Dead Sea

Chapter Two

Once I was safe and sound back inside my house, I checked to make sure nothing had come in while I was gone. I renailed some thick boards over the front door. It wasn’t totally secure, but it would be enough for one night, as long as I kept quiet and didn’t alert anyone else to my presence inside the house. Too much pounding would allow the zombies or raiders to hone in on my location. In truth, I couldn’t have continued barricading myself inside even if I’d wanted to. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and started crying as I hammered twelve penny nails back into the heavy wooden planks. Delayed shock. Mental breakdown. Maybe a little bit of both. But deep down inside, I knew that I wasn’t crying for Alan or anybody else. I was crying for myself. I’ve never been one for self-pity, but I felt it then.

I was alone again.

Deciding I’d be safe enough, I resolved to finish the job in the morning. I felt exhausted and weak and dirty. I tried to remember the last time I’d showered, and couldn’t. Washing up with a sponge and a bowl of rainwater just didn’t cut it.

In the darkness, I ate a can of fruit cocktail. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I forced the fruit down anyway, even the chunks of pineapple, which I hated. Why is it that when you open a can of fruit cocktail, regardless of the brand, there’s always too much pineapple and not enough cherries? Of course, I don’t guess there will be any fruit cocktail for a long time. If humanity ever does get back on their feet, we’ll have more important things to worry about first. As I sipped the juice from the can, I thought about all the groceries I’d left behind on the street. Sooner or later, I’d have to go out again. It was either starve or forage. Day or night—didn’t matter when I went. The danger would be the same. Tonight it had been Alan. Next time it could be me. But I didn’t want to think about that just then.

Naked and sweating from the late summer heat, I collapsed on top of the damp, dirty sheets. The pillowcase stank, even with the stench from outside creeping into the house. The pillowcase smelled like me—of dirt and grime, hopelessness and despair. I had no way to do laundry, and water was too precious to waste. I lay there, tossing and turning, thrashing around. I couldn’t read in the darkness, and I didn’t want to risk using the flashlight. There wasn’t really anything to read, anyway, even if I had been willing to use a light. Just a stack of past-due bills and shut-off notices and a few out-of-date magazines for which there’d be no follow-up issues. It’s amazing how the feature articles in Time magazine and Newsweek, the stories that had seemed so important, become meaningless and trivial. Distant, as if they were ancient history. I had an iPod and the battery was still good on it, but I couldn’t listen to it without somebody else to stand guard. With the headphones on, I wouldn’t be able to hear if someone—zombie or otherwise—tried to break in. (Alan and I had slept in shifts, even during the day; making sure one of us was always awake and on watch.) I couldn’t read, couldn’t listen to music, and didn’t want to think. Add in the sweltering mid-August temperatures and the fear and uncertainty I felt. I was fucked. I didn’t think that I’d be able to sleep, but eventually I did. Fitfully.

I don’t remember dreaming. Not that night or any other night, either. I’ve never been able to remember my dreams. I used to get this weird sense of jealousy when I’d hear other people tell me about their dreams. Most boring shit in the world, but I was always fascinated by it anyway. Wondered if my own were the same. Even their nightmares held me spellbound. Now, all I had to do was look outside. East Baltimore was crawling with nightmares, and there were plenty of them to call my own. Stinking, rotting corpses ran amok in the streets, leaking fluids and shedding body parts. The gutters were thick with offal. Between the smell and the danger, it’s a wonder I slept at all.

A scream woke me. I bolted upright, eyes snapping open, fists clutching the sheets. The sound had already faded, and I wondered if it had been real or if I’d imagined it. Maybe I was finally becoming conscious of my dreams. Out of habit, I turned to the alarm clock to see what time it was, but of course the clock wasn’t working. With no watch and no other way of knowing, I decided to try going back to sleep.

Then I smelled smoke. Burning wood, melted plastic… maybe burned flesh, too. I glanced around. My pulse hammered in my throat. There was an orange glow coming through the bedroom window. I’d nailed boards over it, both outside and inside, and had closed the shades and the curtains, but a few rays of light crept around the edges. Another scream echoed through the night. I sat up the rest of the way and slid my bare feet onto the floor. The room was hotter now-hotter than it had been when I’d fallen asleep. I listened for another scream and instead heard a crackling sound.

Smoke. Light. Heat. Sound.

