Darlings of Decay Page 25

  She perched there for hours, humming a lullaby and rocking slightly, unaware of the women scooting away from an unkempt homeless lady who stared dreamily into space.

  This was her home. This was where she belonged. This and the house on Evermore Street, which had sheltered other families since destitution forced her eviction. The sites were her only ties to a blissful past. To the precious baby and family she once had, long gone, stolen by a cruel sword-thrust of destiny . . . a curse reflected in the terrified eyes of a psychic.

  Police canvassed the neighborhood. Jolene had been brought in for questioning due to a suspicious statement when informed a boy was missing and shown his photograph: "Of course he is.” She claimed to never have seen the child. Adele wondered. Had she glimpsed what would happen to him in her palm? Or in a vision? Did the woman hold clues or the key to her son’s whereabouts? Zeke had begged her to let it go, but she took to spying on the clairvoyant. Trailing her to stores. Then accused her in the aisle of a market, "You must have some idea, some critical detail. Tell me everything you know!”

  "He’s cursed and will always be. But I already told you that,” leered the psychic, blowing smoke in defiance of the NO SMOKING signs. "He’s like a black cat, that boy. You do not want him to cross your path.”

  Adele reeled. What an awful thing to say! The witch cackled and pulled free. Her laughter rang up and down the aisles. Adele had wafted from the grocery store in a fugue.

  If only they listened. If only they had believed and taken precautions, been more careful. She would have never let him out of her sight, not for an instant.

  Grief, regrets, guilt . . . these led to her husband’s death. He had taken to drinking at bars on the way home from work. One night he never made it home.

  Adele wasn’t a drinker. She had internalized, burying the pain then crawling into the hole, hiding from Life. But one day Life intruded and yanked that hole out from under her with more loss, and she found herself on the outside of everything, wandering past windows and looking in. Hoping to see her son. Hope was all she had left.

  He bet she was pretty in another lifetime. Not that she was alive now. Her gray teeth gnashed at his cheek. Thrashing, he freed himself and his elbow bashed her nose, knocked it sideways. She looked worse. The prophet had looked sufficiently harsh before he mutilated her. Age combined with madness. Some women matured gracefully, accepting their skin with pride and dignity whatever their age. He would observe them, subconsciously examining the faces of crowds for his mother. The little boy inside of him pictured his mommy that way. He had a vague impression of a beautiful lady smiling, hugging him. It had to be her that he remembered.

  The prophet clawed at Ziggy. She and the protester wouldn’t leave him alone. He shoved his followers, snarling, and tromped away. The rabid stalkers tagged after him.

  A door slammed open. An alarm jangled. Three guys in black burst out of the fire exit. As the door latched, they froze at the specter of three ghouls in the alleyway. The men were prepared to be apprehended. They were not prepared to be eaten.

  "Ziggy?” asked the tallest. The computer caper’s leader. "What happened to you?” His face was incredulous.

  The other two merely gawped, speechless with revulsion.

  "Bub,” rasped their tongueless cohort. He meant bugs. He gestured. Like those.

  The trio cartoonishly turned as a gathering hum crescendoed. A thick purple-black swarm blocked the alley.

  Ziggy shrugged. He wasn’t even curious about the mission.

  Girlish shrieks ensued. The human savages feasted.

  Three bodies lay strewn, grisly leftovers. And then they twitched, sitting up, clambering to their feet to sway. The revived activists groaned.

  Their leader’s name was fuzzy. Tim? Ted? Ziggy frowned. His mind functioned slower, thoughts torpid, bogged down in wet cement like mental quicksand. His grasp of mundane connections faltered, yet he might recall dining on his friends.

  Was he alive? He still had enormous trouble to draw air into his lungs. The effort was similar to ramming a dozen forks in his chest. And equally effective. Were any of them alive, these walking wounded with their flesh ripped apart? How could they be? What kind of affliction was this that reduced them to mangled corpses who could still think and feel on some crazed demented level, and have boundless appetites like voracious beasts?

  Like zombies.

