ZWD: King of an Empty City (12 page)

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 13

ZWD: Dec. 12.

Library, in and out. Right, like it would be that easy.

The first thing I did was plop down on a couch in the children’s section and rest. She disappeared upstairs and came back a little while later with a first-aid kit and a needlework kit. We went into the bathroom, where I stripped down to my bare chest, and we washed the cut on the back of my head. Then she took scissors and clipped the hair away from the cut. “Keep your head down,” she said and left the bathroom. I did and watched the little droplets of blood-filled water that trickled from my ears down my cheeks and dropped into the sink. I pushed out the thought that this cut was going to somehow turn me into a zombie. I wasn’t bitten; this came from the five-pound brass nozzle of a fire hose. I had a concussion and I kept telling myself that they make you delusional.

She returned with a book in her hand and gave it to me. “Shove this into your mouth and bend over the sink.”

              “What are you going to do?”

              “Close that cut, you need stitches.”

              Reluctantly, I bent back over the sink with the book firmly in my mouth; she poured alcohol onto the wound. White-hot burning fire filled my vision. I bit into the book and screamed. My hands grabbed hold of the sides of the vanity pedestal that held the sink till my knuckles went white. I stomped one foot repeatedly into the ground. Somewhere around the third breath everything went from white to black.

I woke up on the floor of the bathroom, shirt off, my forehead resting on my arms. I heard a
snick
and saw the scissors get tossed to the ground next to my face. She was sitting on my back. “That should do it,” she said as she stood up and stepped over me to the sink to wash her hands. I just lay there. When she finished washing she leaned against the bathroom wall and slid down it to the floor. She had a medical book in her hand and was thumbing through the index as she landed on the floor.

“Was it bad?”

“Six stitches. I used a chevron stitch so you’ll have a pretty scar under all that hair.”

“Can I sleep now?”

“Not yet.” She turned her attention back to the book. In a few moments she said, “Let’s go to one of the couches upstairs. Once we get there you can sleep. But I’m going to have to wake you up every couple of hours and ask you questions to make certain you're ok.”

              It took me a while to get off the floor. I was so tired I just wanted to lie there and sleep. Walking was a lot of fun too. I felt like I was in a funhouse walking on one of those floors that keeps shifting. We finally made it upstairs and I collapsed on the couch. I had no dreams.

                  A few hours later she woke me up and started asking me questions. She made me sit up and talk to her. I was pissed off. After a few minutes, I got to lie back down and sleep. This went on for hours. Finally around dawn she stopped waking me and I slept uninterrupted till noon.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 14

ZWD: Dec. 13.

Caught a car on fire and watched them come. Like snipers we shot dozens from the roof.

             
She spent the time I was sleeping photocopying medical books and looking at first aid. What woke me up was the absence of noise. I went to the bathroom and washed up before going to look for her. I stopped at the front window and looked out at the parking lot below. There were a few zombies around, but most of them were gathered around the now smoldering husk of a car I’d set on fire the day before.

             
I found her downstairs practicing with the bows. She’d set up a shooting range down one of the book aisles using a stanchion as a target. I joined in and we spent probably three hours shooting arrows and backing up down the aisles of books, getting more and more accurate. I had to stop and read the books she’d pulled about archery to get an idea of how the mechanics of aiming worked, but once I had it in my mind, I understood what I was doing wrong and I think I quickly corrected it. I’m no Robin Hood, but at least my shots were hitting the target now.

             
After three hours of shooting, we took a break to pursue our personal interests. I took a nap. My head was still throbbing and I didn’t feel like doing much else. When I woke up a few hours later, she was curled up beside me with her head resting on my arm. We lay like that for a while and said nothing, just watched the light fade from the windows. At dusk, we got up and readied ourselves again to go out into the world, this time with arrows and bows ready.

             
We were going to try my new skills. With a scented aerosol can that was used to mask odors in the bathrooms, we made our way again out the side door near I-630. We didn’t want to attract a lot of zombies like we had on
President
Clinton Avenue, so we retraced our steps till we got to Fourth and Broadway again. I couldn’t help it, I had to see what was going on with the fire truck, but we weren’t going to get that close to it again. I climbed one of the trees that sparsely lined Broadway to get a better view. From the extra height I could still see the hoses thrashing about, and I thought the number of zombies around it was growing. They were tightly packed in a circle around it watching the water spray out. The water itself was striking them in groups and knocking them down, but they were just getting back up and watching like they were in a trance. Every now and then the five-pound brass nozzle would pop down on one of their heads and that one would drop like a rock. I never saw one of them get back up after that. Right before I dropped to the ground I saw one of the nozzles swing wide and crack one of them in the head from the side. It tore his head off. I’d accidentally invented a zombie-killing machine. We don’t go to them, they come to us! I hated losing all that water, though.

