Undead Ultra (Short Story): Foot Soldier Read online

  He’s just turned the key when the furry gray cat comes tearing around the corner. By the time he swings open the door, its frantic meows fill the silence.

  The smell hits Alvarez like a socket wrench. Something—or someone—has died inside this house.

  As the cat winds around his ankles, Alvarez hovers in the doorway, trying to decide if he should go in or move on in search of another house. After a long thirty seconds, he makes up his mind and steps all the way inside and closes the door.

  He can deal with the dead. He’s even proved that he can deal with the undead. But given a choice, the dead are always easier opponents.

  “Where is it?” he whispers to the cat. After a moment of consideration, he extracts his Beretta from his boxers’ waistband.

  The cat is frenzied, winding around his ankles and meowing. The thing’s motor kicks on, adding even more noise. He’d never noticed how much noise a single cat can make. He wants to make the thing shut up, but short of tossing the animal outside or killing it, he isn’t sure how.

  It must be hungry. How long has the poor thing been shut up here? Three days? Five? Longer?

  The side entryway leads into a family room. There are more toys scattered everywhere. All over the floor, all over the two sofas, and even on the fireplace hearth. Alvarez is pretty sure the kids who once called this place home could give the local toy store a run for its money as far as inventory is concerned.

  The living room leads into a formal dining room, where there are still more toys. A giant playhouse dominates the cherrywood table, all the little bits that go along with the dollhouse strewn across the tabletop. Miniature chairs. Miniature beds. He even spots a miniature gray cat.

  The stench is even stronger when he enters the kitchen. He’s getting closer to the source of the smell. He pauses to listen, searching for any hint that he’s up against an undead rather than a dead.

  The only sound is that of the cat, who still purrs and meows.

  That’s when he spots the shoe.

  It’s a small leather shoe with pink leather flowers stitched along the top and side. Or at least, he thinks they’re pink flowers. It’s hard to tell with all the blood.

  Oh shit, no. Please, not a kid.

  It doesn’t take him long to find the other shoe. It’s attached to the foot of a little girl. She’s dressed in a blue and purple princess dress with fairy wings. The side of her face is caved in from a gunshot wound. A grisly bite mark on her neck tells him she had been infected.

  Her little body is laid out in the laundry room. There had been a sheet covering her, but the cat likely dragged it off. It’s now half wadded up against the side of the washing machine. Parts of the little girl’s arms have been chewed, but they aren’t the same as the zombie bite on her neck. No, the mouth that made those bite wounds was much smaller.

  “Mrow?” The gray cat sits back on its haunches, head cocked as it watches Alvarez.

  Swallowing, Alvarez closes the laundry room door. Who is he to judge the feline?

  “We all do what we have to do, don’t we?” he says to the cat.

  “Mrow,” the cat replies.

  THE REST OF THE HOUSE is deserted. Based on the strewn contents of the bedrooms, the family that lived here left in a hurry.

  Alvarez doesn’t blame them. He couldn’t get away from Rod’s Roadhouse fast enough.

  After helping himself to food and water in the kitchen—and making sure the cat was fed—he makes his way back to the bedrooms. The smell isn’t so bad in the back of the house.

  Alvarez rifles through the closet of the master bedroom. One of the former residents appears to have been a cyclist, based on the obscene amount of spandex pants and bright-colored, skintight shorts and shirts. The shoe collection is another giveaway. There are a dozen different, brightly colored biking shoes.

  His mind flashed back to Kate. She’d been wearing ankle-length spandex pants. She’d run over a hundred miles in those pants.

  If spandex could carry Kate halfway on foot to Arcata, they can get Alvarez another twenty-five miles to Ukiah.

  He stares at himself in the mirror once he has them on. Button-down Hawaiian shirt, trucker hat with a golden retriever, skintight black pants, and ratty tennis shoes with dried blood.

  If his cousins saw him, they’d laugh themselves sick. He’d hear about it at every family reunion until the day he died.

