The Apocalypse

Chapter 14

Neil

Montclair New Jersey



For days on end Neil hoarded his food and kept his water jugs filled. He had six candles and he made them last by sleeping when the sunset and waking when it rose. Fearing the coming winter he pulled his mattress into his living room and broke apart his bed-frame for firewood, though as yet he was too afraid to use his fireplace, worried that it would attract more of the monsters.

He then barricaded his doors and shuttered his windows, and turned his broom into a spear, although afterwards he was perturbed because he had a made a mess and had nothing to clean it up with.

Zombies were a nuisance at first, coming along in dribs and drabs, and he assumed that the Hudson River was holding back the millions in the city, and he was right. Those that went into the water from Manhattan usually came ashore in south Jersey where humans had mostly ceased to exist.

The great majority of the undead went north and crossed over the few remaining bridges at a rate of three-thousand an hour. In the prior two weeks more than a million had surged against the dug in army who were trying to hold the quarantine in place. Many turned aside, following the path of least resistance, looking for easier prey. They swept down New Jersey and their numbers proved too great for most.

Only the sturdiest doors and windows could keep out the voracious mob. Thankfully Neil possessed such heavy doors and windows. Out of fear of break-ins and the fact that he was against guns, he had long ago changed out his originals.

He had suggested the same thing to the Randal Cattau, whose house was catty-corner to his, and he hadn't done anything concerning Neil's advice and now his family was all dead. In dread fascination Neil had watched from his guest room as the zombies had swarmed all over the streets and lawns of his suburbia. They banged on doors and punched windows, until the Cattau's front bay window gave and then they poured in by the dozens. And then there was only screaming.

Mrs. Cattau and one of her three daughters became zombies. They had been horribly chewed upon and the girl could barely walk there was so little left to her. The others had been far too damaged to come back, or so Neil guessed.

The gathering had come for him as well, many, many times. When it happened, once or twice a day for the last week, he would retreat up to his attic and sit there clutching his stick, wondering about the possibility of suicide and wishing he had a gun. Tucked away as he was, there wasn't much of a chance for the monsters to get at him, yet he knew that if they got in once he would never be safe and that had him also thinking about trying to make a run for the safety of the army.

Surely they would let him through the lines. After all if they weren't going to protect the American people then what the hell were they doing?

The one problem with the idea was that every day the sound of the guns firing seemed to come from further away and eventually they ceased altogether. This stopped his planning dead in its tracks and he gave up on the idea until two days later.

His guest bedroom afforded him the best view of Grove Street and he liked to take his meals there when the zombies weren't out in full force. That day his lunch consisted of cold New England clam chowder—it wasn't bad if he took tiny spoonfuls, anything more made him want to gag. As he ate he watched the littlest Cattau zombie trying to get at a cat who sat just out of its reach in a tree. Cats seemed to have multiplied since the zombie plague had descended on the world. They were everywhere and unlike dogs, Neil had yet to see one zombiefied.

He had never cared for any animal in a pet sense, but just then he was lonely and he rooted for the cat to live. And this seemed very likely because the derelict zombie girl turned away and stared at something out of Neil's line of sight. Even standing didn't help. Whatever the zombie was seeing was on Neil's side of the street.

Then he heard a tapping on wood and a little voice whispering, “Hello? Can you let me in? There's zombies out here.”

Neil ran to another room that had a better view, and there outside the Krauthammer's front door was a girl of maybe sixteen, knocking gently.

Neil raised his window and whispered to her, “There's a zombie right over there.”

“I know! That's why I need in.”

Neil pointed to the back of his house and then ran downstairs to let her in. He expected gratitude, but instead he got a pistol pointed square in his face when the girl stepped across his threshold.

“Thanks,” she said without the least hint of nervousness to her. “Who you got in here with you? Wife? Kids? Gay lover?” This last she said after giving his neat attire a glance.

“I'm not gay,” he said petulantly. “And there's no one here but me.”

“Are you sure?”

For some reason the gun wasn't scaring him as much as he figured it would and he allowed his anger to show. “Don't you think I'd know if I was gay? Trust me, I like women. I like boobies and vaginas and...”

“I meant are you sure you're here alone? I don't want any surprises. People get killed that way, or worse.”

“Oh. No it's just me. And sorry about the vagina thing. It's just when you're not the most masculine man around people make so many assumptions. And then...”

She raised the gun to his face and said, “Shut up and show me where your food is.”

“You're robbing me?”

“Duh!” she answered. “Now turn around and don't be stupid, because I swear I'll put a hole in you.” She then dug in her pocket and pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Did you see which house I went in? It was the one with the green shutters.”

Her radio squawked and a quiet voice said, “Yeah, but we got a few stiffs coming this way. Leave the back door unlocked and I'll be in soon, over.”

The girl, a goth chic in black, with short spikey hair, looked around, though her gun never wavered. She went through his cupboards with one eye on him and didn't seem to care that he still had his sharpened broom handle in his hands. He held it tight as though he thought the girl would take it from him.

