Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  He continued down the long corridor, using empty laundry bins and food carts stacked with trays of rotting food as cover. In the stairwell, he sat for a moment. There would be more corpses on the second floor, especially with the Intensive Care Unit taking up most of that level. His mother would not have left her post as an ICU nurse. She had to be up there. His cell phone, which he stubbornly still carried, didn’t work, so he couldn’t call or text her. Even if it did work, he couldn’t risk ringing her up and attracting zombies to her location. The generator still pumped power to the second floor of the building, which meant that the intercom might work, if he managed to locate it. The risk with this of course was inviting the dead to come to him. Still, it was safer than searching the entire second floor, room by room.

  At the stairwell door to the second floor, Ian peered through the square window at another empty hall in front of him. It was unsettling, but he felt thankful for his luck. He pulled open the door and walked straight to the nurses’ station without trouble of any kind.

  He took the phone in his hand, examined it and his thoughts, unsure of whether he was ready for the answer he might receive, and pressed the button labeled Intercom.

  “Mom?” His voice boomed in the emptiness. He felt stupid for using precious airtime on three letters that could mean so much to many. Should he say her name so she knew he meant her? Or his?

  “This is Ian.” Again, he felt idiotic.

  Footfalls and moans echoed from around a corner. They were coming. He recradled the phone, crouched low behind the desk, and waited. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Ian had a good view of a circular security mirror that hung near the nurses’ station. It afforded him a reflection of the approaching chaos.

  • • •

  “I don’t want to tell this part.”

  You don’t have that choice. It could be the key to getting better. You can’t leave out a word.

  “She was right there, right in front.”

  • • •

  He saw her.

  She had found him, but the reunion was not as he imagined. Drawn by his voice, but not his voice, only a sound above other sounds, she walked with two other corpses, a patient and a janitor, at the front of the pack. His mother’s hair was stringy and caked with blood. She shuffled like a woman forty years her senior. Urine and feces stained her white pants.

  “Mom,” Ian called as he began to cry.

  • • •

  No one should have to see a parent like that.

  “Ha,” Ian scoffs, “ya think?”

  How did it make you feel?

  “Like a part of me had died.”

  Like it later felt to lose Grant?

  “No, a million times worse. Like I didn’t have a right to exist anymore.”

  • • •

  The undead continued to gather, their moaning attracting more from other areas of the hospital. He watched the crowd thicken until it was ten rotting bodies deep and twenty across. One of them would soon find the swinging quarter door that led behind the desk. They would all follow, like water rushing in through opened floodgates, and eat him alive.

  Another nurse, maybe one who had worked behind the station, was breaking free of the group and making her way to the door. Ian closed his eyes and hugged his knees, preparing for the pain. He heard the hinges squeak.

  Then, an explosion rocked the building. Windows shattered in the rooms across the hall. The dead began to move away from Ian and toward any exit that would bring them closer to the noise. The nurse who was on the verge of discovering him followed the others like a bird in migration. Ian let a few minutes pass before moving even a finger. When he thought they were gone, he slid across the linoleum on his belly until he reached the quarter door. A maggot squirmed on its top edge, left there by the dead hospital employee. He watched it wiggle for a brief moment; a symbol of how close he’d come to death.

  He took the stairs back down to the first floor and sprinted for the back lot. Grant was waiting for him there, grinning like a maniac.

  “Dude, I blew up a car!” Grant yelled.

  “You saved my life.”

  • • •

  He saved your life.

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  You didn’t save his.

  “I told you to drop it.”

  And he thought nothing of saving it. What did he say again?

  “You should have seen the fireball,” Ian says in a voice devoid of emotion.

  He said it much more enthusiastically.

  • • •

  “You should have seen the fireball!” Grant exclaimed. “It was huge!”

  Traveling back to Ian’s house that afternoon was slow going. He dragged his feet and turned back several times to look at the hospital. The boys usually traveled quietly, but Grant was so pumped from the explosion that he retold the rescue story over and over.

  “I could hear the intercom out here and the zombies could too. They came from every direction! It was like you rang a dinner bell! I saw the minivan and I knew I had to do something to get them moving away from you. You know that lighter I always carry around? Well, I ripped the shirt off a dead guy and stuffed it in the gas tank. It lit up so quick I had to bolt outta there! I’ve never run that fast!”

  Ian had no energy to respond so he allowed Grant to talk until he grew angry that Ian wasn’t participating in the conversation.

  Back at home, Ian stood in his parents’ walk-in closet. He stared at his mother’s stockpile of multi-colored scrubs. He remembered the urine stains down her legs. She was scared when she died.

  And that scared him.

  • • •

  “She isn’t dead. She just can’t be!”

  Denial is a stage of grief. It might be time to move to another stage.

  “I don’t know any of the other stages.” Ian tries to remember something he read in one of his father’s books. “But I remember something nice about my mom.”

  Tell them about it then.

