Zombie Nation

The police car turned onto Lomas Santa Fe Drive, bounced over the curb and ran over a gray-haired woman’s foot, bursting the tan leather and squirting her toes out at impossible angles. Hobbs corrected the wheel and the Crown Victoria flounced back onto the pavement like a hippo doing a belly flop. He checked the mirror.

The old woman gave him the bird.

“Wow,” said the passenger.

Hobbs draped his left arm out the window and tapped Sympathy for the Devil on the roof. The woman now limped down the sidewalk as though nothing had happened. “So you’re the new recruit,” Hobbs said. “Dulgan, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir.”

Dulgan wore smartly pressed San Diego Police Department blues, complete with utility belt and pistol. His infection point was a gangrenous scar along his nose, which reeked worse than an undead skunk. Must have hurt like hell, Hobbs thought.

“I’m glad to be riding with the best,” Dulgan said, wiping his snout with a yellow bandana.

“Oh, are you being transferred?”

Hobbs braked to allow a pack of teenagers to jay-walk. The amount of skin they were showing might have been titillating before zombie-hood, but there was nothing sexy about tattoos inked onto pale, dead, lower back flesh, Hobbs decided. One of the women flicked a gray tongue in their direction. Dulgan stared as though there was still life in his loins.

“Goddamned tattoos,” Hobbs said. “Listen Dulgan, I know you came here with great ideas. Probably thought you’d be feasting on tender, sun baked flesh every other week. But the truth is this job is about as exciting as listening to the grubs fuck in your skull. All the humans have been infected. There hasn’t been a live sighting in three years in Southern California, which is how I like it. I tool around in this car all day long and nobody bothers me. If you want to get along, you won’t bother me either. We’re more likely to have to deal with zombie lowlifes than live flesh. Remember, only way to kill them is to shoot them in the forehead.”

“I know. It disrupts the virus, sets up an immune reaction…”

“I don’t give a fuck what happens. Go for the kill. Got a problem with that?”

“No sir.”

“If you do, ask for a transfer.”

“No sir. No transfers for me. Best way to get a promotion is to work with the best. Then I’m getting a car of my own.”

Hobbs raised his bushy eyebrows. Ambition was hard to come by in a zombie. He nodded towards the 9mm Glock in Dulgan’s holster. “You can use that piece?”

“Number one on the shooting range. Nine rounds in the bull’s-eye at 200 yards.” He drew the pistol and passed it towards Hobbs, who declined to take it.

“My nerves are a bit off,” Hobbs said. In fact they had deadened to where he couldn’t even get his index into a trigger guard. Lucky for him he was a cop before the infection, or he would never have passed the academy.

Dulgan shrugged and returned the Glock to its holster. “There are lots of animals left to infect,” he suggested.

“No need to wear yourself out chasing varmints on your hands and knees under someone’s basement – let the kids do that.”

“Okay, I get it. This is the ‘I’m not as tough as all that,’ speech. But I’m not buying it. I heard about North County Fair, how you trapped that whole group of humans inside.” Hobbs snorted. “They tell you there was a tank and an Apache copter too?”

“They said you took out a machine gun nest. Oh shit, what’s that?”

A lump of carrion waddled crab-like across the highway. A hand, twisted skyward and broken to forever give the V sign, was the only recognizable part. Hobbs banked the Crown Victoria in a smooth U turn and dropped it under his right front wheel. It thumped against the floorboard and got trapped against the fender. The floorboard pounded like the Little Drummer Boy on speed. Hobbs accelerated. A deep red smear filled the road in his rear-view mirror. Finally the carrion came loose and the rear tire bounced over it for good measure.

“U.C.A.,” Hobbs said. “Unidentified Crawling Appendage. One of the job’s benefits.” They both laughed.

“You enjoy that,” Hobbs said, “and we’ll get along fine.”

