Smoke rises from them in near silence.
My mouth is dry. I can hear the click of the traffic light overhead, shifting in and out of sync with the scratching from the upturned Chevy. I notice I'm standing in the middle of the intersection, but no traffic is coming. The road is jammed with cars and trucks left like slaughtered buffalo on the plains.
"Somebody help," I shout, but nobody replies. I'm alone.
I run to the Chevy and round to the driver's side, waving through the thick black smoke that fogs around it. I lean closer and my eyes sting, but I can pick out a figure on the asphalt, trying to drag itself free from the driver's side window. There's broken glass on the ground and a dark puddle of what must be blood or oil spreading around him; a guy in a blue denim shirt with long brown hair. He's pulling to get out and the scratching sound must be the seatbelt tearing.
"Hang on," I call to him, "I'll get you out."
He looks up. His eyes are so pale through the smoke I think I'm looking into balls of ice. The pupil at the center is dark but the iris is drained of all color. It freaks me out. His jaw wags and blood spills down his chin.
"I'll get you out," I call again, though I can barely breathe in the smoke. I press my sleeve up to my face, squint my eyes tightly shut, and plunge closer. I get my hands on the guy's arms, in his hot wet armpits, and pull. I lean my weight all the way back and drag on him. His hands patter helplessly off my thighs but he doesn't come free. The scratching sound gets louder.
It must be the seatbelt. I contemplate ducking in and trying to clip him out, but he's so close already, and I don't like the way the car's starting to tick. We have to get clear. His head nuzzles against my knee. I put one foot up against the car body and tug with all my strength.
There's a sharp ripping sound, like Velcro unzipping, and he comes free. I stagger back with him trailing in my arms, so much lighter I can't regain my balance. I fall hard and smack my butt firmly on the concrete, dropping the guy at the outer reach of the smoke.
"Shit," I cry, rolling over. My whole butt's gone numb, I must've twanged my coccyx, and now my legs have gone trembly. I get onto my knees and shout to the guy.
"Are you OK?"
I see his weirdly white eyes emerge from the smoke first. There's blood running out from under his hairline and down his pale gray cheek and chin, staining his shirt. He's crawling to me on his chest, hand over hand, dragging himself near.
It comes to me as a cold flash that he's got no legs. I double-take, thinking maybe he's a veteran or a diabetic, maybe he never had legs, but now he's over halfway out of the smoke I can see the trail of black blood oozed out behind him like a slug trail. His legs were there but they're gone. I blanch, get to my shaky feet, and back up.
"What the hell…?" I mutter.
He keeps crawling. I back up more. He has no legs and no pelvis either. His lower body is wholly gone, ending at a ragged line across his middle, like torn chicken meat. A lump of flesh spits out of his open belly and straggles behind on a strand of purple gut like a sad little kite. I gag. I take another step back, but still he's crawling toward me.
"Hey buddy," I say, pointing with a trembling hand at the organ he's left behind. It looks like a crushed pink ping-pong ball. "You left, uh…"
I stop talking. His blood is everywhere. I finally get what just happened; I tore him apart. He was sawing himself through the window and I finished the job. Now he's coming for revenge.
"Holy shit," I blurt, as he snatches up at me with his bloody hand. I bat it away and take another step back. "Buddy look, I'm sorry, I didn't know."
It is a ridiculous thing to say. He's still coming. It isn't possible; it has to be a dream.
He's a goddamned zombie.
* * *
I walk backward and he follows, like some messed up waltz. For each step I take he lurches closer. I watch with sick fascination as more guts unspool from his belly. Of course I've seen this a million times before, in movies and TV shows and in my own comics. It looks really realistic, is all I can think. The words 'great special effects' roll numbly through my mind.
About twenty yards back, the Chevy bursts into flames.
The blast wind smacks my face and flutters my clothes, but it doesn't throw me through the air. The door does fly though, scything like a Krull blade and cleaving the guy in two like sour cheese, before taking off and pinging away over my shoulder. Fire singes my eyebrows and something punches me hard in the arm and I go down.
