Last Man Standing (Book 1): Hunger (12 page)

I peer through the curtains of the living room window, scanning the street to make sure the infected by the truck aren't about to be joined by company.

"You think this'll work?" Bishop looks down at the bottle in his hand, holding it at arm's length as if he's afraid it might explode if he so much as breathes.

"Of course it'll work." I carefully pour the clear liquid into another glass Coke bottle, then tear a strip from my spare T-shirt to stuff in the neck. "Look, this is arson 101. You have nothing to worry about. Just watch what I do, OK?"

I stuff the rag into the neck of the bottle, then tip it on end until the gray rag darkens with soaked up liquid. "See what I'm doing? Get the rag good and wet with the acetone, then light it a couple of seconds before you toss it. Piece of cake. Understand?"

"Got it," he nods. "Umm... it's just, well, are you sure this is safe?"

I fill the third and final bottle, and stuff in the rag. "Bishop, I think at this juncture safety is very much a relative concept, don't you think?"

He frowns. "Huh?"

"Yeah, it's safe," I sigh, "so long as you don't drop it at your own feet."

Bishop still looks unsure. "Look, I don't want to say you're dumb or nothin', but see this label?" He picks up the plastic acetone bottle and points at the warning sign. "That means this stuff is explosive." He looks at me, and takes my blank expression for misunderstanding. "That means it might, y'know, blow up. You don't mess with this shit, understand? Are you sure you wanna set it on fire?"

I take the bottle out of his hand. "Bishop, look out the window. Look at those things in the street. Now look at this warning label and tell me what you're more afraid of." I set the bottle down on the windowsill beside the three Molotov cocktails. "The time for warning labels is over, know what I'm saying? Now look, don't worry about this stuff. I'll toss it out. You go look out the letterbox, and as soon as they move away from the truck sneak out and get ready to drive, OK?"

Bishop smiles, relieved, as if he thinks he's been given the safer job. "OK, sure, I can do that. You gotta hurry though, OK? I don't want to wait around for you out there."

"I'll be right on your heels, trust me." I glance at my watch. "I think we have about a half hour to get clear. OK, go on now. Good luck, Bishop."

The lumbering giant takes a deep breath then heads out to the hallway with a nervous look on his face. I turn back to the window, push it open as quietly as I can and pick up the first of the bottles. The acetone has already evaporated from the rag, so I tip the bottle upside down again until it darkens once more.

The wheel of the Zippo lighter sounds far too loud as I strike it, and I freeze for a moment as one of the infected outside looks up from his meal and casts his eyes around the street. He looks like he heard me, but I have no time to worry about it now. I hold the flame to the rag and flinch as it catches with a soft
woomph
and a pall of greasy smoke, and I slowly, carefully lean out the window and toss the flaming bottle with a slow, swinging underarm throw as far as I can down the street.

It lands with a dull thump around twenty yards away, in a little gated patch of grass beside a stoop three doors down. I can barely see it from the window, but it looks like the flame went out before it landed.
Shit
. Maybe the acetone isn't flammable enough?

I grab the second bottle and tip it on end, holding it upside down even longer this time, soaking the rag until it starts to drip onto the floor. Again I light the rag, and this time the fire is much more excitable. I lean out the window and toss it high up into the air and right in the middle of the street. I pray as it sails in a graceful arc and thank God as the bottle shatters on the asphalt, the sound echoing between the houses. The mob of infected look up as one at the pool of fire spreading in the middle of the road.

Their excitement is immediately obvious. Three of the group sprint at full speed towards the flame, and when they reach it they circle, confused, unsure whether it's something to be attacked.

But there's a problem. The fourth creature is still hunched over the body by the truck, facing away from the flames and oblivious to the excitement, and now his cohort has gotten out of the way I see why. The side of his face I can see is almost completely gone, eaten away. Even from this distance I can see his exposed jaw move as he uselessly chews, the meat falling out of his mouth as soon as he scoops it in. Where his ear once was is now just a pink, pulpy mass of blood and matted hair. He must be half deaf, and couldn't hear the bottle shatter.

