His mind was in all the wrong places—it was watching Lars splutter on the basement floor, it was sledging the girl in the drugstore, it was burying Evan at the edge of the parking lot, it was watching Brian get ripped apart, it was...
Almost as disturbing was the image of the breached loading dock through which the zombies had entered the Wegmans, killing Brian, and almost killing Sven, Jane, Lorie, and Ivan. The vertical gate had been cut through, the rectangular, human-shaped access point too precise to have been made by the zombies, or even by humans without equipment and experience in improvising entries.
Sven, Jane, and Lorie had all seen it, and Sven was sure it hadn’t been there on his earlier inspection of the supermarket. Though the implications of this discovery were startling, they had all put it to rest for the time being. It was inexplicable.
Ashamed to even think it, Sven knew that part of his despair…part of it was missing the darkness that had consumed him, enveloping his soul, taking over all—he cut the thought off.
It didn’t help that he could hear Lorie crying one floor above him. Sven wished that she would stop. Not that he could blame her for it, of course, but it made the depression he now felt seem utterly inescapable. Jane was comforting the girl, and had been for the last few hours. It seemed that after it had ended, the events of the outbreak finally sunk in for Lorie…as they must have for Jane…and as they were beginning to for Sven.
His chest and neck still hurt from the bench press accident, and he was fairly certain now that he had torn something when he overhead-pressed and tossed Milt.
I need to drink this, Sven told himself, I need my nutrients.
He looked down into the cup of protein drink—his favorite protein drink—took a deep breath, swallowed, and took a sip.
As soon as the mixture was in his mouth, he saw Lars and Brian and the girl with the destroyed head, and felt the mixture turn into a mealy paste.
He spat the mouthful back into the cup. He couldn’t do it.
After putting the cup on the floor, Sven pressed play and turned up the volume on the TV, hoping that would help ward away the gory images playing in his brain.
He watched with impatience as the copyright notice appeared and lingered on the screen for an unreasonably long time.
When the movie finally began, Sven fast forwarded one chapter to get past the introductory credits, so that he could be more quickly caught up in the story.
The movie began to help. Then Sven put his hands on the machetes, and that helped even more. The haunting images were fading, but Sven wasn’t going to try to drink the protein mixture again. He couldn’t face the images it recalled, not now, and maybe not ever again.
He reflected on what a blessing it had been that Lars wasn’t there when he returned to the house. The poor guy had probably wandered out and crumpled somewhere in the hot sun. Sven knew he wouldn’t have been able to deal with finding Lars in the house. And there he caught himself again, thinking about his lost friend. He was staring at the TV, but not seeing a thing.
With a determined effort, Sven clenched his jaw, refocused on the TV, and turned the volume up higher.
After a few more minutes of staring at the screen, and trying, without success, to ward away the depression, Sven got up and put the cup of protein drink in the basement refrigerator.
Reluctant to waste food after the events of the previous two days, he told himself he might try to have it later, even though he knew that he wouldn’t. He couldn’t drink it, and he couldn’t bring himself to dump it out either, so he resolved on trying to forget it for a while.
Sven walked back to the basement’s main room and sat down in front of the TV again.
A thought pounded its way into his head. It had a kind of reverberating clarity that Sven wasn’t used to having in his mind.
“Your bodybuilding days are over,” Lars’s voice whispered to him.
Sven shuddered, and was overcome by the eerie feeling that it was more than a mere thought, more than a post-stress reaction.
It was the truth. He was certain of that.
It was over—the massive eating, the competitions, the man-tards…he would still weight train, but the massive body couldn’t be kept up if his mind remained in its current purgatory.
Sven wondered if that was where the undead went—purgatory—or where they already were when they staggered through the streets, their gnarled bodies just shades wandering the earth, souls long-dispatched.
The TV reporters had said that the infected were already dead when they were in the zombie state, but was it true? What if they could feel everything, compelled in their actions by an undeniable force, the virus’s conscious but unwilling hostages?
Sven wanted to believe that they were already dead when they got to that state. He wanted to believe that Lars…and the girl in the drugstore…God how had Sven done something like that? He wanted to believe that when Lars and the girl were—
Then Ivan skittered into the room, clawing to a halt in front of Sven, the momentum of his movement carrying him slightly past where Sven imagined Ivan had wanted to stop.
The cat looked up at Sven, his green eyes shining brightly in the basement’s gloom. Then Ivan leapt into Sven’s lap, turned a full 360 degrees, meowing all the way around, and settled down to watch the movie.
Sven looked down at his cat. “Turns out you were the smartest of all of us. It’s not our fault, you know, they build you guys a lot differently than us. We don’t see things the way you do.”
Ivan looked up at Sven, blinked his glowing eyes knowingly, and meowed.
“We’re just people. But at least we have TV, right Ivan?”
He pointed at the screen. Ivan sniffed at Sven’s finger, then settled back down to watch the movie.
The sobs coming from upstairs had grown more quiet and more infrequent.
He sighed, and tried to lose himself in the movie, in Ivan’s semi-unconditional affection.