From there we backtracked to Main Street and started for home. There was an empty lot where some building used to be and caddy-corner from there was a parking lot. One of the television stations was there, so I thought this was as good a place as any. It had one feature I liked; the parking lot was fenced in with a six-foot decorative iron fence that had pointy spikes on top. It wasn’t chain link. In the parking lot we broke open a window on a car and lit the seat on fire, then threw the scented aerosol can in the seat and climbed partway up a fire escape on one of the buildings, where we waited with bows ready.

It didn’t take long for them to show up. As soon as the can exploded, four zombies came from the alley. We took aim and
ping
, caught them in the heads. It was short work killing them, and I have to say I was rather proud of myself. But that was up close; I needed to go for distance, so we gathered the arrows and climbed further up the fire escape. This gave us some extra yards and zombies, as far as we knew, can’t climb ladders. On the first landing I waited for more to show up while she climbed to the roof to look for an escape should we need one.

In a few minutes two more came and I was able to drop them in four shots. One arrow went into the car, one into the fat one’s shoulder, and the other two into their heads. I wasn’t great, but I understood what I was doing and I was getting better. I couldn’t get the arrow out of the car. As I tried pulling it with my foot propped against the fender and yanking, she yelled from the roof.

             
“We got more than we want coming this way.” She was climbing down the escape. When she got to me I had most of our gear gathered up and was ready to run. She pointed to the dumpsters that sat in the alley and said, “Let's hide and when they come into the gate we’ll shut it and trap them in.”

             
So we hid behind the dumpster and waited. It didn’t take long for about fifteen zombies to stagger into the lot to see what was going on. She ran from her hiding spot and pushed the gate shut, and together we pushed a car that was parked on the street in front of the gate, blocking them in. As an afterthought, I went into the dumpster and found a few empty bottles. We took the radiator hose from the parked car and I siphoned some gas, making a Molotov cocktail, and I threw it, hitting one of the zombies in the chest. Actually, I kind of doused him when I tossed him the bottle, saying, “Catch.” Zombies can’t catch. His chest burst into flame and naturally all the other zombies left the burning car to go look at him. We didn’t wait around to watch for fear that more would show up.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 15

ZWD: Dec. 13.

Bacon, popcorn, and beer. Yogurt, ice cream, and B-B-Q.

A few minutes later found us blocks away. Her mood was sullen, so I tried to cheer her up or distract her and asked, “Do you think there are vampires?”

             
“There are no vampires. At least I hope not, we have enough things trying to eat us now. I liked it better when we were the top of the food chain.” Her flat answer told me I needed to change the subject fast.

             
“Food, you know what I miss? Bacon. And popcorn, popcorn with beer.”

             
“Yogurt.”

             
“Ice cream.”

             
“That cheesecake they used to make at that bakery on Main Street.”

             
“B-B-Q,” I said with my stomach growling.

             
“The best of all, a peanut buster parfait layered in fudge and caramel and topped with real marshmallow cream topping.”

We stopped walking down Main Street and moved to a car parked on the side of the road like it was a normal business day. She rummaged around in her pockets and pulled out some canned carrots. I pulled out the ring of keys I kept for all the places we went into often, like the library and the base house. On that ring, I kept a G.I. P38 can opener.

It’s a handy little piece of equipment to have if you’re hiking, fighting a war, or living through a zombie apocalypse. Soldiers used them in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam to open canned and bottled goods. It didn’t take up as much room as a conventional can opener. I got this one from my dad in Scouts one year before a big jamboree. He called it a John Wayne. I don’t know if the guys in Desert Storm and Desert Freedom or Afghanistan used them.

We ate the carrots quietly and greedily from the can. They weren’t as good as fresh carrots, but it was food. As we sat on the car hood I started thinking about the raised garden we were going to have to build and where to get the wood to do it, since we couldn’t just run to the lumber store and pick up a bunch. That was when it hit me; I’d use planks from decking. People all around here had built decks. There were plenty of long straight boards within walking distance of the Safeway and scattered throughout the sheds in the neighborhood were boxes of nails. The Page family garage had two or three boxes that I saw. This was really going to be a doable project now.