My mind races as I try to think of a solution. Maybe I could toss the bottle a little closer to him in the hope that his other ear is good, but that might only draw the others back towards the truck. Maybe if I—

I freeze at the sound of the front door creaking open. I lean out the window and almost call out when I see Bishop step outside. He walks as if he's trying to be stealthy, but for someone that large it would be impossible. Even from here at the window I can hear each footstep as he treads down the steps.

The three infected at the fire seem oblivious, still entranced by the dancing flames, but I know the fourth will launch himself at Bishop the moment he sees him. There's just no way the guy can get into the truck without being detected, and his hands are empty apart from the keys. He doesn't even have a stick to fend it off.

There's nothing for it. I know it's a terrible plan but I grab the final Molotov cocktail and tip it up, soaking the rag. I only have a few seconds before Bishop is fucked. I light it with a
woomph
then toss it as precisely as I can, aiming for a spot just in front of the truck, within the creature's eyeline but out of view of the others.

As the bottle sails through the air my heart sinks. The flame goes out almost as soon as it leaves my hand, and it's wildly off target. In the time it takes to complete its arc I picture what will come next in my head. The bottle will shatter on the street, and all four infected will look up and see the big, lumbering oaf Bishop standing there with nothing but his dick in his hand. They'll tear him apart before he can take so much as a slow, leaden step, and he'll go to the grave with the truck keys. All that will be left for me is to find out whether I'll die in a fiery explosion or get torn apart by those fuckers outside running in through the wide open front door.

My mind is running so fast I barely notice the speed with which Bishop moves. Everything seems to move in slow motion as he sees the bottle, reaches out and scoops it from the air moments before it hits the asphalt, gripping it by the neck with his meaty fist. I don't dare breathe as I watch, amazed, as he brings the base of the bottle down on the back of the creature's head like he's stamping a library book. It doesn't even shatter. It just sends the thing silently sprawling to the ground with a knockout blow. Bishop turns slowly to the window, gives a cheery wave and flashes me the most shit-eating grin I've ever seen.

I don't waste any time. Already the fire down the street is dying, and I know as soon as Bishop starts the engine the three remaining infected will notice him. I limp as quickly as I can through the house, ignoring the pain radiating through my body, and reach the front door just in time to watch Bishop fire up the engine and fishtail out into the street with the squeal of spinning wheels.

"You
fuck
!" I yell after him, feeling the dull, impotent certainty that my last chance at survival is tearing away faster than I could ever hope to run. "You rotten fucking
cunt
!" I know there's no way to catch him, but I need to try anyway. I can't just stand here and wait for the end to come. If I die I'll die running, dreaming of what I'd do to that fat, cowardly prick if I ever caught up with him.

I almost fall down the steps in my rush to reach the street, swearing under my breath. The three infected have already begun to sprint towards me, and it's all I can do to force my legs to obey my commands. I break into a run knowing that every step is futile. I can't outpace them, and I sure as hell can't outdistance them. Even if I could I'd never make it out in time before the—

I hear a squeal at the end of the street, the tortured revving of an engine, and I almost can't believe what I'm seeing as I emerge from between the parked cars and get a clear look down the street.

The pickup barrels back down the street towards me, frighteningly quick, and in the moment before it reaches me I see Bishop's grinning face as clear as day through the windscreen. He speeds past me so close that I feel my jacket shift in the turbulence and I spin around just in time to see the truck mow down the three infected, scattering two of them like bowling pins and sending the third beneath the wheels. The truck bounces over it, crushing it to a pulp and leaving the thing sprawled in the middle of the street, twitching its shattered limbs and silently moving its jaw as if trying to bite the memory of the tires.

The truck cruises to a halt, and I see Bishop turn in his seat and look through the rear window as he shifts it into reverse. He drives backwards at speed, aiming for the broken creature, and this time shatters its skull beneath the wheels before bouncing off it and pulling to a stop beside me.

"Woo, what a
rush
!" Bishop grins like an overexcited kid and leans over to push open the passenger door. "Well, you waiting for a red carpet, your majesty? Come on, get in."

