The World Itself Departed Read online

  I didn’t practice because why invite unnecessary pain? But I hear the snuffling and see that Julie is coming out onto the roof too. Apparently the sinus congestion is caused by my mother’s flesh and blood being jammed too far up her nose. A simple decongestant may not do the trick.

  I can’t believe I am thinking about stupid things at a time like this!! I think back to AP Psychology and the fight or flight response. I don’t want to fight, and I’m too afraid to jump. Was there a third choice? Because all I want to do is go to the bathroom. Damn it, I already have.

  I see her coming toward me down the roof and without deciding what to do, I jump. Before I can check for broken bones, I feel her land on top of me, thrashing and snapping. I push her away and struggle to get to my feet. The front door is open. I run to it, as fast as I have ever moved in my life. I know she is chasing me. Inside, I slam it in her face and deadbolt it. My heart pounds wildly. I cannot catch my breath. I am sure I will explode soon. Julie pounds against the front door, and I can feel every blow on my back as it presses against it.

  The lock should hold, I tell myself. I step away, coming to terms with another horror. On the mat in the entranceway lies Shannon. She has been torn up and partially eaten.

  Where is my dad? I stumble through the house and check the master bedroom. Nothing. The house is quiet, but outside, I hear more savagery. I look out the window, and see the little girl, the one with the pigtails who is always selling lemonade even after it’s way too cold to sell lemonade. She’s running down the middle of the street. Chasing her are three or four neighbors. They are bloody. One of them, a fat one, Mr. Pizzimenti, lags behind. The fastest ones tackle the girl. I never bothered to remember her name. She screams as they throw themselves on her. Her legs thrash and after a while, they stop moving.

  I remain frozen at the window in my parents’ room. Then I jump as Julie throws herself at the window from the outside. Oh my god. A gun. My dad has guns. I run to his bedside table and open the drawer. Lubricant. I don’t want to know.

  A handgun. I don’t know shit about guns. It’s a clip thing and not a revolver thing. And it’s got a gun lock on it. Damn it. A pane of glass smashes. I find a key next to the gun. Thank God Dad believes in gun safety, but only to a point. I hold the unlocked pistol in my hands. I hold it with both hands, because outside of computer games, I have never held a gun. Julie was the one who went to the range and did target practice with Dad.

  More glass breaks. I look and see Julie pulling herself up into the window. She can’t take her eyes off me and she’s snarling. If Mom was lunch, I’m dessert. This is insane. What am I supposed to do? I’ve seen a million zombie shows, but they don’t adequately prepare you for this. My sister wants to eat me and my dog is dead. And I—who advocated for gun control just to piss my dad off—have a loaded gun in my hand. I think it’s loaded. I actually don’t know how to check. And I’m pointing the gun at her. She falls to the floor inside the bedroom and rises to her feet and then throws herself toward me.

  I hear and feel an explosion. She lands on me, and I am on the floor, bloody. My hands hurt. She snuffles once, then stops. I remain frozen underneath her, wondering if I’m dying too. Finally, I pull myself out, and shove her aside.

  She’s dead. I’ve killed my sister. Who had apparently turned into a zombie. Holy shit.

  What to do? All I can think is that I am covered in blood and disgusting wet smelly stuff. I need a shower. I shove a tall dresser against the broken bedroom window. I make sure the back door and the door to the garage are locked. I glance out the windows, and see more gangs of zombies chasing little kids. I remember my parents saying, when we moved in a dozen years ago, that this would be a great neighborhood for raising kids. Very child-friendly.

  Not wanting to draw attention to myself or the house, I run around lowering blinds and closing drapes. And then I run into the bathroom, set the pistol on the counter, and lock the door. I find my anti-anxiety pills in the cupboard behind the mirror. I take two. Seems like a plan, the first I’ve had in a while.

  Then I turn on the shower and strip off my stinking clothes. I step in. I do my best thinking in my shower. It is the place for problem solving. And I decide this qualifies as a definite problem.

