Apex Book Company

On the street in front of the school, I sat on the curb and watched all the Zees walking around on the sidewalks, on the lawns of nearby homes, down the center of the roads. They all passed me and gave a look my way, maybe stopped and stared for a few seconds, but none came over. Hell, I even took to throwing rocks at them to see if I could get their attention, but they’re a one-track-mind kind of species, I learned.

The sky was black with smoke from a thousand fires burning all over the county. I didn’t hear no birds singing or dogs barking or cats howling. It was just me and the Zees.

At first I didn’t know what to feel, but by nightfall, it started to sink in that I was really alone. Not the kind of alone I’d wanted before, where I could turn on the TV and see a ballgame, or get a ‘hi’ from Jack at the liquor store, or stare at that single mom two houses down who wore them tight pants. I mean really alone. Unwanted. Ostrich sized.

Two streets over was the Episcopal church, so I got up, grabbed my can of corn again, and made my way over to it. The door was open, the stained glass shattered, and there were Zees inside, which seemed a bit disrespectful to me, them being in God’s house and all. But then, who’s to say all this mess wasn’t God’s idea, some sort of cleaning method so he can start over fresh. But then why…?

I pulled up a pew and stared up at Jesus on the crucifix above the altar. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Everybody’s gone, all eaten and come back as something else. But not me. There something I’m missing here?”

No reply. Nothing.

And then I cried, which was the first time since Korea I’d done that. It was a real cry too, the kind you just can’t stop once it starts, the kind that goes on until you’re dry inside, the kind you got to fight to breathe through. Some time later, I looked at Jesus again and begged him to take me. “I’m lonely,” I said. “I don’t want to die. Everybody else, they get to keep on going, even if it’s as a monster. At least they got something. At least they got each other. You’re leaving me with nothing–nothing! Tell me what I did!”

I threw the can of corn and knocked the cross to the ground.

I fell asleep in the pew.

Where was I…

…tangents, ticktock, tears…

Oh yeah, this morning at the bookstore.

The area outside the bookstore had its usual collection of hungry monsters hobbling around it. I’d given some of them names, the ones I’d seen around a lot: Goopy and Scabby and No-Arms and Pussface. When they saw me coming, saw the other Zees following me like puppies, they ambled my way as well, as if to say, “Thank God, can you please help up with this big metal doohickey? Our ball rolled under it and we can’t get it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, pushing through their numbers as they sniffed me and played with my shirt (I think they could smell the last bits of good meat I’d tossed out). “I see your food, you idgits. I’ll get it for ya. But first, anybody want an appetizer?” I held up my arm, took out the can opener and ran the dull blade across my forearm. As the blood began to trickle out, a few of them stepped forward and inspected it, but just like the other times I’d tried this, they lost interest and went back to moaning at the car.

Throwing my head back, I screamed at the heavens, “What? What the fuck did I do? Why not me?”

Of course, there was no answer, same as that day in the church. Well, I think one of the Zees farted. Which, really, about summed up what God was doing to me anyway.

“I ain’t doing it myself!” I shouted again, just for good measure, pulling out the gun and waving it all crazy-like. “I ain’t ending it like that. If you want me, you take me like you took the rest! This ain’t fair!”

And I sat down and started boo-hooing again, which lately, had become my shtick. “What’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong . . .” Over and over and over, rocking like a Weeble.

At some point I felt one of the Zees push me, like to say, “Hey buddy, get to it already.” Goopy and Pussface were standing next to him, anxious for me to get up as well. Like I said, just like dogs.

“All right, back off,” I said, standing up. Past the car, in the window of the bookstore, there was a paperback I’d thought about going in and getting a few times now. Maybe today I would. Maybe it was time to get out of this town–I could use the reading material for traveling. Maybe I should leave tomorrow. The roads are still pretty jammed up with crashed cars and ambling Zees, and I can’t ride a motorcycle to save my life, but the Bike shop nearby has some good selections. Maybe Mexico would fare better for me. Maybe I could even keep riding down to Panama or something.

Dropping to my belly, I reached underneath the car and grabbed hold of the dead man’s pant leg. His head was all jammed up in the pipes, his eyes still open and dry as chalk, and I had to pull pretty hard to get him out. Course, once his leg hit the sunlight, those Zees pushed me out of the way and went to town, big time.

Hoping against hope, I thrust my arm into the feeding frenzy and felt one take a nibble on my pinky. Hurt like a bitch, but it felt so damn good to be wanted. But the sonofabitch pushed my arm out of the way like it was broccoli on a plate of chocolate cake. Fuckers didn’t want me after all. Same old same old.

