The Undead Situation (4 page)

“At school, my sister claimed zombies would be real some day. I didn’t listen to her, of course. Who the fuck would, right? Embarrassing.”

Gabe often tried to bring up normal life, but I found it awkward, and the conversation never progressed beyond an “oh” or “yeah” from me and ensuing silence from her. This time, when she brought up her sister, I didn’t dismiss her quite as fast.

My sister never claimed zombies would be real, but she said a lot of other strange things. Ivy never spoke a word to anyone but me, and when she did she told high tales so convincingly, sometimes I thought they were true. Her favorite theory was that two small men lived under our house, each coming up only to slap her once and take mayonnaise from the fridge. To deter the villains, she methodically buried new mayo and rinsed the container until the smell was gone.

I never said a word to our grandparents about what Ivy said or did, so they had no clue what kind of mental state she was in, which was for the best.

It wasn’t as though I didn’t care about her. I did and still do. But I knew our grandparents would force her into therapy, just like they did to me when I was even younger than she. If I did one good thing for Ivy, it would be to keep quiet about her abnormalities.

Thinking of my sister left me feeling weighed down and listless. What I felt must’ve been tangible, because Gabe started off down the hall, perhaps picking up on my change of mood.

My favorite boredom spot was the middle of the living room floor, which is where she always moseyed to when she was interested in conversation. I was alone again, waiting for her return. This time she took her time in coming back, but came back nevertheless.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven,” I said, figuring she knew she’d hit a sensitive spot.

Gabe sat next to me, a little too close, and set a hand on my shoulder. I stiffened, but didn’t move away.
She isn’t coming onto you
, I reassured myself,
just trying to comfort you.

“My sister was hard to deal with. My parents said she had Asperger’s Syndrome. It made it really hard for her to talk to people, but when she did she said stuff like that. She was just…awkward.”

I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this, but for some odd reason I felt comforted. Hesitant, I said, “There was something wrong with my sister when we were kids. She’s normal now.”

She pulled her hand away and stood up. “I wish I’d listened to her. Not about the zombie thing, but about
everything
. She was the only sister I had and now she’s gone.”

An unfamiliar tightness in my chest started, and my eyes felt hot. I didn’t respond, knowing if I did I might cry.

Crying was a sign of weakness. To make sure I never got that close to it again, I took to lying around my bedroom, door shut, instead. She couldn’t make me cry if she never saw me.

* * *

Gabriella worried. It was natural at this point in the game, but my opinion of her declined because of her insecurity. At first the battle-hardened youngster didn’t mind staring at a wall for hours. Without stress, she would sleep away the nighttime and sunlight hours. She was a cool cat, but after a few days she became as jittery as a nervous horse.

(I hate horses. No zombie apocalypse could ever change that.)

A few days after her arrival she asked me what was going to happen. We hadn’t spoken even a page of dialogue, and the question was one requiring a novelette to answer. I shrugged. That spoke volumes.

Gabriella worried, but I didn’t. At the onset of her insecurities I began to wonder why I didn’t care like she did. Why, with each passing day, she grew more and more sullen, while I remained flat lined in the emotional department. Was it because she coasted on a level of humanity I couldn’t get to? Or was it because I was on a higher level of being? One that didn’t require humanity or anything parallel to it?

“What were you going to do? Before you decided to wait for your friend.”

The question itself seemed void of real emotion or curiosity. It was raw but sterile. I wondered why she was even asking if she held no interest. But I’d never been good at reading people. No zombie apocalypse would ever change that either.

“In reference to what?”

“All this.” She waved her hands to emphasize the nonexistent concept. “What were you going to do about the zombies? This isn’t a movie. It’s not like you’re going to find a mall and camp out. You’re not going to get on a boat and sail away, and you certainly aren’t going to Rambo it.”

Gabe, as I had come to call her, was sitting on the kitchen counter staring at me. I felt unsettled.

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

“Why did you ask then?”

“I don’t know.”

Time clicked away our lives as we sat in silence, simply looking at one another.

“I was going to wait for them to all rot and fall apart.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The whole world?”

“I wouldn’t have to worry about the whole world. Just this general side of the U.S.”

“That would take a long time,” she said, seeking flaws in my plan.

“Time never was an issue for me. It isn’t for anyone now.”

She rolled her eyes, which was her way of agreeing or admitting defeat. “Then what would you do? After they were rotted and gone? There would be no one left.”

I grunted. “I’ve lived for ten years without the world. It doesn’t need me. I don’t need it.”

Her laugh was bubbly and out of place in the situation. It disturbed me. How could I be the source of such amusement? I almost looked for a secondary cause.

“You’re such an old man. A hermit. What then? Once you have the whole world to yourself?”

“I’d keep on dying like I am now, until I died. Only difference is I wouldn’t have to be as social as right now.”

She clenched her jaw, rage evidently too intense to remain suppressed. Removing herself from the counter, she stood facing me, hands flexing in and out of fists. I stood up, accepting her challenge.

“It’s always been people like you who fuck our world over. People like you who don’t give a damn about anyone but yourselves!”

Her shouting made me edgy. My soundproofing stopped the undead from hearing, but that didn’t make me feel better. I didn’t want to have any part of whatever emotional baggage she was unpacking on me.

“You act as though I’m the one who has issues,” I said. “In reality, I’m the one who’s still living peacefully. Excuse me, who lived peacefully until you showed up.”