  3→WHY ALL THE LIVING SO STRIVE TO HUSH ALL THE DEAD

  Iwatch the red stream of water circle and fall down the drain as cascades of hot water envelope my body. I have never enjoyed a shower like the one we had in our house. Whenever I stayed at a friend’s house, I never missed my folks or my home, but I missed the shower. Sure, it’s a little different when washing blood off, but the feel of pulsating water on my back still helps to calm and center me.

  Okay. Feelings check. I feel… numb. I used to get depressed when someone looked at me with a scowl. Now my mother is dead in the upstairs bathroom. My sister is dead on the floor outside this bathroom door, and my dog is dead in the foyer. My father is unaccounted-for. Could be he’s off somewhere digesting golden retriever and chasing after neighborhood children. Could he be alive and healthy? Alive, perhaps. But he had the flu, too. Just like Julie.

  You’d think all of this would have thrown me into the Grand Canyon of Depression. But no—I’m numb. Maybe it’s shock, but I’m not feeling as emotional as I think I should. Instead, I’m going into analytical mode.

  Like everyone else, I’ve seen plenty of zombie movies. How is this spreading? I’ve seen no sign of bite transmission so far. And how could there be? It looks like the zombies are hungry enough that they’re not leaving enough meat on the bones to zombify.

  The flu? That could be possible. Something made Julie sick and then she started killing. But how are the neighbors turning into zombies? They couldn’t have all gone to a football game or had contact with Dad and Julie.

  Speed. Thank god these don’t seem to be super speedy zombies like in Resident Evil. They seem to be their own speed… I mean, the fat ones move slower than the rest. Either way, I kind of wish I had gone out for track.

  The real question: are these even zombies in any technical sense? I have no idea. As far as I know, no one is rising from the dead. And they seem killable, if Julie counts, so the term “undead” doesn’t seem to fit at all. I guess I’m just using “zombies” in the loosest sense of the word: out-of-control crazies that hunger for flesh.

  About killing them, I don’t even know. Does it take a head shot? I can’t recall where I was pointing when I shot Julie. It all went black. But she died, and she hasn’t come back to life. Unless… I step out of the shower to make sure that I have locked the door.

  After the shower, I wrap a towel around me and creep out of the bathroom. I pointedly avoid looking at Julie’s corpse, which is still there. I head upstairs and find my bedroom door half open, and smeared with Mom’s blood. The desk is still partially in the way and I have to push it to get in.

  I start grabbing some clothes. As if I’m going anywhere. Where the hell am I going to go? Who can a guy turn to when his family is decimated by zombification and his neighborhood has descended into chaos?

  My phone?! Where did I leave it? I remember grabbing it before I went out the window. I look out on the roof—not there. I run downstairs, check the bathroom, the kitchen, my dad’s nightstand—not there. Crap. I must have dropped it on the lawn after I jumped and my sister attacked me.

  I open the front door very quietly, and sneak a peek at the street. While I can hear mayhem in the distance, none appears to be close. I creep out onto the porch and scan the lawn. I crane my neck to look under the bushes without stepping from the safety of the porch. I see it, resting on the mulch. It appears to not be shattered. I slowly move off the porch and toward it, figuring that sudden moves might tend to get me noticed. As I stretch my arm to clasp the phone, I look up, and see Mrs. Romans next door, pressed against her picture window looking at me. Her dilated eyes show no recognition, and her mouth is working as she presses it against the window and smears blood. I see no sign of her baby.
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br />   Grabbing the phone, I pivot and scurry back inside. I deadbolt the door behind me. I don’t think anyone else saw me. I quickly call Charlie Watson, my best buddy. Charlie and I were basically the two-man movie club at Shiawassee High. That’s what we did, that’s what we talked about. Among other genres, we knew our zombie movies cold. But when I call Charlie, I get no answer.

  I call Matt Thomas. Nothing.

  Sarah Kelso. Nothing.

  Ricky Myers. Nothing.

  Finally, I just sit down and go through every number in my contacts. The signal is good, the phones are probably ringing. No one picks up. Whatever is happening, it’s not just confined to my neighborhood.