Shit. I roll back to my feet and see the car's indicator lever sticking out of my shoulder. It is actually stuck into my left shoulder. The zombie half-man is still nearby, grappling toward me with his one good arm. He's left the other one behind, along with all his spools of gut, slit diagonally apart by the door.
I stagger back in shock, looking at the indicator lever sticking out of me. There's blood running wetly down my chest and belly, darkening my hoodie. What the hell? Dizzy ideas come through the fog, that maybe I should push it left, push it right.
Click click.
I yank it out. It comes easily, looks like a screwdriver in my hand, then I drop it. It hits the concrete and rolls. The guy is using his jaw now to propel himself closer. His head bobs up and down like a swimmer going under for breath.
"I mean," I start to say, though I have no idea what I mean to say. The car is burning hard now, with fire rising high, and the chassis has ruptured and warped. "Just a second."
I stumble away from the burning wreck. Twenty feet clear I realize I'm limping and stop. My legs are fine. My left hand is clamped to the indicator-wound but there's hardly any blood coming now. Smoke is drifting finely everywhere. Something catches my eye, and I see a jumbo jet spiral out of the sky.
I track it from high up, spinning like a ninja's shuriken star. The wings tear off and the fuselage breaks apart so it descends in pieces, raining seats, engine parts, and bodies. They're wriggling like maggots. Fire breaks out from a sputtering engine before it falls beyond my field of view, behind the redbricks to the south somewhere near the bridge to Manhattan.
BOOM.
The blast shakes the ground though it was at least a mile away. A fireball rises briefly above the 'Pimpin Ridez' moped shop.
The zombie half-man is nearly at me again. His trail of blood is so full and thick I can barely believe he's got anything left inside to drive him on. Put a shell on his back and he would be a grotesque snail.
I snap myself out of it and start running back down Willis Avenue, toward the bridge to Manhattan. Zombie apocalypse or no, there could be survivors. I dodge around cars, trucks, and motorbikes left driverless. In glimpses down intersections at 141st and 140th I see a maze of vehicles in disarray, some burning, some upturned. A few buildings are on fire too, but there are no wails of fire trucks drawing near.
As I pass through 139th I look to the sky expecting to see F1s or Stealth Bombers closing in, at least helicopters, but there's only the corkscrewing contrails of the plane that fell.
I cover half a mile in five breathless minutes, emerging past barren Pulaski Park to the Harlem riverside like a cork popped from a bottle, to survey the Mott Haven bridgehead to Manhattan.
The Upper Manhattan skyline is on fire. Black smoke rises from many points, forming a miasma that hangs over the city like cigarette fog in a jazz bar. Several of the nearby skyscrapers, bland buildings that aren't famous, have been damaged. There is a visible gout missing in the top corner of one, and something is burning on the upper floors of another. It looks like the city has been sacked by barbarians.
I shake myself and look across the bridge. A chunk of the white support scaffold has ruptured, and the railing beneath it has been swept away, leaving trailing metal fenders pointing down toward the Harlem River. The falling plane must have hit it like a bomb.
There are chunks of fuselage and wing hanging amidst the scaffold like garish Christmas decorations, while other pieces of wreckage lie spread over the blackened asphalt,
some of them belching thick black smoke.
And there are zombies. My jaw drops. They cover the bridge like sand on a beach, a herd of hundreds doddering step by step toward Manhattan. A horrible resurgence of my artwork rises in my head. Are they going for the clouds? Are they going to form up into a tower and reach for the skies?
They see me. One by one they turn their ice-white eyes on me. I hold up my hands like I'm pacifying an ornery drunk, as if that will somehow help. "Just a second," I actually say.
They start running. Their bodies flex and lope expertly, and damn fast. Some of them sprint.
I turn tail and sprint back up Willis. Intersections flash by with the thunder of their stampede gaining behind. Am I really running from a zombie horde? Back past 140th I toss a glance over my shoulder; leading the pack is a guy in a three-piece suit, splattered with dark blood. Yes I am.
