Tuesday, February 5, 2013

LOVE NEVER DIES: A ZOMBIE LOVE STORY



by Tawn Krakowski
 
            He shuffled aimlessly near the structure in the near pitch darkness.  Ambling with his crooked, hitching gait, he knew she was inside.  He ached for her.  Hungered, like a man deprived of air.  He also knew that she would have to come out eventually, and when she did, they would be together...forever. 

***

            Thomas was riding a bicycle he had found abandoned in an alley when he came across the building.  He was on his way to check on extended family that had been living in Wisconsin.  He didn't really expect to find them, but the journey was all he really had left after his wife and three children had been turned.  He didn't have it in him to kill them—even as a mercy—so instead, he ran.  Like the lowliest coward, he left them to whatever existence they had left.  Not a day went by that he didn't think about what he had done and how much he had lost.  But if he had to do it all over again, he knew he would choose the same horrific path, despite the fact that it led straight into the bowels of Hell.

            A large “911” printed on the front of the structure above the door declared it to be an emergency center.  Thomas had been an electrician before the virus had mercilessly swept through this part of Illinois.  Many people hadn't known of the treasure trove of electronics, emergency supplies, and security benefits that such a place boasted or even where to find them.  This meant that most emergency centers were relatively intact, even after all the Walmarts everywhere had been looted into oblivion.  He approached the building warily, circling completely around it twice to verify as best he could that it hadn't been compromised, and then went to work on getting the door open.  He had to hurry.  It would be nightfall soon.

            To his vast surprise, it clicked open before he even had a chance to decide upon the best way to force the lock.  Thomas heard a woman's voice beckon him inside, further adding to his confusion.  Since zombies don't do much more than snarl, grunt, and bite, he figured it was safe to enter.  Once past the front door, he found himself in a short, dimly lit corridor designed to be very much like an airlock on a submarine.  The metal door at the far end of the hallway could not be opened until the outer door had been closed and whomever was inside pressing the buttons decided the visitor was welcome. 

            What if this is some sort of trap? Thomas suddenly wondered, as apprehension crawled up his spine.  Only when he heard the click of the inner door did relief drown his irrational fear.  Thomas pushed through the second security door and was greeted by a slightly plump yet still athletic-looking woman with short mousy-brown hair and a vacant look in her hazel eyes.  There was nothing extraordinary about her looks, but the way she carried herself and the tone of her voice identified her as someone teetering on the razor edge of despair.

            “My name is Sandra,” she said tonelessly before turning her back to him to lead him further into the facility.  The center was built like a bunker.  Before the apocalypse—that's what those who were still human called it—the structure was used as a police station in addition to an emergency response center and was well fortified against attacks from the outside. 

            Thomas was surprised to find that it was also well provisioned within.  The first room she led him through had been an office and was set up as a first line of defense with several riot shotguns, 9mm automatic handguns, boxes of ammunition, and even the sleek black clubs with handles that were issued to cops.  There were flashlights, boxes of batteries, and even a couple of outfits Thomas assumed were standard issue riot gear.   A team of navy seals couldn't get past this room without divine intervention, even if the only defender was a child.

            “How long have you been here, Sandra?” Thomas asked, marveling at the arsenal. 

            “Three months.  My husband was a dispatcher here...before...” She abruptly shoved the knuckle of her right index finger into her mouth and bit down hard to stifle the tears already threatening to spill onto her pale cheeks.

            Thomas didn't need to hear any more to know what had happened.  Her husband had been bitten and turned.  Just like Thomas' family.  “My name is Thomas,” he softly introduced himself to combat the awkward silence that had developed between them, as each mournfully remembered what they had lost.

            “Welcome to Hell, Thomas,” she replied so softly that he missed it. 

***

            Sandra showed the tall, gaunt man she had let into the facility where all of the supplies had been stashed.  In addition to all of the guns in the front office, she and Reggie had loaded three of the four cells in the basement with provisions.  One cell was their pantry, loaded top to bottom with canned food.  A second cell held water.  They had been able to obtain six racks each holding eighteen full five-gallon jugs of bottled water, which they had used and refilled in the early days when the water supply had still been uncontaminated and fresh from the taps.  Now she had just over four racks full of water left and no way to refill them with untainted water.  Even boiling the gunk that came out of the faucets could not make it drinkable.