             
As I kept thinking of the things we’d need to do this—like crowbars and hammers—she got up and tossed the empty can over her shoulder, then walked around to the back of the car and squatted down between it and the one behind it. I could hear her peeing. When she finished she stepped into the street and was staring at the building across from us. Slowly she started walking over there, with a distant kind of gaze in her eyes. I became alarmed and pulled out Harold and slid off the hood of the car. She stopped at the curb on the far side of the street, still looking at the building. I walked over to her side, looking up and down the streets for any sudden dangers that might appear.

The building itself was one of those department stores that were empty. They were going to bring something back and put it in there, some specialty store with maybe loft apartments up above. But now it stood empty. A reflective film had been placed on the glass showing you everything that was across the street.

“What is it?” I asked her as I glanced around. She stepped up the curb and over to the glass front of the store. At first I thought she saw something inside the store so I turned and was trying my best to see through the reflective film.

             
“Do I really look like that now?” she asked.

I glanced over at her. “You look fine.” As soon as I said it I realized what she was talking about; she was looking at her reflection in the glass. I looked from her to the glass and saw what she was talking about too. I turned and looked at myself in the glass. I could see a change in my body. I was thinner, almost gaunt, leaner, chiseled thinner; even under all this clothing I could tell I was more muscular now than I was months ago when this madness started. Where I had chubby cheeks I now had cheekbones. Where I’d been chunky I was lean. Where I used to walk with my body slumped forward I was straighter, taller. I guess starving and hunting for your food for months will do that to you, and for some reason we’d gotten into the habit of running just about everywhere.

             
Her hair had been pulled back into braids to stay out of her face so she could see or fight. She’d lost her apple cheeks too and now had cheekbones like a model. Her features were more angular. I have to say she looked healthier than she did months ago, although I knew she was as hungry as I was. With all the running and climbing we did her dancer's body had come back to her, but dressed as she was with her hiking boots and wool socks, jeans with leggings under them and her coat with scarf wrapped around her neck, and all the other crap we carried like guerilla soldiers, she looked like some street urchin from a Dickens story. We both did, except Dickens never wrote about zombie survivors.

             
I have to say I didn’t object to the way we looked. I think it was the healthiest we’d been in years. But the truth was, food was running out and we were going to look gaunt, skeletal even. Making the raised garden was going to be a major priority when we got back. That and clearing the neighborhood of zombies, and making barricades so no more could get in. And there were those guys in the truck we were going to have to deal with, and I knew there were people still in their homes we had to convince to come out and help us. The list of priorities seemed to just get bigger and bigger every time I thought about it, and I was thinking about it a lot more. I took one last long look at myself in the reflection of the glass and told myself I now had to man up to these tasks because if I didn’t do them, then the man I was becoming without food wouldn’t be able to. The time was now.

“You're as beautiful as you have ever been,” I offered. “You're more beautiful now than you were ten years ago. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” I turned to face her and looking her in the eyes I said it again. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.” Then I stepped next to her and kissed her. When we separated I was holding one of her hands. I squeezed it and nodded. She nodded back. It was an unspoken affirmation of many things; it satisfied us. She went back to the car to gather her things and I glanced one last time at my reflection. I pulled the bandana I had around my neck up over my mouth like I was an old western bank robber and joined her in the middle of the street. She looked at the bandana and rearranged her scarf to cover her mouth in the same manner, and together we took off jogging down the street. Again with the jogging.

             
As we crossed the Main Street Bridge over I-630 we slowed to a walk. I wanted to study the bridge’s ramps. See if I could come up with a way to stop wandering zombies from coming up them. Cars seemed like the natural barricade of choice. Maybe I could hot-wire them and park them across the ramp’s path.

             
She had to stop by the cemetery to see if anything had changed. A quick trip over there showed no new skulls were added to the stack, but someone did leave a small figure. It looked like a superhero I didn’t know. It was encased in some kind of high-tech armor and it was holding a plastic flower taken from a nearby grave in one blue hand.

When we got back to the Safeway, the light was almost completely gone. I took some comfort seeing the Christmas lights still shining, but realized that they just pointed to the ladder, saying someone is up here check them out. I decided to switch out the string of lights with the gargoyle, let him look down on evil. I ran the string of lights to the door of our tent and clipped them to the side where the flap when opened rested on a square of Velcro. Then I started looking through the books and papers for the hot-wiring information. Once I found it I settled in for the night with another can of carrots.

