I felt like wringing that asshole's neck when he pushed pass me. Turns out that that would have been a bad move, but I still felt like it. In fact, I like to think that if I didn't have such a temper, I wouldn't have chased after Tyler when he ran for that friggin' mansion, and Ginger, fat-ass, and me all would have just stood there, staring at those jets like deer at headlights until they bombed the hell out of us and everything else.
But thanks to my desire to wreak havoc on his larynx, we chased Tyler all the way into the basement of that house. There was a dead woman right there in the door, and I almost laughed when I saw him trip over it. I didn't laugh though, because I had enough sense to know that it wasn't funny just yet. Later, in a few weeks, when all of this was just a memory, then yeah, we'd laugh about it. But not now.
Come to think of it, I don't even know why Ginger and Charles bothered to follow me. We didn't know the true intent of those jets like Tyler somehow did, so I figured that they'd just stand there waiting for salvation or something and go get that dumbass later. Maybe Ginger wanted to make sure I didn't kill him after all the shit we'd been through, and then Charles would be left alone, and he wouldn't like that, so he followed too.
I said something like, "Where the fuck are you going, Ty?!" before sprinting after him, and then Gingy and fat-ass followed. Like I said, he tripped, flew through the doorway, and then down a flight of stairs. I could've sworn I heard something of his crack on the way down. We made it about to the head of that stairway before something knocked us the rest of the way down. It wasn't like a shove, or nothing, it was like...to be honest, I can't really describe it, but it was loud as hell and burned like it too. Fuckin' jets were dropping bombs on us. Not ladders like they were supposed to, but bombs.
I don't remember much after that. I just woke up some time later in the dark. I'll admit, I almost pissed myself from fear, I wouldn't be a man if I didn't admit at least that much. It was black as hell at night, (a lot of things reminded me of hell, lately) and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It was the kind of dark you get when your little brother accidentally turns off the light after taking a piss while you're in the shower: it's sudden, scary because you weren't expecting it and you're in a very vulnerable position, and their isn't shit you can do about it except call for someone to turn the light back on.
I didn't call for anybody -at least I have that much sense- but I sure felt like it. The air was really cold, especially compared to the fire from the explosion; I couldn't tell, but I think my back was burned up pretty bad. The air was really wet, too, and I was laying on concrete, or at least I think it was concrete. After the initial shock was over, it kind of felt good, laying there in the dark, letting the coldness of the ground work it's wonders on my burned-up lats. I felt like I could lay there forever. Kind of like when I used to wake up every morning before school, and just stay in bed for as long as I could because I knew that whatever was waiting for me at school couldn't compare to the warmth and comfort of the sack. It would always take mom four or fives times knocking at the door -well, banging on it really, by the third time- to get me up; by then it was five minutes before class started. She did that every day until...well, until she couldn't do that anymore. After that, I just set my alarm earlier so I could essentially do the same thing, except I'd have to play mom for everybody else and bang on my little brothers' doors. I didn't gripe about having to do that, but I still wish mom could've done it instead. She was so much better at it!
I probably would have laid there until Zack woke me up (I thought I was clever, giving those zombies a nickname. Made'em feel less threatening, like they were just the douchebag who hogged the coffee machine every morning.), but I started to smell smoke. As much as I tried to fight it, it's just not possible to relax when you smell smoke outside barbecues and 4th of July stuff.
"Hey, anybody else up?" I called into the darkness. Sure was fun last night at the sleepover, gals, but don't sleep in too late or your curls will fall out. Fuck.
I waited a couple of seconds with no reply. I knew they were alive, Tyler and Ginger and even fat-ass, so they must not have regained consciousness yet. After all, I made it, so they should have too. I was so sure I heard them behind me... "Tyler! Get up, man! Ginger!"
