Zombie, Illinois (22 page)

“Oh no,” Ben whispers.

“Relax, they're way down the block”

“But they see us. I don't think we have enough bullets to kill them all, even if you
are
a good shot.”

I ponder the situation. The zombies slink a few feet closer. A couple of them moan. Others manage horrible, aquatic gurgles. Their rotted out throats give them the voices of half-evolved monstrosities—like things you'd see floating in glass jars in a freak show trying to speak. And what they're trying to say is that they're coming to eat us.

“We go around” I tell Ben. “We'll cut through side streets. Or, wait! Better idea. We'll just go back into the park and head north a few blocks to 43rd Street”

“Uh, no we won't,” Ben says, tapping my shoulder hard.

I swivel around and see another group of zombies about the same size. They have just crested the hill at the entrance to the park. They are even closer to us than the other group. If they haven't noticed us yet, they will in a few moments.

“Side streets it is.”

In my job as a reporter, I'll often ask a colleague how a particular alderman or state senator—who seems so dense that he'd be hard-pressed to remember where his penis is located each time he has to urinate—has managed to rise to a position of power in city or state government. It's not uncommon for the response to involve a knowing wink and a jocular “Him? Let's just say he knows where the bodies are buried.”

Zombies, though,
are
the bodies that are buried. When a zombie outbreak happens and the dead reanimate, where bodies are buried ceases to be classified knowledge. It ceases to be a source of power. Everybody can see where the bodies are buried—or, perhaps more accurately,
were
buried—because they're climbing out of the ground and coming to eat you.

Following Maria down these twisting side streets and alleys of the south side, I am terrified, exhausted, and—if I'm being honest—a little turned on. But I'm also aware of a world around me that has changed forever. The bodies are no longer buried. The laws—at the least the old ones—are no longer in effect. Even the back alleys know that things are different. Even the dumpsters riddled with bullet holes and gang graffiti seem to have got the idea. This is a different world. A new one. Though thousands of people have passed through these darkened side streets, we're the first to be traversing them in a zombie apocalypse. Things have started over again. This is the year 1 A. Z.
Anno Zombi.

Maria and I are explorers in a new world. Who knows what we will find in it?

We run and run through these streets that were never well known to me but are now completely foreign and strange. My gut shakes, and sometimes I'm afraid my pants will fall down, but they don't. I can feel my waist rubbing raw against my belt, though. It's not pleasant.

Maria seems to be having no belt-oriented difficulties. She jumps over rotting garbage and hurdles fences like an African deer of some kind. She still has scratches on her face and some swelling around one of her eyes, but none of it is slowing her down. I struggle to keep up and hike up my pants whenever she's not looking.

“Here,” she says as we turn down a new street. “I think I know where we are. We just need to go around this corner and through the alley. My aunt's place is like a block past.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to conceal just how hard I want to pant. “Sounds good. No problem.”

We round the corner and trot down an alley bordered on one side by garages and on the other by the flat face of an apartment building. Halfway through, the alley is narrowed by rows of green dumpsters placed side by side. Past that, it becomes an obstacle course of dumpsters—some overturned—where no garbage truck could ever pass. I can't decide if someone has done this recently and intentionally as an impromptu fortification or if this is just an especially horrible part of town where ordered garbage collection is not in the cards.

Ahead of me, Maria slows to a creep and holds her automatic at the ready. She carefully picks her way through the maze of dumpsters. Some are five feet tall. Trash and filth cover the street. Most of it is not covered with snow. I realize this maze must be a recent development.

Maria suddenly freezes. Does she see something? Is something wrong? Without looking back, Maria very slowly turns and shakes her foot at the ground next to her. I look and see a dead man in the trash. A hunting rifle is still in his grip. His throat and the back of his head have been mashed in or eaten out. Probably a little bit of both.

If this was the guy who built this dumpster-maze, then where's the zombie that got him?

Seconds later, my question is answered in a horrible way.

Maria passes through a shadowy pair of overturned dump-sters. Before I can do the same, a single white limb extends from the shadows between us.

A figure emerges. It's a woman, maybe five foot six, with dark blonde hair. She moves slowly. Lithe. Confident. Like a living human being, which—I realize moments later—she is not.

Gore is matted into her hair, and her fingers are red with blood. Moreover, it's freezing and snowing, but she's wearing a green sun dress. She does not appear to shiver.

“Maria!” I call. She wheels on her feet and ducks just in time as the zombie claws for the back of her head.

“Move, dumbass! I'll hit you!” Maria cries back.

I fall to my stomach and take a face full of snow.

Ka-POW! Ka-POW!

Maria puts two bullets into the zombie's skull. It falls motionless to the snow. Wary of repeating the ordeal with the overweight, diapered woman, I quickly roll away to avoid contact. It's the right move. The dead woman's head comes to rest in the place where my body had been moments ago. Her green eyes stare up into the darkness. I watch a single snowflake land on her pupil. It does not melt; her eyes are very cold.

“Any others?” Maria asks, peering all around us, brandishing her weapon.

I look around the lonely dumpsters and strewn trash. I see nothing.

