Zombie D.O.A. Read online

  She started crying again and I went out to the kitchen and mixed up some formula. Rosie had stocked up on so much Similac and Gerber Good Start, you’d have sworn she was expecting triplets.

  I went back into the bedroom and tried to feed the baby but after a few pulls on the bottle she spat if out and started shrieking and shaking her little fists.

  I reached out to soothe her and she stopped crying immediately, grabbed my hand and started to pull it towards her mouth. She was amazingly strong for such a small thing, and I had to yank my hand away from her.

  Immediately, she started screaming again and I felt powerless to help her. I reminded myself that this was not my daughter, this was not Ruby, and yet despite that, I softened when I looked at her. She was all I had left of Rosie and I started to convince myself that it would be okay. That there’d be some antidote or treatment for this virus or whatever it was. That Ruby and me and New York City would be okay. How wrong I was.

  When I couldn’t stand Ruby’s screams no more (yes, I was calling her Ruby now) I went to the kitchen and got some ground beef from the freezer, defrosted it in the microwave and mixed it up with some Similac in the blender. I took that back to Ruby and she sucked it down like a drunk falling off the wagon.

  When she was done she fell asleep immediately, and I moved her to the crib and pulled a blanket over her. I watched my daughter sleeping and ran my hand through her dark curls and wondered what she had done to deserve being born this way.

  Later, I remembered Blaze’s advice and went to retrieve Dom’s revolver. I’d never handled a gun before that day, but I’d seen enough cop shows to know that I should check the cylinder. I expected all the rounds to be spent, but 3 were still live. I replaced them and shoved the gun into my waistband and said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t misfire on me again when I needed it.

  After that I checked the cupboards and the freezer and there was enough stuff there to keep me going for a while. I remembered how I used to tease Rosie about being a hoarder and how she used to say you never know when you’re going to run short. Well today I was thankful for Rosie and her hoarding ways.

  I tried the TV again. The same message was running and I sat there watching it until I fell asleep.

  When I woke it was dark. Something had woken me. Then I heard it again. Shouts, laughter, a woman screaming. I rolled off the couch and felt around for the gun, then I crawled towards the window and peered out.

  The street was well lit and I could see people out there - a man, a woman and two small boys who looked like twins. I recognized them as a family who had moved in across the streets a month or so ago. I’d never spoken to them but I’d run into the guy with his two kids in the market on the corner once and I’d overheard him telling the clerk they’d just moved down from Boston.

  Now it looked like they were planning on making a quick return. Their Jeep SUV was stacked with stuff but they were stopped in the road. The man had his hands raised and the two boys were huddled to their mother.

  Looking left I could see why, Chavez and his gang, looking the worse for wear.

  The Level 42’s had acquired some new members since last I’d seen them. There were at least 20 of them now, maybe more. Along with the usual gangbangers, there were a couple of suits, a bald man in striped pajamas, some young guys who looked like college frat boys, a woman in jogging gear, even a priest.

  The Boston guy was saying something to Chavez. He had his wallet out and was holding out some bills. Chavez, took the money, tore the bills in two and threw them in the man’s face. Then he grabbed the guy by the hair and dragged him towards his waiting gang.

  The 42s surged forward and Chavez made a sweeping sign with his hand as though sprinkling something on the ground and they fell back as one.

  Chavez stood there smiling and surveying his troops. Then he called one of them forward, a teenaged boy in Chinos and a bloodstained white vest. The boy approached cautiously.

  Chavez ran his finger along the man’s jaw line and invited the boy to take a bite. The boy sniffed the man’s neck, his face, his hair, like some scavenger trying to decide if the carrion was too far gone. Then he sunk his teeth into the man’s neck with such ferocity that I could hear the crunch from across the street.

  A spurt of blood arced through the air as the boy pulled the man to the ground and continued to feed. The 42s pushed forward again but Chavez sent them back with a sweep of his hand.

  The man’s wife huddled on the ground, her arms wrapped around her boys, preventing them from seeing the atrocities being acted out on their father.