  But weren’t zombies supposed to be mindless, driven by an instinctive desire for brains? Or brought back from a near-death state by a powder that rendered them obedient to a voodoo sorcerer’s spell? There was no magic or hypnosis, no comic-book fantasy involved here. Just poison, Global Warming, and Evolution. He wasn’t himself, that was obvious. He didn’t know who or what he was anymore. It strained his brain to sort it out, to put coherent words together. He refused to go stupid and relinquish his surges of rational thought. It was part of living to adapt to change, but Ziggy could not resign himself to becoming less than human. He would fight this thing, resist with everything he had left!

  His companions, male and female, ravenously assailed a duo of security guards tracking the thieves to the exit door. The raucous feeding revolted Ziggy, and he staggered from the scene of carnage with bile in his throat that tasted petrified.

  Hearing grunts and klutzy footfalls, he ducked into the concealment of shrubs. A flash of exhaustion overwhelmed him. He crumpled to his knees and closed weary eyes.

  The lids snapped up. Out of the alley hobbled a gang of blood-stained brutes. Swerving past his hideout, they clattered down the street demonstrating the light-footedness of slapstick cops chasing robbers. Hunched in the bushes, Ziggy loitered in case they altered direction. Man Zero, the first infected, the source of their ailment, he held a sort of sway. The cretins were drawn to him, like a master.

  The insects, too, and from them he couldn’t hide. A throng accumulated behind where he crouched. Their irritating whine threatened to reveal his position. Ziggy’s head swiveled. They had been fruitful indeed and multiplied. The swarm was huge. What was he, Lord Of The Flies?

  Cuffing them midair, he hunkered as low as possible without lying prone. Growls alerted him that his flock of faithfuls had arrived. The male and female zombies raked at him but he dodged them and dashed forth, loping as fast as he could. It wasn’t devotion. He sensed they might turn on him, finish him off. When he hurried so did they, a silly shuffling race. And wherever he went, the flies hounded his heels.

  It would be dark in an hour. She ought to seek a refuge for the night, yet Adele was unable to budge. The other mothers had gathered their toddlers and strollers and bags of essentials. The park was eerily desolate. And she was half-desperate, half-crazy enough to believe that if she stayed here a miracle could happen. If she left, disappointment was certain.

  Wind ruffled an uncombed lock of hair on her forehead. She recalled brushing fine strands of a lush and shining mane, feeling quietly content. It had been a long time ago, but she could slip inside that younger version of herself and see out of her eyes the unblemished features in a dressing-table mirror. It was a grim contrast to this weathered sun-blotched complexion, the lines streaked by worry and time, engraved like rivers of tears from the deepest of sorrows. Round and chiselled in the wrong places. A stranger’s countenance; a mask of regret.

  She had been a vibrant individual. Now she was like a damaged toy. Hollow, useless, discarded and alone, having lost her purpose, her function: to make a child happy. It was what she needed to do, fulfill that promise, perform that duty, yet it was too late. It couldn’t be fixed. Her heart was broken and could not be repaired. She didn’t know how others could go on, why they bothered. She must possess a flaw, a manufacturer’s defect.

  Adele hugged herself and rocked, cold, so cold. It eluded her that the world was warming. In her secluded atmosphere, the climate was an ice age, somber as a windswept frost-coated plain where the sun never shone and the clouds wept splintered shards of glass.

  That was close!
I should have been more careful. Shut my eyes a minute and they’re on me like ants swarming a dead beetle. I can’t rest. Can’t let down my guard. I can't even blink unless it's safe. Unless I'm in a secure location they would have to break into, which would provide some warning.

  I can’t be sure what's powering them, but they look like you-know-what warmed over. And I don’t think it’s the heat. They should be deceased, not walking around. They act like they would eat anything that moves. Anything. Unlike me, I don’t think there’s a scrap of life or humanity in them. I’m hanging on to mine with a death-grip.

  This plague of Fruit Flies, or whatever you could call it, seemed to originate with me. Or next to me. I just happened to be standing on the X, the wrong spot at the right time. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem fair to have so many misfortunes in one lifetime. What did I ever do to deserve being abandoned by my family and kidnapped, to watch my own family die of poisoning, and then to be the first one doomed, the first carrier of an epidemic?