I felt a fresh wave of fear after they didn't answer for a second time. What if something had happened to them? Shit, something did happen to them, fucking bombs happened to them, but we got to shelter in time, or at least I think we did. Still, I tried to sit up, see if all my bits and pieces were still there, and after I was sure they were, I opted to search the room.
Well, maybe "search" is kind of stretching it. I just sort of crawled on my hands and knees, feeling everything, knocking over this old guy's shit and getting dust and cobwebs in my hair and lungs. Every now and then I'd try calling for the crew in that loud-whisper-that-defeated-the-purpose-of-a-whisper and each time they didn't answer me and I started to freak out a little more. I knew I was easily the toughest of the four of us, and that's simple logic, not ego, so it only made sense that I'd be the first one to recover from something like that, but I didn't use logic all that well when things were going fine, let alone stuck in the dark after getting bombed after getting chased by zombies after going through an average day of college classes. I started thinking that maybe it was best for me not to find them. They may have been fried, or crushed, or worse. What if they had turned into those things? Fat-ass said that only people who were bitten could come back as zombies, but what the hell did he know about whatever was going on here? More than I did, sure, but that didn't mean he knew all the details. I didn't want my friends to be...well, I guess I really shouldn't call them "friends" just yet, I met them about an hour after the shit hit the fan yesterday...wait, was that yesterday? How long had I been out? What if they had already left me behind? Fuck.
But I kept looking. On my hands and knees, I searched for what felt like an hour, at a snail's pace, half in desperation of wanting to find at least one of them alive, and half in fear of finding one of them dead.
After a while of searching in pitch black darkness, whatever was blocking the light from Tyler's romp into this abyss vacated the vicinity, and a pale light forced its way through. It wasn't the piercing, vibrant, God-in-His-Heaven kind of light I had hoped for; it looked like night had fallen in the time we -well, I- was out. I still couldn't read what was on my class ring, but I could make out a few shadows on the broken stairway as well as faint outlines of whatever knick-knacks were between me and the door. Somehow I liked that less than seeing nothing at all.
But then I did see something I liked, something that was undeniable human: the ghostly glow-in-the-dark hour and minute hands of a small wristwatch. I couldn't remember if anybody in our little group wore a wristwatch, but I nonetheless shambled the rest of the way towards it. If I had been in my right mind, I probably would have noticed that it was laying horizontally, and therefore couldn't have been on anybody's wrist... actually, I probably wouldn't have, Charles would have, Ginger would have, Tyler probably would have, but not me, but I still had this mad hope for... well, something, right up until I actually picked the thing up. It felt dusty and cold.
I felt like throwing the thing across the room. I imagined how it would sound when it shattered against the far wall or something in between, and then how it would thunk against the concrete-esque floor. But I didn't. Instead, I just let out a small sigh and put it back on the shelf. When I did, my hand fell on top of another watch, this one with a couple of buttons on the side. Well, lookiee here if I didn't stumble upon some old geezer's watch collection. Fuck.
I guess this one was digital, because when I picked it up -I have a pretty bad habit of picking up things that don't belong to me- I hit a button on one side and the thing beeped. It was very subtle and very quiet, just enough for the watch to let you know it was working fine and dandy if not a little low on juice, but it may as well have been a blow horn for all the shock it gave me. It was so... I don't know, un-organic. Since I woke up, it had been just me and the wind, and the wind was quiet company. I relished this small bit of noise so much that I hit the button again, and again it beeped obediently. So I had found a new friend, huh? Someone that would help me get through this mess, show me the way, and even tell me what time it was, and how long it had been since I went completely crazy. Fuck.
The third time I made my little friend beep, something else responded. It was a low, tired-sounding moan, coming from about ground level less than five yards away from me.
I tried to feel something; I wanted to be hopeful, or joyful, or even fearful, but the past hour of searching fruitlessly in the dark had left me so drained, I just didn't have it in me to conjure up an emotional response. Instead, I just waited for something to happen. And when nothing did, I beeped again.