“Nope,” I say, rising to my feet and dusting myself off.

“C'mon, let's get out of here,” Maria says. “Camouflage works both ways. I don't think the zombies use it on purpose, but they still use it.”

We hurry through the remaining dumpsters and head toward the buildings beyond.

Maria's aunt lives in a Chicago-style bungalow. Between Frank Lloyd Wright, the legions of skyscrapers in the Loop, and the Prairie School, the bar for architecture in Chicago is pretty high. Which makes bad, uninspired, boring architecture—like every Chicago-style bungalow ever built—stand out all the more starkly. As is typical of houses on the city's south side, all of the windows are barred. Even from a distance, I can see that the front door has three or four locks on it.

As we draw closer to the yellowish-brown house, what stands out are not the bars and locks. Rather, it's the very large man waiting outside the front door. His arms are crossed, and he looks up and down the block every few moments. He is not trying to conceal his presence. He looks like he is here for a reason. There is nobody else on the street.

“Do you know him?” I whisper to Maria. We huddle in the shadows of a garage across the street.

“Never seen him before.”

“He doesn't look armed.”

“He's armed.”

“But I don't see—”

“He's armed.”

I rub my chin and wonder what to do.

“What's he doing in front of your aunt's house?”

“That's the question, doye,” she shoots back. “And I think the best way to answer it is from a position where he can't shoot me. I don't think he's a friend of my dad's. I don't think my dad would post somebody outside like that.”

“No?”

“No,” insists Maria. “It's supposed to be secret that we both know to meet at this place. A dude out front just attracts attention.”

“We could get the drop on him.”

“Um . . . I think
I
could,” Maria says, looking me up and down. “Do you mind being the diversion?”

“Huh?”

Maria proposes a scenario in which I get the large man's attention while she sneaks up from behind. I'm the bait. I'm the one he's going to see.

And, I mean,
maybe
I'm right about the gun thing.
Maybe
this guy is unarmed. There's no way to tell from here.

The real question is if I'm man enough to do this. I decide that I am.

Maria slinks into the shadows and takes a circuitous route to the back of the house. She is unobserved by the man. A few moments later, I step out of the darkened garage and begin to stride across the street. The man notices me after just two steps.

He is perhaps thirty, black, and wears a stocking cap on his head. He also wears a slightly puffy North Face coat. He's also huge. As I get closer, I can tell it's not just the cut of the coat—this guy is built. He has a v-shaped torso and very large arms. For an instant, I feel protected by my AK. Then his hand flies to his hip, where a gun is sequestered.

“Hey there,” I say with a smile. I try to give off the vibe of neighbor coming outside to commiserate about a power outage. (But instead of flashlights we carry guns, and instead of waiting for the electric company are waiting for.. .who the fuck knows.) I keep a smile on my face and approach slowly. If he's used to guns at all—which I am not—he's almost definitely going to be able to draw and fire before I can even correctly shoulder my AK.and I'm not even sure it has any bullets left.

The man does not smile. He frowns and cocks his head to the side. His fingers dance above his pocket like a typist working an invisible keyboard.

Oh fuck, I think. Where the hell is Maria?

Moments later I have my answer.

With the dusting of snow masking her lithe footfalls, Maria steals out from the shadows and creeps up behind the man. She takes exaggerated steps, like a cartoon character sneaking. I try not to look directly at her so the man won't notice. At the same time, anything that will keep him from deciding to shoot me sounds pretty good. Still, I manage to keep my line of sight mostly just straight ahead.

Maria reaches a spot directly behind the man. For an instant he seems to sense her presence and begins to turn his head. In that same instant, Maria presses the barrel of her gun into his ear. She looks supremely confident. Has she done this before, or is it just the primal need to find her family that lends such courage? Either way, it's pretty cool.

“Do not take even so much as a step,” Maria says. “If you don't want to die, you're going to raise your hands right now.”

The man obeys, blinking frantically and shrinking from Maria's gun like it's electrified. He has a look on his face like a losing coach whose team has just been defeated by a trick play.

“Who are you and what the fuck are you doing here?” Maria asks plainly when the man's hands are raised.

“Now hang on, hang on,” he says.

He's cowering but still articulate. This is—I realize—probably much more than I would be in the same situation. I raise my own gun and hurry over.

“Where the
hell
is my father?”

“Lady, who's your—?” the man begins.

“Frankie Munoz,” she clarifies. “Alderman Munoz.”

The man's eyes shoot back and forth.

“I don't know where he is.but he's safe,” the man insists. “Please. I work for the city council. I'm
supposed
to be here. Please.”

“Why are you standing in front of my great-aunt's house?”

“The mayor died a few hours ago, out in Mt. Carmel Cemetery,” the man says.

“Yeah,” I say, piping up. “I saw it on TV.”

“What does that have to do with my father?” Maria asks. She shoots me a daggered look, annoyed that I have interrupted her interrogation. She presses her gun deeper into the wincing man's ear.

“When the mayor dies in office, power shifts to the vice mayor,” the cowering man explains. “He or she is in charge until the city council can elect a replacement.”