Free

I wish I didn’t worry all the time.  If I really could’ve relaxed, it might’ve been a different story, but I wanted to be able to hear Matt if he called out to us, so I left the bedroom door open.

I left the goddamned door open.

What more is there to say?

We’re in bed making love, then all of a sudden, he’s on us.

He bites Wil, takes a big, honking bite out of his back.

He must’ve died in them twenty minutes since I checked on him, and he bites Wil.

I’m underneath him and see it all happening, but there’s Jack Squat I can do about it.

Wil slides off me and takes him to the floor, and he beats that poor kid’s face in with his bare knuckles alone, nothing more to lose.

It don’t matter no more.  It don’t matter if blood splatters in his mouth or his knuckles get torn open.

Nothing matters any more.

He’s a dead man.

“Shoot me, Ruby,” he says, on his knees and covered with gore.  “It’s over. Shoot me.”

I take up the gun, but somehow I can’t go through with it.

“Why’s it me, always has to shoot everybody?”

“I don’t know, Mija.  Luck?”

We stare at each other and laugh.

“You gotta shoot me now, God damn it.  I can feel the change starting already.”

“You’re probably the last man on earth the same age as me,” I tell him.

“I know.  But you still have to do it.”

I slam a new clip in.

“I love you, Wil.”

“Love you, too, baby, but we’re running out of time.”

He opens his mouth, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Don’t be afraid,” he tells me in his soft Mexican accent, his hands behind his head like for a traffic stop.  “Do what we always talked about.”

I cock the gun.

“This sucks.  I can’t even kiss you.”

“Yes, you can.  You can kiss me from the inside out.”

He opens his mouth again, and this time I stick the gun in it.

“Well,” I say, a wiseass to the end.  “There’s always the afterlife, I guess.”

And I pull the trigger and blow his fucking head off.  I’ll probably be deaf for a week, and I have bits of bone and hair and meat all over me, dripping off my chin and pooling on the floor between my knees.

At least with Joe, I was at a distance.  At least with Joe, I didn’t have to smell the tang of gunpowder mixed with fresh blood.  I get up and stagger over to Matt and shoot him, too, just to be safe.

I’m shell-shocked, I guess, ’cause all I can do is walk downstairs to the boy’s room and flop down on his bed, gun and blood and everything.

I don’t know how long I slept.  Might’ve been a day, maybe two.  I’m tired all the way down to my bones, mentally, physically, emotionally, but the sun’s coming up, so I rise to meet it.

I step out onto the gallery to greet the dawn.  The dead are all clustered at the bottom, still banging away at the door.  It would be the simplest thing in the world to just go down them steps and open that door and let them tear me apart, but I’ve never been known for taking the easy way out.

I laugh madly.  There are still a few bullets left in my gun, but I doubt I could hit them at this range.

I wonder, will Joe be waiting when I get to the other side?  Or Wil?  Or maybe it’ll be both of them.  Hell, maybe everyone I’ve ever loved’ll be there.

I hope so.

I hope they’re all there to meet me when I come tearing through that veil between the living and the dead, but one thing I’m sure of: if I let them scumbags take me alive, I won’t never get to the other side, so I climb the rail and perch myself up there, facing the lantern, leaning my elbows on the dome.

It’s better this way.

I’ll be done, and I’ll get to take a few of them sacks of shit out with me.

“Well, fellas,” I tell them, cocking the gun.  “Ready or not, here I come.”

And I stick the gun in my mouth.

One.

Two.

Thr–

A final blast and I’m soaring, free as a bird.

Relax

Them pus-bags are real restless tonight.  We have the windows cracked for some fresh air (if you can call it that) and the wind carries their moans up to where we can hear them.  We’re used to this effect, ’cause when the sea’s quiet like this, the sound of their voices reverb off the rocks outside and into this tower.

Wil’s restless tonight, too.

Hell, I guess we’re all restless.

Let me go check on Matt a minute, I tell him.

And I do, and it seems like maybe his fever’s a little higher, but it could be it’s just getting ready to break.  I kiss his baby forehead and shut the door so he don’t catch a draft.

We lay there talkin’, me ’n Wil, and the moaning outside just sort of falls away.

After a while, it’s only us two in the whole wide world, and we cozy up together and relax.

No Pity

Tell me the truth, says Wil.  What’s wrong with you tonight?

Nothing, I tell him.  I’m just worried about the boy, is all.  He’s been running a temperature for a few days.

He’s fine.  He’s just too skinny.

Yeah.  You’re probably right.

And I think of Wil’s kids, long gone.  He used to have a wife and a job and a family.  He used to be just a normal, regular guy, but he gets mad when I feel sorry for him.  He says at least he never had to kill any of his loved ones.

