Zombie City: Episode 1
By M.F. Soriano
Copyright 2013 M.F. Soriano
All rights reserved.
Cover Photo by Gianluca Ramalho Misiti
Author contact:
[email protected] For Scott Mackell.
Chapter 1
It was 3:37 a.m. on Saturday, and Shane was running late.
“Shit,” he said, looking down at his watch. He paused his pedaling in order to tuck the watch back into his left front pocket. And then he took hold of the handlebars with both hands again, putting a little more force into each push of his legs.
The streets were empty at this hour. The road stretched ahead of him, lined with parked cars, punctuated by streetlights. The only sound he could hear was the rhythmic squeaking of his bike chain. He listened to the chain for a moment, frowning.
“Gonna have to replace that chain,” he said.
He looked up at the sky. The fog was a thick blanket blocking the stars, the moon just a blur of light.
“Next paycheck,” he said, thinking of the chain.
At Folsom he turned left, drifted over into the bike lane. The wet, misty air clung to his face, cold against his cheeks, but he didn’t mind. It distracted him from the throbbing pain in his head, the nagging, sick feeling in his stomach. As hangovers went, it wasn’t a bad one. He’d had enough hangovers, especially in the past few years, to learn to deal with them. Still, starting the work week feeling shitty was never ideal.
He pulled in a deep lungful of air, coughed it back out. He pulled in another.
After a few blocks a thin patch in the fog revealed the moon. It hung in the sky, round and bright, like a clean plate at the bottom of a scummy sink. Shane glanced up at it, still pedaling, and sighed.
“Be 30 next month,” he said. “And what do I have to show for it?”
Honey Guts, he thought. Fucking Honey Guts.
He frowned. Looked at the road ahead of him.
Honey Guts, the unfinished poetry collection gathering dust on the desk in his shitty studio flat. It was supposed to be his offering to the world, his best efforts distilled into something better than himself. It was supposed to be a work of art, like the Beat poetry that had changed his life when he’d first come across it at age eighteen. Back when he’d decided to come to San Francisco, in the first place.
That had been almost a dozen years ago. And now, he realized with alarm, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d sat down to write.
Shane guided the bike with his left hand on the handlebars, letting his right hand drop down to rest on his right thigh. His right hand pushed down firmly with each stroke of that foot on the pedal, trying to squeeze a little more force into his pedaling.
“How old was Ginsberg when he moved to San Francisco?” Shane wondered aloud. “How old was he when he finished Howl? And what about Ferlinghetti? He wrote his best stuff here, didn’t he?”
There was no one there to answer his questions. No sound except for that squeaking chain.
Shane frowned again. “Of course, when Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti moved here, there weren’t any tech-worker hipsters driving up the goddamn rent. Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti didn’t even have to work. They lived like monks, writing and drinking wine all day.”
At 13th Street he swung right, taking the turn wide, letting his bike drift out into the middle of the car lane. 13th Street ran beneath the elevated Central Freeway. He glanced up at the blue metal girders that held the freeway up, tasting the metal in the moisture-thickened air.
The sides of 13th were lined with parked vehicles—including a good number of RVs and camper vans—packed in so there was hardly room to walk between the bumpers. And the sidewalks were occupied by tents and cardboard boxes and other improvised shelters for the homeless. Shane held to the center of the lane, reached forward to grip the handlebars with both hands. He watched the sides of the street, just in case someone darted out at him. But everything was dead still, the lonely squeaking of his bike chain the only sound.
A thought came to him: “All of it, all my time and energy, goes toward making rent. Nothing left for Honey Guts. I came here to write, but living in the City is keeping me from writing.”
He’d had the thought before. But being on an empty street at nearly four in the morning—at the start of another work week, with nothing to show for the days off except a hangover—it gave the thought weight. Made it seem like a revelation.
“I’m almost thirty,” he said to himself. “I need to get out of San Francisco.”
A red light loomed ahead of him: the traffic signal at Harrison Street. Shane looked left and right, then blew through the intersection without stopping.
Half a block later a siren split the silence. Shane looked over his shoulder, saw a cop car coming up fast behind him, its roof lights whirling.
“Shit!” he said.
He looked around quickly, thought of making a run for it. But his head was throbbing and his stomach still felt queasy. He was in no shape to run.
Shane squeezed the brakes, pulled over to the edge of the road. The cop car roared past, siren screaming. He flinched, leaned away from the gust of wind shoved at him by the speeding car. It whipped left on 11th Street, taking the corner so fast he could hear its tires squealing above the siren.
The siren faded into the distance in less than a minute, leaving the street dead still once again. But a jittery energy coursed through Shane’s arms and legs now. Despite the cool air, he suddenly felt clammy hot. A drop of sweat rolled over the side of his ribcage, beneath his flannel.
“Shit,” he said again.
He took a deep breath, lifted his left foot back onto the bike pedal. And then he glanced over to the sidewalk, and saw something that made him forget the cop car—and the squeaking chain and Honey Guts—all together.
There was a rolled up carpet there, near a pylon supporting the freeway overhead. And sticking out of the bottom of the carpet roll were a pair of legs.
Shane stared at the legs, his mind blank. The traffic signal up ahead—for the intersection the cop car had just ran through—switched lights with a click, and the street was so quiet that he heard it clearly. He shook himself a little, blinked his eyes. He looked back at the legs.