            The third cell held cans of gasoline for the large generator located upstairs that was jury-rigged to direct its exhaust outside, propane tanks for cooking when the gas company was no longer supplying gas—which came to pass only two weeks ago—and all the lighters, kitchen matches, and butane refills they could find on all of their pre-apocalyptic scouting missions.  There was even a pile of homemade torches for when the generator could no longer provide light. 

             “And this last cell is the sleeping quarters.” Her voice broke from the heartbreak that had not faded in the last three months.  The man—Thomas, she reminded herself—took her into his arms, hesitantly at first, but it wasn't long before he was sobbing as desolately as she was.   Sandra's grief was so raw, so bottomless that he was swept away by her emotional maelstrom.  They stood, clinging to each other, weeping, until Sandra emptied her broken soul and her breath came in ragged gasps. 

            Oh, Reggie...

***

            The decrepit, shambling creature that used to be Reggie was so far gone now that he couldn't even remember her name.  Or his own.  But the miniscule part of him that was still alive, that remained locked away deep inside, imprisoned by the catastrophe that had transformed him into an animated corpse, that part knew her.  Loved her.  But that was the extent of his awareness.  He only knew that she was his reason for being.  In some primitive way, perhaps he sensed that she could free him from his abhorrent captivity so he would no longer be forced to commit the most heinous of crimes to feed the cravings within his rotting dungeon.  If she could love him again, as she had before he had become this...thing...then maybe he could finally be at peace.

***

            Thomas awkwardly released the despondent woman from his arms and wiped his own eyes.  Somehow, her raw pain had blown apart the barrier that he had erected around his emotions as if it were nothing more sturdy than a house of cards.  Comforting her had initially made him feel a bit better, reaffirming his place among humanity after his vile abandonment of his loved ones.  Now, however, something felt wrong.  As if she were feeding on his pain, sucking him dry.  He feared that soon nothing would be left but a husk if he did not push her away.

            “I'm sorry,” Sandra sulked.  She didn't even bother to dry her tears, allowing them to glisten and dissipate on her cheeks.  “It's been so long with only my nightmare for company.  I just...couldn't...”

            Thomas interrupted her confession.  “Your nightmare?  What do you mean?”

            “I'll show you,” she replied.  “Come look at the monitor.”

            Intrigued, Thomas followed her back up the stairs to the main floor.  Sandra led him into a room which contained four high tech computer workstations.  This must have been where the 911 dispatchers had worked before the world was turned upside down. 

            To conserve energy, Sandra had a single station operational with only one monitor on.  She turned to Thomas and said, “Tell me what you see on the monitor.”

            Thomas tilted his head quizzically at her before honoring the request.  The screen cycled through the images piped in from various cameras located around the facility.  “What the...” Thomas breathed as he saw a shadow, darker than the surrounding night, clumsily trudge past the door from which he had entered not so long ago.

            “I let you in because I couldn't stand to watch him...it...kill another one,” she shuddered in horror.

            Another one?”  Thomas' creeping apprehension returned, running its icy fingers lazily from his neck to the base of his spine.  “You mean it comes here to feed or something?  But they don't do that.  They wander around and kill whatever they come across.  They don't hunt!”

            “He never leaves,” Sandra whispered hauntingly and moved deeper into the room to Thomas' right.

            Thomas found the control inputs for the cameras and removed all the other feeds from the cycle so that he could more closely watch Sandra's zombie.  He said nothing as he concentrated, brow furrowed, for another ten minutes on the image shown on the monitor.  “It's still out there,” Thomas said, nodding at the camera.  “I can't figure it out.  What does it want?”

            “Me,” Sandra said without looking at him. 