  “Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have to worry about seeing those assholes anytime soon.” The truth of those words brings a brief flash of sadness.

  He spots something purple and shiny poking out from beneath the bed. Bending down, he fishes out a fanny pack covered in purple sequins. No doubt it belonged to the little girl.

  Alvarez buckles on the fanny pack, deciding it completes his outfit. It’s practical. He can stuff some snacks and even a water bottle inside.

  “Mrow.” The cat wanders in, purr thunderous. The animal gives him a long, luxurious stretch, then flops over to clean his ass.

  “I don’t care what you think,” Alvarez tells the cat. “I make this outfit look good.”

  Mile 25.3 + 1 night of sleep

  ALVAREZ HAS NEVER BEEN so sore in his entire life. Not. Ever.

  Not in boot camp. Not when he hit the gym hard. Not even when he got his ass whooped by his dad for stealing candy from the local 7-11.

  He hurts in places he never knew existed.

  Sucking in a breath, he pushes himself up off the sofa. The cat, which he named Gris—Spanish for “gray”—cracks open an eye and rumbles in annoyance.

  “Tell me about it,” Alvarez says.

  He has two choices. He can sit around and be in pain. Or he can get his ass moving and be in pain.

  He’s made a commitment to move forward. That leaves him only one choice.

  Forward.

  Forward.

  Forward.

  Mile 25.5

  THE FIRST HUNDRED YARDS of jogging away from Gris’s are absolute pain. His feet ache. The dozens of small cuts and lacerations from rocks are sore and tender. The sunburn on his back and chest is lobster red. The chafing on the inside of his thighs from the boxer shorts is nothing short of horrifying. He almost doesn’t notice the scrape from his bare-backed tumble across the pavement with the zombie; his arms, legs, and back all hurt from the running and walking he did yesterday.

  Resolute, he keeps going.

  Mile 26.2

  HIS BODY LOOSENS UP. He still hurts from head to toe, but not as badly as he did ten minutes ago.

  He misses the cat.

  I should have brought him with me. The thought rolls through his mind as he jogs down the road and away from the house he slept in last night. The morning sun crests the horizon, sending blinding spears of light into his eyes.

  Gris. He remembers the cat’s companionable warmth when he curled up on the sofa at his feet last night. Alvarez had even found a Disney Princess backpack in the little girl’s room. Gris would have fit inside perfectly.

  Except Gris had no interest in riding in the pack. And forcing a cat to do anything was a recipe for disaster. The last thing he needed was a screaming cat drawing every undead for miles.

  He emptied a bag of cat food onto the floor and propped open the side entrance with the plastic rock. He had his doubts about a domestic cat surviving on its own, but at least Gris had a fighting chance. At least he wouldn’t starve to death in the house with the dead girl.

  Anything was better than that.

  Mile 30.1

  WITH THE HELP OF A map scavenged from Gris’s house, Alvarez navigates through the less populated streets of Willits and avoids the main part of town. He kills a few zombies along the way.

  Each kill gets easier. Each one makes him reflect on the fear that hounded him for all those miles. It’s amazing he hadn’t ended up dead.

  He vows to face his fears from this day forward. No more running away from things.

  From now on, the only way he was going to run is forward.
He’s running to meet up with his fellow soldiers in Ukiah. He’s running forward to help people.

  He’s running to fight the undead.

  Mile 34.7

  SPANDEX IS MAN’S BEST friend. That’s all there is to it.

  Forget dogs. People who claimed dogs are man’s best friend never had to travel fifty miles on foot.

  It’s all about spandex.

  Mile 39.7

  IF SOMEONE HAD TOLD Alvarez three days ago that he would be traveling fifty miles on foot, he would have laughed his ass off. Or maybe cried. Or maybe told the guy he was a fucking fool.

  Whatever the case, he never believed it was possible to travel so far and so fast on foot without dying.

  Granted, he’s not running all the time. He’s settled into a run-walk combination: ten minutes of running followed by ten minutes of walking.