I break stride for a second to reach into my jeans for my phone, but of course it isn't there, I left it to charge. I remember Lara, she's in my apartment now. Shit.
I crank up the speed. I vault over the bonnet of a red Porsche jammed in headlight-to-trunk with a garbage truck. I dodge round another crawler on the ground. I run up the hood of a beat-up old Volkswagen and down the other side.
The Subway station passes by on my right. On 141st I hit the southern edge of Willis Playground. I pass back through the intersection on 142nd and pinpoint my snail-zombie from his bloody trail. I jump over his head. This is ridiculous. My breath comes hard but my legs feel good, and the lack of a twinge still is amazing.
The last stretch to 143rd and my apartment passes in a blur. I wheel left at the bodega and I'm back on my street, with the lead guy maybe fifty yards behind me.
I hit my block with the keys already in my hand. I jiggle them into the lock and dive into the hallway, slamming the door behind me. I stand for a second panting in the hallway.
It is so quiet in here it freaks me out. Then the door takes a massive thump as the guy's body hits it. I literally jump in place. I cast about me for something to reinforce the door with. This hall is so empty! There's an ancient dark pipe running round the skirting board into a heavy metal radiator mounted on the wall, but that's no use at all. There are shelves filled with the owner's chintzy bric-a-brac, the kind of Delft doggies and Portmeirion plates we sell in our fulfillment center. There's a mirror, there's three doors leading off the corridor, and there's a little side-table and a chair.
THUMP.
The door rocks again and that must be the next in line. It's followed by a steady drumbeat as more bodies pound on the door. How long can it hold? I grab the side-table and push it up haplessly against the door. It looks utterly forlorn, far too small and light to do more than perhaps keep a cat out.
I grab the chair and stack it next to it, but that will do little more. I get frantic as more bodies impact, and the smacking of their dead white flesh on the wood becomes a hailstorm. They'll pummel the door from its brackets in moments, I'm sure.
I go to the first door on the right, the owner's flat. She must have furniture I can use, a sturdy chest of drawers or something.
I try to kick the door open but fail. My foot hurts from the impact. I try again, growing more frantic as the hailstorm becomes a thunder. How many zombie body battering rams can my door take? I kick again, then throw my shoulder into it, before I remember the landlady keeps a key under the rug. I drop to one knee and flip up the frayed Persian and voila, key. I open it up.
The door leads directly into a dark and dank living room full of heaps of junk stacked high to the ceiling; a hoarder's paradise. It smells of moldy plaster and old newspapers, likely because there are tall piles of newspapers and magazines tied in coarse string bundles filling the room like pillars.
This is my salvation. I grab a heavy block of newsprint in each hand and carry them down the hall to stack at the door. It is weirdly reminiscent of building with blocks in Deepcraft. I make ten frantic trips more and build a wall of solid paper bricks three wide and seven high in the entrance hall.
My chest heaves up and down with panting, but at least the thumping from outside is muffled now. Will it hold? It might. If it's anything like as strong as the door to the landlady's room, it will. Either way I'm hanging by a thread.
Lara.
I run up the stairs. Any day of the last year I would have been collapsed on the floor disabled by twinges, but today I feel vital and alive. On the top floor I shuffle the key out and jiggle my room open, then step back into familiarity.
It's almost quiet up here, with the thumping four stories distant. My room's soothing smells are on the air; green tea, bolognese, fresh sheets, but Lara is not here. I look to the bed, to the desk, even out the window, but she isn't here.
"What the hell…" I mumble.
In her place the bed has been made and there's a note lying on the pillow, written in neat handwriting. I snatch it up and read it three times.
I had a great time. You have my number. Good luck with the zombies. Lara. xx
I sag to the bed and laugh. This is utterly crazy.
My phone rings. I pick it up and see it's an incoming Skype call from Cerulean, with a history of thirty-three missed calls. I've had his number for all these past six months, but we've never actually spoken.
I slap answer and hold it to my ear.