  I head to the TV and turn it on. CNN is showing a special about drought in Africa. A line of text scrolling across the bottom of the screen says, “CDC will not confirm whether incidents of violence are connected to devastating flu outbreak…”

  The Weather Channel is showing a special about tornadoes.

  Channel 3 is showing an infomercial about protein shakes.

  ESPN is showing a college football game from Alabama.

  The Shopping Channel is off the air.

  Cartoons are all over the place.

  Finally, in desperation, I check Fox. They’re showing an old panel discussion about the bird flu, in which one speaker insists it’s a former President’s fault. The black one.

  I turn off the TV.

  Outside, I hear a distant scream. I realize the broken window in my parents’ room doesn’t make this a very secure fortress. Walking into the room, I assess the situation. My sister’s body is still there. I put my hands to my head. What the hell am I supposed to do with a body, for Godsakes! And then it occurs to me—911! In the midst of the biggest emergency of my life, I actually checked the Shopping Channel before I called 911. That doesn’t speak well for my grace under pressure.

  I dial, and get a recording: “Due to unusually heavy call volume, there may be a delay in answering your call. You are caller number… 9,857.”

  It’s not like I have anywhere to go, but I still don’t think I can wait that long. I look back at my parents’ room. I will need to move furniture to block that window, and Julie is in the way. I take a deep breath. I will need to drag her outside now, because I just realized that things are beginning to smell bad in here.

  I bend over to grab her wrists, but they’re covered in blood. Still bent over, I shuffle to the bathroom and throw up in the toilet. Violently. Repeatedly. I stand straight and try hard to get it together. Catching my breath, I look under the sink, and find my mom’s stash of latex gloves for cleaning. They’re too small for me, but eventually I get a pair on.

  Overhead, I hear a loud rotor. A helicopter. I pause, and while I try to decide whether to run out onto the back deck and flag it down, I hear it zoom past. The sound fades.

  The body. I reach down again, avert my eyes, and grab her wrists. Then I drag her down the hallway. I have no idea what the usual timeline is for rigor mortis, but she is stiff in awkward ways, and her leg bangs into every sharp corner. She slides better once I get her off the carpet and onto the kitchen tile. Then the dining room, right up to the glass slider to the deck. I see no activity outside, so I quietly unlock the door and slide it open. I drag her outside. I can hear shouts. Gunshots. I see nothing. I look at the stairs from the top of the deck where we are to the yard. I can imagine her bumping down every splintery step, leaving a trail of torn flesh and drying blood.

  And then do I bury her? In movies, they always bury their loved ones, and they make digging a six-foot hole seem quite routine. Last summer, my dad tried to make me help him dig some postholes around the garden. Those were much smaller than body-sized holes, and I found them immensely difficult. I quit after 15 minutes and about 10 inches of hard-packed clay. No fricking way would I be burying Julie. Plus, she ate my mom and tried to kill me, so that takes the shine off the whole sibling love thing.

  I’m ready to pull her down the stairs when I see a guy run across the backyard of one of the neighbors behind us. I almost yell to him, but then he just doesn’t look right. Plus, he’s carrying a dead cat by the leg. He doesn’t see me and seems to have an idea where he’s going, so I let him go. Then I look at the steps, say fuck it, and prop Julie’s stiff corpse against the deck rail. I reach down for her leg—the one that’s not crooked, and lift it up, flipping her whole body over the rail. She lands with a thump next to the green turtle plastic sandbox that my parents should have gotten rid of a decade ago.

  It’s just getting dark enough to make me realize that before long it will be completely dark. I will be all alone in a very dark and zombified world and will surely die of fear.

  Faced with that prospect, I hurriedly go back inside, lock the slider, and run to the bedroom. I move Mom’s tall dresser in front of the window. And then I drag Dad’s dresser in front of that, just to hold it so it won’t be so easy to knock over. Then I pick up Shannon’s remains and toss them off the deck to join Julie.

  Christ. Now for Mom. This one’s bad. She’s torn up like a calzone and nobody wanted to eat the crust. My brain is reeling. I can’t just toss her into the dead family pile like this. I take the bedspread off Julie’s bed, and throw it over Mom, and then awkwardly try to wrap it around her without looking at her. When I’m done, I try to pick her up but I’m too much of a weakling. Do I drag her down the stairs? It’s pitch black outside—and inside too, since I’m afraid to turn on any lights.