As long as I feed you, Sven thought, and patted the cat’s head. He felt his throat lock up, and nausea swept up through his body. Even the thought of food, of Ivan’s treats in this instance, was enough to make him want to retch.
Then Lorie and Jane came down.
“What are you watching?” Jane asked. Her face was ashen and she was trembling.
Lorie beat Sven to it before he could answer. “Harry Potter…the fourth one, right?”
“Yeah,” Sven said, “that’s right…it was a gift.”
“It’s really loud,” Lorie said. “Can we turn it down a little?”
“Sure,” Sven said, and passed the remote to Lorie. He made himself look away from her red eyes and cheeks.
The girl turned the volume down and sat down on the floor in front of Sven. Ivan jumped down and sat next to her, sniffed at her arm, and, apparently reassured that Lorie was Lorie, began to stare intently at the screen. Lorie put her arm around Ivan.
Jane looked at the girl for a moment, then plopped herself down next to Sven and drew her knees up against his side. It hurt him, but he didn’t say anything or push her away. She put her head on his shoulder and a hand on one of the machetes attached to his belt. He covered her hand with his, and tried hard to escape into Harry’s adventure.
Maybe, Sven thought, if they were lucky, each of them could get away for a while, even if just for a few seconds at a time, could get lost in the story and forget…forget…
Afterword
Milt awoke and drew in a painful, rasping breath. He opened his eyes and squinted up at the sun, beating down on him through the moist air.
His mouth felt as dry as cracked parchment. He could feel the cracks in his lips, and there was something wrong with his mouth. It didn’t feel right. He wiggled his jaw, turned his neck, and then he understood what it was.
His mouth was so dry that his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. It took him a few tries to get it unstuck, and the detachment hurt enough that Milt was sure some of his ton
gue was still on the roof of his mouth, though the rest of it was free.
Then Milt realized something else was wrong, in addition to his now possibly-forked tongue. He had fought enough video game battles set in forests and wooded areas—and had designed enough of them—to realize that the scene he was currently in was missing a key gaming element—sound.
He couldn’t hear a thing. There were birds above him, fluttering, opening and closing their beaks, and engaging in the other bird-like activities that Milt found annoying, but he couldn’t hear any sound coming from them. He was sure they were clucking and chirping and chattering and otherwise trying to get on his nerves, but he heard nothing.
Apparently, Milt thought, being deaf has its benefits.
Looking away from the birds, Milt put a tentative hand to his lips and then touched the inside of his mouth. He looked at his fingers. There was no blood on them, but…but they looked so wrong.
They were pale, shriveled, and cracked, and they cracked even more as he bent them, opening up lines into his flesh. It was troubling to see, but there was no blood, and it didn’t hurt as much as it should have. It just felt like a tightness, like stretching.
Milt knew that he needed fizzy refreshment—he needed it badly.
He sat up with a crackle of joints and dry skin, feeling the sun’s ominous rays becoming more bothersome by the second.
Where am I? How did I get here?
He felt his tongue begin to stick to the roof of his mouth again. Finding that his neck wasn’t mobile, Milt moved his eyes around as far as they would go and scanned his surroundings.
He was looking for some bottles of Coca-Cola, trying to ignore the fact that such a thing might be hard to come by in a forest, where he almost certainly now found himself.
Coca-Cola would fix things, or at least begin to fix things. A few bags of miniature Snickers bars would help too. Maybe there was a convenience store not too far from here.
Milt tried to comfort himself with the thought, but he had to admit that he couldn’t see anything but woods surrounding him.
I need a running brook or stream or something, he thought, at least until I can get somewhere with real refreshment.
He wondered if it was dangerous to drink raw water, but the thought dried up and turned to dust in his mind. He didn’t care, he would drink anything right now, from anywhere. He would squeeze water out of elephant dung in his condition, like that skinny, self-proclaimed survivalist on the television that all the women were giddy about.
Milt thought he could feel his own brain, nerve endings or no, shriveled up like a prune. It hurt. It needed hydration. And he would hydrate it, he would find a way. It was his favorite, most-cherished organ, after all.
But, even through all the dryness in his head and throughout his body, Milt could still feel a want—another want. There was an empty spot in his mind, no, in his soul, and that spot could only be filled with Sven’s suffering—with Milt’s domination and final ownership of Sven.
Milt still could not believe the boldness of that atrocious man in throwing him from the roof, down to the zombies.
Wait, he remembered Sven throwing him to the zombies, but how had he gotten here? There were no zombies around, and Milt was still alive.
He tried, but couldn’t remember what had happened in the interim. His mind seemed to be grasping, but when his brain tried to turn out the thought, it felt like there was coarse sand grinding over itself inside his head.
The stuff in his head—whatever it was now—needed wetness, at least enough wetness to get to a muddy state of comprehension. Right at that moment, nothing made sense.
Milt’s neck creaked as he turned his head in a series of short jerks, looking for a source of hydration. He was somewhere out in nature, and wasn’t the natural world supposed to be full of water and such? He was sure it had to be.
There were leaves on the ground, and shoots, and roots, and there was a tree trunk not too far away from Milt. There was no elephant dung to squeeze, but Milt decided that chewing on some fallen leaves was a better idea than squeezing dung, whether the dung was available or not.
