Illinoir

I wrestled my foot from the door, an endeavor which took more time than I’d like to admit, and provided Westy with no end of amusement. Finally free, I shoved my hand through the hole I’d made and found the door knob on the other side.

“Brains.” Careful now.

“Nonsense. Just a simple twist of the wrist, et voila.”

“Brains.” Wait —

Westy’s warning was cut off as the door swung open on oiled hinges followed immediately by an explosion, which though it was, in terms of explosions, small and controlled, still rocked the apartment and slammed me against the wall behind me.

Had I been knocked out? Was it possible for a Z without a nervous system to be rendered unconscious? It was some moments, or minutes, or hours later that I opened my eyes again. I checked my head and limbs — habitual self-diagnostic — and found everything to be in the right place. The only thing amiss was the foot long piece of a Masonite Palazzo Series interior door sticking out of my chest.

“Holy fuck!” I exclaimed. “Would you get a load of that?”

“Brains.” The door exploded.

“Must have been booby trapped.”

“Brains.” Would someone go to such lengths to protect his porn collection?

“I don’t know — I might. Not that I have a porn collection. Really.”

“Brains.” Right.

I rose to my feet, yanked the splinter from my chest and tossed it aside. Why would Stimph booby trap a door in his own apartment? And how had it been rigged? And how was it possible to disable the defense system to allow for safe entry by authorized personnel. A quick examination of the wall to the right of the door revealed the remains of a keypad that had previously been hidden from view by a sliding panel.

“Crap. Should have thought of that first.”

“Brains.” We did.

“Well, you could have said something.”

“Brains.” We tried.

“I suppose you did,” I admitted. “Well, no matter. We’re still in one piece, I think.”

“Brains.” Your shoe is on fire.

I looked down to see that Westy was right — my shoelaces were smoldering. I stomped on one foot with the other, putting it out.

“Good looking out, Westy.”

“Brains.” No problem.

I peered through the smoke into the bedroom. Apparently the trap had been designed only to kill or maim someone breaking into the room, and not to destroy the contents of the room itself. I guess that spoke to Stimph’s confidence that the bomb would do its job, and a lack of foresight that a mostly indestructible member of the walking dead might be curious about what was behind that door. I supposed that had I been your every day run of the mill human being that I might be in worse shape. If the splinter through my chest hadn’t done me in, there were plenty of other dangers that would take care of an ordinary homo sapien: the shockwave of the explosion forcing al the air from my lungs; the resulting fire; or the smoke. Whoever had made this bomb knew what he was doing.

As the smoke cleared, I took stock of the bedroom. There was no bed — where one might have gone, there was a large table that had been covered with beakers, test tube and other lab equipment. The glass, of course, had all shattered, and anything sturdier had been thrown aside, but it was still clear that this was a work table of some sort.

“Was Stimph cooking meth?” I wondered aloud. But I immediately knew this wasn’t the case. I’d watched Breaking Bad and knew that even the smallest meth labs required more space, security, and ventilation than this room could offer. Still, it appeared as if he was making something that required chemicals; something that required the greatest secrecy.

Smoke still obscured much of the room, but I could make out a closet to my right. The doors had been thrown off their rails by the explosion, and they had absorbed some of the blast, but they were still mostly intact — the blast really was designed to blow out of the room. I pulled the doors down and threw them aside. Inside the closet were two large drums — one of ammonium nitrate, the other of some sort of sulfate. Bomb making stuff. It appeared as if Stimph had rigged the bomb himself.

“Son, maybe you haven’t been around much lately but  I can tell you ain’t stupid, so I hope you won’t get offended if I give you a piece of unsolicited advice.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“You gotta always be on your guard these days. I ain’t sure how you lived before Westphail fever swept the nation, but you can’t be livin’ any other way but this. You traipse about like you’re still in the good ol’ days, you won’t last long. Just strollin’ along, mindin’ your own business and then bam! –” he shouted this; I didn’t flinch “– zombie got yer kitten.”

“‘Zombie got yer kitten?’” I asked.

“Yep,” he said, as if no further explanation was needed, and I suppose one wasn’t. “Zombie got yer kitten.”

