The sun is streaming into the living room from between the gaps in the plywood. Another day in paradise. I fell asleep in my clothes; the house smells like pot and so do I. My mouth is dry and tastes like someone shit in it while I slept. I need water. My bare feet hit the floor and my head spins. I’m hungry, and as I stand I realize my jeans are loose. I pull my shirt up and notice my little Buddha belly is disappearing, slowly transforming into a bit of a washboard. Funny, I finally get that beach body I’ve always wanted only after there’s no one left to appreciate it.
I catch my reflection in the mirror as I pass by. My hair is getting longer and I haven’t shaved in a couple weeks. My beard is coming in with a whole lot of grey. I look like a morph of Robinson Crusoe and Charlie Sheen, the crazy tiger blood Charlie. Perfect. I’m the love child of two dudes, and one of them isn’t even real. I suppose neither of them is real, when I think about it for a few seconds. I wonder to myself if Charlie Sheen is still holed up somewhere, surrounded by porn stars, or if he got sick like most everyone else and is roaming the streets of Hollywood, dead eyes searching for something they’ll never find.
Same routine: move the board, list the plywood, slip into the back yard through the French doors and pee. It’s quiet, except for the birds; there are always birds, always the sweet summer sounds in the trees. It’s already hot out, and there’s a cicada buzzing somewhere up above me. The flowers along the north side of the fence are in bloom, pinks and yellows and reds. They’re beautiful, and it’s nice to have something pretty to look at. When the people around you are dead, pretty much everything else looks dead, too. I zip up and pad over to the mulch bed and pull a few handfuls of weeds before plucking some flowers. They’ll look nice on the piles of dirt near the shed. I lay them gently and neatly at each little patch of raw earth. I miss the girls, terribly. I feel them coming, rising up from deep in my belly, big, heavy sobs that shake my whole body before erupting into long, wet tears that run freely down my cheeks and spill to the ground.
I sit like that for a while, crying, smelling like stale weed and sweat. When the sobs finally subside, I rise and step into the pool with my clothes on. The water still smells of chlorine, but the ring of algae is getting thicker and the water level is noticeably lower. I strip my clothes off and work them around in the water, a half-assed attempt at a spin cycle. I let the Levis sink to the bottom of the pool and wring water from my tee shirt, soak it again and toss it to the deck, and repeat the process with my jeans, making sure I spend a few extra seconds under the water before bursting up into the warm, summer air. The Levis plop onto the pool deck with a wet splash; I work water through my hair with my fingers, scrubbing with the tips of my fingers. It feels nice, and I realize I’m longing for someone to touch me, someone alive and real.
I’ve always hated being alone. Now, I’m really alone. It’s been, what, a week that I’ve been the sole occupant of this house. Just one week. My God, it feels like fucking forever. I wonder just how long forever really is, if a week feels like an eternity. I suppose I’ll find out.
I pull on another tee shirt from the patio. It’s hard and scratchy from drying in the sun. The Levis I work over my legs are pretty crusty, too. But they smell like the outdoors, they’re clean. This pair is loose on me, too. I have some smaller clothes upstairs; I’ll need to break them out. I remember they’re in the bedroom and my heart sinks. I don’t want to go in there.
I look down at my arms. They’re pretty pasty; normally, I’d have a pretty decent tan going on by this time of year. I guess survivors don’t get a lot of sun time in the new world order. Besides, the pool is now my bathtub, not to mention the fact I had a dead woman in it a few days ago. Ah, fuck it. I strip off my shirt and jeans and quietly drag one of the zero gravity loungers close to the door and toss my clothes onto the steps. I wipe a few spider webs from the chair and stretch out, leaning back so the chair lets me float on my back, delicately balanced on the pivoting brackets. The sun is hot on my skin and it feels good. I close my eyes and listen to the birds, trying to imagine the sounds of water splashing, of Rachel laughing… the taste of margarita salt on my lips. I can almost feel the tequila in my head, making my brain swim just a little. For the first time in forever, I can feel the tension leaching from my pores, dripping from my body with each bead of sweat. I’m… relaxed. Imagine that. Yesterday, I fed my neighbor to zombies, and today I’m peacefully sunning myself on my patio. Naked.
The birds are calling to each other from the tree tops. Rachel is playing in the pool. I can feel the cold, misty stem of the margarita glass slipping from my fingers, slowly. It drops to the patio with a thud. Another thud. And another. My mind is foggy; glasses don’t thud, they clink, shatter. Thud, again.
I open my eyes. Thud. The sun is higher in the sky, more than directly overhead now. I’m half blind. Did I fall asleep? Thud. For how long? Thud. Christ. Thud. At the south side of the fence, the far side of the pool, I can see the top of Bob/Robert’s head. It’s banging into the fence rhythmically. Another thud, this time followed by a long, hollow moan. Well, shit. It looks like Robert has managed to die, but not die.
I sit up and my skin is like ancient leather. Looking down, it’s red. Not just red, but fucking RED. I can’t believe I’ve actually found a way to get myself terribly sunburned, right smack dab in the middle of the apocalypse. Perfect.