I don't say a word as I climb in the car and buckle up. I don't speak as Bishop shifts back into drive and bounces over the pulped body of the creature a final time. I only manage to catch my breath long enough to direct him south to the Verrazano Narrows bridge. My heart pounds in my throat, and my vision narrows to a pinpoint as unconsciousness finally overtakes me.

Fucking Bishop
.

I dream.

I dream the story told to me by Paul McQueen, my old friend back in Bangkok. I'm standing above the street, watching the terrified crowd turn. Searching for Kate in the chaos, hoping -
praying
- I'll find her in time to pull her away from the grasping hands trying to pull her down with them to hell.

There she is. I see her hiding from the violence by the side of the street, a solitary blonde head in amongst the dark haired crowd. I yell out to her at the top of my lungs, begging her to run, but my voice emerges as nothing more than a whisper. She can't hear me above the crowd. Doesn't even look my way. She's staring open mouthed at the horror around her. Teeth tearing into flesh. Fingers forcing their way into wounds, tearing them wide open as the victims scream. The street is awash with blood, flowing into every crack in the sidewalk. Filling the gutters until they overflow.

I try to run towards her, down to the street to pull her away to safety, but it feels as if I'm wading through molasses. I can't make any headway, and the crowd is only growing more frantic by the second.

Then I see him, standing between me and Kate, blocking the stairway down to the street. Sergeant Laurence. He towers over me, eight feet tall and grinning as he spots me. Blood drips from his smiling lips and runs down his chin and he chews a mouthful of flesh. My feet stick to the ground as if they're buried in cement. I can't move a muscle, even as Laurence charges towards me.

He tackles me by the waist and pushes me to the ground, pinning me down. I can't fight back. Can't even get in a punch as he begins to pummel me. I open my mouth to scream as he leans down over my prone body, but nothing emerges even as his hands reach into my mouth, one gripping each row of teeth, and he pulls my jaw wide open until the skin of my cheeks stretches so much it begins to tear.

Then... a bright light. Blinding. A sound like a freight train in my ears, overwhelming my senses until I can't even feel the pain any more. I close my eyes tight but the brightness doesn't diminish. I manage to raise my hands to my ears but the sound doesn't fade. It only grows louder, and louder still.

"Tom." I barely hear the voice above the roar.

"Tom." A little louder now, breaking through. I open my eyes just in time to see Kate standing above me, a silhouette against the blinding light.

"
Tom
!"

The sky falls away below me as I open my eyes. I see two suns set at once, one behind me, red, muted and hidden in haze, the other ahead, blindingly bright, impossibly large and close. Just a few feet away I see fire hanging down from above, the fierce flames swept towards me by the wind.

It takes my mind a moment to figure out what I'm looking at. I'm upside down, pinned to my seat by the belt that digs into my shoulder and cuts deeper into my skin with each breath.

I'm still not fully awake. I feel like I'm sitting safely in the back of my own head, watching my life roll by dispassionately on a screen. I look up, craning my neck to the ceiling, and see a shallow pool of blood gather in the creases of dented bare steel. Another drop splashes into the pool as I watch, and I smile at the hypnotic sight of the liquid rising from my head and levitating its way to the ceiling until it hits the pool and sends a ripple across the surface. For a moment I try to figure out the trick. How did they manage to make the blood weightless?

Oh yeah. Upside down. Huh.

It's the next explosion that finally tugs me back to the world. Through the cracked windscreen I watch as a black plane drops something, then banks and gains altitude as the falling object sprouts a parachute. It's weird to watch it upside down. It looks like the plane is sailing across a cloud sea, firing its payload high into the sky.

The rumbling of the jet finally reaches me as the parachute nears the ground, but I can't see it any more. It's vanished from my narrow little window on the world, and the thing it dropped falls slowly, gracefully, its silence in counterpoint to the roar of the jet. From my point of view the parachute looks like it's rising slowly into the air, like a balloon that slipped from a child's hand.

