Zombie Exodus Novel, chapter 3, Abigail

Abigail realized civilization would soon run out of graves. She wore her tool belt now and used a screwdriver to jimmy open the lock of a maintenance closet. She dragged the infected body inside. He barely fit, and she bent his legs up and shoved him between a shelf and cardboard boxes. On the top shelf sat a plastic tarp, which she stretched out to cover him. She made the sign of the cross and closed the door.

There has to be a phone around here somewhere. She walked to Mr. Connors’s apartment and tried the handle—open. She hesitated. Though she never met Arthur Connors, she trusted Emma’s opinion when she said he was as friendly as a starving hyena. Abigail met him once three months ago when she moved in with Emma. He had been carrying packages up the back staircase, and Abigail offered to help. The old man refused the assistance and told her to limit that heavy metal music she blared at all hours. Abigail never thought of the Counting Crows as metal. Normally, she would never think to enter old man Connors’s apartment but rules change in the apocalypse.

She eased open the door which caught the end of an exquisite Oriental rug, causing it to bunch. She yanked the rug and stepped into the living room. Instead of letting the door close, she swung it wide and slid a heavy umbrella stand over to block it. The only light in the room came from the moon and stars through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Mr. Connors has expensive tastes, she thought. Victorian-style couches and a love seat formed an L across the center of the hardwood floor. On an antique stand sat a Victrola. She glanced at the old music player, with its large funnel-shaped horn and hand crank. Impressionist art hung from the walls, and statues of Aphrodite and Apollo stood guard on either side of a single room. Past the couches sat an open kitchen, and she heard static from a TV or radio coming from there.

She searched the living room but found neither house nor cell phone. She checked the kitchen next and spotted the source of the static—an antique radio on a marble counter next to a coffee maker. She flipped off the radio. The white noise died out and a scraping sound replaced it­—nails across wood. She spun around and gripped her hammer. The scraping slid from one end of the kitchen to the other, crossing the walls behind overhead cabinets. That’s no mouse. She reached up and popped open a cabinet door and drew back the hammer to swing. Nothing jumped out at her. Inside sat soup cans, dried pasta, and glass jars of herbs. In the last cupboard, she saw a can of premium Colombian coffee and was reminded of her dull headache. Mr. Connors won’t mind if I make a cup. She opened the can but instead of beans, it held rolls of money. She lifted a roll and flicked the edge of the paper to show all twenty dollar bills, dozens of them. She frowned and turned the money over and over in her hand before placing it back in the coffee can and into the cupboard.

As she stepped out of the kitchen, she heard a low, raspy moan hissing from the other room. Abigail opened her mouth to call out but thought better of it and said nothing. She moved across the floor on the balls of her feet, quiet and cautious, and pushed the door inward. With each creek of the hinges, her heart skipped, but nothing appeared beyond the door but the contents of a bedroom. She slid across the carpet and heard the wheezing again, close and low, like someone breathing through a plastic bag. She walked around the queen-sized bed, and there he lied—Mr. Connors—though not the man she remembered. This version had the signs of infection: the deep amber skin, the green marks, the jagged teeth. He clawed the air and reached out for Abigail, though his movement was impaired by two broken legs. Brown-freckled bone jutted through the thigh of one leg while the other was twisted twice, once at the knee and once below the knee, giving it an S-shape. Mr. Connors seemed unfazed by the broken limbs but reached for her, and with each swing of his arms, Abigail heard the crackle of bone.

Her arms slumped to her side. Is this the end? Is this what we become in death? She thought of all the people in the city, now the city of the infected. The first two people she met today were lost to the disease. Does it spread so fast? Is the whole city infected?

Mr. Connors twisted his torso until the bones of his legs split down the length. This act moved him a full foot closer, though still out of Abigail’s reach. She smelled his rot. Brown liquid oozed from the open cavities of his broken legs. His teeth clicked as they snapped. 

She slipped a screwdriver from her belt and plunged it into the side of the infected man’s head until the metal disappeared into his skull. Mr. Connors went limp. 

She sat on the edge of the bed and scratched the tip of her nose. This is the world now. She wondered if she was the last living human. Did that mean Emma’s gone, too? If she ever hoped to find out, she would need more than screwdrivers and cell phones.

She checked the bedroom, hoping to find a phone or whatever else may be of use. The closest held suits and several suitcases. She opened a steamer trunk and found vases and golden sconces, boxes of jewelry, several scrapbooks with photos turned gray and brown from aging, and a box with a top hat. She searched a large oak dresser and pushed aside neatly folded clothing. Under a pile of starched undershirts lied a pistol. She knew little of guns, though Emma had given her a few free lessons at a local gun range last Christmas, and she recognized the .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. She checked the ammo and loaded it to full and slipped it in the front of her pants behind her shirt.

She turned to leave, but her eyes fell on the dead man. “Sorry about the music, Mr. Connors,” she said and covered the man’s body with the floral comforter from the bed.

Not enough graves in this damn world.

***

Back in the hallway, she tried to open the next neighbor’s apartment door, but when it was locked, she raised her hand to knock. What if there are more infected inside? Won’t I just be alerting them to come out? She rested her head on the hallway wall. All of this for a phone—I’ve already killed two people. But were they people? She didn’t want to hurt anyone, let alone commit murder, but what choice did she have?