  His purple-sequined fanny pack is proving to be an invaluable find. He crammed it full of granola bars he found in Gris’s kitchen. He keeps up a steady intake of food throughout the day, munching a few bites every thirty minutes.

  There are two things he doesn’t have to be afraid of anymore: zombies and running.

  Mile 48.2

  UKIAH. POPULATION 16,036. It’s four times the size of Willits. The town is large enough to boast a Costco and a Buddhist college.

  This is where soldiers were sent to set up a blockade, a last stand to keep the undead from flooding farther south into the state of California.

  Up until the moment he stepped foot into the outskirts of the town, Alvarez hadn’t considered the fact that he might not find anyone. It’s been nothing but death and the undead in the long miles he’s traveled. Will Ukiah be any different?

  Highway 101 bisects the town. Even from a distance, Alvarez can see the road is a mess. An overturned semi. Lots of abandoned cars, many of them smashed from collisions. Undead roaming the roadway.

  Should he brave the freeway or try to make his way through town?

  Logic says if the freeway is a mess, it won’t be any different in town. The question is whether he’ll have a better chance surviving the freeway or the town.

  The sun is low in the sky. It took him all day to travel the twenty-five miles from Willits to Ukiah. Hell, he hasn’t even gone a full fifty miles yet. His body feels like it’s been methodically beaten with a rolling pin.

  He’s going to need to find a place to hole up for the night. He considers his options.

  That’s when he sees the bus.

  A VW bus. Spray-painted with red, green, and yellow stripes. It’s one of those VWs from the seventies.

  Alvarez scans the surrounding area. The bus was left to the side of an off-ramp, the front passenger door still hanging open. The nearest zombie is a hundred yards up the highway where the cars begin to pile up. More cars are piled up at the bottom of the off-ramp with zombies cluttering the intersection. The area immediately around the bus is clear. He heads toward the bus.

  As he reaches the driver’s side door, something snakes out and grabs his ankle. Alvarez tips backward, landing hard on his back. Already bruised and scabbed from his first sprawl on the asphalt, the fall sucks the breath from his lungs. Pain shoots through him, but instinct kicks in.

  He rolls, jerking on his leg. Something heavy drags against his foot, growling.

  He catches a glimpse of a zombie. It’s a twenty-something with a man-bun. His teeth are clamped around the toe of Alvarez’s tennis shoes. The white eyes roll as the beast tears at the light fabric.

  Alvarez snatches his knife, the sheath of which rests on the belt of the purple-sequined fanny pack. Bending at the waist, he stabs underneath the car. His knife punches through the skull, killing the zombie. The creature’s head thumps onto the ground. It remains there, unmoving.

  Breathing hard, heart pounding from the near miss, Alvarez retrieves his knife with a fierce jerk. Nearby moans draw his attention.

  His scuffle alerted nearby zombies to his presence. They shuffle in his direction, arms outstretched as they growl and hiss.

  He climbs into the bus, resisting the instinct to slam shut the door. Rather, he closes it softly, stopping when he hears the latch click. It should be enough to keep any zombies from crawling inside.

  Turning, he scans the interior of the bus, knife upraised. An empty interior greets him. On the right side of the van is a small counter with a rusted sink. On the left side are storage bins and an ice chest. In the back is a love seat that’s been converted into a bed. A sleeping bag and pillow are rolled out, just waiting for him.

  It feels like the fucking Ritz Carlton.

  Alvarez glances out the windows, surveying the zombies. Now that he’s inside and everything has fallen quiet, the zombies drifting in his direction have slowed. A few of them have even wandered off in other directions.

  The sun is buried halfway in the western horizon. Alvarez heads into the back of the bus and flops down on the blankets. His body parts give a collective sigh of relief.

  He should take off his shoes. He should check his feet, let them air out for a while.

  Instead, he falls into a deep sleep.

  Mile 48.2 + 200 Hundred Yards

  HE’S NEVER SEEN SO many blisters in his life. Alvarez stares at his feet in the dusky light of dawn. They create a series of reddish-white domes all across his toes. Some on top. Some on the bottom. Some between the toes. Some along the sides. They had somehow manifested in a single day like spawning guppies.