  Chavez now turned his attention to the woman. He dragged her to her feet while her sons screamed. The woman was obviously terrified but she stood and pushed her boys behind her and faced Chavez down.

  The gang leader moved in close to the woman and ran his tongue across her face. He reached down and grabbed her crotch, and still she didn’t flinch. Her hands remained firmly behind her back protecting her sons.

  As I watched this I felt a cold, dark anger brewing up inside me. Blaze had given me solid advice about laying low. This really wasn’t my fight and I was outmuscled and out gunned. Despite what had happened to me on this day of death and suffering I very much wanted to live. And I knew that if I went out there I was dead.

  I also knew that if I let them kill this woman and these little boys I was dead anyway – in soul at least.

  I stuck Dom’s misfiring .38 into the back of my waistband and left the apartment at a run. I didn’t have a particular plan in mind other than to tackle them head-on, perhaps create a diversion so the woman and her sons could escape.

  I bounded down the stairs out onto the street and shouted, “Chavez!” That got their attention. As if as one, the 42’s turned in my direction and I could see that there were a lot more of them than I’d originally thought, at least 50 battered, corpse-like creatures.

  Chavez calmed them with his sweeping hand gesture. Then he turned to me and smiled.

  “Hey Homes, how’s it hangin’?”

  “Pretty fucking good. Now let these people go.”

  Chavez looked at me with an exaggerated expression of incredulity of his face, half turned towards his followers then looked back at me.

  “Or fucking what?” he said.

  “Or you die.”

  He laughed then, threw back his head and laughed like I was Eddie Murphy doing a guest spot on Saturday Night Live.

  “You got cohones homes, I give you that. But what’s to stop me settin’ my posse on you right now. They be cleanin’ their teeth with your rib bones long before I’m finished snackin’ on this fine white lady’s pussy.“

  He was right of course. I had about a twenty-foot lead on them and I’m pretty fit, so if I bolted they’d have had a hard time catching me. But there’d be more of them waiting out there in the darkness and what chance did I have of surviving the night out in the open.

  Besides I would be abandoning this woman and her children, not to mention Ruby who was awake by now and probably needed feeding. No, I was seeing this through, whichever way it went.

  Behind Chavez the 42s were getting restless. Chavez turned and used his peculiar hand signal, like sprinkling something on the ground, to calm them.

  When he turned back to me he had a strange look on his face. “I know you,” he said. “You that mick fighter, Chris ‘Cruisin’ Collins, right. Yeah, I seen you at the Paradise fighting Ronaldo Holmes. Man, that nigger was all over you like white on rice. Whoo hoo, ladies and gents we got ourselves a celebrity here.”

  “Bronson”, I said. “Tell you what, why don’t you and me have a talk? You’ve got no beef with this woman and these kids. Why don’t you just let them go?”

  “I look like I gotta talk to you? Look behind me, homes. I got me an army.” Behind him, the ranks had indeed swelled, not an army, but upwards of a hundred. They stood dispassionately, like a crowd watching a rather boring concert.

  “I the only one can control these
people, homes. Right now I be the king of New York, maybe next year I be president.”

  He laughed at the idea, but then was deadly serious again. “What I’m saying is, I want to spend some time with that fine-assed white lady, I want to feed her little boys to my posse, I snap my fingers and it’s done. Who’s gonna stop me? You?”

  “And when your people turn on you? Who’s going to stop them?”

  Chavez threw back his head and laughed. “Ain’t gonna happen, homes. I be bokor. Ain’t no zombie gonna mess with no bokor.”

  The guy was obviously insane and I wasn’t going to get into a debate with him. The crowd behind him was getting restless again and he had stopped trying to calm them. If I was going to make my move it had to be now, but even so I knew I had virtually no chance of getting out alive.

  I looked over to where the woman and her boys were huddled against the car and hoped she wouldn’t freeze when it was time to move.

  “I’m leaving now, Bronson,” I said. “And I’m taking these people with me.” I hoped that my fear didn’t carry to my voice.

