Likes to Ramble

The Urban Dead (short story)

Posted on 13. May, 2010 by Bran Rainey in Rambles

The springs in Ross’s mattress creak as I climb out of it. Ross is still snoozing, his face parallel with the couch legs, hugging an invisible person where I used to be. I rub my arm, still feeling the chafe of stiff springs. Maybe we can go out and get him a new mattress today. I’m getting tired of sleeping on that one.

Ross actually has a real bed, but it’s in the tiny bedroom of this apartment. I’m over almost every day now, so he just leaves the spare out in the living room so we can sleep together. The single mattress in his real bed isn’t big enough for that.

I smile to myself as I walk into the kitchen.

We didn’t get to do anything last night, though. Ross always wants to watch the news before bed, and there was an extended report last night about some kind of new virus that was going around. I was tired and not really paying attention, but it seemed to really shake Ross. He just… wasn’t in the mood at all. That’s weird for a boy.

“Good morning,” Ross says. He stumbles up to me, eyes still half-closed. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for your oatmeal,” I say. He wraps his arms around me from behind.

“Sorry about last night,” he whispers into my hair. “You know this whole quarantine situation has me worried. I can’t help it.”

“It’s okay.” I turn around to give him a proper hug before returning to the cupboards. He points me in the right direction. As I start making a pot of oatmeal, he goes quiet. I think he’s still a bit spooked.

“When did you go to sleep last night?”

He runs his hand through his hair. “Sometime past one, I think. I couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s got you so worried?” I ask. “You need to stop watching the news. They’re scaring you for no reason.”

“I’m just concerned about the quarantine,” he says. “And we haven’t had internet access in this city for the past week, so I need to watch TV. Even if it’s garbage, I need to have some idea of what’s going on.”

“I know, I know,” I assure him. Sometimes he gets worked up over things like this and I have to calm him down. “Here, your oatmeal will be done in a second.”

Soon we’re eating together at the small kitchen table. Ross’s spoon clanks against his bowl as he eats slowly, his mind elsewhere.

“Why don’t we go buy you a new bed today?” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “We’re going to need tetanus shots if we keep sleeping on that mattress.”

Ross cracks a smile. “Yeah. I’m just being silly about this whole thing. Sorry for getting you down.”

“Whatever. You can get me down whenever you like,” I say, winking.

Ross starts to laugh, but he’s cut off by a crashing sound downstairs. He jumps to his feet immediately, staring at the front door.

“What was that?”

He lives in a decent neighbourhood, but stuff like this is still bound to happen at times. I’m the voice of reason when I answer:

“Sounded like glass.”

“From what?”

“It’s none of our business, Ross.”

He ignores me and walks to the door. He looks through the peephole. After a moment, he opens the door to look up and down the hallway.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Look, I… I don’t know,” he says, still looking. I can see cold sweat on his forehead as he looks back at me. “I heard reports that there were some… killers on the loose. That’s why we’re under quarantine.”

“What? Why would we be quarantined over that?” I start to get up from the table.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I don’t know!” he shouts. “I think something’s going on that the government isn’t telling us about. Just trust me, okay?”

I shake my head, but Ross ignores me. He looks genuinely scared.

“I’m going downstairs to check it out, just in case,” he says. “Stay here until I get back.”

“This is stupid. I’m coming down with you.”

“No!” I back away from him, insulted. “Stay up here. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

I roll my eyes. “Alright, Ross, be my knight in shining armour. See if I care.” But I didn’t really mean it. I’m used to stuff like this. Ross got himself fired once for punching out a coworker who insulted me. It’s not charming exactly, but I’m not seriously insulted.

Ross gives me a kiss before leaving the room. I shut the door behind him, then turn around to face the room, fidgeting slightly. I can’t help it. Ross’s paranoia is starting to spook me a bit. I go over to the window and pull the curtains.

At first everything seems fine, and I relax a bit. It looks like a typical busy day, cars driving through throngs of people who don’t know how to use the crosswalks. But when I look a little closer, I see that the cars are moving quickly – far more quickly than they should be, given the traffic congestion.

One elderly man seemed to be crossing the road, until a truck started driving up to him. He turned around to face it like a deer caught in headlights, but the truck didn’t stop. It plowed right into him and just kept driving, mangling the man’s body as the tires peeled off from the bloody mess.