  • • •

  His previous last memory of her was Friday night’s dinner, the evening before the plague came to town. His father was working late at his office so his mother cooked Ian’s favorite dinner of macaroni and cheese and let him rent a movie online. It was a near perfect evening, as though the universe was giving him the best before replacing it with the worst. It was also one of the rare occasions in which Ian saw his mother in regular clothes. She wore jeans and a blouse instead of her scrubs. To him, she looked how a mom should look: happy and normal.

  • • •

  That is nice.

  “And then I had to go and fucking screw it up! I insisted on saying goodbye and now my final memory of her is forever altered. She is dirty, disgusting and dead!”

  You need to try to forget.

  “It will haunt me for the rest of my life. I pray that isn’t long.”

  “Ian! Grant!” a familiar voice calls from the front lawn.

  “It’s Keller,” Ian tells himself. “What do I do?”

  Stay quiet. He’ll think Lena killed you both.

  “So you believe me now, that he sent her?”

  I have accepted it as part of your reality.

  “I should face him. I know where all the weapons are now.”

  You are in no shape to fight him. He’ll kill you.

  “I’m dying anyway,” Ian says as he stands up in the closet. The wool coat falls to the floor. An empty water bottle and the bodies of moth larvae crunch and squish under his feet.

  Listen to me! Don’t you dare let him know you are here. You’ve ignored me before.

  “Ignoring you is the one thing I’m good at.”

  Why don’t you sit back down and tell them about that then?

  …I DIDN’T TRUST MY GUT

  In fact, Ian did a pretty good job of ignoring it entirely. The little voice inside his head said stay home, stay in the place that you know, stay safe. But he and Grant were itching to get out and explore. He wanted to see the
inside of some of the other houses in his neighborhood and now the opportunity was before him. Besides, if you could get away with looting, wouldn’t you?

  Their plan was to make ever-larger circles, block-by-block, but to always end up back at Ian’s house. Sometimes they would make it back before dark. Other times they might have to find a place to sleep and head back the next day.

  “Where should we go first?” Grant asked as he rubbed his hands together mischievously.

  Ian scrutinized the front door, which his mind told him danger was on the other side, but all he wanted to do was open it. “My neighbor Gerry’s on a hunting trip. He probably won’t make it home. We could check his house for supplies.” He didn’t expect Grant to say yes.

  “Okay!” Grant said, jumping up from the couch. “Grab your gear!”

  Grant had several trespassing citations under his belt. He was no stranger to angry owners and responding cops. Once, he’d climbed the fence that blocked the delivery area underneath the mall and another time he was caught shooting his BB gun into the trees on cemetery property. But Ian wasn’t a rule-breaker and he had qualms about breaking and entering.

  They hopped the fence between the two backyards. Grant wrapped his hand in a t-shirt and punched a hole through a window in the back door. He unlocked the deadbolt and walked in.

  “Easy,” he said. “Now, let’s find some goodies.”

  • • •

  And I told you to turn back, didn’t I?

  “But I didn’t. I followed him in.”

  • • •

  Camping gear lay scattered about the living room, as though someone had just come home from a trip rather than left for one.

  “Does he always leave his gear out like this? It’s like he wants someone to take it.”

  It would have been easier for Ian to touch things that weren’t his if they didn’t belong to someone he knew. He instead looked at the photos on a wood-paneled wall across from the couch. Gerry had several grown children and, from the many faces in the images, a plethora of grandchildren.

  “This machete is nice. You should take it.” Grant picked up the black-bladed weapon and swung it through the air, attacking an invisible creature there.

  Ian stepped back. When Grant was excited, sometimes he wasn’t careful. He’d once hit Ian in the face with an Xbox controller when he died in a game. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  Grant held the blade out to him. “Take it. Once you know how good it feels, you won’t want to put it down.”

  • • •

  I told you not to.

  “But I held it and it felt great, just like Grant said.”

  • • •

  “Who’s there?” a man called from down the hall. His voice was coarse as though he’d just woken up or recently spent too much time screaming. He emerged from a back room. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

  It was Gerry, but he seemed different to Ian. The man’s skin was ghost white and his left arm was generously wrapped in multiple gauze bandages.

  “Um, uh…my mom wanted me to check on you.” Ian hoped the old man would buy the lie.

  “I’m…not okay.” He held up his arm. “Had to come home early, say my goodbyes.”

  As far as Ian knew, Gerry lived alone and his family was spread out across the country. “We’ll be going then.”

  The sick man stumbled as he walked toward the wall of photos. Ian still held the machete. Grant stared at Gerry. Ian knew it was because Grant wanted to see the change occur. But they both noticed the gun tucked into his belt.

  Gerry brought two fingers to his lips and kissed them. He then placed the fingers on a face in one of the images. He repeated the gesture over and over, until every loved one was accounted for. With the same hand he then reached for his gun.

  • • •

  I told you to run.

  “But I didn’t. I watched a man take his own life.”

  • • •

  The sound of the gunshot and the instantaneous spray of blood and brain matter onto the white popcorn ceiling made the boys jump. Ian dropped the machete. Grant still stared at Gerry in amazement.

  • • •

  You could have avoided the entire situation, all of this, if you’d only listened to me.