Gabe didn’t move an inch as I walked towards her, face contorting with spite for something still unknown to me.

Closer yet I moved, one small step after another, closing the seven feet between us. I gambled farther into my speech, knowing it would distract her from my catlike advance.

“I believe I saved you. I believe you are also extremely ungrateful.”

Six feet.

“Your soul-tormenting issues probably pile higher than the world’s current body count, alive or dead. Right, Gabe?”

Five feet.

“You’re jealous I don’t have the petty attachments to normal life like you do.”

Four feet, my voice lowered.

“You’re jealous of my freedom, my ability to be so cynical without any guilt.”

Three feet. My voice was a husky whisper.

“You want the life I have. The life of a recluse who can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, even in this chaos.”

At two feet away, I loomed over the small teenager. She tilted her head to keep eye contact, still holding her vow of silence. I leaned closer, stealing away the space that gave her false protection.

“And worst of all—for you—is you know I’m right.”

When silence still greeted me, I became angry. I wanted a response and she wasn’t giving me one. She dredged up old, painful memories every day. She made me
feel
things I didn’t want to feel, remember things I did not want to remember. I abhorred domestic violence, so I wasn’t sure why I did what I did next. I grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed my head against hers.

She screamed in pain and fell to the floor. Unhurt by the head-butt, I dropped to my knees and grabbed her calves as she tried to flip onto her other side and scramble away. Pulling her closer to me was effortless, as was my goal to entrap her. Before I scored, she managed to bring her knees up and kick out, hitting the center of my chest. I wasn’t expecting it. Air burst from my lungs as I fell backwards, head connecting with the dining room table before meeting the ground. A searing hot pain flashed in my head, and my vision became foggy.

Gabe got up and prepared to take advantage of my position. She succeeded with a poor kick. As her boot joined my kidney, I grabbed her ankle and twisted hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to break. She yelped and lost her balance, while I held fast to her sprained ankle.

In control again, I twisted around until I could grab her other foot and knock her to the ground. I climbed on top of her, returning her cheap kick with an equally dishonorable punch. Blood burst from her mouth, droplets splattering onto my otherwise clean carpet.

With my free hand I grabbed at my belt, pulling it from its loops.

I realized I had been screaming at her the whole time, but I hadn’t been paying attention to the words flying from my mouth. She was screaming too, but I didn’t care what she had to say.

The belt went around her hands, just as a temporary binding until I could get something better. I yanked at it, eliciting another scream from her as it tightened and ripped at her flesh.

“What to do, what to do, what to do,” I said, dragging my hostage from the kitchen to my bedroom. My muscles strained from the effort.

I smiled at Gabe. In return, she let off a string of profanities followed by a projectile of saliva. Unfazed by her insanity, I flung the closet open and pulled out a ring of black cord.

After much fighting, much yelling and hitting—a bloody nose for her and a split lip for me—I bound her wrists in front of her.

Our final moments before I threw her off the balcony were very pleasant.

“I hope you burn in hell, you motherfucker!”

“We’ll burn together, baby.”

* * *

Gabe fell two and a half stories down. Dangling from the black cord I held, she bounced a few times. So I changed tactic and slowly lowered her. Only a few Zs were on the street, but the louder we were the more they would come.

The balconies weren’t directly under one another. Below mine was brick wall, but to the right was another balcony. It was far enough away Gabe couldn’t get to it, close enough to remain an idol of false hope for her. But I knew it was unrealistic to leave her hanging by the wrists for very long. Loss of blood circulation could cause the loss of limbs and other maladies. I shifted the rope far enough to the side so the tips of her boots rested on the lower balcony, easing the strain on her wrists. But she could still smell the rotting corpses and see the fine details of their decomposition, which was what counted.

Her little episode forced me to take action, to discipline her. The new world, the world after the zombies, wouldn’t tolerate her kind. If and when Earth recovered from the walking dead, the survivors would be the cold and heartless.

Who was I kidding? I didn’t like Gabe, but that’s not why I lost it. She was too much my opposite. She felt too many things and made me second guess myself and remember the person I used to be. Hell, she even made me remember a toy train I got for Christmas when I was seven. But I had to keep up the act. I had to pretend I was a sociopath, since I couldn’t reverse what I’d done.

“See what happens when you have outbursts?” I called down.

She flailed, slipping on the railing before settling once again. Stopping, she looked up at me. A raw, bright streak of blood washed down her mouth and chin.

“Let me back up!”

Laughing, I shook my head and proceeded to tie the cord securely to the metal railing in front of me.

“Why?”

“Simple, you dick! The longer I stay here, the more of those things will come. They’ll climb on top of each other until they can reach your damn safe haven.”

Her point was farfetched. It held a smidge of validity, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t be able to stay there forever, as much as I would’ve liked to.

“I suppose they’ll get you first, seeing how you’re down there,” I stretched my arms above my head, groaning at the pleasant feeling of muscles working, wincing at the pain in my chest and abdomen, “and Pickle and I are up here.”

Metallic, putrid scents wafted upward. Across from me, a freakishly obese man walked onto his balcony. His arm was out if its socket, hanging on by a thread, and coagulated blood soaked his left side. Even a complete idiot would be able to tell he was dead, what with the vacant white eyes and moaning.

I motioned to Mr. Chunk and the zombies gathered below her. “I guess I’d better leave you to the party. I never was one for parties. Too social for my liking.”