Kevin Salerno ran a torn piece of t-shirt along the barrel of his pistol, taking care to catch all the oil he could see in the glow from his red LED flashlight. His other pistol, a .22, lay on the table beside his right knee, ready in case he needed it. The boy scouts had been right all along. Always be prepared. In four practiced motions, he reassembled the pistol, jammed in a fresh fourteen-round magazine, and chambered a round. He clicked the safety on. Done.
He set the pistol aside, picked up the .22, and began taking it apart by memory. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and listened for his pulse. The process of cleaning his guns always stirred up conflicting emotions. On one hand, he felt an overwhelming sense of calm, a meditative peace in which everything else in his life faded into the background. Disassemble the weapon, clean it, apply oil, wipe, and then reassemble. Simple, repeatable, and predictable. At the same time, by the time he was finished, he always had a raging hard-on and wanted to fuck. This reaction had embarrassed him until his shrink told him it was normal, something to do with power.
He rolled his shoulders again, cracked his neck, then listened for sounds from outside. No change. A few minutes later, he was done with the second weapon. It went into the holster strapped on his thigh. He picked up the first pistol and went to the window. He peered outside. Although it was dark, he sensed movement around him, a lurking presence, rustling, shifting, ebbing and flowing like a deep, raging river. It was a swarm of the undead, the biggest he had ever seen.
Kevin was camped on the top floor of a mostly-complete condominium complex in Marana, just north of Tucson. Loading his motorcycle with camping gear and bugging out of town before things completely fell apart, he had barely escaped from Boise as the zombie uprising mushroomed out of control. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the extent of what was happening to the world, and he correctly figured the best place to be was anywhere but a major city. He had watched the bombs fall from the side of I-25, weeping uncontrollably as they blanketed his beloved western landscape with brilliant, incandescent flashes and far-off rumbles. The only direction untouched by the bombs was south, so that was where he had headed.
Now that he was there, at the far corner of what remained of the United States, he was second-guessing his decision. There were a lot of undead, far more than he ever expected. It hadn’t been that way when he arrived. When he first rolled into town, he was pleasantly surprised to discover only a few stragglers. He avoided them easily, collecting supplies for the next leg of his trip and allowing himself to relax for the first time in as long as he could remember.
Tucson seemed as good a place as any to take a break, to figure out what to do next—keep going south into Mexico, or head east into New Mexico, Texas, and the Gulf Coast beyond.
But then the undead had arrived. Where they were from, he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter at that point. What did matter was that the swarm seemed to have no end. Thousands upon thousands of undead milled just outside his door. He imagined what it would look like from the air, probably like the great wildebeest migrations in Africa.
He wasn’t able to discern any sort of pattern from his hideout; he couldn’t tell if the swarm would eventually pass by or if it was circling back on itself, a hurricane of rotting flesh. Maybe there wasn’t a pattern; maybe they communicated telepathically, or through their moans. He had no fucking idea.
He crept back from the window and returned to the enormous master bathroom where he had set up camp. Big enough for a couch and his pack, the bathroom served as an adequate hideout in the midst of what was most definitely hostile territory.
The noise was the worst part, a constant rustling, the occasional crash as one of the creatures bumped into something. Fortunately, they didn’t moan unless they saw something they wanted to eat, and thank God, that hadn’t happened. Yet. It freaked him out, put him on edge, and messed with his head. At any moment, one of them could catch his scent, and he would be screwed, with nowhere left to run. He shuddered at the thought. He had long ago decided he would take his own life before he became dinner for one of those sick bastards.
Sinking into the couch, he put his feet up on the dressing table and scratched his forehead with the barrel of the loaded pistol. Before he knew what he was doing, the barrel had traced a line under his jaw and was pressing into the soft flesh of his throat. He caressed the trigger, running his finger along the delicate steel as he would touch a woman. Why not? he asked himself. Why the fuck not? He cocked the hammer. Dug in a little deeper. He scratched at the scruff on his jaw, bending the hairs backward and letting them snap back to attention one by one. It hurt, but in a good way. It reminded him he was still alive.
What else do I have to live for? He had no family to speak of. No wife. No girlfriend. No close friends, at least none that he knew were alive. His parents were both dead, and his brother had died in high school. He was alone in the world. The last man standing. He laughed, a thin, reedy cackle that to his ears sounded like someone else.
The trigger beckoned. Kevin exhaled and removed his finger. Not today. Not now. He eased the hammer down and lowered the gun, laying it on the couch cushion beside his leg. This had become a nightly ritual for him, and he was sure some day he would get the balls to pull the trigger. But not today.
Feeling around in the space under his feet, he retrieved his sleeping bag. He pulled it up and over himself, making sure to tuck it around his feet. He didn’t like sleeping with his feet exposed. These days the monsters under the bed really would bite.
He was snoring within a minute.
~~~