I’m seeing murder on the streets in broad daylight.

And just at that moment, I hear a thumping out in the hall. Footsteps.

I whip around, letting the curtains fall behind me. Ross is right; there really are killers on the loose! How could something like this happen in broad daylight?

I try to keep a cool head as I lock the door and grab a knife from the kitchen. Ross doesn’t have a gun, so this will have to do. But as the footsteps draw nearer, I can hear the sound of Ross’s voice, booming down the corridor:

“Kaitlyn! Let me in!”

He’s panicked, I can tell. He reaches the door before I have a chance to unlock it, pounding against the wood with his fists. “You have to let me in, Kaitlyn! Come on!”

I fumble with the lock for a moment before he bursts into the room, nearly hitting me with the door in his haste. As soon as he comes in, he slams and locks the entrance behind him. He runs to the kitchen, panting heavily. This apartment is on the nineteenth floor, and he must have run up every one of those steps from the way he’s breathing. The handle of my knife is soaked in sweat.

“What’s going on?” I ask as calmly as possible. Ross just shakes his head at me, looking through cupboards. He grabs a large frying pan – cast iron and heavier than some people – before turning back to me.

“They aren’t killers,” he says.

“I saw someone get hit by a truck outside! How aren’t these killers?”

He pauses for a moment. “They are killers, I guess. But they aren’t human.”

“Wha–?”

“They’re zombies.”

I blink.

“What?”

“There’s no other explanation for it,” he says. “As soon as they saw me, they tried to attack. Some of them were running, some of them were shambling, some were just… groaning and not doing anything else… I don’t know, Kait. They’re all torn up and violent, and their eyes…”

“This is stupid!” I yell angrily. “How can they be zombies?”

“Just trust me,” he says. “Whatever they are, they aren’t the good guys. That’s for damn sure.”

He sets his pan down and starts pushing the couch.

“Help me set up some barricades. They have a hard time with stairs, but they’ll be up here soon.”

I stand still for several long moments as Ross pushes the couch across the door. This is too much. He doesn’t look like he’s joking, but this can’t be true. It doesn’t make sense.

“Stop standing around!”

“I don’t– I don’t know what to do!” I say, and it’s true. I don’t know where to start. I’m overwhelmed. This is too much.

“You need to help me, Kait! Come on!” Ross yells. With a final grunt, the couch is in place. I can hear more thumping from outside. Ross looks at me seriously.

In some ways, I still think this might be a joke. But the old man outside getting hit by a truck? Something is going on here. I help Ross throw the mattress against the couch, just as the footsteps approach the door.

They stop just outside, for a brief moment. Then we hear a loud, piercing screech. The blood runs from my face; I look like I just lost a fight with a bag of flour.

“It’s calling for others,” Ross says. He runs into the kitchen before I can respond.

He braces himself and kicks a leg out from under the table with all his strength. It collapses on one corner, and it barely has time to land before he’s kicking down the other side. Within moments, Ross has the entire table in pieces, bracing the door closed. I run for nails and a hammer so we can block the door the way they do in zombie movies.

I don’t know what else to do.

“How long is this gonna hold?” I ask Ross when he finishes nailing the table into place. On the other side of the door, I can already hear the scratching of claws. None of the zombies can open doors. Not yet, at least.

“I doubt it’ll be around for long. Just long enough for us to get out of here.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Ross looks around the room.

“We’ll have to use the window.”

He tears the curtains right off the frame and pulls up the glass. A cool early-autumn breeze enters the room and makes me shiver reflexively. Now that I know what’s going on, I can see what’s happening outside.

All the people wandering the streets, getting hit by the occasional vehicle as it drives through at top speed… these are the monsters. These are zombies. I shiver again, and it has nothing to do with the cold.

The city is infested.

* * *

I can barely remember anything after that point. Ross threw two hundred feet of nylon rope out the window and we started the climb. Eventually, Ross fell. I’m not really sure how it happened, but it was close enough to the street that he wasn’t killed immediately.