Bob/Robert must have turned in the past day or two; I’d last seen him watching me deal with my back yard intruders a couple days ago. I slowly rise to my feet and groan as my skin, tight like a glove, stretches and pulls and flexes. It doesn’t quite hurt yet, but it will. I slip my Levis on and already wish for some fabric softener and the luxury of the washer and dryer as the rough denim works up my legs like twin sheaths of steel wool. I can’t wait for tomorrow, when the pain will be a hundred million times worse and there won’t be anyone around to hear me whine about it.
Bob/Robert is still banging his head against the fence as I make my way to the far side of the pool. The fence is white and there are flecks of red on my side dotting the spot where he’s been slamming his head against the wood and the blood from his forehead has spattered. I can imagine what his side of the fence looks like. Bob/Robert notices me and groans; it reminds me of the sound Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor makes at the beginning of Home Improvement. It’s almost identical, except for the fact that Tim Taylor isn’t dead and pounding his head against the back side of my fence.
My fence was built by the previous owners of our house. It’s not your typical subdivision fence with slats nailed to two by fours, at least not in the sense. There are slats, and there are two by fours. But the genius do-it-yourselfers who owned the place before I did decided to get creative and left a foot of open space at the top of the fence, so where there should have been an extra foot of privacy is a foot of open air topped by a two by four laid sideways and supported at the center of each span by another piece of two by four screwed in vertically. It’s one of these pieces of vertical two by fours that Bob/Robert has started pulling on, rocking against the fence with the full weight of his body. The entire fence is swaying with the motion; the lumber wasn’t in the best shape years ago, and it’s sure not going to hold up to the determined rocking of an overweight dead man for long.
Bob/Robert stops yanking on the fence and turns his head to look over his shoulder. He doesn’t turn his body, and I can hear the pop and snap as the vertebrae in his neck strain to swivel his meaty skull to an impossible angle. Journey and Ozzy, his Irish Setters, are growling from the patio, their heads low and the hair along their backs raised. Bob/Robert’s torso finally gets the hint and rotates with the rest of his spine and he turns to face the dogs with a jerk. His head cocks to one side, the same way the pool kid’s head did, and he takes one unsteady step in the general direction of his patio and the dogs. The fence is safe, for now. Bob/Robert isn’t.
It’s here where I get my first glimpse of how typical, loving family pets react to their undead guardians. It’s neither typical nor loving. Ozzy, or maybe Journey, springs from the patio and bounds across the small back yard, rocketing into Bob/Robert’s belly with the force of a small car. I can hear snarling and growling and teeth snapping. Bob/Robert stumbles backwards two steps, his arms pinwheeling, and goes down hard on his back. Journey, or maybe Ozzy, her hackles raised, slinks across the yard and digs her long teeth into the meat of Bob/Robert’s calf, shaking her head like she’s playing with a tug toy. But she’s not; the denim of Bob/Robert’s jeans tears as does the meat of the leg Journey has between her teeth. Blood flows freely over her muzzle and she shakes even harder, ripping chunks of flesh and muscle free from the bone. Bob/Robert lets loose a howl that’s stifled into a bleating whine, growing higher in pitch as Ozzy’s teeth sink deeper into his neck, finally tearing through his larynx and shutting off his cries forever.
The dogs are going absolutely ape shit and Bob/Robert is thrashing in the grass, his arms and legs waving and kicking wildly. I wonder if it’s him that’s doing the moving, or if the dogs are driving his activity at this point. Both Setters are drenched in slick, red blood. Ozzy, or maybe Journey, has given up on the gaping hole in Bob/Robert’s neck, trading gristle for the soft, loose flesh of his belly. Bob/Robert is no longer thrashing and I can see through the ragged flesh that used to be his flabby neck that the pearly white rings of his upper spine have chewed apart, leaving his skull and what’s left of his face independent of the rest of his body. Bob/Robert’s jaw is still working feverishly and his eyes are wide in their sockets. The rest of him, though, is no longer active aside from random jerks and twitches as Ozzy and Journey tear wet chunks of skin away.
And it’s here, in the warm summer afternoon, with my stiff jeans riding harshly over what will surely become one of the worst sunburns of my life, that it hits me, hard: I’m no longer the husband, the father, the funny guy in the office that everyone used to like to be around. I’m never going to be that guy again. In the period of a few weeks, I’ve killed, I’ve escaped being killed, and I’ve watched death and undeath in just about every sense imaginable, and in ways that before The Flu would have been unimaginable. I’ve lost the capacity to feel, to care, to give a rat’s ass about anything but surviving. I realize, as the sun continues to work its magic over every inch of my still-exposed skin, that I don’t remember much about Bob/Robert, and even worse, I don’t very much care. What I find myself thinking as I watch his dogs chew flesh from bone and quarrel over a hand that’s been worked free of the wrist, is that beyond the carnage in Bob/Robert’s back yard, up two steps and through those sliding glass doors, is a kitchen, and a pantry. Food.
Bob/Robert didn’t acquire his considerable girth eating rice with condensed milk.