Finally, moan-maker spoke up. "Who is that?" it said. Zack didn't ask questions, so I would have felt relief if I had anything left in the tank. I was pretty sure it was a dude's voice, too.
"It's me," I answered.
"Who're you?"
"I'm me, I just told you."
"But who are you?"
"I just fucking told you, it's me."
"Oh, you're Jay."
"Yeah, and who are you?"
"Tyler. I'd thought we'd met?"
He started shuffling there in the dark, all those wonderfully human swishes and ruffles that I couldn't wait to take for granted again. It was slow and unhurried, and really did remind me of someone getting out of bed, someone who had it tough yesterday and wanted nothing more than to put his knee back to his chest and let the Z's fly all whilly-nilly. I wondered if I should...I don't know, help him or something, it just felt like something to do, but decided against it. I guess it felt too much like ignoring a drowning man in the ocean and then hindering him with help once he made it to shore. I read that somewhere, I'm sure, in an English literature class. There probably weren't going to be any more English literature classes for a while, and I let it pocket itself in my mind that maybe Zack had done something good for the world after all.
Tyler inhaled sharply next to me, and slapped the offending part of himself out of instinct, which of course probably just did more damage. He groaned like someone taking a cruiser weight dump.
"Shit...I think I dislocated my shoulder, man," he said quietly.
"Yeah, probably. You pretty much faceboarded down those stairs."
"Faceboarding, huh?"
He didn't say much after that for a while. I thought that awkward silences had died along with all of those people on campus, but if it did, it reanimated like them, too. "Where are we?" I asked.
"We're in the house you followed me in."
"Oh."
There was another silence, another pause in our attempt at re-establishing human contact. Tyler beat me to breaking this one.
"So, you followed me?" he said, very quietly.
"Yes," I said, much louder. I figured that the best way of trying to get things back to normal, to re-make the rules of common courtesy, was to break them. "You just said that. I wouldn't be here if I hadn't." I knew what he was going to ask next. And I was right, it was just a whisper:
"Did they come with you?"
I guess that's when I knew that we were in this for the long run. We needed each other's company. I'm not sure if we liked each other, or could even stand each other, but goddam it we needed
each other. No hugs, no there-theres, we just needed to see someone a second and third time, to know that there was another person, who, in spite of any physical or mental or emotional or political or religious difference that separated you before Zack, was going through the same shit you were, and needed help just like you. I couldn't answer him right away, and when I did I made sure that he didn't know I thought that.
"I don't fucking know. They were behind me when I checked last." It probably didn't help the poor kid's emotional state, but emotions really didn't count for shit anymore. Tyler was silent again after that, and this time I didn't bother even trying. Better to leave each man to his own thought for a while, let him brood or think or think about brooding until he can put enough of his shit in a pile and move on. At least, I thought that was best, until he let out this long, wavering sigh, only it wasn't a sigh, it sounded more like: I don't have it in me even to break down and cry. God damn it, I'm an asshole casserole.
"How's your shoulder?"
No answer. Probably trying to get the quiver out of his voice; God forbid you show the jock a sign of weakness, he'll eat you alive, give you a wedgie, and use you to slow down ole' Zack. Fuck.
"I've been looking for them for a while. I don't guess you got a light on you, do you?"
He sniffed, then coughed to make it seem like allergies. "Yeah, actually, I do. On my key chain. It's not much, I use it to find the key hole in my car at night, but it works. If they're...awake, they'll probably see it before we see them."
"Fine, whatever. Give me your keys, and stay put."
"But-"
"Your shoulder, remember?"
He either reasoned that either he was, in fact, unable to move well, or it was simply not worth the effort to argue with me, but he gave me his keys, with the flashlight singled out. Flashlight was stretching it, it was more like an electronic firefly, but now I could see two feet in front of me in about a four inch radius. If I hurried, I'd have half of the basement searched by next month. Fuck.