***

The sun hovered between the tops of the rolling waves and the bottoms of the palm fronds. They were parked on San Elijo Avenue overlooking Cardiff by the Sea. Hobbs was starting to doze when the airwaves lit up as if Satan had just crawled from the Nine Hells. A Live Sighting at the Del Mar Racetrack. Dulgan’s eyes glowed.

Hobbs backed up and accelerated south. He made the quick hop over the railroad tracks to the Pacific Coast Highway and put the pedal down. V8 power flowed through his feet to his groin. He glanced at his partner. Dulgan’s lips twitched. His eyes were vacant.

“Control it,” Hobbs barked.

Dulgan’s head started leaning to the side.

“Don’t let a moan escape or you won’t be able to think.”

“So…hard…”

Hobbs dodged around a Mini Cooper. The tires squealed. He blew through two red lights. Not many cars clogged the P.C.H. – few zombies maintained enough manual dexterity to keep machinery running.

“Remember what they taught you at the academy,” Hobbs said. “Stay calm. Pump your lungs in and out like you’re breathing.”

“I’m okay,” Dulgan muttered through clenched teeth.

“This is probably a false alarm. Hasn’t been a true human sighting in years. Every crackpot with a radio will be there ahead of us.” He slugged Dulgan in the shoulder.

“Stay with me if you want a piece of it.”

“Yes sir.”

They whipped left on Via de la Valle and roared through the Jimmy Durante entrance. There was a steep drop into the floodplain housing the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds. Hobbs smashed through a metal barricade. The three-inch pipe broke off and dropped under the tires. The Crown Victoria skidded sideways into a guardrail. Metal screamed and the left headlight shattered before Hobbs managed to stop. He backed up, shifted to drive, and cruised into the dirt parking lot behind the horse barns. Directly in front of them stood the low curving barrier surrounding the track. The middle of the track held two ponds and some dried grass that used to be a lawn. On the far side were the grandstands and behind those, large buildings for expositions.

Hobbs and Dulgan threw open their doors and climbed out of the car. A horrible moaning greeted them, zombies in full Rage.

“It’s real,” said Dulgan. “They wouldn’t be so worked up if they hadn’t smelled man-flesh.”

Hobbs said, “Come on, we’ll go around.”

“Cutting across the track is faster,” Dulgan said. His voice was choked.

“You want to learn, follow me.”

Dulgan followed. He walked with a stiff-legged gait. His knees had nearly locked up. They passed a dozen horse barns: long, rectangular buildings with horizontally divided doors which could be opened so the horses could see outside. Each barn also had a corridor dissecting the middle with gates to each stall from inside. The barns were long-since empty.

“They’re converging on the grandstands,” Dulgan said.

The sea breeze shifted and Hobbs caught the unmistakable scent of woman. His Adam’s apple nearly jumped to his throat. “The humans will try to keep moving,” he croaked.

“Ooohh,” Dulgan replied.

Hobbs slapped him to the ground. “Control yourself. You’ll never catch them like that.”

Some sense of order returned to Dulgan’s eyes. He spit out a tooth. He was able to grunt, “Sorry, sir.”

“I know what I’m doing. We’ll set a trap.” They found a pedestrian gate in the fence which separated the barns from the fairgrounds. They crossed and stopped behind a long building where, if Hobbs’s memory served correctly, children brought their sheep to show during the fair. There was a 10-foot wide sliding door on either end of the building and no other entrances. Hobbs set up position beside the door, away from the grandstands. Dulgan kept muttering that they were in the wrong place, but he was too much the new recruit to act on his own.

The scent of woman suddenly disappeared. Smoke billowed from the grandstands, followed by the roar of flames. The fire rumbled like a long, slow earthquake. Soon a drizzle of ash covered them in gray robes. Zombies wandered aimlessly, trying to catch some whiff of their prey.

After an hour, Hobbs and Dulgan dropped to their backsides and leaned against the wall with their legs stretched out in front of them. Dulgan said, “I guess you were right, false alarm.”