A minute later a brutish man came through the back door, he had a shotgun pointed at Neil. “Is it just him? Did you check?”

She shook her head and pointed at the sink. “One cup. One dish. He's all alone and he's got some choice stuff. Look, hot cocoa.”

The man unslung a large empty duffel bag from his back and started taking Neil's food, pulling down the neatly stacked cans in a rush. “What about his car?”

The girl shrugged. “He looks like a Prius-fag.” When Neil dropped his eyes she laughed. “I can pick em. And no guns either, but don't worry, Mister we won't take your stick.”

“Are you going to leave me any food?” Neil asked.

“This can of asparagus,” the man said and tossed the can to Neil. “And this squash, blech.”

In the end they left him four cans total and when they slunk back out into the dangerous jungle that Jersey had become, Neil cried. He didn't know how to live in the world anymore and with his food gone he didn't think he would make it for very long in his hermetically sealed house either. He cried because he was a fool and a coward, and he was lonely and so very depressed. Yet for all that, he cried for less than a minute and then, still sniffling and with damp eyes, he went back to his guest room and picking up his bowl, he watched as the pair worked their way down the street, looking for suckers to open their doors. The girl would go along acting all scared while the young man hung back in a big black truck that looked as though it could squish any zombie that got in its way.


They were out of sight before Neil asked a question that had been bothering him in the back of his mind: “Why wasn't the girl scared?” She was smaller even than Neil and her pistol wasn't some “Dirty Harry” piece of hand artillery, either. It was little enough to fit her small palm.

Then what was it that made her so fearless?

Why didn't the zombies scare her and how could she rob people so easily when she was just a kid? What made her so special? Was she special because she was so courageous? Or was she courageous because she was special?

Neil wiped his eyes and decided somewhat rashly to go outside, wondering if by acting brave he would be brave. He stepped boldly from his back door and then immediately hid back behind his rhododendrons. There was a pack of the zombies shuffling by, however they were going away from him and he fought the temptation to run inside.

After a few minutes they were far enough away that he was able to come out of his hiding place. Looking up and down the street, he felt suddenly strong over his tiny victory—not running away equated to a victory for poor Neil—and he went along the side of his house breathing deeply the autumn air.

“Now what?” he asked aloud. A few zombies were out, pecking about, and he felt stronger still when he decided to turn his back on them and walk across to his neighbors the Krauthammer's. He hadn't heard anything from then for a couple of days and now he knew why. Their front door was open.

He glanced in, though when he heard something moving about he pulled back.

And then he heard a leaf crunch behind him and he spun and there was the little Cattau girl zombie. Neil made a noise and then began to run for his back door, but then something gripped him around his heart.

There wasn't any future left in his house. His future had been stolen from him...yet what kind of future had it been? One of slinking around in perpetual fear? Neil Martin stopped running and turned, deciding to fight for the first time in his life.

It wasn't much of a heroic battle. As small as he was, he was still twice the size of the zombie-girl, yet he was shocked when he stabbed her in the chest with his makeshift spear and she kept coming, sliding herself up the smooth wood of the broom handle.

In desperation he swung his end of the broom handle and with her weight suddenly shifting outward she slid off the stick and fell into the street. Next Neil tried to knock her upside the head with the silly spear. He cracked her a good one and he felt bone give; unfortunately his spear also split in two.

Now he was defenseless and the girl was getting up again. Neil stared around him and even took a cowardly step back to his house when he caught sight of one Mr. Krauthammer's garden gnomes. A strange fury overcame him just then. It was part anger over his situation and part sadness for poor Mr. Krauthammer. And then in a rage he rushed to the gnome and used it to dash the little zombie's brains in.

She went down like the dead thing she was and Neil raised the gnome with a battle cry in his throat, only to choke on it. The zombies that had gone down the street earlier had turned around and now he saw there was a good chance that they would beat him in a race to his door if he dared to go back that way.

He didn't. Neil's daring had left him and he ran the other way, down Grove Street. He ran, keeping low, close to the hedges because there were other zombies out. Mostly they seemed oblivious to him and so he kept going, yet where he was going he didn't know, not until he saw the big black monster truck rumbling on the side of the road a block ahead.

And as he watched he saw the same brute of a man that had robbed him fifteen minutes earlier get out with an empty bag on his back and a shotgun in his hand. And then Neil had a wild idea.

He couldn't go back. Even if he could get into his house safely what then? There was only going forward and that meant he was going to have to take some chances. Keeping even lower Neil scurried down the block until he heard the zombies behind him. He could hear their odd grunting and their slapping feet, and so, with his heart in his throat he gave up any notion of sneaking and took off at a sprint, running straight for the truck, praying that the door would open.

It did! With a mad cackling laugh he climbed up the beast of a vehicle and set himself behind a wheel that was wider across than he was. Reverting momentarily to his former self, he adjusted the seat and checked the mirrors before driving off, bowling over a pair of zombies in his path and making a retching noise in his throat as he did.