I get mad, too, ’cause what we can’t afford around here is self-pity.  It’s the big destroyer, and it’ll bring you down faster than anything.

He says he wants to go to bed, so I follow him, and when we come out to the stairwell to climb the stairs, we hear them goddamn pus-bags banging on the metal door downstairs.

They don’t scare us no more, though.  We know from long experience they can’t get in, so we ignore them and go up to bed.

The Day the Monkeys Took Over

Let me tell you about the day the monkeys took over.

Not apes.

Not chimps.

Just regular little monkeys with long tails they can swing from, the kind with spidery long legs and grasping paws, the kind of cute little animals they used to have for organ grinders and whatnot.

The kind you’d never suspect of being capable of something like this.

It was summer.  Mid-July.  Hot as hell, so hot we had all the windows open with fans in them and were still sweltering.  The doors were open, too, flimsy screen doors hooked against intruders, but the secret is, the intruder would have to give a shit about getting in trouble.

Like they say, locks are made for honest people.

Well, as you probably know by now, monkeys are neither honest nor people, so they busted in the screens while we were eating lunch and suddenly they were on us, flashing white sharp teeth and clawed fingers, biting and screeching and ripping at us.

My baby went down first, the kindergartener.  The monkeys took her down easy and bit off her nose, and while she lay screaming on the floor, they went for the knives, pulled them out of the knife block and tore her apart right in front of us.

We wanted to help her, really we did, but there were so many of them and it was already too late.

Where the fuck did they all come from?

They took the dog out next, and swarmed my wife, slashing her throat while I watched in horror, only running when I realized I was next.

Where’d they all come from?

No one knows.

It was nothing for them to disable our emergency systems, to baffle the cops and cripple the paramedics and generally just screw us all.

I met the others in an old factory.  There were five of them, and they were as ragged and shocked as I was, but you couldn’t afford to freak out or lose your head, and we were all pretty much the same kind of cool-headed people who got away.

Dennis was the first guy, and at first he wouldn’t open the door, but then he realized I was human, scared and alone.

“Where are they, man?” he asked, yanking me inside by the collar.  “Were you followed?”

“No.  They have enough to do right now.”

A teenaged girl who sat nearby with her back braced against the wall started crying, but the rest of them all nodded.

“Who’d they get?” Dennis asked me, his voice growing gentle, his arm sinking down around my shoulders.

“Everybody.  My wife, my kid, my dog.  Everybody.”

“They’re organized, the little bastards,” said an old man, climbing to his feet.  “You gotta give ’em that.”

“Yeah, they are,” I nodded.  “So we’ll have to be even more organized than they are.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked one lady, jumping up and collaring me.  “We didn’t even know they were coming, so how can we guard against them?  They can climb and grab and jump.  Everything.  How can we guard against something like that?  How?  Tell me.”

She was hysterical, shaking me like I had any more answers than she did.

“I don’t know,” I said, slapping her hands away.  “We just have to, is all.”

This nerdy young guy in glasses stepped forward.

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Poison.  Rat poison.  Fucking poison them like the rodents they are.”

“How?  They’re pretty smart, those monkeys.  Won’t they know?”

“No,” he told me.  “We’ll crush it up and put it in some fruit.”

“Which we don’t have.”

“Yeah.  There’s that.  I mean, the poison’s here somewhere.  I saw dead rats when I got here, but what else do they eat?  Do any of you have anything?”

“I have my lunch,” said the girl, “but I’m not giving away our only food to a bunch of goddamn monkeys.”

She put her head back down like she was taking a siesta, but all she was really doing is crying some more.

“Anyone else?”

“I have a couple of candy bars.”

This from an old woman I hadn’t noticed before.  The way she was dressed, with those slip-on shoes and a housecoat, it’s a miracle she got so far.

“Do monkeys even eat candy?” asked the teenager.

“Yeah, listen,” said the old guy.  “I was stationed overseas, and those little pricks’ll eat anything.  They’ll mug you for food and steal purses or bags or anything they can get their hands on.  I say she’s right.  We make a little slit in the candy and shove a few rat pellets inside.  It ain’t gonna kill many of them.  Hell, it might not even kill any of them, but maybe it’ll make them sick.  Sick enough so we can go pick us some of them figs across the street and make more.  Plus, sometimes they’ll eat another monkey, so we get to spread the love.”

When the old man said they’ll eat anything, he was right.  We flung a bunch of those candy bar pieces out there, and they were on them in minutes.  Some picked them up, then other monkeys rushed forward to fight with them over them.  Big monkeys killed small monkeys. their horrible white teeth flashing and gnashing without a care.