The first silent burst makes me flinch in my seat and wince as the belt cuts deeper. It pops silently in a gray cloud, like a monochrome firework, and my mouth gapes open as the gray burst suddenly erupts, a fraction of a second later, in a blinding flash of light, darkening to a deep orange. It's... I've never seen anything quite so beautiful. I can't tear my eyes away from the—

The shockwave hits me like a punch to the gut, forcing the air from my lungs. Colored spots appear in my eyes as I struggle for breath, and just a second later the noise reaches me, deafeningly loud. Distant car alarms begin to sound, and somewhere far behind me dogs howl, startled by the noise of the blast.

My mind clears in an instant, and with it the pain returns with full force. I reach up to my side and fumble for a moment until I find the seatbelt release, and I press the button without thinking. I fall hard, landing headfirst in the pool of blood gathered above me, and I scramble quickly through the broken window, my palms digging into shards of shattered safety glass strewn like gravel across the ground.

"Bishop," I call, my voice hoarse and low. "
Bishop
!" I feel like I've swallowed a bag of sand, my throat hurts so much.

As my vision clears I lay on my hands and knees and stare, confused at the scene around me. On either side of the road great steel rods climb high into the air like the bars of a giant's prison cell. Out in front an enormous archway towers over me, the road leading beneath it and on towards the setting sun, away from the artificial sun burning bright in the opposite direction.

It's only after a few moments of confusion that I realize I'm on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a couple of hundred meters from the Staten Island shore. I haven't crossed the bridge in years - nobody goes to Staten Island without a damned good reason - but I've seen it in the distance often enough to recognize the shape.

Ahead of me the world looks perfectly normal, just as it did yesterday. The sun sets on another lazy spring Saturday in America. Tomorrow it will rise like always to light gardeners tending their yards, golfers perfecting their swing on pristine, overpriced courses, moms cooking and freezing next week's gluten free, low carb meals, bored kids firing racist slurs through their gaming headsets, and everything else people do with their Sundays.

Behind me...

Behind me life will never be the same again for those few who managed to get out. I turn back to look at the Long Island shore and see nothing but destruction. A thick, greasy pall of black smoke climbs high in the sky and spreads as far as the eye can see, hiding the bare, bleached bones of my city. Buildings are flattened right up to the shore parkway, and more collapse as I watch. The smell reaches me, carried on the breeze. It's indescribable.
Everything
burning, all at once. Wood. Tires. Trees. Gasoline. Plastic.

People.

My mind can't possibly grasp the extent of the destruction. It's just too big to fit in one head. I can stare at the ruins, but I can't make myself believe that somewhere hidden beneath that shroud of smoke my apartment has been blown apart by an unimaginable force, and everything in it scattered to the wind. My clothes. My ATM cards. My passport, laptop, cameras, the half finished memoir I've spent the last year of my life writing, and every photo I ever took. I can't believe that my parents' house in Queens is gone, following the path they themselves took years ago. Somewhere in the smoldering wreckage their bones are buried, six feet beneath the ground in a cemetery within a cemetery.

My old high school is gone, and the playground where I had my first kiss with Tammy DiMicco. The dank, smoky little bar on Doughty Street where I once got an awkward handjob in the restroom from a middle aged woman who wore rings on all her fingers. The humid little bodega where I buy my cigarettes, always filled with a strange, overpowering spicy smell I could never quite place. All gone.

And then there's Manhattan itself.

I can't even think about that right now. It's too much. Too big. Its destruction belongs in movie theaters and nightmares, not the real world.

I look north, and for a moment - just a brief, beautiful moment - I manage to forget the destruction. Far off in the distance, almost too small to see and hidden beneath the smoke, a familiar sight stands tall. Marooned in the middle of the upper bay, briefly caught in the light of the setting sun, the Statue of Liberty rises high above the black water.

"At least you made it, girl," I whisper. I know it's dumb, but I feel comforted that some remnant of the city I've called home for almost thirty years still stands. Even if everything else has been wiped from the earth and ground into the dirt, at least she's still there to mark the grave on the map.

Here Lies New York City.