  Kate said something about lancing blisters and sealing them with Super Glue. Alvarez stares at the uncomfortable red lumps. He can’t wrap his head around lancing them, let alone resealing them with Super Glue.

  He pulls on the clean pair of socks he found in one of the VW’s plastic tubs. A groan escapes his lips as he bends over. Yesterday, he felt like he got run over by a truck. Today, he feels like he got hit with a freight train. He had no idea it was possible to be so sore. Every ounce of his body hurts, from his arms to his abs to his shoulders to his lats to his legs, all the way down to his shredded feet.

  Hopefully, once he gets moving, things will loosen up like they did yesterday. He peers out the window, assessing the highway.

  There are still wrecked cars, bodies, and zombies. Nothing has changed since yesterday. Those zombies that had drifted toward the VW are still milling around, closer than he’d like.

  He’d gone to sleep worrying about how he was going to get through Ukiah. He woke up with an idea, a clear plan of action. Alvarez takes a survey of the wrecked cars, looking for a candidate to enact his plan.

  At first, he thinks to set off a car alarm, to draw zombies to the noise so he can slip past them.

  Two hundred yards down the road, he sees something that brings a smile to his face: an ice cream truck.

  His mother drove an ice cream truck in LA for a few years. As a kid, he bragged to everyone about how he got free ice cream, even though he never did.

  Most importantly, Alvarez knows how to turn on the music. An ice cream truck will play music much longer than a car alarm will wail. It’s the perfect lure for the undead.

  Now all he has to do is get from the VW to the ice cream truck.

  He rummages around the interior of the bus, searching for food, weapons, and water. He fills his fanny pack with a bag of trail mix. He polishes off a large jug of water stashed under the sink. Then, beneath the bed, he unearths a toolbox.

  Flipping up the lid, he smiles as his gaze falls on a hammer. Perfect. Between the knife and the hammer, he’s ready to kill some undead.

  He returns to the window and studies the roadway, determining the best route to the ice cream truck. There’s no way to get to it without passing some of the zombies. He’s going to have to move fast and kill a few. There won’t be much room for error.

  He snugs the red trucker hat into place and readies his weapons. No reason to sit around anymore thinking about his plan. It’s time to move.

  “Get ready,” he tells his aching body. “No b
itching about being sore. No room for bitches on this crazy train.”

  He exits on the passenger side. There’s no way to avoid the soft click of the latch when he opens the door. Three nearby zombies turn at the sound, moaning to one another. When they start moving in the direction of the bus, Alvarez takes off at a blind sprint.

  Or he tries to sprint anyway. His sore body protests.

  If that old lady could run over a hundred miles, you can run two hundred yards to the fucking ice cream truck.

  Gritting his teeth, he does his best to ignore the pain and haul ass.

  He doesn’t make much noise as he runs. The stained sneakers of the dead trucker are well worn and soft. Even so, in the stillness and quiet of the zombie apocalypse, the soft tap-tap-tap of his footsteps can be heard.

  Moaning sounds all around him like a chorus of ill-tuned instruments thrumming to life. White eyes roll in his direction. Bodies turn, homing in on the sound.

  He sprints between two cars and comes up against his first zombie. It’s an old woman, dried blood encrusting her face. She wears a pair of black sunglasses encrusted with rhinestones. At the sound of his approach, she pulls back her lips and snarls.

  Without breaking stride, Alvarez smashes the hammer into her face. She drops as he sprints past her.

  All around, zombies converge on him. Fuck. He thought he’d have more time.

  He veers right, churning around a red pickup truck as five of the undead close in behind him. As soon as he’s past the front bumper of the truck, he takes a hard left, trying to throw off the pack. Several of them run into the bumper, snarling in frustration.

  Two more undead loom up in front of him. Teenagers. Alvarez smashes his hammer into the face of the first one. As the second one leaps at him, he spins to the side.