  Chavez smiled as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to him. “Tell you what homes, I a sportin’ man, and you got some brass balls, so I’m gonna cut you a deal. You a fighter right?

  “Now I ain’t seen a good fight since that Holmes wupped your ass at the Paradise. So I tell you what, let’s have us a fight. You against one of my boys, mano a mano, no holds barred. You win and you walk outa here with your white bitch and her brats. You lose and we eat your ass, what you say!”

  What could I say? Although I knew there was no way Chavez would stick to his side of the deal regardless of the outcome, I needed to buy time. Needed to think of a way to get us out of this.

  “You’re on.” I said.

  “Yee ha! We got ourselves a fight ladies and gentlemen,” Chavez said disappearing into the crowd.

  Without Chavez there to control them, the ghouls in the front row shuffled a few paces forward, and looked hungrily at me, some faces fixed with insane grins, others blank as a white sheet. I could hear the angry, guttural noises they made, an insane cacophony that conveyed hunger and anger and pain.

  Then the crowd began to part as Chavez returned, leading a man by the hand. The guy was huge and appeared to be of Hawaiian or Samoan descent. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie. He reminded me of “Oddjob”, in the James Bond movie, Goldfinger. All that was missing was the bowler hat.

  Oddjob’s face was mainly in tact, but his neck had been severely mauled and the front of his suit and shirt was stained scarlet.

  “This here be Iakopo , heavyweight champion of American Samoa or some fucking place. Well, I’m not sure if he is or he ain’t but he fucking well could be, right. Now I realize he’s a bit out of your weight division and all, but this the best we got, so what you say, Mister Chris Cruisin’ Collins?”

  “I’ll take him.”

  “Now that’s the spirit. Ladies and gentleman, we got ourselves a fight!”

  To my right I saw movement, and noticed one of the creatures, a young guy in a pizza delivery uniform, hobbling towards the woman and her children.

  “Hey!” I shouted, and Chavez produced a long barreled handgun that looked like something out of Dirty Harry and fired. He hit the man with his third shot, spattering blood and brains.

  The crowd became restless and Chavez stilled them with his now familiar hand gesture.

  Then he turned to me and smiled. ”Right ladies and gentlemen, we have a real treat for you tonight. Bronson Chavez Productions presents this fight to the death.

  “In this corner, from New York City, the challenger, Chris Cruisin’ Collins. Collins. And in this corner, from American Samoa, or some fucking place, Iakopo, the destroyer!”

  While Chavez was doing his Michael Buffer impersonation, I looked over at Iakopo. He was huge, and appeared to be least a foot taller than my five ten, with a build that would have made him a good offensive tackle for the Jets. He stood there looking down at his shoes like a scolded schoolboy, his massive fists clenching and unclenching.

  I’d fought some big guys in my life, both inside and outside the ring, but never anyone close to this big. Still, in a normal standup fight, I might have stood a chance. You learn things as a fighter - how to protect yourself, how to hurt the other guy, where to direct your bombs so they really hurt.

  Problem is, this was no ordinary fight. These things seemed oblivious to pain. Not only that but, say I hit him, say my fist grazed his tooth and it opened up my hand. I was done right there, infected. Seemed to me the only way to stop one of these things was a bullet to the brain.

  Chavez was finishing his ring announcer act with, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” He dragged the last word on and on, like Buffer used to do. When he eventually stopped he looked directly at me and said calmly, deliberately, “Seconds out, round number one.”

  Out of habit, I put up my fists and shuffled into the centre of the imaginary ring, then I realized what I was doing and retreated back to where the ropes might have been.

  Iakopo stood dead still for a minute then looked up from contemplating his shoes and blundered forward like Frankenstein’s monster. I took another step back, reached behind me and produced Dom’s .38.

  I leveled it at Iakopo’s head and fired. Nothing. I fired again. Nothing. Iakopo was three feet away when I pulled the trigger again. I heard the click of a misfire and knew I was dead.