There was about a tenfoot gap between the roof I was on and the roof of Tim Stimph’s building. I’d never been involved in a rooftop chase which required me to leap from one building to the next, but I’d seen a lot of movies, and it looked like a lot of fun, so I was eager to get going. How often do you get an opportunity like that?

I gauged the distance, estimating how much of a running start I’d need. Ten feet isn’t a whole heck of a long jump (the men’s world record in long jump is almost six time as far) but when you’re ten stories above ground, it tends to make you extra cautious even if you’re certain (or at least the voice in your head is certain) that you’d survive the fall. Jumping from roof to roof was something I wanted to do. Experiencing a 100-foot drop with a sudden and violent conclusion was not.

“This is so bad-ass,” I said, psyching myself up. “I’m a fucking action hero.”

“Brains.” You’re a zombie with a human complex.

“And you’re a wet blanket buzzkill. This is going to be so cool.”

I stepped back about 30 feet, and did a couple test runs of the running start. When I was confident I could manage the jump, I took a couple deep breaths (unnecessary, of course) tore ass across the roof and leapt into the air.

“Yippie-cay-yay motherfucker!” I shouted.

“Brains.” Why is it that David Hasselhoff was killed in a riot in Berlin? I thought he was really popular in Germany.

“Guh?” I asked. And then, as I slammed into the side of the building whose roof was my target, I said something along the lines of, “Oof.”

I’d caught the lip of the building’s roof right in my midsection. I think I felt (and heard) a couple ribs crack. If I still had a functioning circulatory system, I’d have a hell of a bruise. As it was, I was just really annoyed.

“Dammit, Westy,” I shouted, “you did that on purpose!”

It turned out to be a lot easier to find Tim Stimph than either Westy or I thought it would be. Well, I found where he’d been, anyway. First, I went to the grocery store where he’d sneezed on me. In 2016, a law had been passed requiring all food vendors to get full name and address information from all customers in case a food-borne Westphail outbreak popped up. When I got to the store, the windows were broken and the store was dark, like all the rest of the stores I’d seen. The grocery store had been hit particularly hard by looters, of course, with everyone trying to stock up on necessities as they fled the city. The shelves were bare, the coolers empty. I even checked the registers, but even they had been emptied. It wasn’t likely that American currency had much value anymore and it would probably be a very long time before it did again, if that time ever even came. But old habits died hard; even in the face of total annihilation, greed still ruled.

But I wasn’t looking for food or money. I wanted those records. I made my way towards the back of the store to the manager’s office. The door was locked; apparently nobody had thought there would be anything of value in there. The two way mirror which the manager used to spy on his customers and employees was still intact as well. I removed my jacket, wrapped it around my fist and punched through it. It broke with a satisfying smash.

“Shit, that was cool! I’ve never done that before!” I exclaimed as I shook the broken glass out of my jacket put it back on and climbed through the window into the office.

As I jumped to the floor from the window frame, I disturbed a huge cloud of flies which swarmed about my face and then streamed through the window. I feared the worst: a huge pile of decaying corpses strewn about. When I opened my eyes, I discovered that the office was a mess, and it wasn’t just from the broken glass I had just sprayed all over the place. It also wasn’t from looters or Zs or bodies or military action or any of the other messes I’d witnessed so far that day. This was just a straight up mess caused by an untidy, uncaring, unorganized office occupant. Apparently, the manager had a great love of fast food and a great disdain for any sort of cleaning supplies, up to and including garbage bags. There was litter everywhere: half-eaten cheeseburgers molding in McDonald’s cartons; spilled soda turned to hardened syrup deposits on the floor; stacks of pizza boxes came up to my waist. The place was a wreck and looked like it had been for longer than Westphail had been around.

“What a stench!” I exclaimed, then realized that the smell wasn’t really bad at all. To my new zombie nose, I guess, it smelled like dinner. Fuck, I really didn’t want to be attracted to rotting garbage. Not much I could do about that.