             
Later that night while she slept, I went down to the ground. Looking up at the gargoyle’s red eyes peering over the edge of the building, I was satisfied that she was safe sleeping in the tent. I crept into the Safeway with a flashlight. I didn’t have to go in very far to find what I was looking for. Just over to the smoker’s cage. It had long been broken into and there wasn’t much left to the supplies they felt so compelled to lock up. Not that the Plexiglas cover on the cigarette case was much protection. I can’t explain it, but for some reason I wanted a cigar. I think it might have been just a craving for caffeine. I hadn’t had a soda in forever and I think I just needed something like that, but all I found was Swisher Sweets Peach flavor. But since I wasn’t a big smoker anyway the peach flavor was probably a good thing.

             
I went to one of the cars we’d found earlier where someone had left the window cracked enough to just reach in and unlock the door. It was a rusted-out La Baron in the parking lot. Someone used to smoke a lot in here; either that or they just loved air fresheners; there were ten of them hanging from the rearview, pine, cherry, ocean, etc. I even found a book of matches in the seat and lit up.

             
Like I said, I’m not a smoker, but the nicotine did help my headache. Throughout the day the fog that had been hanging around for days had been thinning out to the point that now there was just a thin mist hanging in the air and making halos around all the lights. You could see for blocks and it all looked like something out of an old black and white film noir as the streets glistened with a reflective sheen of moisture.

I was enjoying the calm and quiet, listening to the sounds of the world and trying not to get sick. A smoker can probably finish a little cigar like this in fifteen minutes or drag it out to thirty. But I think in my entire life I’d smoked five cigars, and one of them was in high school years and years ago. The peach flavor didn’t help much either. I tried to imagine that I was Clint Eastwood in one of his westerns and looked at the world through narrowed eyes, mainly because the smoke was making my eyes water. I gritted my teeth as I held the cigar in my mouth. The thing was making my tongue burn. And with each puff I grew greener around the gills. I have to admit it was making my headache go away, but it wasn’t doing the rest of me any good. I finally had to put it out.

             
I rolled down the window to get some air and made sure the side mirror was set so that I could see anything coming up behind me. I tried to take slow, deep breaths, trying to clear my head and settle my stomach. Snow started to fall in big fluffy flakes. I watched with a sense of delight as they floated down and disappeared on the ground. I started to get out of the car and sit on the hood to watch this spectacle when I heard a strange sound and then saw movement a block down the street.                                      

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 16

ZWD: Dec. 14.

A stick tapped on an empty can will draw zombies. Drag it on the ground behind you and the noise makes them come. A running start with a shovel takes the head right off. Found out burning them brings more.

Three figures were moving in bursts down the street. Darting from one shadow to the next under the streetlamps. They were clad in dark clothing and looked to be children, probably no older than nine and no younger than six. They were moving with the practiced efficiency of children who were used to sneaking around in the dark. Further down the street, two figures were boldly moving my way. They had something with them that was making the noise that I was hearing, but it wasn’t till they were across the street at the post office parking lot that I saw what it was.

             
I was sitting in the La Baron at the edge of the Safeway facing up Main Street from the south end of the lot, looking out between two of the trees that lined the parking lot, and they were moving towards me. They were across the street with sticks tied to their belts and empty cans attached to the ends of the sticks. These two looked to be older, perhaps fourteen, and they each carried long tubular things that were almost twice as long as they were tall. These things looked like some sort of guns, but nothing I’d ever seen before. On their backs were what looked like a set of thick antennas bunched together.

             
The three little ones darted across the street and crouched down under cover of a few of the cars. I was straining my neck to see what was happening across the lot. Up on the roof I could see her standing just short of the ledge, wrapped in a dark blanket to keep hidden; the cans’ noise must have woken her up. She had a bow in hand and ready to draw back and shoot. The two older boys marched east on Seventeenth Street, then turned into the parking lot and marched across the front of the store. One row short of me they turned again and started back to Main Street. Once there, they circled around the lot again in the same manner. While they were moving up Main again one of the three cried out, ‘Hi-Oh.” And the two turned to see what was going on. One of the three was pointing to the storefront. Turning, I saw a zombie stagger out from the missing front door. The two marched with very determined steps to the zombie and leveled their long tubes at the thing. Then there was a
WHOOMP
sound from one of the tubes and the zombie fell over dead with a stake stuck out of the back of his head.