my lips and her eyes glazed
. She
let out a breat
h that seemed to go on forever, t
hat seemed to sound in my ears even after it was gone.

I knelt there on the floor with my wife’s blood on my hands and held her like a broken toy. I
must have
cried
, although all I
can remember was a deep, dark emptiness
in my heart and a maelstrom in my head as I tried to deal with both my loss and confusion at how this had happened.

I saw
that Rosie’s nightdress had hitched up and out of some sense of modesty, I guess, I straightened it. It was t
hen
that
I
noticed the
flatness of her belly.

My baby, she’d said. Had she miscarried? Is that what she’d meant? Where? How
? What had happened here
?

I slowly lifted the nightdress.
T
here was a lot of blood, but
even so
I could
clearly
see
the terrible injuries. 

Rosie’s
stomach had been ripped open
leaving a jagged
wound
. The
r
e
were
deep gashes on her thighs
where it appeared chunks of flesh had been ripped from her
.
Jesus Christ, were those
bit
e marks?
Holy mother of
God
,
how was this p
ossible?

Someone knocks on the door of my apartment at 7 o
’
clock on a Monday morning and rips my unborn child from my wife’s womb? How
could
such a thing happen?
How?

Outside I could hear sirens and
suddenly
realized I had to call the cops. The phone in the front room was dead
.
I
tried to remember where I’d left my cell, but for a moment I blanked.

Then it came to me,
on top of the john
. I sprinted for the bathroom, getting there
just
as
the phone started to ring. The
ring
tone was set to vibrate, and as I reached for the phone it slid across the porcelain, and dropped into the bowl. 

“Fu
uu
c
kk
k!” I screamed at the top of my voice and
ran back down the p
assage
and across
the hall to the Kranski’s
.

I banged on
the
door.
“Mrs Kranski, it’s Chris Collins, I need help. I need to use your phone, there’s been an accident. Mrs Kranski! Please, call 911, there’s been an accident!”

If Kranski was there, she wasn’t answering. “Fucking old witch
,
” I spat. I was going to
have to try and find
Rosie’s
cell,
or go down to the call box on the corner.
Or I could try Brad.

I reached his apartment
door
in four
long stride
s. The door
was ajar
, and
I noticed something that looked like blo
od on the doorframe and handle.

I realize now that
it
should have struck me as strange,
but
at
the
time I was frantic and the reality of the situation was starting to cut through the haze of shock and adrenalin.

For a brief moment I totally convinced myself that this was all a dream
and a sensation of calmness swept over me, like the way you feel when you waken from a nightmare and realize it isn’t real
.
But if this was a nightmare, it wasn’t letting go just yet.

I entered
Brad’s
apartment,
without
b
othering to knock. “Hey Brad!”
I shouted. “I need help. I need your help
,
man. My wife. There’s been an accident!“

There was no answer.

“Brad, I need to use your phone, I need to call the cops, so I’m just going to do that, okay!”

I picked up the phone. Dead.

“Hey, Brad. I’m gonna need your cell. This is an emergency. This is a fucking emergency, you understand!”

There was a sound from the kitchen, a faint bubbling sound. “You in there Brad,” I shouted.  “I need your cell”.

Again I heard the distinctive bubbling sound from the kitchen. I headed in that direction.

Brad was standing with his back pressed up aga
inst the counter. He wore his
Hospital Security Guard uniform. The front of his shirt was blood stained and there was blood on his hands, one of which dangled a large kitchen knife
, also
dripping blood
. A cigarette
hung
between bloodstained teeth, which seemed impossibly large. His mouth was curled into an insane grin.

On t
he stove, a pot of water bubbled merrily away. Next to it, on a cutting board, lay the tiny corpse of my unborn
daughter
.

Now you need to understand what goes on in a person’s mind at a time like this. There’s a moment when you feel like a puppet, suspended on strings. The puppet master has just yanked you in a direction you don’t want to go. But you go anyway,
because
you have no choice.

I should have been heading across town with my wi
fe for her
obstetrician
appointment
. Instead, my wife was dead, my
daughter
was dead and I was standing
just
feet away from the man who had
killed
them both.
Butchered them both for some insane idea that I didn’t understand.

I’m not sure how long I faced off against Bra
d
across
his kitchen
. It could have been a second. I
t felt like an hour.

It was
he
who broke the
standoff
.  He allowed the cigarette to drop from his
lips
, stubbed it out with his shoe
,
the
n
looked up at me and grinned.
Then the grin seemed to charge, to morph into anger, into rage, into something more primal. He made a gagging sound as though trying to clear something unpleasant from his throat and then he charged me. 

He crossed the eight feet or
so that separated us in an instant, and it was only my fighter’s instincts that saved me.
I’ve fought lots of
guys like
Brad
in my career. Big
,
bull-
necked guys, who think their power makes up for a lack of skill. I
used his momentum to my advantage, shuffling
out of the way
at the last moment and ca
t
ching
him with a solid, fight-ending
right
behind the ear.

Brad plowed on
past, his
impetus
carrying him into the living room, where he crashed face first into a glass topped table.

He lay there in a crumpled heap, his arm bent back at an
improbable
angle. The kitchen knife lay a few feet from him
,
and for a moment
I
had an almost uncont
rollable urge to
pick it up and
plunge in into his back until there wasn’t
an inch
of skin
on him
without a knife wound. The only reason I didn’t
,
is because I had more important business
to take care of
.

I
sprinted
down the passage to fetch a towel
for
wrap
ping
the baby’s body in.
I heard a sound behind me and
turned to see Brad getting up from the rubble of his coffee table.  He stumbled down the passage towards me, dangling his
shattered
arm. There were shards of glass in his face, the largest of which protruded from an eye socket.