Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  Remember what happened next in the great magazine debacle?

  “Edith ate toothpaste.” Ian laughs at the memory.

  • • •

  “How desperate are you for entertainment that you’d steal?” Edith yelled. She pulled a tube of toothpaste from the front pocket of her floral apron and began to nurse on the thing as though it was a Gogurt. Everyone could see she had several more tubes on standby for when she sucked the first one dry.

  “You are eating toothpaste! If that isn’t desperate, I don’t know what is,” Grant said.

  “This isn’t desperation! I’m on a budget and I had two-for-one coupons! Besides, the mint flavor calms me down.”

  Edith’s refusal to loot during end times was annoying to say the least and her suggestion that she was capable of operating in a calm state of mind was comical to Grant.

  “I don’t think you know what the word ‘calm’ means, lady,” he spat.

  “Look you piece of shit,” Edith screeched, “your mother may have let you disrespect her like this, but I won’t stand for it!”

  Ian wasn’t prone to fits of rage or violence, but when he heard the word ‘mother’, it set him off and he took up Grant’s fight as though it were his own. “No, you look you psycho bitch! My mother was great. You should be dead instead of her!”

  Grant laughed.

  The other Walgreens survivors gasped.

  Edith’s face went red. The tube of toothpaste dropped to the floor, sending a small glob of the mint-flavored dental hygiene goo shooting out onto Edith’s Crocs. She opened her mouth to speak, but she could find no words. One of the women ushered her away, down the greeting card aisle, her sanctuary, where heavy sobs could be heard.

  “I think you boys should leave,” the man said.

  “Fuck you and your stupid rules,” Grant replied.

  In the secluded back parking lot of the building, they sat on a curb to formulate a plan. Grant pulled open his backpack.

  “I smuggled some stuff out.” He presented Ian with a tube of ChapStick, a deck of cards, a travel-sized package of Q-Tips, and a book of crossword puzzles. It was an odd assortment, but Ian saw the usefulness of each item and wholeheartedly approved of Grant’s rebellion.

  • • •

  The sun is going down outside the mostly abandoned house. Ian still sits in the bedroom, wrapped in Grant’s sleeping bag, the empty bean can beside him. He goes to the window to study the world before the light disappears once again. A thick fog has come in and for a moment he pretends the world is normal beneath it.

  A corpse, a thick man in a motorcycle jacket, breaks free of the white veil. “I know him,” Ian says to himself. “I remember him from before Walgreens. From when…”

  …I JOINED AN UNSKILLED ARMY

  The zombies continued to pursue them, unconcerned for the boys’ emotional well-being. They just had to keep on living; to survive and to survive hard.

  If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you might think the local motorcycle club’s “clubhouse” was just another biker bar; a bar you never dreamed of setting foot in and most likely crossed the street to avoid walking in front of. But it was more than that. Even before the end of the world, with its few windows and secure entry, it was a stronghold that kept unwanted folks out and protected the membership from other gangs and public scrutiny. As an apocalypse bonus, zombies had a hell of a time breaching the fortress.

  Grant and Ian stood on top of a pawnshop on the other side of the road, observing a row of twenty motorcycles parked in front of the bar. They couldn’t stay an army of two any longer and the motorcycle club seemed to be a good answer.

  “Look, I know the guys,” Grant assured Ian. “My dad used to ride with them before he left. He intentionally withheld the part where his dad had been kicked out of the club for losing his kutte, or club vest, in a bar fight with a rival gang.

  • • •

  That was an important bit of information.

  “He didn’t know that.”

  I think he did. It would have saved a lot of trouble.

  “Can I keep telling the story, please?” Ian asks the airspace.

  Go right ahead.

  • • •

  A man—dressed in true biker getup: jeans, boots, and a leather jacket with a large 3-piece patch on the back—stepped outside of the club to smoke. His beard was a memorable shock of red hair.

  “That’s Big Jack,” Grant said as they watched the man casually finish his cigarette while the dead closed in on him. “He’s the president.”

  “So if we want to join up with them, he’s the guy to talk to?” Ian was hoping for someone more approachable, not the six-foot-five bearded giant who clearly felt no fear.

  “He’s the only guy to talk to. If we ask anyone else, Big Jack will get mad.”

  The motorcycle club president flicked the butt of his cigarette at a zombie who’d made it within five feet of him, punched the walking corpse in the face, turned toward the door of the fortress, and went back inside.

  “Yeah, let’s not make him mad,” Ian said.

  The boys watched the small crowd of zombies build, tear at the brick facade of the club, and then give up when they could make no progress.

  “Time to reintroduce myself,” Grant said with a sigh.

  “Here goes nothing,” Ian said.

  • • •

  That would have been a good opportunity to walk the other way.

  “I know, I know. But Grant insisted the club would help us.”

  • • •

  Ian knocked on the door.

  • • •

  I thought you said no one knocks in the apocalypse.

  “This was different. These guys were clearly dangerous. You’re interrupting too much.”

  • • •

  The dead turned on their heels when they heard the sound. Grant knocked next, louder and more insistent. Ian watched nervously as the reanimates moved closer. They were nearing the parked motorcycles and had begun to filter through them.