If the filth didn’t assault my nose, it did assault my sense of orderliness. My poverty and inability to acquire mass quantities of consumer goods had done me one favor: it forced me to maintain a lifestyle that could be classified as spartan to say the very least. Not having a lot of things meant not having a lot of things to clean up, keep tidy, or take care of, and that had suited me just fine. This office was painful to be in, so I hastened to get in and out as fast as possible.

The computers were, of course, dead and useless. Even if the power had been out, I’m not sure I would have been able to see clearly through the film of grease on the monitor or make use of the crumb-filled keyboard enough to find any files on the machine. Fortunately for me, the manager (a placard on his desk read, “Rob Anise, Grocer”) had apparently not trusted any type of electronic file storage to do its job and had printed out every email, website receipt and computer record that had ever seemingly come across his screen. Besides all the detritus of a life sustained on carry-out food, the desk was covered with what must have been reams of letter-sized paper, covered with everything from an email from a friend (“Rob — Great to see you on Tuesday. Have you lost weight? Just kidding, I know you haven’t. — Craig.”) to a receipt for the purchase from Nile.com (four workout DVDs: “From Cankles to Ankles”; “Grace Bagby Kills Cankles”; “Cankles: A Historical Perspective”; and “30 Minute Cankle Workout” — I guess the guy had issues with his lower legs.) A few stray customer records with their full info were scattered amongst the pile, but the far wall of the office (and the office was so small that the wall was not so far away) was lined with floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, several of which were helpfully labeled “Customer Records.” I pushed aside a pile of festering Chinese take-out boxes and, with some hesitation of what I might find, opened the drawer marked “R-T.”

Apparently, Rob Anise, Grocer, had had some assistant or temp worker who occasionally came through to help out with his filing because instead of a huge mess of papers, stuffed into the filing cabinet at random covered with grease and filth piled on top with more papers and garbage (which is what I had assumed I would find,) the drawer opened with ease upon a neat and orderly collection of files, alphabetized properly. I could have sworn I heard a holy chorus sing a single, sustained note as I slid the drawer open.

I quickly rifled through the files until I came to Stimph’s. Just as easy as pie, I had all the information I needed. He lived, at least until June 30th of 2020 which was the date on the printout, just a few block from the store.

“Told you I could do it, Westy,” I said triumphantly.

“Brains.” Yippie.

I could swear this comment was followed by a sarcastic slow clap.

“Brains.” Indeed. Now, should we go find someone to eat?

An idea formed in my head. I was like Dexter. I could go around eating the brains of every asshole that ever did me wrong. No, that’s no good. That’s just a mad dash for revenge. I could go around eating the brains of every asshole that ever did the world wrong. I could be a force of justice. I could be the flaming sword of God’s archangel Gabriel. Right? He was the one that dished out vengeance? I had no idea. It didn’t matter. I had purpose and focus, for the first time in my life. Turning into a Z might have been the best damn thing to ever happen to me.

“Brains.” I’ve been trying to tell you that. Now, who’s first?

I hadn’t a clue where to start. “I bet all the bad guys are already dead or zombified anyway, huh? Probably not a whole lot of serial killers left in the world.”

“Brains.” Just pretend the next living person you see is a serial killer.

“Hah, Westy, it doesn’t work like that. But, you’re my dark passenger. It’s your job to make me kill and my job to focus that into something productive. So, ok. How do we find someone who deserves to die?”

“Brains.” Next person you see. Doesn’t matter if they ‘deserve’ to die or not. Everyone deserves to die. And you deserve to eat.

Westy was good at his job. It was going to be tough to resist that urge to feed. It was pressing in my mind, harder and harder the longer I went without eating. Had to be like Dexter. Find a deserving victim. Find someone who didn’t care about human life, didn’t care about who he hurt, didn’t care about…. I had it.

“Who’s the one person we know of that obviously just doesn’t give a shit about how he affects the rest of the world? Doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions? Goes around just sneezing on people without even apologizing?” I cried out. It was like the Shaft theme song, but far less funky and not about the coolest guy to ever grace the silver screen. Who was it about? It was about “Motherfucking Tim Stimph! That’s who!”

“Brains?” Who?

“Oh you’ll just love this, Westy,” I said with a grin. “He’s the guy who brought you into my life!”