“Three years without a live sighting.” Hobbs put some ancient hay between his teeth.

“Someone probably stirred up an old laundry basket or something, hence the smell. You want to see some action, enlist in the Carrion Corps and travel Down Under. The Aussies are putting up a fight.”

Something rustled within the sheep building. Hobbs leaned sideways to peer into the gloom. From under a musty pile of boxes one, two, a dozen humans emerged and ran directly towards them.

“Escape tunnel,” Hobbs said, rolling to his feet.

Dulgan’s mouth dropped open.

Hobbs waited until Dulgan stood then tripped him onto his back using a clumsy judo throw. Flesh, so close! Hobbs’s tonsil quivered. He shoved on the barn door. The rusty wheels protested.

“Come on, come on!” Hobbs muttered. “Mustn’t let them come this way!” His mind flashed back to North County Fair. Not again, he told himself. Dulgan struggled to his feet. The humans were near, so near. The rust on the rollers gave way and Hobbs slid the door a foot, then three. Dulgan was in full Rage, his head tilted at a ridiculous angle. Hobbs managed to slam the door closed and – yes – found a rusty padlock. He snapped it on. Dulgan clawed at the door as though he could pull the wood apart splinter by splinter. His fingernails pulled off. He bit at the wood. Splinters tore through his lips. The humans banged on the door from the other side and shouted for help. There were women and men both.

Hobbs swallowed a moan. He turned and hobbled away, tears brimming out of his eyes from some distant reserve. “Shit, shit, shit,” he said. “Not again.” He heard the moans of zombies converging on the sheep building like locusts. A few gun shots. Hobbs crossed the fence. He fell into a horse barn and rolled the barn door behind him. Two more shots. He leaned against the door…

…and heard breathing. A body moving. He smelled live flesh.

He couldn’t stay away. Once in a day the addict can say no, but not a second time. Not with the prey so close. This flesh, this gift from God or Satan, Hobbs didn’t care, was all his. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. A moan escaped Hobbs’s lips. He staggered to the far end of the barn.

There, in the stall, a mother and son. Noble and sleek, with brown coats and delicious black manes. Hobbs paused for a second. Such noble lines. The mare whinnied and pawed the ground. Her eyes were wide with fear. The colt looked from his mother to Hobbs and back again, confused. He was a newborn, too young to know that zombies were killers.

Hobbs smiled.

The next day Hobbs picked up his partner outside his Encinitas condominium as usual. “Chief wants to give us commendations,” Dulgan announced, sliding into the passenger seat. His lips were black and shredded. He lisped.

“That right?”

“He says it is for, ‘Brilliant and unselfish duty.’”

Hobbs snorted.

“I would have told him you locked those humans in the barn,” Dulgan added, “but I really need a commendation.” He pronounced it, “somensation.”

“Forget about it.”

“I told him we did it together, you and me. I think he knew it was you, but he made like he believed me.”

“Fine.” Hobbs took an onramp onto Freeway Five south. There was a three car smash-up in the slow lane. He bypassed it – no casualties in zombie crashes.

“You sorry you didn’t taste human flesh?”

“I got what I wanted,” Hobbs said.

“I found a toe,” Dulgan said. “Best damn toe I’ve every eaten. Say, come over this evening. You can meet my wife.”

Hobbs turned in surprise. “You married?”

“Yeah.”

“From before?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t her that infected me. I was on a fishing trip with my buddies and one of those damn yellowtail jumped out of the water and bit me on the nose. Linda. Her name’s Linda. I came home from the trip thinking I could, you know, eat her. But someone had already gotten to her. She was waiting on the couch.”

“Waiting to welcome you with a kiss, no doubt. True love.” They rode in silence for a while. “She well preserved?”

“Got bit on the neck but you can barely see it. Eyes are blue. Perfect skin. She’s beautiful. Only rotten where it counts, if you know what I mean.”