Nonetheless, I trudged away, backtracking towards the door, sweeping in front of me with Tyler's keys, illuminating corners of boxes and bottoms of shelves and even the carcass of a rat in a mousetrap, but nothing that was or could have once been Ginger or fat-ass. I must have looked pretty stupid, crawling on my hands and knees, nose inches from the ground and butt held presentably up in the air, raking a band nerd's keys across the floor like a fucking mine detector. I could almost feel Tyler laughing at me, and so I kept it up for a while longer. I sort of felt bad; I know I'm not the nicest asshole in the world. Some people think that, oh, I just want to keep up the jock image, the big, tough, lumbering brute that no one messes with, that under my armor, I'm a sweet innocent little lamb with the heart of a prince and the soul of a poet. Fuck. That image is the nice me, the kind Jay; I make regular assholes seem like just colons. I wasn't abused too much (or too little) as a kid, just the right amount of discipline, I always did my homework, wasn't in trouble all the time, just every now and then, and I actually had a lot of friends, close friends that I wondered about when I was barricading that exit door and when I rammed a business lady like a fullback. I'm a prick, a jerk, a bastard to the core. Everyone loves me, and I don't know why, but I keep on being an asshole.
"You could climb the stairs, you know." Or are you afraid?, I heard under that. "There are probably flashlights and stuff upstairs." And if you had the brainpower of a six-year-old with Down's Syndrome, you'd know that. "And if you find any guns, bring me one." They might still be out there.
He said everything like he was afraid I was going to come over and throttle him for talking down to me, but I knew he was right. Truth was, I just wasn't ready to see again. I wanted to hold on to the dream that maybe what had happened didn't really happen, that I was waking up from a hazing ritual from the football team or from a really bad binge drinking episode. I didn't want to leave the dark and know again. It was okay to not know in the dark. Dark was where everything was uncertain, that what you thought could be true and what was true could always be two different things or one in the same, depending on your preference. It is always so much easier to imagine in the dark, so much easier to hope for something different, because you can't see anything; how can you be sure that something exists if you can't see it? The second I walked or crawled or hobbled up the stairs and through what was left of the door, things would exist again that maybe I wished didn't. And I was scared.
But I tossed the keys back in Tyler's general direction and headed for the door. It seemed so abrupt, that I would head into the unknown with so little preparation, but how much preparation was I going to get done when I couldn't see if my fly was still zipped?
I didn't dare head up the stairs fully upright; that'd be one hell of a way to end it all, slipping in the dark down a flight of stairs and breaking my neck. Survive Zack, fall to gravity. So I took each step with a foot and a hand, each one creaking just as you thought it should, until my hand found its way to the doorknob. I thought for a moment, then felt around for a light switch. No such luck. So out the door I went, and with the sudden flood of light came the awful stench that I would grow used to over the next few days.
Burnt hair.
You'd think it'd be burnt flesh, because there is so much more of it, but the hair is what can really bring you to your knees. If you want to know the truth, without thinking I'm a sick bastard, burnt flesh smells kind of good. A little bit like hamburgers. Meat is meat, I guess, but if you've ever played around too much with a grill lighter, you'd know that hair burns good, and it smells horrible. The kind of smell that you can taste, if you breath through your mouth too hard. It's not the kind of welcome you want to have going back into the world.
The house, or mansion, or whatever, actually held up through the explosion very well. You know, in terms of what a bomb can do. Most of the windows were blown out or at the very least cracked and spider-webbed beyond recognition, and most of the furniture had that black singe on the corners, but it was nonetheless still in better shape than my dorm room. What that says about my dorm room remains out of the discussion.
The source of that stench was easy to find. In the front yard -I was at just the right angle to see out of the front windows- was a nice thick blanket of roasted Zack.