It was horrible, watching them tear each other apart.

The ones who ate the candy laid out there on the blacktop, kicking around, but all we had to do is remember what they done to our families, our wives and kids, and all our sympathy for them dried up.  They screamed and foamed at the mouth and threw up, then they laid down and writhed around until they stopped moving at all.  Me and Dennis and the science guy ran out to the far end of the parking lot and picked as many figs as we could before the second wave of monkeys showed up.

Wasn’t too much different with the figs.  Those little bastards can really be mean.  They fought again, same result, but this time there was more to be fought over, and some of them ran off with the spoils.

“That’s right, you little fuckers,” I said, peering out the dusty windows.  “Take those monkey-bombs and keep on running.  Share that shit with the other little fuckers.”

We didn’t count on how smart they really are.  We didn’t take into account how they might want revenge.

They got suspicious after a while.  They saw all their fellows lying there in puddles of puke, and I guess they figured it out.

We’ve been under siege for eight days now.  The teenager’s gone half-crazy and the old lady’s in a coma from missing her meds.

No hope for them.

No hope for any of us.

You ask me, we ain’t never gonna get out of here alive.

“Son?” the old man asked me.  “You ever seen Butch Cassidy?”

“Yeah.  So?”

“So I say to hell with it.  I say we go out in a blaze of glory and take a few of those little bastards out with us.”

So we gathered up a bunch of old mop and broom handles and sharpened them up into spears, and here we are sitting in a circle together listening to the girl rave.

“She ain’t gonna do us a damn bit of good,” the old man told us.  “We can’t take her with us.  She’d be tore up in a minute.”

And we draw straws.

Shortest straw goes and puts a spike through her heart.  The only humane thing to do.

The nerdy kid got that one, but we all knew he wasn’t up to it, so I jumped her from behind and choked her out, then I stuck her.

She went out easy.

“Thanks, dude,” the kid told me.

“No problem.  But you fail us out there, I’ll spike your knees and leave you bleeding.”

“I know.  I won’t.”

“Let’s go, then,” I said, readying my spear.  “All this sitting around here waiting to die is giving me the shits.”

I throw the door open and begin.

My Latest Book

I just published my latest book of erotic fiction, and I dedicated it to a young man I met on this blog, who I’m very happy to call a friend.  He goes by the handle @Ngageguy on Twitter.  We have many things in common, especially our mutual fascination with zombies.  Anyway, the book is out now and it’s called, “So Spankable!”  If you’re interested in checking it out, here’s a description and the buy link:

Amazon.com: So Spankable! (BDSM Erotica) eBook: Angela R Sargenti: Kindle Store

.  If you just want to see what I’m up to lately, check out my other blog, Friday I’m In Love, at www.angiesargenti.blogspot.com.

Prison

We sit here over our cat sausages, but none of us is eating very much.  We’re hungry, all right, but we’ve each had it in our own way.  We’re bored and worn out and sick and tired of seeing other people die.

I wish we were back at my house with Old Joe, hanging out and shootin’ the shit and growing things with our hands.  I miss my old life.  I miss my pals at the casino.  I miss being able to show myself in broad daylight any time I want.  I want to go home and I want to talk about going home, but I’m scared it’ll bother the little one.

So what are we gonna do, shut up in this tower like this?  It’s like we’re in prison, but we ain’t done no crime, and there ain’t no parole.

Just the three of us, waiting to die ourselves.

Grinder

Can’t eat blackberries all the time, so Wil goes looking for some meat.

Lucky for us there are still a lot of feral cats from before the shit hit the fan.  He bags us a couple and brings ’em home for me to clean.

I ain’t got the heart to kill ’em.

That’s his job.

I’ll clean ’em fine, but I won’t kill ’em.

Not unless I have to.

I take Old Joe’s Buck knife and make the cut around the neck, then the slit down their bellies, sickened with pity.

Poor little bastards.

We used to keep some cats for pets.

“It ain’t nothin’,” I tell myself, trying to forget.

I shake my head and wipe my eyes on the backs of my sleeves, then I grab hold of their heads so’s I can tear off their hides.

“They’re nothin’ more’n rabbits with long tails,” I say. “Nothin’ more’n chickens with fur.”

I throw the hides in a bag for later and cut off their heads.

“That’s what they’re here for,” I tell myself.  “To give us something to eat.”

I cut off their feet, then cut out their guts, careful not to waste anything.

Fennel grows wild all around here, too, just like them damn blackberries, and Wil brought us back some of that, too.

I inspect the livers carefully and they look clean.

“Well, fellas,” I tell them.  “Looks like we’re gonna have us some fine cat sausages.  Boy?  Go get me the grinder.”