“Lucky you.”

“Gotta love it.”

“Okay, I’ll come over.”

***

Dulgan flicked on the television as soon as they got to his place. Some new zombie production was playing on Fox. Dinner didn’t exist anymore and zombie social life was practically non-existent. Hobbs began to wonder why he had come over, that is, until Linda appeared. She was everything Dulgan had said: a beautiful blond, five foot ten with peppy breasts and legs to die for. She wore designer jeans and a sleeveless, paisley tunic. Her dangly, blue earrings matched her eyes. The tiny bite on her neck looked like it belonged there.

They talked. Dulgan’s replies became monosyllabic as he became engrossed in the sitcom. Linda nodded at her husband and winked. “Dulgan’s got the Rage.” Indeed, his head tilted slightly to the side. “Want to go for a walk?” she suggested.

He did.

They strode a narrow path between countless, identical condos. Hobbs detected a light perfume behind Linda’s ears. “You found yourself a good zombie,” he offered.

“I knew him when he was a man. Now he’s somewhat less.”

“He means well.”

Linda’s flip-flops spanked the cement. She touched Hobbs on the arm and said, “Dulgan idolizes you.”

“He’ll get over it.”

Linda smiled. “You talk in sound bites.”

Hobbs grunted.

The half-moon peeked through the eucalyptus branches, giving Linda’s hair a silver gleam. “What was it like finding humans again?” she asked. “I wonder how they hid so long right in the middle of Del Mar. I think if I had found them I would have run in the other direction. Or I should say waddled in the other direction.” She laughed.

“You scared of taking a bullet in the head?”

“Not at all. I told Dulgan that if I ever, you know, chased a human he should shoot me.”

Hobbs raised his eyebrows. “What did he say?”

“He said the Rage is in our nature. Can’t blame us and all that. He sides with the literati who feel that immortality is worth the price.”

“What do you think?”

“Women who tear their fetuses from their own wombs to eat them – there is no morality in that. A bullet is better.” They walked in silence for a time. Hobbs thought that he had never met anyone quite like Linda. Each time she smiled at him his heart did a summersault. She seemed to understand life and beauty the same way he did, and he told her so.

When they arrived back outside Linda’s condo, Hobbs felt like a frightened schoolboy. He kept reminding himself that Linda was married to his partner. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

Linda asked, “Do you remember when you got infected?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Will you tell me about it someday?”

“Maybe.” Hobbs was surprised to see that he had taken her hand. Quickly he let it go. “I should leave,” he said.

“Come back.”

“I will. Sure.”

He drove straight to the Del Mar Racetrack. The air smelled of charcoal and human flesh and his lips quivered. He shambled to the horse barn. He opened the upper door of the stall so the moonlight shown in. He grabbed a handful of alfalfa and fed it to the colt. The mare shied away but the colt ate from his hands. He entered the stall, changed their water and then lay on the hay with his hands behind his head. He watched the colt’s chest expand and contract with each breath.

“Zeus,” he said. “We’ll have to find you a friend. Would you like that? There must be live horses left in Northern California. Maybe at the Tejon Ranch. That’s only a few days ride from here, I think.”

The colt nuzzled his hair and he patted its jaw. He addressed the mare. “What do you say, Venus? When will your son be ready to ride? Six months? A year? I think I’ve found someone to take with us.”

***

Linda and Hobbs talked of life, of beauty, of having children and how that was a thing of the past. They wondered if amoebas were zombies, if they still divided. Dulgan encouraged Hobbs to come over and Hobbs came. They never kissed, never broke Linda’s vows, though in Hobbs’s mind they had broken them a thousand times. One day, when the time was right, Hobbs asked Linda to meet him at the Racetrack.

“Dulgan can’t know about it,” he said, meeting her eyes.

Linda put her hand on his chest, a gesture that was only part invitation. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you about the day I got infected.”

She grinned with half her mouth and said, “Now that sounds like a party.”