  Come on, Ian thought. Let us in.

  A thickly set man, who Grant later told Ian was nicknamed Tank, opened the club door.

  “Whatcha want?” he asked gruffly.

  Ian could hear the bikes being jostled back and forth behind them as the dead pushed through the makeshift barricade.

  “Who is it?” Big Jack yelled as he came back to the front door.

  “A couple boys,” Tank replied as he moved aside to allow the club’s president to see them both.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Big Jack said with a grin. “You’re Tony’s kid.”

  “Grant,” Grant reminded him with a slow nod, unsure that acknowledging the relation to his father was a good idea. “This is my friend Ian.”

  • • •

  “I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be ‘Grant’s friend’ just then.”

  You were scared.

  “I was terrified. These people were outlaws, criminals.”

  But not all of them remember? Tell them who else sought refuge with the bikers?

  • • •

  “Come on in, kids,” Big Jack said, stressing the word ‘kids’ as if to remind the boys of their unequal status. “Make it quick, the zoms are getting through.”

  Hanging lamps brightly lit the inside of the club. A low hum of a generator could be heard burning fuel in the distance. A funk hung in the air and with each inhale Ian’s nostrils registered another cause of the smell—old vomit, unwashed bodies, rotting drink garnishes, blood. The bar was fully stocked with empty bottles, drained early on by the club members. Generations of flies, from squirming maggots to adult flies flitting about, had made the bar’s prep station their home. Food encrusted plates sat in an unrun dishwasher.

  “Gross,” Ian said quietly.

  “Make yourselves at home, boys.” Big Jack made no effort to introduce the other men, all fifteen of them. The club president walked to a pool table and continued a game.

&n
bsp; • • •

  You aren’t telling them who else was there.

  “I’m getting there. Don’t hype her up.”

  You’re right. She isn’t anything special.

  • • •

  They walked to an unoccupied table, set their bags down next to it and lowered into the dirty wooden chairs. At the back of the club, a door swung open.

  A man and woman were laughing and showing certain public displays of affection that Ian had only see in online short films that he wasn’t supposed to have watched. Her face was hidden as the man licked and kissed her exposed flesh. She wore a thin lace tank top, jean cutoffs, and cowboy boots.

  “Hey, Colleen,” Big Jack yelled from the pool table, “I thought you said he was dead.”

  The woman pushed the affectionate man off of her and stumbled closer to Ian and Grant.

  “Mom?” Grant asked incredulously. “What the fuck?”

  “Hey, baby,” she slurred. “How ya’ doing?” She sauntered over to Grant and held her arms out to him for a hug.

  Grant’s mother had hugged him few times in his life. He could remember all three. Once she did it in front of a social worker to keep him in her custody. Another time she awkwardly hugged him at the one parent-teacher meeting she’d attended in order to please the teacher about their “home life”. The last time was when Grant’s dad left them for good and she was high out of her mind, she didn’t know what she was doing.

  Grant chose to remain seated. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Spending some quality time with your dad’s old friends,” she answered. The man she’d been fooling around with smacked her butt playfully.

  Grant knew what ‘quality time’ meant. It meant drugs, drinking and sex. It meant not caring that your teenage son was unaccounted for. “You told them I was dead?”

  “I figured, since I hadn’t seen you around. Everybody else is dead. The neighbor lady, my dealer, you.”

  “No, mom! I’m not dead. I’m right here.” He believed that she was dead as well. She survived on opiates, beer and a sporadic consumption of food, mostly the fast kind. She’d be better off dead.

  “She’s drunk, Grant.” Ian didn’t need to point it out. It was obvious. Colleen couldn’t stand, think or speak well enough to be deserving of the title “adult”.

  “Ain’t this little family reunion sweet!” Big Jack said mockingly. He was the type of man who found stolen bike parts, rival gang deaths and zombie face punching sweet, not families. “Too bad Tony couldn’t be here.”

  “I heard he got the infection,” Tank, one of the other bikers said from another of the dirty tables. When he spoke, he sounded like a child or at least a very dumb adult.

  “No,” Colleen replied, “he’s in prison. He’s safe there.” She then sat down on the carpet as the alcoholic exhaustion hit her. None of the men moved to help her to a better seat.

  “Ha, he’s safe from zombies anyway. I know some guys in there who are after much more than yer brains,” Big Jack said.

  Laughter came spilling from the mouths of the many men in the room. Colleen giggled from the floor, though she was too drunk to actually understand the joke.

  Grant leaned in toward Ian and whispered, “I can’t stand to be around her. We should leave, find somewhere else.”

  “We have nowhere to go right now!” Ian whispered back. It wasn’t like him to be so insensitive to his friend, but the bar was safer than any other place they’d found yet. “Find a way to ignore her, like you always have.”

  “Ahem,” Big Jack—who’d once again stopped his pool game and come back to the main bar room—pretended to clear his throat. “This is my clubhouse and my crew. Anything you have to say can be said out loud.”