Yanking some carnage from No-Arm’s mouth–in case I needed some for later–I went into the bookstore and grabbed the paperback in the window. It was The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski. I’d read it ages ago, and it depressed the shit out of me but, right now, I needed to know someone else felt my pain. Needed to know that someone else out there, even if he was fictional, was as unwanted as me. Rolling it up, I stuffed it in my jacket pocket, made my way back around the Zees, who were all on their knees ripping every last bit of flesh and sinew off that rotted cadaver, and headed back to the park.

The pigtail girl was there again, just sitting on the bench, cradling an unopened can of Coke like it was a baby doll. Let me tell you, when you have no one to talk to, the walls become a real good audience. These Zees were no different than walls, and so I sat down beside her and looked in her eye, the good one that wasn’t swishing about on her cheek.

“Hi, Precious,” I said. “What you got there? That your baby? What’s its name?”

If it had been a real baby it would have been an unhappy one because she tossed it on the ground and growled at it as if it had ruined her life. Satisfied with that, she took up sniffing my coat again and discovered the meat I had in my pocket. Suddenly ravenous, she started to tear into the leather, her strength much greater than you’d expect, so I turned away from her and got my hand on the meat before she rendered me naked. Judging by the look of it, it was a head scrap: an ear and part of the scalp, some hair stuck to it on one end. When she saw it, she lunged at me.

“Hang on, hang on. Jesus you guys don’t know shit about patience, do ya?”

So I wrapped it around my fingers because, you know, I had to keep trying, right? Had to hope one of these times the bite would work for me.

And you know what she did, as I gave her my hand and said, “Here comes the plane, into the hanger”? Know what she did? She unwrapped it! Took it off my hand and wolfed it down and didn’t touch me at all.

“Oh come on!” I grabbed her head and opened her mouth and stuck my nose in it and pushed her jaws closed until white light erupted behind my eyes and blood ran down my throat. Did that for about ten seconds until I realized I wasn’t going to do shit but lose a nose and have to walk around sounding like a teakettle as the wind blew through the new hole in my face.

Needless to say I gave up.

Afterwards, she sat there, blood streaked on her cheek, her dangling eyeball drooping a bit lower, and she just kind of looked at me.

“Brandy,” I said, calling her by my granddaughter’s name–it just came out of nowhere. She didn’t look like Brandy, who’d had blonde hair and freckles before she’d died, didn’t look like her at all, save for the age part. “I miss you.”

And then it just came out, out of nowhere, out of that part of my head where important things get buried: “I shouldn’t never have yelled at you that day.” She, it, whatever, made a sort of cooing sound and dribbled some blood onto the bench, and I chuckled a little bit, which was a good feeling. “I shouldn’t never have hit you neither, young as you were. Not for that anyway. Not for breaking a watch I hardly wore anymore. Fact is, I should have laughed at your ingenuity, cooking it in that pot of stew like that. Pretty funny now. Certainly shouldn’t have smacked you in the face for it. I get angry, you know, just can’t help it. I…I’m…Maybe I can make it up to you? Maybe we can go–”

Before it went any further though, she got up, shuffled over to the coke can, picked it up carefully like it was a crystal vase or something, and walked away into the shadows.

Leaving me alone. Again. With tears. Ticktock. Ticktock.

And so here I am, sitting under the moonlight in a forgotten park, writing to you–whoever you are, who finds this dog-eared notebook–getting ready to head south. The world’s most unwanted man. Me. Tomorrow morning, way I see it, I’ll grab some Chef Boyardee and get going on down the I-5. Maybe the Mexican Zees got a better bite.

Can’t help but keep thinking–hold on…this teenage one’s licking my neck…please, please, please… Shit! No dice. He’s leaving now…back to wherever he goes at night, I guess.

Can’t help but keep thinking about what my wife said a few weeks before all this began, before she died and came back and ate our granddaughter. She said I was dead inside, that my heart was nothing but a ball of mud, all stinky like skunk cabbage. We didn’t get along so great those last years, always fighting and cussing and ignoring each other. And, well, shit, I don’t know you–whoever finds this–so I’ll just admit that I hit her too. A few times. Great, now I’m getting these words all wet.

Yeah, I hit her. Hard, more than a few times actually. I get angry, you know.

And she said all my bitterness and anger killed any sense of humanity I had.

I told her I didn’t care, and went to my TV room downstairs and just stayed there, alone, and didn’t come out for… well…until those reports started about the dead people.

I bet she’s staggering around back there in Dallas, laughing inside that bloody husk she got as a body now. I bet she’s laughing hard as I used to hit her.

No humanity left.

Maybe she’s right.

Because here I am.

Ryan C. Thomas is the author of the novels The Ratings Game (Cohort Press) and The Summer I Died (Coscom Entertainment) and editor of the forthcoming anthology Monstrous (Permuted Press). Visit him online at www.ryancthomas.com.