5. PHONE
"Cerulean," I say into the receiver, "holy shit, Cerulean you're alive."
A moment passes and he says nothing, during which time I feel like I'm falling, then his voice comes through, weak and high.
"Amo?"
"It's me, I'm here, shit I saw your message earlier, I thought you were talking about the date then I went outside and damn, it's been crazy, the girl's gone, the whole city's been turned to zombies, what the hell is going on?"
"Amo," he says again, his voice getting clearer now, a light Southern drawl. "I'd just about given up, I've been calling and texting you for hours. You say you went outside?"
I take a deep breath. Abruptly tears start coursing down my face. Shit, this is Cerulean, and it's our first time to talk.
"The twinges are gone. I went out to get coffee and the world's gone crazy. They're everywhere. They chased me up and down Mott Haven. Planes were falling from the sky, New York is burning. What's going on?"
"Calm down. Amo, I know. I've been watching it all night, it started around midnight and it spread across the country in hours. They were calling it a disease vector carried on the gulfstream, until it got them too and most of the news outlets went out. Twitter went down while they were trying to evacuate, but most people were at home asleep in their beds. The whole country's gone down, I'm surprised the internet is even up still, phone service and texts went down hours ago. I thought I'd call you until my uplink went dead, and then…" he trails off.
I stifle my tears and stare wide-eyed out the window.
"The whole country's gone down?"
"They're all zombies, Amo. This thing is instantly virulent, one breath and you're infected. You've seen them so you know. I saw them on the news; there were videos up on YouTube before that went down too. A few websites are still working, so I Googled everything I could find and downloaded it to our shared drive on your computer. You'll need to know this stuff, I've got reams on the prepper lifestyle, survival tactics and strategies, how to make weapons and how to find weapons, how to rig a generator and hotwire a car, siphoning fuel from a station, all that kind of stuff. It's good I did because Wikipedia has just gone down; I guess they didn't get enough donations."
He gives a scrappy laugh. I'm struggling to catch up with everything he's saying. My heart's still pounding from the run.
"What are you talking about? Cerulean?"
He takes a deep breath. "Amo, I'm cured too. The twinges are gone and I'm thinking clearly. I'm not a zombie, but everyone else is. You said everyone you saw in New York is a zombie? They're all zombies, as far as I can tell. Now you need to surviv
e."
"Sure, but-" I begin then trail off. There's something missing. "What about you?"
He laughs. "My brain got better but I'm still a cripple, buddy. Where do you think I'm going to go? I'm busting for a piss but is my mom going to come down and take me to the toilet? More likely she'll come down and tear out my throat. She's banging on the basement door even now, she's been at it all night, her and a few dozen others. It sounds like they're pulling up the floor overhead, actually."
"What the-" I start. "She's a zombie?"
I can hear him smiling. God I love Cerulean. That fit, handsome, paraplegic bastard. His mom's upstairs coming for him and he's been calling me all this time, trying to save me. "Of course she is, and it's not to bring me a batch of midnight cookies."
I get to my feet, deciding instantly. I look around the room taking stock of what I'll need. "Where are you? I have your address here somewhere. I'll come get you. I'll get you out."
He laughs softly. I picture the only Cerulean I've ever seen images of on Google, the dark young man on the dive platform or the medal stand, full of confidence and in his prime, ready to take on the Olympics and the world and make them his own. "Don't be silly, Amo. You'll never get here in time. The basement door's been iffy for years; it won't take much longer for them to get down here. They'll come through the floor in a day or two anyway. Don't worry about me, I've got a syringe here and I know what to do with it."
The blood drains from my head and I go dizzy. I'm still looking round my room urgently, like there might be an answer here when there cannot be.
"What do you mean, you've got a syringe?"
"It's all right," he says. "Sit down. Are you somewhere safe, Amo? Are you in your room, are you barricaded in?"
"I don't-" I begin, then look at the door. I can hear them thumping faintly from downstairs. "I'm in my building. I blocked up the front door, but there's probably hundreds of them out there now. I don't-"