They were dressed in slacks, a pair of polished-leather shoes covering the feet. If it wasn’t for the fresh shine on those shoes, he probably would have assumed the legs belonged to a bum. Plenty of homeless people camped on these sidewalks, seeking the shelter of the overhead freeway. They slept in tents and cardboard boxes to stay warm.
“But no bum shine’s his shoes,” Shane said quietly.
The thought of homeless people made Shane realize something else. The bums on this part of 13th normally gathered even more thickly near the freeway pylons. But this pylon, except for the legs in the rolled up carpet, was deserted.
Shane leaned over the trunk of the car he’d stopped next to, leaned over to look at the sidewalk. He could see scraps of trash, even a few pieces of flattened cardboard that looked like they’d served as someone’s mattress not long ago. But the only figure in the area was the man rolled up in the carpet.
“I don’t have time for this,” Shane said. “I’m already running late for work.”
And yet he found himself lifting his left foot off the pedal, swinging that leg over to stand beside the bike. He squeezed between the rear bumper of the car and the front bumper of the van behind it, dragging the bike to the sidewalk. He laid the bike down on the sidewalk, took a step toward the carpet.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey! Are you alright? Do you need help?”
There was no response.
Shane crouc
hed down beside the carpet, near the end opposite the feet. “Hey!” he said again, aiming the words at the opening in the roll. He saw that the carpet was sodden, soaked with a dark liquid on this side. “Hello?”
No response.
Shane looked up the sidewalk in both directions. He got to his feet and looked up the street where the police car had gone. The street was dead.
“Never there when you actually need them,” he said. “Fucking cops.”
He crouched back down. “Hey!” he said, shaking the carpet roll. When that got no response, he gave it a good shove. The carpet rocked toward the pylon and then rebounded, rolling toward him. Shane stood and stepped back quickly.
And then he heard a low moan, muffled by the carpet, coming from the rolled up figure inside.
“Hey!” Shane shouted at the opening in the carpet. “Are you all right?”
The figure moaned again.
Shane put both his hands against the rough carpet backing and started rolling the carpet away from the pylon.
It took three turns, the polished shoes flopping as they rotated, and then the carpet rolled open. The man inside came to a rest facedown on the concrete. His hair was greasy and dirty, bits of debris in it. His arms and legs were limp.
“Are you okay?” Shane asked, hovering over the man but hesitant to touch him.
The man moaned again, and Shane took hold of his shoulder, turning him. The man flopped over onto his back.
“Aw, shit,” Shane said, stepping back. “You stink like a damn brewery.” He waved a hand in front of his face.
The man moaned again. The front of his suit was coated with crusted red vomit. Dried blood had clotted in the stubble under his nose. His eyes were squeezed shut, dark bags under them as though he’d been on a bender.
“So I’m gonna be late for work ‘cause you can’t handle your liquor,” Shane said. “Why can’t you crash in your own flat, like every other drunk yuppie?”
And then the man opened his eyes, and Shane’s words caught in his throat.
The whites of the man’s eyes were so bloodshot they looked angry red. They looked as if they’d been scrubbed raw with sand. And the man’s gaze looked so glazed and dull that Shane could see no sign of active thought behind them. He looked like he was asleep with his eyes open.
Asleep, or dead.
“Fuck, man,” Shane said, stepping back. “You need to get your shit sorted out. Rehab, or something.”
Abruptly, the man rolled toward Shane, his hand reaching out.
“Take it easy,” Shane said, stepping back.
The man lurched up onto his hands and knees, crawling toward Shane.
“Hey!” Shane said. He took another step back, and bumped into something hard. He turned his head, saw he’d backed into a parked car.
And then he felt something gripping his leg, tight around his ankle. He looked down, trying to pull his leg free. The man had him, and his grip held fast, despite Shane’s attempt to pull his leg back.
“What the fuck?” Shane said, getting angry again.
He felt the man pulling his ankle, drawing it toward him. He saw the man’s mouth open, teeth bared.
“What the fuck!” Shane said, jerking his leg back again forcefully.
The man dropped onto his chest, but still he held fast. And now his other hand came forward, reaching for the same ankle.
Shane’s irritation flared into anger. Before he could think of what he was doing, his own hands came down, shoving the man’s face into the sidewalk with a crack. The hand holding his ankle went slack.
Shane hopped back, suddenly horrified.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
The man lifted his head up to look at Shane. His lip had split like a cat’s, his front teeth were broken, awash with running blood.
But his eyes were just as dead as they’d ever been.
“Fuck this,” Shane said, backing away. He snatched up his bike, squeezing between the bumpers of the car and the van, desperate to get back to the street. As soon as he’d passed through, he threw his left leg over the bike, nearly losing his balance in the process.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man rising to his feet on the far side of the car.
Shane lifted his foot toward the pedal, hopping on one leg, almost losing his balance again. The man lurched toward the gap between the car and van, and Shane put all of his weight onto the left pedal, lifting himself off the ground as the bike rolled forward. He dropped his right foot onto the other pedal, started cranking as fast as he could.
Behind him came a moan, low and throaty and long, loud in the otherwise silent night. Shane looked back over his shoulder, pedaling hard, and saw the dark figure of the man following him, stumbling up the middle of the street.