Zombie D.O.A. (4 page)

I thought I hea
rd Dom Buchanan calling, “Michael
!” And then as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The last
car
pulled away from the curb, and the street fell as silent as a battlefield after a firefight.

It resembled a battlefield too. I saw a number of bodies, both dead and dying. A woman cradled a dead child in her arms and when I approached her
, she
screamed and ran away. The last of the looters evacuated the supermarket carrying a few
cases
of Coors.

To my left I heard shouting and a black guy in a business suit running down the middle of the ro
ad at full tilt. He neatly side
stepped the guy with the Coors, but his pursuers were not as nimble. They
collided with
the Coors guy, sending him crashing to the ground.

The suited guy flew past me and shouted
,
“Run!” without breaking stride. 
I heard screaming
a
nd looked back to
s
ee the Coors guy being attacked by about eight men. I recognized o
ne of them as
Bronson Chavez, the leader of a local street gang
called
the Level 42’s. 

The
42’s had the Coors guy surrounded and
he
was
on his knees
crying and blubbering while they
circled
him
.
Chavez knelt down next to him
and pu
t an arm around the guy. Coors guy
started
to
sob and
Chavez
leaned
in and
seemed to whisper something in
his ear
. Coors
began to tremble violently and then to strugg
le, as
Chavez
held him.

W
he
n he pulled away
Coors
started to scream
and to hold his hand to the gaping hole in
his
head where his ear had been
.
Chavez
held
the
severed ear
between
his teeth
and chewed on it like a piece of beef jerky
.

His followers seemed to take this as a signal, and
fell on
the man
like a pack of
starving
wolves, ripping and tearing with teeth and nails. They
tore
off his clothes and started
biting
at his buttocks
,
legs, chest and arms,
ripping
off bloody strips of flesh and devouring them. That’s the best
word I can find, devouring, the way a predator devours prey.

Without realizing it I had
moved
off the street
and found cover
on the stairs that led up to my apartment building. Even after
what had happened to Rosie and
what I’d seen
in
Brad
’s apartment
, I found what I’d just
witnessed
impossible
to comprehend.

I’d just seen a man torn apart and eaten alive by another group of men
on a suburban New York street
.
What was this?
Some kind of a virus
?
A biological weapon released in a terrorist attack
?
Some kind of zombie apocalypse like your saw in the movies? Crazy as that idea was, it seemed
very
plausible
right
then
.

The 42’s were finishing off what was left of the Coors guy. From my hideout on the steps, I couldn’t see them any more, but I could hear them squabbling
over the remain
s. I also thought I
hear
d
them gnawing on bones but I
quickly convinced
myself that
that
was my imagination.

I had to get off the street and back to the relative safety of my apartment, before the 42’s finished their meal and came looking for new prey. As
cautiously as
I’ve ever done anything in my life, I climbed the steps, walking backwards, squatted down and using my hands to avoid losing my balance.

I’d reached the door when I heard new noises to my left. Ripping noises, snarling noises, eating noises. The
re’d been no screams or cries so I figured the 42’s had started feeding on some of the corpses
left
behind
.

I had to get indoors and quick, but I
as soon as I tried to door I
realized I’d made a monumental mistake, I
’
d allowed the door to latch. I was locked out.
I needed someone to buzz me in.

There were 6 apartments in our building
-
us, Kranski, Brad, Liebowitz on the
second
floor. Two larger apartments on the third, Jenny Lee
, a
cellist
currently on tour with the New York Philharmonic
, and another guy who no one ever saw and who Kranski
was co
n
vinced
was a drug dealer.

Mr
.
Liebowitz was bed-ridden and had a day nurse (although not today, I suspected).
That
left Kranski or the drug dealer.
I tried the drug dealer.

“Yeah?”

“I need to get in.”

“Sure thing.”

He buzzed me in and I took the stairs t
o my apartment three at a time.

I crept to the window which was letting in the golden rays of an early fall afternoon.
Peering over the sill, I could see a few of the 42’s milling around aimlessly. One of them had lost an arm and another had a gaping wound in his ab
domen, others had what looked like severe head trauma.

In fact, none of them was without some injury that would put any n
ormal man in the ground. None of them
except Bronson Chavez.

I wanted to draw the shades but was afraid that
the movement
might
attract attention, so I lay down in the warm afternoon sun and despite what had happened, what was happening, I felt myself starting to drift off.

That was when I heard the baby crying.

At first I thought it was my imagination or that the sound was coming from some
where else, but there it
was clear as day,
a baby
’s cry
,
coming from our bedroom. And then the sound of
an off-
key
melody
, a song I k
new well
, “The Greatest Love of All
.”

On a day when the whole world seemed to have gone insane, t
his was
a new tweak on insanity. M
y wife and
daughter
were dead.
I
’d
seen them, held them,
put my hands on
their wounds. I’d cradled their
broken
bodies.
There was no way either of them
was alive
. Yet, I could hear them in the next room. 

The urge to run was strong.
Every cell in my body, every molecule of my being
,
told me to go
, t
o just keep
running
and not
look
back. To tell myself that wh
at I’d heard was my imagination
, or
m
y grief playing tricks on me, or
my mind trying to make sense of the unfathomable
.

But if you’ve ever loved
someone, you’ll know why I di
dn’t
leave,
why I
couldn’t, why I
had to go into that room and see for myself.

I
crawled from the window on all fours, standing only when I was sure that I was out of the line of sight from the street. In the room the baby had fallen silent, but I could still hear the lullaby
. It was a scene I’
d
looked forward to since Rosie had told me she was pregnant, my wife singing our daughter to sleep. I never suspected that it would fill me with terror.

Panic started to well in me and I steadied myself with a deep breath and stepped cautiously in the direction of the bedroom.
There was a sideboard against the wall and I
picked up one of my bo
xing trophies from it
. I hefted
the trophy
in my hand and the weight
of it felt strangely
reassuring
.  Then, I quickly
stepped
towards the bedroom before I lost my nerve.

The room was dark with the curtains drawn and the only source of light coming from the half open bathroom door. Rosie was sitting on the bed
,
back to the headboard, the baby suckling at her breast.
The little one
was hungry and the sound of
her
feeding
was
like the rasping breath of
a
dying man. B
lood ran down Rosie’s breast as
the baby
suckled.