Every time I draw back my arm to hit another nail, I feel the hammer slip from my hands a little more. The handle is coated in sweat – my cold sweat of fear, panic, and whatever other emotions I’m feeling right now. I don’t have time to name them all. Hundreds of walking corpses are right outside this window. I have to nail things over it. Whatever I can find.

We’re in the bottom floor of someone’s house; I don’t know whose. Ross is lying behind me, barely alive. At some point while I was dragging him to the first house I could find, he went unconscious. There were already people here when I broke in.

I hear broken bits of a table fall to the floor behind me. Sam dusts off her hands.

“My arms hurt,” she says. “Whatever happened to collapsible card tables?”

“I think that’s enough wood,” I tell her. I back away from the window, rubbing my biceps. “Can you finish this window?”

“Finish?” Sam raises an eyebrow, inspecting my work. “Those are service-sector workers out there, not zombie lumberjacks. How great do the barricades have to be?”

“I don’t know!” I yell. “I just don’t want them inside, Sam. Please…”

I lay down on the floor next to Ross, trying to calm myself down. After so many hours in this house, the moaning really gets to you. I rest my head against Ross, trying to hear his heart instead of the zombies.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

Well, he’s still alive at any rate. I close my eyes, focusing on this sound like a lullaby. But I can still hear the moaning and scratching around me, relentlessly. I know that Sam isn’t doing any work; she’s sitting in the corner, resting. I can hardly blame her from my position.

Another body enters the room from the stairwell. He doesn’t speak a word, so I know it’s Bippers. I reluctantly raise myself off the floor to see him. Ross is still alive for now at least – I’m not accomplishing anything by lying here.

“Bippers,” I say. “Is everything okay up there?”

His eyes dart around the room, nervously examining every detail. He nods slowly, not looking me in the eye. From most people that would be unusual, but for him it’s just par for the course. Bippers is always watching, never talking. Sam tells me that he was in this house when she got here, and she has no idea how or why he’s around. When she asked him his name, he just told her and hasn’t spoken a word since. He seems harmless enough to her.

But what kind of name is Bippers?

I just think he’s sketchy. But we need all the help we can get.

“How’s Ross?” Sam asks.

“He’s alright,” I say. “Still bleeding.”

“Like a vampire water fountain?”

I ignore her.

We sit in silence for long minutes, just trying to keep ourselves calm. I guess that’s an effort in futility, though, since the silence only ever emphasizes the sounds from outside. The wood covering the windows and doors remains firmly in place, but that’s not as much reassurance as I’d like.

As soon as Ross gets better, I’m getting out of here. We’re both covered in his blood, so I’ll find a place with running water first. Then we’ll make a break for it. This city can’t be totally quarantined – there’s going to be a hole somewhere that we can scurry out of. We just need to find it. As soon as Ross gets better, everything will be okay.

I’m fighting to keep tears out of my eyes now.

“I think these ‘cades will last us another hour or two,” Sam says, standing up. “Let’s go back upstairs. There’s still a few chairs up there.”

“We need to stay with Ross,” I tell her.

“Just let me and Bips carry him up there,” she says.

“We don’t know what’s wrong with him. He could have broken his back and now the slightest movement will kill him.”

Never mind the fact that I dragged him to this house already. But he’s getting worse by the minute and I really don’t want to risk it. Why did this have to happen?

Before Sam can answer, we hear a loud crash from upstairs. I jump to my feet immediately, my heart pumping. Sam freezes, eyes on the staircase. Bippers stops looking around the room for once. There’s another crash, and what sounds like boots stomping around. Something is definitely upstairs.

Sam scowls and runs up the stairs. I just stand there, listening hard. Her footsteps stop at the top of the stairs. I can hear her voice demanding something, then an indistinct reply from a male voice. I let out a sigh of relief.

Zombies can’t talk.

I look at Bippers, but he doesn’t meet my eyes right away. He’s still watching the ceiling intently, ignoring me. After a moment, he turns his head to look at me. His eyes are widened in terror. I’m about to ask what’s wrong when he grabs me by the arm and starts pulling me towards the stairs.

“Hey!” I yell. “Let go! I need to stay here!” What if the zombies break in while I’m gone? Ross can’t defend himself.