            She sat on a desk in the abandoned 911 center, hugging herself tightly.  She had been terrified and sad for so long now that her overwrought emotions, agitated when Thomas had held her, had morphed into a detached  hollowness.  She didn't have to see Reggie on the monitor to know that he was waiting for her.  But the thing that waited outside was no longer the man that she had loved with wild abandon.  It was a hollow shell that was all that remained of the Reggie who had succumbed to the last wave of the virus that had nearly scoured mankind from the planet. 

            A rotting corpse which had, until three months ago, been her husband. 

            “You?” Thomas' voice cut through her misery. “What are you talking about?”

            “It was my husband, Reggie,” Sandra told him.  “He was turned three months ago and hasn't left.”

            Thomas was so baffled that he could not process what Sandra had told him.  “He hasn't left?  That zombie has just been hanging around for three months?!”

            DON'T CALL HIM THAT!” Sandra screeched, her hazel eyes erupting into a wildfire of anger fueled by anguish and fear.  Her voice pitched higher as her denials became more vehement. “He's not a zombie!  He's NOT!”  She clutched at her short hair, whipped her head from side to side, and repudiated all of Thomas' startled attempts to soothe her before she streaked toward the front door without warning.

            Thomas' utter shock kept him rooted in place for a moment too long.  He sprinted into the office that was outfitted like NRA headquarters just as the inner door banged closed.

            “NO!  Oh, God, NO!”  Thomas prayed to a God he no longer believed in that he would find the button to seal her into the corridor before she could do the unthinkable.  He searched frantically around the room, but the hollow sound of the outer door opening stabbed at his heart an instant before he found the control panel. 

            Sandra was already outside.

***

            The monster that stalked the building in the dark night halted its lonely rounds, sensing that something had changed.  A loud noise and her sweet voice echoing into the parking lot heralded the end of his suffering.  She had come.  At last, she would save him and his hunger would be quenched.

***

            Sandra had come entirely undone.  The frayed bits of her mind that she had thought to mend by letting a stranger into her sanctuary had been the very thing to finally break her.  She had heard the man she had saved from the thing outside use that disgusting word to describe Reggie, her soul mate.  But it just couldn't be true.  Reggie was not a monster.  Reggie loved her.  He couldn't...wouldn't...

            She had to know.  She had to find out the truth...whether or not even the most miniscule speck of what had filled her heart with so much love remained.  Why else would he still be here, but for her?  Maybe he needed her help.  Sandra could not hide in her fortress anymore.  She had to be with Reggie even if there was nothing left of the man she loved. 

***

            Thomas ran back the way he had come to the dispatcher workstation.  He didn't want to watch the broken woman be torn to bits by her zombie husband, but the guilt that this was somehow his doing needed to be assuaged.  Sandra had to be delusional, insane.  Zombies simply did not behave in the manner she insisted this one did. 

            Thomas watched the monitor, frozen in horror as the woman and the zombie closed the distance between them, like a cheesy movie where lovers run to each other through a field of blooms in slow motion.  He hoped against hope that her death would be quick and painless, that she wouldn't be turned instead.  Maybe that's what she wants, materialized unbidden in Thomas' mind.

            He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw in an effort to force the repulsive thought from his head.  When he opened his eyes and focused again on the image on the monitor, he saw the plump, short-haired woman with the tear-stained cheeks fall into the arms of the ravenous walking corpse.  The scream Thomas fully expected to hear despite the lack of speakers did not come.  The awful sounds of the rending of flesh and warm blood splashing on the concrete played only in Thomas' imagination.  Against everything Thomas knew to be true, Sandra—still alive and unbitten—was snuggled in the putrid arms of her zombie lover. 

            Thomas' appalled disbelief overpowered his rising need to be sick and he absently swallowed the bile in the back of his throat.  He sat down heavily in the rolling office chair at the desk, still staring aghast at the monitor.  If that zombie was still human enough to remember Sandra, then what hellish nightmare must my wife and children be experiencing?  Can love really overcome a zombie's hunger?  Oh, God, what have I done?

            Thomas buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly a second time in less than a day.  He didn't need to see the woman and her zombie wander hand in hand into the night to know in his heart  that he had just witnessed proof of the power of love.

 ***
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