What better way to start my rampage of justice, my righteous murder spree, my saccage tuent-fou as the French say than by taking out the bastard who turned me into this monster in the first place?

“Brains.” It’s been three years. A lot has happened. You won’t find him. Let’s just go get the next person we see. Enough of this nonsense.

“I know you’re just doing your job. I respect the division of labor here, I really do. You’re trying to get me going. And I don’t know why I’m resisting. From what I can tell, I should be just another mindless, killing, eating machine. Hell, that’s pretty much what I was before Stimph sneezed on me. Minus the killing part. I think.”

“Brains.” You’re making things too complicated. Why not just let go? Relax? Everything can be so easy if you just stop struggling.

“Yeah, that’s what they always say about everything. Resisting just makes it worse. Just go towards the light. Everything will be fine. You know what? I’m done with that. I’ve been doing that my whole life, and now that I’m technically dead, it’s time I took a stand. It’s time I made things right. It’s time I killed the prick that made me turn into a zombie!”

“Brains.” Whatever. As long as there’s some killing involved.

Ak was lost in thought again. “My family, man, they’re all…”

“…dead? Zombies? What?”

“What? No. They’re all at the Oklahoma City Reanimiated Human Defense Zone Relocation Center. Mom and Dad. Wife. Kids. My cousins, aunts, uncles. Grandma. Yeah, they’re all fine. Got ‘em set up real nice, thanks to the ZH beer people and my Red Bull sponsorship. I saved Senator Pitt’s kids from certain death during a Z outbreak in DC back in ‘16 so he owed me one. They got a big-ass house, nice car, a pool. Everythin’.”

“How come you’re not down there with them?” I asked.

“I’m a Zombie Hunter. Sorry, the Zombie Hunter,” he said. “Zombie Hunter gotta hunt. Never mind the sponsors and the contracts and the TV show, it’s in my blood, son.”

“TV show?” I wondered.

“Hell yeah, son, I got me a TV show. Realest reality show you ever seen. Cameras followin’ me around watchin’ me kill Zs wherever I go. Big hit. ‘Course, God knows how many people got TVs or ‘lectricity such as they can watch anymore.”

I peered out into the night, wondering if I’d missed a camera crew that had been shadowing Ak. This conversation would have been an editor’s nightmare — long, action-free, mostly devoid of plot development or pertinent details. I felt bad for the guy.

“Where’s the camera crew?” I asked.

Ak shook his head again. “That’s something else only God knows, I guess. Lost them a few days ago. Zs came outta nowhere, outta the sewers, outta everywhere. I saw a few of ‘em go down, yeah, did what I could to help, then we got split up in the chaos. Spent the last few days lookin’ round for them, but haven’t had any luck.” He brightened. “Say, you ain’t seen nobody carrying a big-ass stupid camera, running around scared like a zombie chicken with its head cut off, have you?”

“Sorry, Ak, I can’t say that I have.”

“Didn’t think you would have, figured you’d’a mentioned that one already, but figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Sure hope someone made it. I’d really like to see the footage from that fight. Boy, I pulled some shit that night I thought I was too old to do. Was killin’ Zs with everything I could get my hands on. Killed one Z with a pitchfork. Never held a pitchfork before in my life. No idea what a pitchfork was doin’ in the middle of the suburbs. Just lyin’ there on the side of the road. Pinned that Z to the wall. Got another one with a boom mike. Just grabbed it out of the sound guy’s hands, he’s still holding it out, recording, I don’t know, me gruntin’ and fightin’ and swearin’. I just grabbed it from him, knocked a Zs head clean off with it. Smack. Plop. Dead. Good stuff.”

“Man, I would love to see that. Hope the cameras were still rolling.”

“You and me both, son. That could really make the season right there.” Ak sighed at the thought of lost quality footage. “Anyhow, I interrupted again. You know me long enough you’ll realize that every story you tell, I’ll butt in with my own thoughts each time. Bad habit of mine, I guess. The wife keeps tellin’ me it’s something I gotta work on. I figure only thing a man’s gotta work on these days is keepin’ dead critters from eatin’ his brains.”

I laughed. Westy said, “Brains.”