  “I could have avoided seeing all the dead little kids at the elementary school, their abandoned backpacks and tiny shoes, the way the returned ones wandered around like drunken sailors. That one girl whose hands were worn to stumps from clawing at the classroom door. The teacher who hanged herself on the basketball hoop. And Grant, and Ripley, and my parents! It’s all so fucked up!” Ian stands and punches the closet walls around him. One of the strikes opens a hole to the room next door. He clutches his hair in clumps and sinks back down to the floor.

  Breathe, Ian. Calm down. You’re rocking like a crazy person. Tell them why you ignored me.

  “I didn’t trust my gut because…”

  …I THOUGHT I WAS SAFE

  Due to his parents’ professions, the house he grew up in, before it burned, was fully stocked with first aid kits and self-help books. Because they both worked long hours, the pantry was brimming with non-perishables for Ian to prepare for himself. When the world started to end, Ian assumed his parents would continue to look out for him. He still felt he could come home to a clean bed, his choice of snacks, and sack lunches.

  On a Saturday, Ian woke to an empty house. His Mom was already gone at the hospital and his Dad was at his office. They were creatures of habit and bound by their respective duties. He went downstairs to the kitchen, still in his pajamas, and poured himself a bowl of cereal. One of his parents had left the television on, but the sounds it was emitting were indiscernible over the loud crunching of his Cocoa Puffs. He put his dirty bowl by the sink and sat down for his usual morning cartoon run. Technically, he was too old for the programming, but he wasn’t quite ready to grow up yet.

  As soon as he sat down his ears zeroed in on the word ‘plague’ coming from an anchorwoman’s mouth. The ticker across the bottom of the screen threw out words like ‘attack’, ‘unknown origin’, ‘terrorism’, and ‘contagious’. When Ian reached for the remote, desperate to hear as much as he could, he found a note from his mother taped to its surface.

  Please put the laundry in the dryer and keep the doors locked. - Love Mom

  • • •

  Even your Mom couldn’t save you. She tried though, didn’t she?

  “She always did.”

  She was a good mom.

  “To more than me. That’s why she went to the hospital that day and never came back.”

  • • •

  Ian knew his parents would both be overwhelmed and maybe not make it home to him that first night. His mother would be treating people wounded out of fear. His father would get all sorts of crazy people in his office, saying crazier things than they previously had. He felt no need to switch the laundry at that moment. He’d get to it before they came back.

  He ran up the stairs to his room and changed out of his sleepwear. His cell phone chirped and he picked it up to find it had filled with texts from Grant. The gist of the messages was that he was on his way over and ‘dressed to kill’, which Ian correctly interpreted as apocalyptic humor. Ian was on his way to the pantry when Grant let himself in, which was not out of the ordinary, especially on a weekend. He had donned a t-shirt that read Zombies just want hugs. Ian had selected his Dawn of the Dead shirt and they smiled when they noticed the similar choices. Grant had a huge duffel bag that was nearly as long as he was tall.

  “What’s in the bag?” Ian asked.

  “Everything,” Grant replied and he meant it. His possessions were few, even before the end of the world. “But I could use something to eat.”

  Ian pointed to the kitchen. “You saw the news then?”

  Grant nodded, poured himself his own bowl of cereal and they walked to the living room. They scanned the channels and watched the programming drop l
ike flies. One station after the next turned to static or the Emergency Broadcast Signal.

  • • •

  And yet you still felt safe.

  “Suburbia and privilege have a way of doing that to you. It felt fun to pretend it was real.”

  The world around you was already a mess though.

  • • •

  The Seattle Center was a blood bath and the fountain at its center ran red. Riots raged downtown. Folks hauled away clothing and electronics from shops with broken windows, only to be devoured a block down and their treasure taken by another before they too were attacked. The video switched to a busload of tourists on a Ride the Duck amphibious vehicle. They were stuck in traffic and surrounded by the dead, but luckily just out of arms reach as the vehicle was elevated. Terror clung to their faces.

  “Its like a bento box on wheels,” Grant said. “They’ll be nice and juicy when the infected finally reach ‘em.”

  “Gross.”

  When all but one station remained, Ian stood up and stretched. “Let’s move upstairs, we can ride this out there.”

  They hauled as much as they could to the hallway at the top of the stairs and then into his parents’ bedroom. Back down in the garage, they searched for weapons. The sledgehammer was too heavy to swing with enough stopping force, so they chose a hammer from Ian’s dad’s unused toolbox and a wooden baseball bat.

  “We should bring up the camping gear. At least the lanterns and camp stove in case the power goes out.” Grant held up a sleeping bag.

  “Good idea.” They found several flashlights as well and Ian dug through the pantry for extra batteries.

  “Wow, this is a great view.” Grant stood in front of a large window overlooking the front yard and street. “We can see everything.”

  Ian hated spending time in his parents’ bedroom and didn’t like thinking about them as a loving couple. It had been a long time since he’d seen any proof of that relationship, but Grant was right, the view was unbeatable. From there they could keep tabs on the goings on in his neighborhood. It was the perfect tower base camp.