I almost felt a sense of retribution, that we had beaten the mob that chased us so relentlessly through the campus center, that evil had finally felt the almighty bitch-slap of justice, you know? I sort of forgave the jets. The way they probably saw it, bombs were a better way out than being eaten alive, so any non-zombie targets underneath them were actually being done a favor. And it worked out in the end, so what did it matter?
As I looked around the spacious living room when I got to the end of the hallway, I realized that I didn't have the slightest idea where to start looking. I opened the nearest drawer, found a couple of letters and a rubber band, closed it, opened another, closed it, and resumed standing there waiting to be guided by some unseen force to find-
Thump.
I wasn't alone up here. Fuck.
The closest thing to a survivor's manual that I'd ever came into contact with were the old horror movies, and if I played by the same rules by which they were governed, then, as a manly white male, I was obligated to investigate the noise without any forethought whatsoever. I'd cautiously approach the source of the noise, it would have to be behind a door of some sort, maybe a closet, and take no less than five seconds to reach for the knob. Then, violins and a drum roll, I'd swing the door open and all would be silent as I found nothing there, after which I would breathe a sigh of relief. Then, it pounces me from behind.
I didn't think that Zack had the brainpower for stealth, and that was to say any of them survived the bombs, but I wasn't taking any chances. I headed east -or at least right- of the noise towards the kitchen, because obviously, everywhere else in the house that wasn't in the area of that noise was guaranteed safe, and opened the dishwasher. I searched until I found it, the big chef's cleaver that you can never remember using but nonetheless ends up in the dishwasher every Thursday, then started off, in a combat crouch, towards my target.
I identified the source of the Thump as a closet of some sort about a hop away from the front door. The explosion had jarred loose a bookcase from the adjacent wall, and it had fallen (and with it, all five of the books it held) against the door, effectively barricading the Thumper inside.
I reached the closet, and suddenly my cleaver felt about as threatening as a ham sandwich. "Come out," I said, because Thumper was probably just shy despite having the strength to move an extremely expensive and heavy-looking bookcase away from the door. "Come out, you bastard, I'll chop your fucking neck off."
I wielded my ham sandwich and waited for Thumper to respond.
Shuffling. Then, "...Jay? Jay is that you?"
Ginger.
"Jay, the door is stuck!"
Charles.
They'd had taken cover in here, instead of following the dumbass duo down into a cellar. And it sounded like they fared much better, aside from being trapped.
I was so relieved, I hadn't even realized that I was still standing there as they pleaded for my help.
"Jay, we're trapped! Help us!"
"Oh...sorry guys. Hold on, I bet I can move this bookcase..."
"Where's Tyler?"
"Who?" I said, grunting.
"Tyler!"
"Oh, yeah," Bookcases are very heavy, did you know that? And it's hard to concentrate on talking when you are moving something heavy, did you know that? Because they apparently didn't. "He's...fine, in the basement...shoulder's banged up, but..."
"What about the zombies?"
"Oh, Ginger, don't call them that, it's not at all-"
"They're dead, or at least the ones in front of the house are. Burnt to a crisp."
"So, we made it?"
"Yeah, I guess we did."
The bookcase slammed back against the wall with a resounding thud, tilted dangerously back towards me, then hobbled the rest of the way in place.
The door opened, and Ginger and Charles came out slowly. I thought about hugging them, then didn't.
One of them had found a flashlight in the closet, and I led them back down the stairs to a very relieved Tyler. The thud form the bookcase must have scared the piss out of him. I -rather forcefully- encouraged his shoulder back into place, and then we each helped him back up the stairs.
We had survived. Zack was a pussy, and we had survived.
The wind blew past us, and it smelled like victory (and burnt hair, which more than tainted victory, be I tried my best to ignore it), except for one small detail.
Carried by that wind, were the moans.
Author's Note: So yeah, I decided to do something different with this chapter. In fact, that's kind of what I aim to do with all of them; let each character have their turn at telling you the story. This time it was Jay. Thanks for all the reviews so far, and please let me know what you think!