  Then the giant’s head exploded, spraying me with blood as his huge frame crumbled to the ground like a deflating air balloon.

  For what seemed like a minute but was probably no more than a second, there was a deathly silence. Then Chavez was screaming, “That’s not fair! That’s not fucking fair, you cheating slime!”

  “No holds barred,” I said. “You called it.”

  “Oh you gonna die now, motherfucker!” he screamed, then shouted something to the crowd in a language I didn’t understand. They pushed forward, snarling and fighting each other for position. The car was to my right, but I didn’t think I could get to it before they got to me.

  The crowd closed in cautiously, like a pack of wild dogs approaching an injured quarry that they know is still dangerous. I could smell the fetid, rotten meat stench of them, could see their blood-crazed eyes and oversized, predatory incisors.

  Ten feet from me a big guy in construction overalls abruptly broke ranks and charged. He’d gotten maybe three feet when his head seemed to explode. Then the head on a woman in the front row exploded too, and then the same happened to the guy next to her, one of the college kids.

  Suddenly, all hell broke loose. More of the creatures fell, while those behind continued to push forward. Many of them went crashing to the ground and were trampled underfoot.

  I took me a moment to realize that someone was firing from somewhere. I couldn’t hear any shots, but whoever was doing the shooting was some marksman.

  A man with half a face reached for me and was instantly dispatched by the gunman, who then turned his attention back to the crowd, where three of the things went down in rapid succession.

  I could hear Bronson Chavez shouting, alternating between English and the foreign dialect he’d used earlier, but I couldn’t see him in the melee.

  All of this happened in a split second, before I made a dash for the car. The woman had had the presence of mind to get her boys into the vehicle and was struggling to start the engine.

  “Move over,” I shouted and she did without question. I turned the key and heard the ignition grind. Too fast. The mystery gunman was taking a heavy toll on the creatures in the street below, but even he couldn’t keep them at bay. They swarmed the car, banging on the roof, the windows, the hood.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled through gritted teeth then turned the ignition again. This time the engine roared into life, and I slid the shift into reverse and gunned the motor.

  The car accelerated backward, taking several zombies along for the ride.
As I deliberately overshot the intersection I stood on the brake and those still hanging on to the SUV were thrown to the tarmac. Then I put her into drive, turned left and raced off into the darkness.

  At Lenox Avenue, I turned right and pointed the SUV south. Then I stopped the car in the middle of the normally busy thoroughfare.

  Tonight the only vehicles were abandoned or wrecked or burned out hulks. There were bodies too, lots of them, some half consumed, some skeletal, others afire. Here and there I saw hunched figures lurking, their shadows thrown onto shattered storefronts by the flames.

  Fortunately, the path down Lenox seemed fairly clear.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the woman.

  “Valerie.”

  “Well, Valerie, this is where I get off. You follow the road straight on and it will bring you to Central Park. There’s an army base there, they’ll take you in. Keep the car rolling, drive around obstacles if you can, otherwise push them out of the way. Whatever you do, don’t get out of the car, and you stop for nothing and no-one, you understand?”

  She nodded, a haunted, drawn expression on her face. “Come with us,” she said.

  “I can’t. I have to get home to my daughter.”

  Valerie nodded. “My husband…” she started.

  I shook my head and the pained expression on her face told me she understood.

  “Take care of your boys” I said and got out. As an afterthought I handed her Dom’s .38. “It will probably do more damage if you throw it, but you never know.”

  “Thank you,” she said, “for everything.”

  I stood in the middle of the road and watched them drive away. Then I turned and headed towards home.

  Chapter Three: Ash Wednesday

  I tried to guess the time and figured it was well after midnight. Ruby had been alone for hours and hadn’t been fed since mid-afternoon. For a normal one-day- old baby that would be a problem, but I reminded myself that Ruby wasn’t normal. Ruby was…special.

  That’s how I preferred to think of her now. Ruby was special. Sure she was teething six months too soon, and her favorite meal was pureed beef, but she was my daughter and I refused to believe that she was one of these things.