Zombie Tales: Primrose Court Apt. 502 (4 page)

The drunk had reached the prone cop,
officer number two, and looked to be attempting mouth to mouth but
it was hard for Tommy to be sure from this distance. He watched
Officer Bradley throw himself to his knees next to his
partner.

“Oh God,” The cop shouted, Tommy could
hear him clear as a bell, “Oh God, what the fuck? What the
fuck?”

Tommy turned in time to see the Asian
lady climb back to her feet. Tommy had thought she was a goner for
sure, but she began a slow shuffling walk towards Mr. Grimly. Tommy
wondered if his neighbor would help the poor woman.

There was another loud
blast from a gun and Tommy turned back just in time to see the
drunk CPR guy hit the pavement and a halo of blood spilled out of
the back of his head.
It’s like a
movie,
Tommy thought.
You never get this much action on TV. This was like a summer
blockbuster.

Mr. Grimly got his bags in the trunk,
but as he turned the Asian lady grabbed at his arm. Grimly pulled
his arm away and then took a second to glace at the lady. He did a
double take, took one step back, and then shoved the lady away from
him.

A plumbing truck just happened to be
racing up the street at the time. The passenger’s side of the truck
literally bounced up when the wheels went over the body. Just like
the taxi this driver didn’t stop. Tommy didn’t even see brake
lights.

Mr. Grimly managed to make it into the
driver’s seat of his car and the old Lincoln sputtered and smoked
as he started it and revved the engine up. Tommy could see for a
few blocks in each direction and it wasn’t until the action in
front of his building had died down that he bothered. What had just
happened on the street below him had been unbelievable, but on the
next block over he saw crashed cars and more drunks, more people
were screaming and more people were being run down by speeding
cars.

Tommy took another Camel from his pack
and lit it with shaky hands. He took a long drag and closed his
eyes. The noise he heard wasn’t the usual chaotic noise of the
city; There was a frantic undertone to it, people laid on their car
horns, the crunching of crashing vehicles, the high whine of racing
engines, the screams of the injured and dying, all overlaid with
the incessant shriek of sirens and alarms.

“Hey, kid?” Officer Bradley said, once
again appearing in the window.

“God damn it!” Tommy yelled, “I swear,
Carl, you are not cut out for this line of work.”

“Tommy,” Officer Bradley spoke over the
top of Tommy, “do you have a first aid kit. I got Adam up here, but
that man… that man chewed half of his face off.”

“Chewed?” Tommy asked, “You mean like
bit him?

“I mean the guy fucking ate half of my
partner’s face! Now, do you have medical supplies?”

“…
There are a few things
in the medicine cabinet and there might be some gauze in the drawer
next to the fridge.”

“Is that it?”

“Well, what the fuck do you want,
Ricky? This ain’t a hospital. Aren’t you supposed to have a kit in
your car, for when you come across bad accidents and
stuff?”

“Yeah, but it’s not safe down there no
more kid.”

Tommy looked down into the street.
There were the three bodies of the drunks that the cops had put
bullets in, they lay motionless in pools of blood. The Asian lady
was also in a pool of blood, but she was still crawling up the
street with her crushed legs dragging behind her.

“Looks pretty clear to me, Carl,” Tommy
said.

“Fuck you kid, why don’t you just go
ahead and jump?” Officer Bradley said through clenched
teeth.

Officer Bradley disappeared for a long
while. Tommy watched the city around him. Small columns of smoke
were rising for miles in every direction he could see.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Officer Bradley
said, “Move over, kid.”

The cop hopped up onto the ledge and
tried to scramble towards him, but his knee slipped off the edge
and he grabbed for it with both hands as his body swung in thin
air.

“Jesus,” Officer Bradley panted,
“Jesus, kid, give me a hand. Help me back up.”

Tommy started to scoot across the ledge
toward the officer, but then the torn face of his partner was
there. One of his eyes had been completely destroyed and the entire
left half of his face was gone. There were still bits of stringy
flesh dangling from the cheek bone, but Tommy could see all of the
teeth on that side.

Tommy couldn’t move. The thing that had
been Officer Adam crawled up onto the ledge and began to chew on
his partners fingers. Officer Bradley screamed and tried to
reposition his hand, but the teeth followed and cop number one
couldn’t maintain his grip. He dropped, his legs hit the ledge of
the fourth floor and his body tumbled end over end. When his head
hit the concrete it broke open and splattered the sidewalk like a
bucket of paint had been spilled.

Cop number two was really committed to
snacking on his partner because before Officer Bradley’s body even
stopped twitching, Officer Adam had climbed head first over the
edge and slammed down next to him. The lower half of cop number two
was twisted at an odd angle, but he didn’t seem to mind at all, as
he went to work chewing through his partner’s ribcage.

Tommy didn’t want to jump anymore. He
lit his last cigarette and threw the empty pack down into the
street. He took a few more long drags then the power went out.
Several of the alarms died with the power and some of the police
sirens faded away. There weren’t any cars on the streets anymore,
at least none that were moving. As the sun set Tommy decided, he
didn’t want to die.

He would have crawled back in the
living room window if his mother hadn’t been standing there. Her
bloody hands fumbled along the ledge as she silently grabbed at
him, but he was out of reach. He stared at her blank, Little Orphan
Annie eyes and knew at that point that he wanted to live more now
than he ever had in his twenty-three years on the
planet.

He turned away from his mother, the
zombie, then and tossed his lighter down into the courtyard. If he
was going to live, he was going to have to be a non-smoker there
was no way he was getting another pack anytime soon. He looked back
at the crazy zombie standing in the window and wondered how long
she could possible last.