Abigail thought of her sister and images formed in her mind. Emma surrounded by the infected, unable to fight them off, succumbing to the bites, and eaten alive. She shook her head to remove the imaginary sounds of the screaming and the pleas for help. She grew sick as she watched the scene play out, and she pounded the door with her fist until she cracked her knuckles and drew blood. No one answered. She flexed her hand and stretched her fingers, and feeling no real injury, she moved on.

She checked each door along the hallway with no success. As she approached the final apartment on her floor, she heard noises: a repeated fast-paced tapping, a constant electrical hum, and a male voice. Is someone still alive around here? She tapped the doors and flinched from her soar knuckles. She rolled her eyes at her own mistake and listed at the door. No more sounds came through.

Moments passed. Her fingers grazed the door knob, and with each second, she tightened her hand to grip it. As she started to turn it, the door swung inward, and she released the handle. A tall man stood opposite her, dressed in a shocking amount of tie-dye. His face was lean and covered in a blond beard, longer in some areas, and curled at the edges. His hair was tucked under a blue knit cap, and something purple was smeared above his lip in place of a moustache. Is that jelly? Abigail thought.

“Come in, come in,” he insisted, and he grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. The well-lit apartment held an abundance of furniture and technology. Half-a-dozen laptops blinked and buzzed in a row all linked together in cables and wires. A plasma television the size of a kitchen table hung on the wall showing eight different news channels tiled across the screen. Dozens of open cans of Red Bull spread across various surfaces, and pizza boxes and instant dinner packages littered countertops. Comic books were thrown about, and Lord of the Rings memorabilia decorated the walls along with movie posters covering sci-fi over the past thirty years.

"Hey, I'm Jason...have a seat," he said through a raspy, cigarette-soaked voice. He dropped into a rolling chair positioned in front of the row of laptops and slipped on a headset with a microphone pressed to his mouth. "People are just rising from the dead all over the world. It's global zombie chaos. This is undead Armageddon!"

Abigail leaned against the computer desk. "Hey, Jason. I'm Abigail. I really need a phone. Do you have one I can use for a quick call?"

"Not sure what you're trying to prove asking me that?" Jason said, shaking his head.

Abigail scratched her chin. He was an odd man, and while she wanted to bypass the pleasantries and search his apartment for a phone, she accepted that this was the first living, non-infected person she had seen since the outbreak. Playing nice for a few more minutes seemed more prudent than breaking out her hammer on him.

“Sorry, I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to reach my sister and could really use your phone.”

Jason removed the headset. "No, sorry I was talking to my buddy, Deter, on VOIP. Trying to stay off the cell-phone grid."

"No problem, can I use...um, VOIP to call someone?"

“Yeah, it’s possible, but your sister would have to have software on her end to communicate.”

The lights overhead dim and laptops and monitors fizzle out. The electrical hum warbled and died, leaving the apartment in a sudden void of sound. Jason flicked switches and tapped on his keyboard. “No, no, no,” he said in an increasing pitch of frustration. He stood and moved to a side wall which had the appearance of the most elaborate fuse box in North America. As he pushed wires and fuse caps about, Abigail scanned the area for a phone or phone line, lifted boxes, pushed aside dirty clothes, and rummaged through piles of collectible junk. 

“I’ll get the lights back on soon enough,” Jason said and disconnected a car battery from the massive wall unit. “I knew the world was going to crap, so I made my own power generator. It runs on stored energy, not carbon-based fuel, since we’re not allowed to install exhaust channels in our apartments.”

Abigail thought it best to keep Jason talking and distracted while she searched for a phone. “How did you know this outbreak was happening?”

Jason’s voice hit a new high. “I’ve been monitoring the stream of information across the Internet. This virus is not new. It’s been running through the Far East unchecked for weeks, knockin on doors, screamin ‘I’m comin in.’ No one tried to stop it, until it was unstoppable.

"You see, this epidemic is under-reported. Most of Europe is already zombiefest, and there are millions of Asian zombies running around. These things are not like the movies. They're even more ferocious. You got to destroy their heads, or they just get back up more pissed than ever."

A long shriek echoed through the apartment, the sound pervading and deep like it rose from the bowels of the building. Abigail and Jason froze. The sound came again, and this time Abigail knew the source was neither human nor animal but held in it a quality so primal, it gave her every reason to run from the apartment and go far away.

The power in the room turned on, and the laptops awakened in a sudden strobe of light. The electrical hum returned, drowning out all other sounds beyond the walls. Jason ran to a closet and pressed his ear to the surface.

“What are you doing?” Abigail asked.

Jason rushed across the apartment, bumping into the rolling chair, which spun like a top. He listened at the front door, and his mouth opened wide. "Sorry, you got to go."

“What? Why?” Abigail said, but Jason took her arm, opened the front door, and yanked her toward the hallway.

“Look, all I need is a phone. Is that too much…” she started to say, but as her feet hit the carpeted hallway floor, the door slammed shut, and once again, she was alone.

Enraged, she spun and slammed her palm on the door. “Open up. Come on, Jason.” She kicked the wall several times, chipping paint with the edge of her steel-tipped boot, and drew a pry bar out of her tool belt. She shoved the metal edge between the door and its frame and braced herself to apply pressure. As she leaned forward, she paused. Jason had no phone inside and had no mind to help her or anyone. Whatever freaked him out moments ago intensified his social awkwardness. Her best course now was to head downstairs and find a phone in a common area. She remembered being friendly with Mike the maintenance guy. He was ex-military, a hunter, and a clever man. If anyone could survive in the outbreak, it was Mike.

She pulled the pry bar out of Jason’s door, returned it to her tool belt, and set off toward the stairwell.