I summon the strength to turn my head away from the dogs and pad quietly across the pool deck to the sunroom and step into the gloom of the house. It’s cooler in here, but not a whole lot. It smells musty and humid, and the aroma of decay is drifting down from the bedroom where the blood-soaked carpeting has begun to ferment. I pull on a pair of socks, even my feet are a brilliant red, and then my boots. In my duffel, I rummage until my fingers tighten around the grip of the Glock. I pop out the mag and make sure the clip is full, and slap it back cop style with the palm of my hand and tuck the gun into the waist of my Levis along with the laundry bag and head back outside.
Ozzy and Journey have made one motherfucker of a mess of their master during the five minutes or so I was inside. Bob/Robert’s naked torso, along with one leg, is sprawled face down across the patio. A pool of red the size of a truck tire is spreading from half a dozen leaks where pieces of him have been bitten and ripped away. Another leg is next to the fence, with a good nine inches of femur protruding from the meat of the thigh; it looks like a ham. I don’t even see the arms. Ozzy, or maybe Journey, is tugging at a length of slick, grey rope leaking from a gaping hole in Bob/Robert’s belly.
Quietly, I lift a bistro chair from the patio and prop it next to the fence and climb over, dropping onto the grass next to Bob/Robert’s head. His eyes are still moving, and they follow me as I step over. His tongue is working, licking away at the air. Ozzy and Journey are oblivious as I slip the Glock from my jeans and wrap both hands around the grip, making sure to keep the muzzle pointed at the ground. Good thing for all those cop shows I used to watch. I side step my way across the back yard, carefully picking my way between chunks of flesh and skin and who-knows-what-else.
The patio door is ajar, and I quietly slip into the gloom of Bob/Robert’s breakfast nook. The kitchen is just to my left, and I step softly around the bar stools and high top counter. The window over the sink looks out on the back yard and, I notice, this vantage point provides me with a damn good view of my pool and patio. So much for privacy fencing. I’m standing there, getting pissed as I think about Bob/Robert watching my girls as they played in the pool, probably rubbing his dick against the cabinet while he did it.
Journey and Ozzy are still tugging at a hunk of slippery intestine. Good dogs.
I reach up and pull a cabinet door open. Dishes. The next one is filled with drinking glasses, and one whole shelf is dedicated to those Looney Tunes glasses from Burger King in the late seventies. Foghorn Leghorn, Bugs, and the Road Runner smile back at me from the cupboard. I’m not positive, but I think I’d broken every single one of those glasses before they were a week old, and I don’t remember getting into much trouble over it, either.
Door Number Three. The cabinet over the stove is filled with boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and packets of rice pilaf and the modern version of Rice-a-Roni. Noodles with alfredo sauce. Noodles with butter sauce. Noodles with butter and garlic sauce, and they’re all coming home with me. I drop the contents of the cabinet into the laundry bag and try the next cupboard. There’s jelly, and jars of peanut butter and boxes of crackers, and they all go into the bag as well. The last cupboard is half empty; the remainder of packages of Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes litters the first shelf. The upper level is crammed with little jars of vitamins and herbals and prescription meds. Since I won’t likely be making it to the Walgreen’s any time soon, these all go into the bag, which I pull tight and sling over my shoulder.
From behind me, there’s a low growl and I hear myself saying “fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck” in my head as I remember I didn’t close the patio door. Slowly, I turn my back to the counter to face the fucking Hounds of the Baskervilles. Ozzy and Journey are staring me down, the hair on their backs raised as they growl in harmony. Both dogs are completely drenched in blood; it’s literally dripping from the long fur of their necks onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor.
Ozzy and Journey aren’t moving; they’re just growling. I’m for sure not moving. I’m still not moving as I notice their eyes aren’t quite right. In fact, they’re wrong. The warm spark of life is gone from them, and a cold blanket of fear wraps around me as I realize I’m staring into the dead eyes of – wait for it – zombie dogs. Zombie. Fucking. Dogs. Unbelievable.
The dogs don’t move. I don’t move. The Glock is on the counter to my left. It’s go-time. With my right foot, I kick at one of the bar stools, punting it into Ozzy (or Journey) just as he springs from the floor. The stool catches him in mid leap and he topples backwards as Journey starts her leap. The two of them topple onto the floor. I make a leap of my own, up onto the bar, my back scraping hard along the edge of the counter top. My hand slaps frantically along the counter until my fingers find the hard plastic of the Glock, and I manage to bring my arm around just in time to squeeze a couple rounds into Ozzy’s chest as he leaps up from the slippery, bloody floor. The slugs slam into him, driving him backwards across the kitchen and once again into Journey. With both hands on the grip, I take a slow breath and squeeze another two shots into Journey’s head, half of which peels away with a splash of spatters onto the far wall. Ozzy growls and looks at me with those dead dog-eyes and I pump three shots into him; the first two blow holes into his neck below his muzzle. The third hits home, ripping through the soft black nose as it bores a tunnel through Ozzy’s sinuses and brain cavity and blasts a fist-sized hole out of the back of his head.
Man’s best friends are dead. Again. I slide down from the counter and heft the laundry bag over my shoulder, which hurts like hell from my sunburn. I wonder if Bob/Robert has any aloe in here.