  I have to keep going. Can’t get sucked into despair. Can’t let it win. I won’t allow it to defeat my spirit and get the best of me. I’ve been lost before, but never totally, and I won’t be vanquished now by fears or flies or walking stiffs.

  An open door . . . does it lock? There. That should hold for a while. Nice. Very nice.

  I need to avoid everyone, living or dead. I have to assume a scratch could transmit the illness. I've seen that it's contagious through the swarm or contact with its consequences, me and them. I'm just not sure if a scratch or bite alone would be lethal, or merely morph someone to my state. Maybe you need to actually die to be like them. I’m trying to decipher the rules, if this thing has any. It’s insane. It just suddenly began, as if Nature had a spasm. Like a bull quivering to throw a fly off his back. I’m not planning to stick around and find the answers. If someone’s infected, I’ll leave them to fend for themselves. Call me a coward. I prefer the word loner.

  I've always done this, talked to an imaginary audience on my very own private stage. More accurately, in the circus ring of my brain. As if I'm important, the main attraction. As if my life amounts to something. That's a good one. I'm about as worthless as they come. I couldn’t even protect my wife and child. Other than them, I don't think I've made a difference to anyone, made the tiniest ripple with my presence on this planet. I just kind of watched from the sidelines and let things happen to me.

  Is it any wonder? My mother, whoever she was, ditched me. She let me get lost or stolen and never came to find me. That smiling portrait of her in my head was probably fanciful thinking. I have this notion of her burying me like a turtle egg in sand. It would explain why I developed a shell for protection as a child. When Ma and Uncle were boozing, when the house reeked of bourbon and gin, I pretended I was a turtle with a strong shell in which to hide. Psychological child’s play, perhaps.

  Did I mention I was so average before today, I was invisible? At least my mother seemed to think so. I wonder if it's her I've been addressing my whole life. Hey, Mom, thanks a lot! Great job of being there!

  When I say average, I don't exaggerate. Fair to middling, no more, no less. I have set no example for others; I didn't rate above average at anything. If they get me, it won't be a great loss. Yet there is something within me that won't be conquered. Maybe it's what kept me going thirty-odd years.

  I hear them, rattling the door, thumping the exterior wall, scrabbling to get in.

  I am trying, I am really trying to make sense of everything. Nobody will believe this until it’s too late. The heat has made us all mad, including the insect population. Or is this to settle the score after we killed off the bees and butterflies, disrupting the Food Chain? Seemingly minor, that colossal error steadily caused things to unravel. It may start with a single loose thread. You tug it and the world comes undone.

  My arms itch. Oh jeez! I’m rubbing them together like a fly! Am I turning into one???

  Absurd. It was nothing. I guess I’m entitled to some awkward behavior considering the circumstances.

  Corporations created this mess. They had the money, so of course they had control. They continued to tinker, engineering stronger species, like they manipulated crops. Only it didn’t stop at bees or butterflies, it spread. And what resulted was about what you'd expect when tampering with the natural order. One mistake led to another and another and another, until my family died and with them my heart.

  Bitterness and self-pity are all I’ve got. I’m basically waiting to die too. And I don't mean from old age. What chance do I have? They’re going to keep paying it forward, and there will only be more of them, folks turning, devolving into grotesque shambling nightmares.

  It's the screams that make me cringe.

  And fear. The fear of dying but not dying.

  Being a zombie, if that’s what in fact I am, has its advantages. I won’t have to worry about rules. Or if my hair is thinning. I can wear the same clothes for a year.

  I can’t believe I once cared which side scored more goals or baskets, more touchdowns or runs. I can’t believe I wasted so many hours of my life drinking beer and feeling sorry for myself.

  I’m so hungry. I can’t stay here. I’m shaking again.

  The street looks clear. I need to keep going. Dawdle too long and I'll find myself surrounded. The one thing I seem to be good at is surviving. I’m still kicking. But what for? Another opportunity to die? Maybe that’s all we really live for, the chance to cling to life.

  I need to find somewhere to hole up, before those things are everywhere. I'm jumpy from stress. How I yearn to curl up in a warm bed and slumber without tension. What I wouldn't give to simply relax. Amazing how life can change just like that. There were signs but we ignored them. Like symptoms of Cancer. It doesn’t go away when you tell yourself it isn’t real.