What follows is an excerpt
from the novel this short story is based on…

DON

OF THE

LIVING DEAD

By

Robert DeCoteau

A

ZOMBIE TALES
PRESS

Publication

CHAPTER ONE

I can’t claim to have seen
every zombie movie known to man, but I have seen most of the good
ones, from the old black and white George A. Romero flicks to the
modern day,
Resident Evil
flicks. Many of them begin with the damage
already done. We meet the characters sometime after their survival
skills have kicked in. On occasion, we see how those characters
encountered their first zombie; sometimes it's in a graveyard,
sometimes in their home, or, more recently, in a secret underground
laboratory.

My first encounter was nothing like in
the movies. I was sitting on the toilet.

Don't laugh.

I am one of those rare few that are so
regular you could set your watch by my bowel movements, no fiber
added.

It all started on a Wednesday afternoon
in May. My allotted half hour lunch break was over and I was taking
my mid afternoon constitutional.

After nine years crunching numbers for
the same company, I had conditioned my body. I drank my morning
coffee at my desk in my little cubical, ran numbers and cost
analysis until twelve-thirty, took my lunch until one o’clock, and
then spent fifteen relaxing minutes on the pot.

Who can blame me for taking my fifteen
minutes on the clock? I'm sure everyone has the same mentality
about their employers; everyone has been force to suffer with fewer
benefits, less pay, and less time off. The recession has put most
companies, from the giants like Wal-Mart to the lowly mom and pop
stores in the same predicament. But even with all its drawbacks
there are benefits to businesses during a recession. One of the
benefits is that for every employee on staff there are two or three
equally qualified individuals out there just waiting for the
opportunity to take the job, often for less money.

My job was definitely not secure. Even
with all my time working for Comdex Pharmaceuticals, I was just as
expendable as the next guy; maybe more so, I was one of the highest
paid accountants in the company. They could hire one of the young
fresh graduates off the street for nearly half of what they paid
me.

I work hard, but I see no reason to
waste any part of my lunch break in the john. Other than a pen or
two and maybe a few sheets of copy paper, those fifteen minutes are
my only extra compensation for the wonderful job I did at Comdex.
But I suppose I should quit rambling and just start at the
beginning.

Lunch had been a frantic race to find
Rebecca, the sandwich girl. She made her rounds in our building
every day, but ultimately she seemed to forget me three times a
week. It wasn’t by accident of course. I don't know what her
problem was. I mean, sure I asked her out once, but when she said
no I didn't push. I don't know why everything got awkward after
that. I'm an adult and she's an adult, just because she didn't want
to be an adult with me doesn't mean I don't still like
sandwiches.

That day, by the time I caught up to
her on the third floor, all she had left was turkey on rye. I can't
stand rye bread, why would anyone fuck up a perfectly good loaf of
bread like that? I bought it anyway, because I hate spending the
afternoon with an empty stomach more than I hate rye.

She sold the sandwich to me, but was
very flippant about it, like just because I chased her down to
purchase something for lunch, she had grounds for a sexual
harassment suit.

As if, I thought. Plenty of other girls
out there refused to date me, why would she think she was so
special.

I mean, sure Rebecca was attractive and
had eyes that flirted from across the room whether she knew it or
not, but I don't see how selling sandwiches out of a basket puts
you anywhere close to the top of the most eligible single woman
list.

Anyway, I had to eat my sandwich on the
move. By the time I caught up to her, purchased the sandwich, and
got my change, I had ten minutes left to get back to my
office.

The elevator ride back up to the fourth
floor was not at all note worthy. I got a few strange looks from
the other passengers because I was woofing down my turkey on rye,
but fuck them. There is no law that says you're supposed to stand
all ridged staring at the numbers above the door waiting for your
floor. I was hungry and I wasted precious time chasing down the
bitch that didn't have time to date me.

I got off the elevator on my floor,
humming the tune to some bluesy number that had been playing in
there. I tried to remember the words but quickly gave it up, words
were not my thing. Numbers were my thing.

I made my way to my cubical eating my
entire sandwich except the bottom crust; I tossed that into my
wastepaper basket. I booted up my computer and made sure the
spreadsheet on my screen looked like I had been working hard. My
screensaver was set for twenty minutes, more than enough time for
me to hit the restroom, but still have proof that I had returned
from lunch and started crunching the sales figures
again.

I gave Marcy a little wave as I passed
the reception area. She looked right at me but pretended that she
didn't see, putting her hand up to the headset she was wearing and
turning in her plush leather office chair.

Bitch.

I had been there for her. When she and
Julio from the mailroom broke up, I was her shoulder to cry on. I
bolstered her self esteem. I helped her understand that Julio's
need to screw other people had nothing to do with her. And what did
I get for all my trouble?

Nothing, that's what.

I didn't force myself on her. I mean,
that's what you're thinking, right? That I tried to make a move on
her while she was crying in my arms. Well, that's not how it
happened at all. I was a perfect gentleman. After she had somewhat
recovered from her falling out with “Don Juan” Julio, she started
badmouthing me all over the office, said I tried to take advantage
of her. There is no doubt in my mind that it was because she had
seen my crappy studio apartment and had second thoughts about me
and her.

She played it off like I was relentless
in my pursuit of her to the point of bordering on harassment. Like
I got nothing better to do than beg dumb chicks for sex, so much
for being the nice guy.

So that day was much like
any other. I enter the men's room at the end of the hall to do my
business with my copy of
USA Today
under my arm; well truth be told it wasn't my
copy; I didn't actually have a subscription. I routinely stole the
copy from the waiting area, but who cares? Who really expects to
have up-to-date reading material when they’re sitting in a waiting
area anyway?