“I’ve arranged for Dulgan to get his own Crown Vic. on Friday. He’ll be busy.”

“He’ll swing by the condo to show me.”

“You’ll be gone by then.”

Linda met him outside Bing Crosby Hall. Dulgan was too much the cop not to take some precautions. He arranged the meeting place cattycorner from the horse barns, too far for Linda to catch the scent of the horses. She arrived in a yellow GT wearing her jeans and a sleeveless, white top. She had beautiful shoulders. She had put on white cowboy boots.

Hobbs nodded at the boots and said, “You read my mind, sweetheart.” He swept Linda into his arms and kissed her mouth. Her lips were cold, of course, but deliciously wet and pliable. Her tongue snaked around his.

“Come on,” he said. He pulled her along by the hand.

“You promised to tell me about Ground Zero,” Linda said as they walked, “your infection point.”

“It was in North County Fair. It’s an indoor shopping mall – totally enclosed except for a few doors and through the big department stores.” Linda said she knew it, that there were three stories and a big food court.

“Yeah, well, my girlfriend got bit in the Victoria’s Secret dressing room.”

“Not many secrets in there.”

“No. We planned to celebrate her successful operation. Darlene, my girlfriend, wobbled from the dressing room wearing thigh-high panties and nothing else. It was the first time I had been permitted a peek since Doctor Brinkloe did his work, so I didn’t notice that her mouth was ringed with blood. I told her the implants looked great. She lunged for my neck but I jumped sideways and wrapped her in a headlock. A part of me thought it might be one of her kinky games. Then she bit through my shirt. I screamed, kneed her ribs and backed away. She gobbled the skin and blubber she had bitten off like it was candy. A Victoria’s Secret saleswoman wrapped another customer in a bear hug and began eating her face.”

“Dulgan says you were a hero.”

“Not a hero. No way.”

“Darlene advanced on me again and I kicked her away. Then I smelled human flesh and a red mist settled over my eyes, like a shark smells blood. Darlene lost interest in me and wandered away. Screams suddenly didn’t bother me. The smell of human flesh became IT, a need so dear I saw people as walking bratwursts. I chased a little boy into Macy’s and lost him among the coats. A severed arm latched onto my leg and tripped me up just as the National Guard arrived with machine guns and blasted through the zombies like watermelons. The zombies were so crazed that they ran right at the Guard, not even trying to avoid the bullets.

“But I fought it. I didn’t let it control me completely. When the National Guard came, I hid.”

Linda gasped. “You controlled the Rage?”

They passed the charred wreckage of the grandstands and the auction yard. Hobbs caught a whiff of the horses.

“Hell, I liked it. It felt so damn good to want something with every fiber of my body, like a drug or something. But I clamped my teeth together and held tight. Keep the moans under control and you can fight the Rage. That’s the key. Remember that.” He stopped their frantic walk. “Can you do that? Can you keep the moans under control?”

“Do I want to?”

“Linda!”

“Yes, yes I can. Hobbs, where are you taking me?”

Hobbs set off again, reeling out the story as he walked. “I waited until the Guard thought they had the place cleared.”

“Hobbs, why are you upset?”

“Can’t you see? I opened the service door to Macy’s. I let the other zombies in so they could feed.”

“It’s the Rage. It’s not your fault.”

“Darlene can say that. Hell, you can say that. But I could have walked away. I had it under control. I made a choice. I murdered all those people.”

Linda got in front of him, dragged him to a stop. “You are not a murderer.”

They were in front of the sheep building where Dulgan’s scratches marred the door. Hobbs hugged Linda as hard as he could. “That’s why I stopped Dulgan here, not to trap the humans but to keep him from killing more. I didn’t want my partner to be a killer. Linda, I’ve found a way to redeem myself.”

Linda pulled back. “Stop it, Hobbs. There is nothing to redeem.”

