Curran Array - Zombie Pulp

“I’m not leaving,” he said.

Good God. He was still in the Marines. He was living some prepubescent G.I. Joe fantasy. The zombies had been vanquished. There was no reason to hole up like this any longer.

When the Army came-and Gus, of course, had warned them off until they trained antitank guns on the house-they said that out at Fort Kendrix there were hundreds of people-men, women, children, all rebuilding their lives. They had fresh meat, fresh fruit and vegetables. Water that didn’t taste like metal. And medical care. Real medical care. And the guy in charge, Captain McFree-handsome, dashing really, with his black commando beret and pencil-thin Errol Flynn mustache-said they had electricity and a DVD library.

“Gus, be realistic. It’s time to go.”

He looked around, pale and paunchy and unshaven, camouflage pants worn and dingy. “I’m not leaving all this. I’m not leaving my home.”

Emma sighed. “Home? This isn’t a home, Gus, it’s a barracks.”

There were cases of MREs fighting for space amongst iron crates of ammo and jugs of purified water, the guns and first aid supplies. A survivalist’s wet dream, but hardly a home. The walls were tacked with maps, the windows boarded over and criss-crossed by duct tape so they would not shatter. The brass coat tree by the front door was hanging with gas masks and waterproof ponchos and web belts.

Home?

Sure, Good Housekeeping as seen by Soldier of Fortune.

Emma didn’t bother arguing. She packed up what she could in a suitcase and a nylon duffel and dumped them before the front door. “I’m going now, Gus. The war is over. Time to put away our guns and pick up shovels and saws and rebuild.”

“Fuck that,” he said.

Emma felt sad. She had watched a good man degenerate into this paranoid wreck. And as he degenerated, so had her love and respect for him.

She threw the bolts on the door and stepped out onto the porch. Gus slammed it immediately behind her, fumbling locks into place.

“You’ll come back,” he said.

No, I won’t.

“You’re making a big mistake, Emma,” he told her through the mail slot, using that calm and authoritative voice of his that had been so effective in the past for everything from getting money to getting into her pants. “You won’t make it out there. You’ll be dead before you reach the Army base. You’re not a survivor type and you know it.”

She didn’t argue with that. “The survivalist thing is you, Gus, it’s not me.”

“You just don’t have what it takes, Emma.”

“You’re right,” she said, leaving the bunker.

If surviving means becoming a rat afraid to leave its den, then I’ll be a victim, Gus, and be happier for it.

It was wonderful to be outside again.

The clean-up crews had hauled away the bodies and remains and for the first time in weeks and months the breeze did not smell like it had been blown from a morgue drawer. It was coming from the south and she could smell sweet odors of spring growth, lilacs and honeysuckle. The sun on her pale face was warm, inviting.

She moved down the walk and stopped beneath one of the big oaks out there.

Thank God, thank God, thank G The wind shifted direction and soured right away, bringing with it a vile odor of bacterial decay and corpse gas. It was not old, but recent, very moist and organic like rotten meat shoved in her face.

Emma froze up.

She dropped first one bag, then another.

The sun was behind her.

Her shadow was cast over the walk as was that of the oak. She could see its twisting limbs and threading branches…and in them, hunched-over shadows like gargoyles.

Something hit her in the back of the head.

She heard a high chittering sound.

She turned and something hit her in the face.

Something wet and crawling and stinking.

She clawed it away with her fingers…bloody meat that crawled with bloated white grave maggots. Gagging, she tossed it away, the stink of putrescence putting her down to her knees.

With a gore-streaked face she stared up into the tree.

She saw a grinning, demonic visage staring down at her. It snapped its teeth at her.

Emma screamed.

*

Through the gunport slit in the living room wall, Gus watched his wife walk away. She was making a big mistake and he was angry that she did not know it. Angry that a bright woman like that did not realize the fix they were in.

And after all he had done for her.

Betrayal.

He didn’t need the Army.

He didn’t need Fort Kendrix.

Everything he needed was here in the shelter where he was master and commander.

He lit a cigarette. It was stale but he didn’t even notice anymore. He blew smoke out through his nose and scratched at the stubble on his chin. Automatically, obsessively, his hands roamed his body making a quick inventory:. 45 Smith in the holster-check; K-Bar fighting knife in its sheath-check; extra magazine for the What the hell is she doing?

Emma had stopped on the walk. She had dropped her bags. She made a gagging sound, digging something from the back of her head that was tangled in her hair.

Gus grabbed his M-14 sniper rifle and ran to the door.

He threw the bolts and was outside in seconds.

Emma was sitting there on her ass as something dropped out of the tree not five feet from her.

The thing saw him, hissed, and charged in his direction.

Gus just stood there, shocked at what he was seeing.

A baboon.

A baboon of all crazy fucked-up things: thick-bodied, compact, covered in a down of shaggy brown fur. Its eyes were shining a tarnished silver like dirty nickels, huge jaws wide open, fangs bared. It left a trail of slime in its wake.

There were huge ulcers eaten through its skin.

You could see its bones.

Zombie.

When it was ten feet away, Gus automatically shouldered the M-14 and fired just as he’d been taught at Parris Island so many years before. He popped the ape in the left eye socket with a. 308 round that blew its skull apart in a spray of gray-pink mucilage and sent its corpse tumbling through the grass. A jelly of worms bubbled from its ruined head.

“EMMA!” he called out. “EMMA! RUN!”

Two more baboons dropped from the trees, then a third and a fourth. There had to be a dozen more up in the branches. They were shrieking and growling, absolutely enraged.

Gus heard a scratching, scrambling sound and turned. Two more were up on the roof. They were leaping from the trees onto the top of the house.

He dropped one that was five feet from him, pivoted, and knocked another off the roof that had only one arm.

He could hear Emma screaming.

The baboons were coming at him from every direction.

They looked like the remains of test animals that had been slit and bisected, poked and peeled and drained: grave-waste. He saw one lacking legs that swung its torso forward with its arms and others that seemed to be missing sections of flesh as if they’d been biopsied.

They all had huge holes eaten through them, bones jutting from their maggoty hides, meatflies rising from them in clouds. Baboon faces were skinned to pink meat or gray muscle, some were chewed to the bone by carrion beetles.

He dropped two more and then there was no room to shoot as they nipped at him, raking his legs with sharp skeletal fingers. He used his rifle like a club, swinging it, bashing in heads and smashing snarling faces to pulp until he was sprayed with rancid gouts of brown and red fluids.

The baboons circled him, gnashing their teeth.

He waited, the M-14 encrusted with gore and dripping a foul corpse slime.

He knew Emma was out there, but he didn’t dare look for her. He couldn’t even hear her now over the wailing and yipping sounds of the baboons.