Fire…

I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. One of the pieces of plywood that I’d nailed over my picture window had a small knothole in its center. Not enough for the zombies to see inside, but enough for me to see out into the yard and the street beyond. Alan and I had used it to spy on the neghborhood, making sure that the coast was clear and our defenses would hold. Still naked, I knelt in front of the peephole and looked outside. The sky was on fire, lit up with shades of orange, red, and yellow. The houses across the street were smoldering, and beyond them, the neighborhood was ablaze. I didn’t live in a row home exactly, but most of the houses for blocks around were similar in size and shape—little run-down, one-bedroom boxes with tiny yards. They were grouped close together, and the flames leaped from one home to the next. The street was filled with thick clouds of smoke—and filled with those fleeing the inferno, both the living and dead.

It was terrifying and surreal. The parade of survivors came first. Some were naked or in their underwear, others wore pajamas, and a select few were dressed for survival: Kevlar vests, combat boots, camouflage, and stuff like that. All of them were trying to escape the inferno. There were probably two dozen total. I wondered where they’d all come from. I’d thought all along that Alan and I were the only people left alive in our immediate neighborhood, but obviously I’d been wrong. It was weird to think that while I’d been huddled inside my home, my neighbors had been doing the same, hiding in basements and attics, waiting for whatever happened next, fighting to stay alive one more day. I’d felt alone and miserable, and meanwhile, these people had probably been feeling the same way.

Most of them were on foot, some without shoes. They ran down the street without looking back. The survivalist types were armed with assault rifles. I wasn’t sure what type, but they were the kind you saw in movies. A few of the others clutched weapons or belongings, but most of the people in the fleeing crowd were empty-handed. A black Lexus coasted among them, car horn blaring, the driver trying to get through. A man dressed like he was going deer hunting spun around and fired three shots through the windshield. Screaming, the people around him scattered. The man calmly approached the car, opened the door, tossed the driver to the pavement, and then slid behind the wheel. Another guy raced by on a motorcycle, weaving in and out of the pedestrians.

The dead came next. They were mostly human, but there were a few animals as well. Some of the zombies were missing limbs. Others had huge, ugly wounds that wept blood and pus-injuries that should have been fatal. One shirtless corpse was missing its entire abdomen. A few strands of gristle hung down to its crotch. The gaping stomach cavity was empty—no organs, just pink meat and bones. I wondered if it still craved living flesh, and if so, what happened after it had eaten. How could it digest anything without a fucking stomach? How could they process food when they were dead? And why didn’t they eat each other instead of munching on the living?

A naked dead man stepped out of the alley and passed through my yard. He was covered with dirt and blood, and his skin was a dark bluish-purple, the color of a bruise. There was something else wrong with him, too, but I couldn’t tell what it was until he turned toward my house again. Then I saw what was wrong. His genitals were missing—replaced by a big, bloody hole. I recognized the dead man as one of my former neighbors. Never knew his name, never talked to him while he was living. Just the occasional head nod from over the fence. And now here he was, dickless and dead.

A few of the creatures were obviously from some of the higher-income parts of the city. I wondered what had brought them to my neighborhood. Had they come here while they were still alive, forced to flee into the ghetto, a place they would never have set foot in under normal conditions? Or had they come here after death, hunting for food? The corpse of a white yuppie wandered down the street, arms outstretched and mouth open. His distended belly was swollen with gas. Two shards of red, broken glass jutted from his forehead like horns. Despite the horror, I had to laugh. He looked like Satan in a Burberry shirt. Another dead man was dressed in the tattered vestiges of a Catholic priest. Apparently, they weren’t immune either.

The creatures shuffled along behind their fleeing prey, oblivious to the spreading flames. The dead didn’t give a shit about fire. Their only concern was dinner—and dinner was served. You’d think that as slow as they moved, the zombies wouldn’t have been able to catch anyone. But they did. All it took was one stumble, one misstep. Get yourself backed into a corner, pause for a loved one, fall and twist your ankle, and that was it. You got eaten. I watched it happen right in front of me. One woman simply seemed to give up. She glanced over her shoulder, watched her house go up in flames, and then sat down in the middle of the street. Another man tried to pull her up, urge her on, but the woman waved him away. When he insisted, she slapped at him. He hurried away, resigned to letting her commit suicide. I didn’t blame him. It never occurred to me to go to her rescue, either.

The first of the corpses fell on her, biting into her scalp with cracked yellow teeth. An undead dog was next. The monster buried its snout in her belly and pulled out something wet and purple that glistened in the moonlight. Through it all, the woman didn’t scream. She looked peaceful.

I envied her.