Bippers doesn’t listen. He seems panicked, like some sort of animal, putting all his adrenaline-fueled strength into pulling me. He practically drags me up the stairs. I’m watching my boyfriend disappear around the corner of the stairwell, tears of fury welling in my eyes as I scream at Bippers to stop.

He doesn’t.

By the time we reach Sam on the next floor, I’ve rendered myself silent. My throat and eyes are burning. Bippers sets me down gently next to Sam, then stands behind the both of us. Sam is sitting on the only chair in the room, glaring at the intruders furiously, but she has the decency to pat me on the shoulder when I sit next to her.

The people who must have entered through the windows are two men in military uniforms, flanking a woman in a lab coat. All of them are soaked with blood.

“Is this everyone?” the woman asks.

Sam nods.

“Excellent,” she says. “I’m Dr. Euel, working for the Necrotech division of the federal government. Necrotech is doing a systematic sweep of all solanum-infested areas in the Midwest. We received a report from our agent here, Mr. Sauvé” – she gestures to Bippers – “that there were infected individuals in this building.”

“Only one,” Bippers says. This is the first time I hear his voice; it’s gruff and manly, the way you would expect the voice of a man with two names to be.

That liar.

“There’s only one infected here, in the basement,” Mr. Sauvé continues. “Take him and leave the rest of us alone.”

I want to scream at them, “He’s not infected! He’s mine and he’s just sick!” But I can’t bring myself to speak a word. My throat is too raw and there are too many emotions running through me. Too many for me to name.

“Bippers,” Sam says, watching her feet. “You betrayed us.”

Dr. Euel laughs.

“Still doing that secret identity thing, Sauvé? You can’t think of a better name than that?”

“It’s not a secret identity, Euel, and you know it,” he growls. “Leave these women alone and do the job you’re paid to do.”

“This is the job I’m paid to do,” she responds. “You’re the traitor, always letting the infected escape. How do you think this whole virus is spreading? These areas are under quarantine; if we let people free, they’ll only infect more people.”

“You don’t know that!” he yells.

“That’s why we need to do this,” Euel responds. She keeps her calm throughout, smiling falsely. Her guards start to make a move for the stairs, and I fall to the side as Bippers pushes through me to stand in their way.

There’s tense silence for a moment as he stands there, blocking the two guards. Sam hasn’t moved an inch. I can’t draw the strength to pick myself off the floor. I feel like I’m melting through it, watching the world underneath.

Through the floorboards I hear wood begin to crack. I hear glass shattering. I hear nails being ripped from the walls as hundreds of living dead push and shove their way into the bottom floor. But I’m the only one that hears this, my head pressed against the floor.

Sam jumps from her position and throws the chair at Dr. Euel. It hits her square in the face, knocking her back near the broken window. She teeters on the edge, so close to falling through. One of the guards punches Bippers in the gut and tosses him aside. He falls to the floor beside me.

“You’re an inhuman bitch!” Sam screams. “Necrotech kills people! Your science is a slaughter!”

She’s about to push Euel out the window when one of the guards intervenes. He tackles her to the ground and pins her there as his boss moves herself out of harm’s way.

“Get rid of them,” she says coldly. “We have enough people who won’t cooperate.”

She and the other guard walk downstairs.

Bippers is out cold. He hasn’t moved since he hit the floor.

I don’t know what to do.

“Please,” Sam begs as the guard lifts her to her feet. “Please just let us go. We haven’t done anything. You can take the man in the basement. We’re not stopping you.”

The guard shoves her towards the window. She shuffles precariously over the edge, about to fall. From my position on the floor I can clearly see shards of glass cutting into her feet as she stands there.

“Please,” she says. I think I can see a tear in her eye.

The guard pushes her out the window. I hear a scream; a long string of curses that fall on deaf ears. We’re only on the second floor – the zombies will kill her before the fall can.

The guard isn’t even paying attention. He moves towards Bippers and me.

Beneath the floorboards I can hear gunshots mixed with yells. Are they shooting at Ross, or are they shooting at the zombies? I don’t have time to figure it out.

The guard shoots me in the head.

My emotions start fading away one by one.

Goodbye fear, panic, hopes, and dreams. Goodbye Ross. You were right all along.

I hope the zombies kill you before the government can.

Tags: dead, fiction, horror, necrotech, story, urban, zombies