  Grant knew to take Big Jack seriously. When he was younger he had seen how short the man’s temper was. If you could measure such a thing, his was mere centimeters. “We were just thinking about hitting the road again,” Grant offered.

  Big Jack pulled a chair out from the table at which they sat. His demeanor changed and his voice quieted to a threatening whisper.

  “You’re in my domain. I’m the fucking king here. You’ll do as I say, and that includes staying or going.”

  Ian fought his nerves to remain in control of his body. Every inch of him wanted to shake in fear. Grant had less success in suppressing the trembles.

  “Come on, Jackie, don’t treat him like that. He’s family!” Colleen whined from the floor. She was now lying on her side as though she hoped to nap.

  Big Jack pushed the chair out and ran to her. He grabbed her arm and yanked her from the floor. “Bitch! Don’t tell me how to act! You’d be dead if we hadn’t opened the door for your sorry ass! And don’t you fucking call me Jackie!”

  “Bitch! Bitch!” Tank screamed. The altercation excited his small brain.

  Colleen tore her arm away from him and ran the best she could back through the door from which she’d come out. The men could hear her sobs, but no one, not even Grant or the man that had been licking her, ran to her side.

  It made Grant happy to see someone tell his mom off. She was dumb. She made poor decisions and had always lived off of the hard work of others. And she had the audacity to call him family. She didn’t know what the word meant.

  Ian was terrified and mortified that anyone would treat a woman like that. His parents had raised him better.

  • • •

  Was that sympathy for his mother?

  “As horrible as she was, she was a person too. We all make mistakes.”

  You should be as forgiving with yourself as you are with others.

  “I’m working on it.”

  • • •

  “Saddle up, everyone. Time to ride!” Big Jack roared. The men jumped to their feet, suddenly showing signs of life. A new energy rippled through the dirty bar.

  “What?” Ian asked as he watched the men don their leathers and head to the front door. “You’re going out there? On your bikes?”

  “A bike is never just for show,” Tank recited with a proud smile, like a child remembering to wash his hands or tying his own shoes for the first time. It must have been a rule of the club.

  “What’s life without the ride?” Big Jack asked. “And what’s a bar without beer?”

  “A beer run?” Grant asked.

  “We’ll stay here,” Ian suggested.

  “No outsiders in the club without a club member present,” Tank called out. He certainly seemed to be the club’s walking bylaws.

  “Tank says you have to come with.” Big Jack smiled maniacally. “If you want to ride with the big boys, you gotta start acting like ‘em.”

  “We don’t want to ride. We just got here and the dead are everywhere.”

  “If you’re staying with us, what you want doesn’t matter anyway.”

  • • •

  How many red flags was it going to take for you and Grant to realize these men were bad?

  “They didn’t even check outside to see if it was safe.”

  And you still went along for the ride.

  “How could we say no to Big Jack?”

  • • •

  The only reason the bikers survived as long as they had was because the dead couldn’t bite through all the leather. The beginning of the end for the gang started with Tank on that fateful ride. It was an unseasonably warm day and, being a heavier set man, he began to sweat quickly in the sunshine. While the other bikers looted a liquor and beer store, Tank watched the parking lot and tucked his jacket into a storage compartment on the side of his bike. A zombie approached him and Tank giggled with excitement. He raised and fist and swung to bash its face in, but his timing was off and his fist flew by in a whip of wasted energy. Tank stared at his arm, still hung in midair, in disbelief that he’d missed. A set of teeth from the spared zombie bit down into his chubby forearm.

  “No no, no no no,” he whimpered. He retrieved his jacket from his bike and pulled it over the wound a
s the boys and the others exited the store.

  • • •

  But you made it back to the bar and you got away.

  “The bikers had a drunken meeting in a back room. We weren’t allowed to attend. ‘Club matters’, Tank let us know. So we grabbed our bags and disappeared out the front door.”

  They all died in that meeting. Tank was infected. He knew it and saved you.

  “Yeah, maybe they did all die. Maybe he did save us.”

  Speaking of getting saved, maybe we should revisit the church?

  Ian sighs. Recalling the past is a trial, especially when you are judge, jury, and executioner. “The last time the dead were upon us I nearly got myself infected because…”

  …I OVERESTIMATED MY STRENGTH

  At this point in his young life, Ian had never played sports. He was unaware of what the inside of the school’s weight room looked like and when he ran for any real distance, his asthma flared up. He had, according to Grant, the “undefined muscles of a sick girl.” And hand-to-hand combat is never as easy as it looks. Nor is entering a “House of God” unprepared for what you might find within its walls. And though a church can be many things for an individual: a sanctuary, a community center, and an escape, Ian never expected the first church he entered to become a battleground.

  They were moving east and still searching for food, even though their bags were full from their “friend” Thomas’ generosity. Hunger threatened always to surge around the next bend, so it was best to check buildings when they could.

  An auto repair shop.

  “No,” Grant said.

  A yoga studio.

  “No,” he said again.

  They came to a church and Ian continued walking, sure there wasn’t any food to be found. When he no longer heard Grant’s footsteps behind him he stopped and turned to see Grant staring at a building.

  “We should check in there.”