  I lift up the blind in the bathroom, and see nothing. I quietly open the window, and hear nothing. I pop the screen and it pivots out of my grip and tumbles to the ground. Nothing seems to respond to the jangling crash. I look at Mom in her bedspread. I stick my head out the window and look down. There are probably solutions with more dignity, but I am not emotionally equipped.

  When I was a kid, sometimes Mom would take a quick nap when she got home from work. If I tried to wake her because I needed something, sometimes she would pretend to be so soundly asleep that she couldn’t be wakened. I think she hoped I would eventually wander off. Sometimes I did. Other times, she convinced me that she was dead, and grief and shock would shake me until I crumbled. She didn’t get much of a nap those days.

  Now I look at her, wrapped in Julie’s purple bedspread and know she’s not faking. So I have to do what I could not have imagined doing when I was little. I drag her to the bathroom window feet first, and I grunt and groan and lift her over the ledge. When she’s about halfway out, I muster a big effort and give the rest of her the heave-ho. Mom lands in the darkness with the noise of a big pillow being punched. I shut the window and lock it, and shut the blind. I sit on the toilet and cry. Just hours ago I was trying to leave this hellish world. Now, I’m trapped in a deeper, darker hell, and I’m wondering what I need to do to live.

  4→PLACED IN THE MOST IMMINENT DANGER

  Ihear something. From downstairs. It sounds like a phone ringing, but it’s no ring tone I recognize. Then I realize it’s my “stranger” ring tone—the default for the few calls I get for which I haven’t already assigned ring tones.

  I nearly turn on the hallway light so I don’t tumble down the stairs, but I catch myself. I have no way of knowing if a light might attract the neighborhood welcome wagon, but I’m in no hurry to find out. By the time I get downstairs, the phone has stopped ringing. I find it in the living room. There’s a number there, under recent calls, but I don’t know who it is.

  I call it. Voice mail. I hang up after the first word, because I hate voice mail. In the old days, they had busy signals. I would like that better, because there would be no guilt if you hung up without leaving a message. I hate leaving messages.

  A few minutes later, I try again, and a woman’s voice answers. “Arvy?”

  “Yeah, this is Arvy. Who’s this?”

  “Oh my fucking unbelievable!” the woman shouts. I hear her whoop.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m happy, too. But who is this?”

 
“It’s Maggie!” she says.

  The room is dark, the drapes subtly illuminated by the faint glow of a streetlight. I don’t know a Maggie.

  “Maggie?” I say.

  “Yes! I can’t believe I found you! Where are you? The world has gone batshit crazy and I’m trapped in my truck!”

  “Maggie who?”

  “Oh my god. Maggie, Maggie Bindenmuller. It hasn’t been that long.”

  I realize I do know a Maggie. Maggie Bindenmuller. She’s not lying about that last name; it almost makes me feel better about mine. I knew her in high school but she wasn’t really someone I ever talked to.

  “How did you have my number?” I ask timidly. Maggie Bindenmuller was kind of scary in high school.

  “That group project we worked on together in history in tenth grade.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I don’t remember working with you on a project.”

  “Hilarious! That’s because I didn’t do anything. But I was there for the first day when we all exchanged cell numbers.”

  “And you still have me in your contacts from tenth grade?”

  “Is it my fault that I’m the only girl I know who hasn’t dropped her phone in a toilet in the last few years? Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I’m having a bad night. My family and friends are all dead, and crazy people are trying to eat me.”

  “Yeah,” I say, not knowing what to say, because I tend to freeze up when talking to pretty girls. Maggie Bindenmuller was pretty in a very threatening, in-your-face kind of way back in high school. Brunette and gorgeous and big breasts and wanted everyone to know, so she wore low-cut, tight shirts. At 16, like most guys, all I could do was stare and try to keep my mouth shut. And if she caught someone looking, she would go out of her way to humiliate them. She used her breasts as a weapon against the weak.