Then Milt’s ear canals suddenly cleared a little, and he heard a faint gurgling coming from somewhere nearby. He rolled over, and, focusing on the sound, began to crawl toward it. He scraped himself on rocks and through bushes as he went, but he felt nothing. His body felt like a shell that could be sloughed off and remade, and he was unconcerned about it—except that he did need to water it.
The sound was getting louder, but his body was slowing down. The more he crawled, the stiffer he became, and the harder it was to keep up the crawling.
Milt paused to rest, thinking that might help, and saw something that he didn’t want to. There was fluid oozing out of the cracks in his skin. A pale yellow fluid was seeping out of him, like motor oil.
He tried to crawl some more, but his arms and legs seized up and became rigid, and he collapsed in the dirt. Though it must have been his body cramping up, it didn’t feel that way. It didn’t hurt, but was simply immobile.
As luck had it, it wasn’t dirt that Milt had collapsed in. It was mud. Milt’s slowing mind realized this, and also that the gurgling sounded like it was only a few feet away—so close.
Milt felt the seeping fluid leaving him, and he understood that he could control it—not the stuff that was already outside of his body, but the stuff still in it. There was some still in there, deep down.
He focused, and bade the fluid to gather in his neck, throat, and jaw. When it had, he opened his mouth and forced his head into the mud, as deep as he could make it go.
There he drank.
When he had drunk enough to form more fluid within his body, he withdrew his face and head from the mud, chewing on the bits left in his mouth.
Milt pondered his current state, being reduced to a kind of prehistoric beastliness, finding sustenance in mud. It was no Snickers nougat, that was for damn certain.
But wait…was it better? He couldn’t believe it, but the mud seemed to be fulfilling some carnal need that even Snickers candy bars didn’t.
It was as if the mud was doing something far more vital for his body than Snickers or Coca-Cola ever did, or ever could. Milt had never imagined that a base substance such as mud could be filled with such incredible powers of revitalization.
As the mud replenished Milt’s system, the stuff in his head began to flow, began to stir, and he understood.
He understood everything about the evolution he had gone through—much more than he ever thought there was to understand. So much more, in fact, that even he was humbled by the knowledge he had gained through his experience with the zombies.
Not only had they taken him in and made him one of their own, they had selected him as their leader, placing him at the top of their hierarchy.
Milt had been right at the very outset of the contagion—it had brought his destiny with it. He was the one human with the constitution worthy enough to lead the zombies.
Only...he wasn’t human anymore, no. He knew he had become something else—something better, superior to any human, and, superior even to his quite wondrous former self. As hard a feat as that was to accomplish, he had done it. He had become an even greater, enhanced version of himself.
He was still thirsty, and now he had the strength to crawl the rest of the way to the stream, so he did, and he drank until he was contented.
It was Milt’s first drink of pure water since a mysterious bottle of Evian had snuck into one of his Coca-Cola cases, and that was years ago. The cold flowing water was even better than the mud.
Then he lay down sideways with his body half in and half out of the stream, so that he could continue to soak in the cool water. That was what his body needed—to sop up the stream, all of the stream. Of course that was impossible, but Milt felt like if anyone could do it, he could.
After some moments, Milt raised his head and looked down at his soaking body. He
saw that his portliness was much reduced, and that in his prostrate position, his belly did not completely obscure his feet. The tips of his pallid, shriveled toes were visible, poking out of scraggly, torn socks. He wiggled them. Notwithstanding their appearance, they seemed to work just fine, and maybe even better than before.
Milt lowered his head back onto the damp earth and took a long, deep breath. He was startled to note that all traces of his asthma were gone. He took a few more deep breaths, and was astounded that he could breathe in and out fully, with no wheezing. His lungs felt better than they had in years.
There was water in his body and fresh air in the far reaches of his lungs: Milt could not deny that his body had changed.
As he lay there, wiggling his toes and taking the moist air into his apparently rejuvenated lungs, the rest of the previous days’ adventures came back to him.
Once the zombies had taken him in and made him their leader, he had become privy to a sort of collective consciousness, a shared mind—a shared mind that he controlled.
That was the best part. It was like playing Warcraft—not World of Warcraft—and directing his underlings in battle. The zombies were his chess pieces to move about the world...only now...now he wasn’t sure if there were any left. That insolent, muscle-bound ruffian, Sven, had no doubt destroyed them. That was just like Sven, a hater of zombies if there ever was one.
So, the winds of destiny had come for Milt...to make him great. But, he had originally thought that he would lead the humans against the zombies. Now, knowing that he was to lead the zombies against the humans, he had to confess that he had been short-sighted not to see this prospect earlier. Milt as the zombie commander was an elegant, even brilliant turn of events. He understood that this new station was allotted for him, prearranged somehow.
We all have a role to play, he told himself, and I will play mine to perfection.
Then, Milt’s hearing abruptly returned to its full capacity, and the infernal birdsong that came from all around him made him lose his train of thought.
After a few moments of painful chirruping, Milt remembered the new task that fate had allotted to him. He was to gather and assemble the zombies, and lead a zombie army against the darkness that was humankind.