“My job is finding life and destroying it. But I can’t. Not anymore. I’ve saved a little. I want to share it with you.”

“Just calm down. The other zombies will tear you to pieces if they hear you talking this way.”

“Linda, you knew this was coming. How couldn’t you?”

“Come home,” Linda said. She pulled him back towards Bing Crosby Hall. “This was a mistake. We’ll forget we had this conversation.”

Hobbs tilted his head. He thought he heard car tires pull up. Several doors slammed shut. He looked into Linda’s eyes and saw fear.

“You told them.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“You told them I had hidden a life.”

“Just go with them. If you show them where you’ve hidden it, they’ll understand. What was it, Hobbs? A human child? You’ve been a good zombie. You’ll get off easy. You trapped all the humans in North County Fair, that’s got to count for something.”

“I thought you understood me.”

“You are a sick zombie, Hobbs. You need help.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” The breeze blew her hair across her eyes. He was so angry, the Rage bubbled through his veins. Her hair smelled like lilacs –sweet and tawdry as a whore.

“You bitch,” he said. He slapped her and she fell. He turned and waddled towards the horse barns.

“Don’t run, it will only make things worse,” Linda called. She was on her hands and knees.

He ignored her. He clamped his teeth together. He couldn’t run. His legs were locked in that ridiculous zombie gait. Sweat poured from his brow.

The other zombies were closing in. They were cops. They hadn’t picked up the Rage because they hadn’t smelled the horses yet, which meant they were gaining on him. Cops, Hobbs thought. Dulgan must know.

He passed through a horse barn, dusted away his tracks as best he could and let himself outside through a stall. He climbed the embankment out of the floodplain and exited the racetrack through a hole in the chain link fence that he had cut that same morning.

He relaxed a little. His walking became less stiff. The horses were well hidden. They should be safe.

Then he heard a snicker. He stopped.

“Who’s there?” Hobbs called.

A man moved from behind a tree. He held two lead ropes in his left hand, a pistol in his right. Even in the dim, evening light Hobbs recognized his partner.

“Two saddles, Hobbs?” Dulgan asked.

“I have to save them. Their beauty--don’t you understand?” Hobbs took a step closer.

“Of course I know beauty. I’ve been blessed with it.”

“Linda? She, she doesn’t love you. She loves me.”

“Why didn’t she come with you?” Dulgan asked. “If she loved you she would have come with you. But she phoned me on the way here. Oh yes, partner. Linda told me that you would betray me.”

“Linda doesn’t understand. I thought she did but the Rage holds her too deeply. Oh God, let me take the horses and go.”

Zeus put its nose to Dulgan’s rotten ear and licked. Hobbs could see Dulgan’s Rage coming on. He won’t be able to fire if he is in Rage, Hobbs thought, but he will bite the first living thing he sees. He will kill the horses.

“Calm yourself Dulgan,” Hobbs said. “Don’t let a moan escape.”

“I would have let you go if Linda came with you, but she didn’t. She loves me. You were trying to steal her from me.”

“Control it, put down the Rage. Dulgan!” Hobbs stilted forward.

Bang!

The flash blinded him and Hobbs fell. He lifted his head and saw that it was a chest wound. Dulgan wasn’t trying to kill him. Hobbs sat on his elbows. Dulgan was crying. His lips remained tightly sealed. Hobbs laughed. “Dulgan, I knew you would see. I knew you would understand. They are beautiful, Dulgan. Don’t you see? Pure beauty.”

“Yes Hobbs. I see.”

Bang!

Hobbs dropped flat to his back. His forehead landed some twenty feet behind.

Venus neighed. Dulgan looked up to see a horde of zombies climbing the embankment, led by Linda in snarling Rage. Her sleeveless top tore as she flailed through the chain link fence.

Dulgan pulled himself onto Venus’s saddle. He held Zeus’s lead rope tightly. He said, “Control, Linda. Learn to control the Rage. I’ll come back for you.”

He dug in his heels.