Many times after things fell apart, I’d wanted to give up, throw in the towel, and see what happened next. I wasn’t religious. Didn’t believe in God. Didn’t believe in an afterlife. But anything, even empty oblivion, had to be better than this. Like I said, survival instinct is a motherfucker, but why fight to stay alive when living itself had become such a horror? Alan and I had discussed it at length, even before our conversation at the grocery store, and neither one of us could come up with a very good reason. We didn’t have loved ones who were counting on us. Had no faith that mankind would turn the tables and win the day. Civilization was pretty much finished, as far as we’d been concerned, yet we still fought on. The will to survive was strong, even when we didn’t want it to be—until Alan got bitten, of course. And that hadn’t been his choice.

Why go on? I don’t know. Don’t have an answer for that question. But I did go on. Every single time I faced down dead men walking, I fought to live.

A few blocks away, there were acres of abandoned houses and buildings. Before Hamelin’s Revenge, they’d been rife with drug dealers and squatters and crime. Oftentimes, the older folks in the neighborhood would comment that the whole area should be burned down. All it would have taken was one match; the buildings were that deplorable. I wondered if that was what had happened. The fire was coming from that direction.

I got up from the window and ran back to the bedroom. The smoke was stronger, the fires drawing nearer. It burned my nose and throat, and I breathed in short little gasps. The flames grew louder, crackling and licking at my neighbor’s homes. I heard a building collapse. Heard a child crying. A car horn blared. A gunshot rang out. And above it all, I heard the screams of the living. And even above the stench of the smoke, I could smell the dead.

There was a rapid-fire series of explosions. They were distant, by the sound, but coming closer. I slipped into my clothes and boots and grabbed my backpack. As quickly as I could, I threw in what canned food I could carry without being overburdened, as well as bottled water, matches, and other things I’d need to survive. I popped open the revolver’s cylinder and dumped out the spent shells. I’d shot the zombie and Alan, and had two bullets left. I grabbed a long butcher knife from the kitchen and duct taped it to my leg so that I wouldn’t cut myself. There was another explosion, louder this time. The house shook. My bookshelves rocked back and forth, spilling DVDs and compact discs to the floor. Pictures fell from the wall. Something heavy rained down on my roof.

I took the remaining water and dumped it all over myself, making sure my clothes, hair, and skin were wet. I soaked a washcloth and held it over my nose and mouth with one hand. Clutched the pistol in the other. And then stood there in the middle of my living room and wondered what the fuck to do next.

I couldn’t just go out the front door. Smoke in halation would kill me before I got the barricade tore down. Even if I did make it, the street was full of zombies. I could shoot two of them, but then what? Stab them with my knife? That wouldn’t work. One of the weird things with Hamelin’s Revenge was that you had to destroy the infected corpse’s brain. Nothing else worked, except for maybe incinerating them. I could outrun them for a little while, but eventually I’d tire or the smoke would get the best of me.

Stay here, a voice whispered inside my head. Just sit down and relax. Go to sleep. Quit running. It’s easier. Why bother anymore? Does it really matter? Does anything really matter? Maybe Alan was right. Maybe this would be easier.

I had to admit, the idea was tempting. Go back to bed and wait for the fire to engulf the house. With luck, I’d be dead before the flames even reached me. But I’d seen a documentary about burn victims. Last two things to burn were the heart and the brain. If the smoke didn’t kill me, I’d be alive that whole time, aware as I burned to death.

That wasn’t an option.

Deciding fast, I grabbed the hammer and ran back into the kitchen. There was a small window over the sink, and I’d nailed a single piece of plywood over it. Six nails stood between freedom and me. They screeched as I yanked them loose. I tore the board free and tossed it to the floor. Then I checked outside. The narrow alley behind my house was full of smoke, but otherwise deserted. I smashed the glass with the butt of the pistol and then tossed the backpack outside. Then I crawled through the window. Keeping the wet washcloth pressed to my face, I crouched down, retrieved the backpack, and crept through the darkness. I stayed bent over, trying to stay as low to the ground as possible, down where the air was better. Discarded trash crunched under my feet. The alley was full of debris: empty beer cans, used condoms, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts. A dead man lay sprawled on his back across the concrete. His skin looked like a greasy, bloated sausage casing. A red hole was in the middle of his forehead. He wasn’t coming back. Holding my breath, I stepped over him.

All around me were screams and the crackling of flames. The neighborhood was a Molotov cocktail and God had just tossed the fucker. The fire came from three directions. The only way still open to flee was toward the harbor.

I ran into the night, straight into the inferno.

Straight into hell…