Tim Meyer - Less Than Human

“Route 77 South. About twenty minutes west of LBI.”

LBI, Josh thought. Long Beach Island. They were about forty minutes south of his apartment. The old shitbox . There was nothing back there for him anyway. He had some supplies they could have used, and an unregistered handgun he had stashed beneath his mattress, but that was it. Nothing worth risking their lives for.

“I have something I need to do.”

“And what might that be?”

“I’m heading to Pittsburgh.”

“Oh,” Josh said. “Why?”

“My son lives there,” Ben said. “With his mother. They might… still be alive.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Josh didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had seen news reports about cannibalistic attacks in Ohio, not too far from the Steel City. Instead, he shook his head. “Anything is possible.”

“Do you have any family that might be alive?”

Josh thought about it. He couldn’t be certain. His mother had been eviscerated in front of him. His father ran out on him when he was little. His uncle in Oklahoma was arrested for diddling kids. He had no siblings, at least to his knowledge. Every single grandparent died long before the end of times. He might have had a few cousins left in Detroit. He hadn’t seen any of them in over ten years.

“No,” he said.

Then he thought of Olivia again. Fuck, how could I forget her?

Maybe because you don’t care about her as much as you let on, you useless addict, a very harsh voice responded in his head.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said.

“I have this girlfriend, sort of. It’s off and on. Complicated.”

“Oh?” Ben tried to smile. “And… uh, is she…”

“Alive?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t know. She’s on vacation with her folks in Harrisburg.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“It’s on the way.”

“Do you have a cell phone?” Josh asked. “I could call her.”

Ben shook his head. “No signal. I’ve tried everywhere.”

Josh closed his eyes. “How did this happen?”

“I’ve asked myself the same question.”

“The government will bail us out. I mean, they prepare for this sort of thing, right?”

Ben shrugged. “It happened so quickly.”

Josh rested his head against the seat, staring at the ceiling.

“I can take you to Harrisburg, if you want.”

He ignored Ben, leaning his head toward the window, trapped in some horrific reverie. Then he glanced over at the man responsible for the pulsating pain in his arm. “What?”

“I can take you to Harrisburg,” Ben repeated. “It’s silly to travel alone. At least together, we can watch each other’s backs.”

Josh nodded. “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re buying the first round at the first bar we find.”

“Is that right?” Ben grinned, killing the engine.

“Absolutely. It’s the least you could do for breaking my arm.”

They chortled softly before deciding who was going to take the first shift watching for zombies. They needed to be refreshed for tomorrow. Brand-new horrors awaited.

“God is finished, sick of his creation and the abomination it has become, you hear? This is the end of times, the days that will lead us to the Rapture!”

Ben awoke to the fiery, southern drawl of an evangelist. His temples throbbed and the righteous man’s sermon was not helping. He switched the radio off, not remembering turning it on. Something pounded on the glass. His first semi-conscious thought was that the windshield wipers were swaying back and forth rhythmically. As the world became clear, he saw a dead woman gently smacking the windshield with her palm.

The zombie was once an old lady, but now it was just an it , barely resembling anything human. Half of her cheek was missing, exposing grayed gums and teeth blackened with rot. She stared at him with eyes displaying no intelligence, no sensible thought or reasoning. All it wanted, all it craved , was the taste of Ben’s flesh and blood.

She was unlike some of the other zombies he’d seen in his parents’ development. Some of them were quick. Really quick. Almost as fast as Ben could run. They had more will too, more motivation. The elderly corpse only made feeble attempts at breaking in. Her fists were doing little, except damaging her own body; her wrists were clearly broken, blood leaking from the torn flesh where bone peeked through. Ben turned on the wipers to wash the old woman’s blood away, and she didn’t seem to mind. She continued smashing her fist against the glass sedately.

Just as the wipers dragged across the patches of dry glass. Josh snapped out of his mini coma.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “I fell asleep.”

“It’s okay. Look.”

Before Josh noticed the walking corpse outside of the car, he lightly touched his shoulder. Pain shot up and down his arm. He couldn’t move it. Rolling up his sleeve, he found a big purple mark where the car got the best of him. “Motherfucker.”

“She’s so… slow.”

Josh finally glanced up and saw the old lady. She was as Ben had observed. Slow. She vaguely reminded him of his mother, only much older, and more… dead. He would never know what Meridith Emberson would have looked like in her eighties, but the walking cadaver was close to what Josh had imagined. It brought a certain sense of sadness to the forefront of his emotions, but hatred, confusion, and the pain that throbbed in his shoulder overpowered everything.

“Definitely not like the ones back in Pine Coast…”

“What?” Ben asked.

“Pine Coast. That’s were I was before you hit me.”

“You work there or something?”

“No, I was visiting,” he replied.

Ben heard something in his voice that gave everything away. He closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Josh said. He quickly wanted to change the topic. “I’m sorry I fell asleep during my watch. Could’ve gotten us killed if granny here was a little more hungry.”

“She looks hungry all right,” Ben said. The woman opened and closed her mouth like a fish.

“I say we get out of here before more come,” Josh said.

They drove west for almost twenty miles, not seeing a single person, living or dead. There should have been evidence that the world had ended, an indication that the dead no longer stayed dead. But there was nothing. Only open roads and derelict vehicles. They didn’t stop. Driving slowly, they peered through the windows. No signs of the living. They thought they might see the owners of those vehicles hoofing it a few miles down the road, but that wasn’t the case. It had been days since those cars and trucks had seen their drivers.

“Do you think maybe the infection—or whatever it is—has made it everywhere yet?” Josh thought out loud.

“I don’t know,” Ben replied. “But I find it weird we haven’t seen anyone or anything in almost an hour.”

“I don’t like it. It’s like the calm before the storm.”

Ben had that feeling, too. The arrow on the Sonata’s gas gauge approached empty. Considering they were nowhere near a gas station, it would have been a very bad time to run out of gas. They had no food, with exception of a few packages of gummy snacks Ben had found in the glove-box. More importantly, they had no water.

“Cigarette?” Josh asked, holding the pack in front of Ben.

“No, thanks. My wife made me quit years ago,” he said. “Well, ex -wife,” he corrected.

“It’s the goddamn zombie apocalypse. You’re probably not going to be alive long enough to catch cancer,” Josh said.