  What’s that? Footsteps. Run!!!

  My legs are so heavy and slow. Am I dreaming? I wish I were. I could slap myself a thousand times and behold the same madness. There is no going back.

  Faster . . . One was hiding in a doorway. Striving to enter a building. He grabbed me to sink his teeth into my face. I panicked and punched him. There are more now. It won’t take long. Several months, a year, and whatever isolated individuals are left will take their own lives at the sheer fruitlessness of going on, the futility of barren hopes.

  The wretch is stumbling after me, way too energetic for a corpse! How it manages to hunt and feed while decaying by the minute is a mystery. They go through the motions of living, yet most are dead. And I am merely delaying the inevitable.

  Ahhhh!

  Oh no. No! Stay away, you stinking rotter! What dismal luck. My ankle twisted stepping off a curb, and the ripe stiff (who probably already stank before dying) is only a few steps from munching my remains.

  I have to limp as best I can, laboring to pour on steam, but the thing back there is advancing. I may as easily succumb to a solitary biter as an entire horde. The slightest weakness could be fatal. A single mishap and I'm done for. It's survival of the fittest and I’m falling apart! I’m in shreds, the walking leftovers of a flesh-eating virus! Was that a whimper? If I start blubbering, it’s all over.

  The worst part is losing hope. I just can't picture a future. I'm hanging on and I don't know why or how. The world is barbaric and crude. There is nothing of value, only chaos. It was that way before this calamity ever began.

  Ha, that was rich! The echo of footsteps sent a shudder up my spine until I perceived they were mine.

  A snort, perilously near. That wasn’t me. Uhhhh! Great, peering behind I stubbed a toe and tripped. This is it, this is all it takes!

  Stay calm. Take a breath. Ahhhhh!!!

  The thing clumsily pounced. I rolled to meet it. These things are sure tough for being dead. Yuck, strings of slobber and mucous are dripping to my eyes. I'm struggling for my life and a distant memory surfaces: wrestling in Gym Class, the coach yelling that I was as useless as a fish on dry land. Yeah, I
would never be an Olympic athlete I knew, so why bother? Wish now I had trained for this. Again though, why bother? My ma and uncle used to tell me, "If humans were meant to be heroes, they’d be born with capes. Don’t be a hero, just stay out of trouble.”

  They were right. It seems ironic to me as I’m tussling with a dead guy. The lengthy hours spent studying . . . then slogging away in a career that no longer exists or bears significance. Rendered moot — not by the collapse of a civilization that neglected to learn from History — by a simple shift in culture. My livelihood was replaced, after years of producing windshield wipers, by glass that doesn’t need to be wiped. Rainproof Glass, resistant to water. For every step forward, it seems, someone or something gets trampled underneath.

  Add unemployment to my list of achievements.

  I’m brilliantly trying to choke the cadaver and he claws my cheek. It isn’t like I was uninfected, but I’m far from thrilled. I’m alive and he isn’t. What’s the difference? My brain grapples with the question, mentally mimicking my physical plight, and an epiphany strikes with a bell’s ding, signalling the round’s end. Zombies don’t pay attention to bells, so we keep brawling until I heft a chunk of brick and dent his skull. It’s a trick I picked up from watching the dead lurch and lunch on the screen.

  Humor, my trusty Defense Mechanism.

  In the excitement I almost forgot I had an epiphany. That’s how dim-witted I’ve become. What was it? Squinting, I can glimpse the tail of a frail wisp, a transparent inkling . . . Oh yeah, I was nibbled by Fruit Flies, whereas my fellow infected were chomped by humans. The Fruit Flies didn’t kill me. Technically I’m not a zombie, I just look like one. It’s a good disguise, but it hasn’t fooled them.

  This scourge is one of many. We tipped the balance, and we are the victims of our own undoing. Most of the survivors of this plague will doubtless suffer from any number of maladies. Contagions have been springing up daily. Skin lesions and breathing disorders. New cancers. None of us can endure unscathed. None of us are intact. And we did it to ourselves. Cheerful, isn’t it?