I
Whispers of the Undead
Lila awoke at 4am and swallowed her pills without eating breakfast. She had a cigarette with her coffee. Fluid swelled up in her eyes, stomach acid burned her throat. She flipped through her stack of bills and ignored the messages on her phone demanding payments. She swallowed pills for the ulcers in her guts and for the headaches and for the anxiety and for the infection in her tooth. Her little boy awoke early to play video games with his friends online.
The news broadcast went on about politics, war, fires, and a new plague infecting the city. She looked out the window over the shadows over the trees and grass as the sun rose behind them. She didn’t care about any of this when she was younger, but after having her boy, getting tied to a chair and shoved into a frozen pond by his father, trying and failing to get back into school, not only did she age incredibly and gain weight, but she started listening.
The new plague evolved quickly. It resisted antibiotics, extreme heat. The only thing that slowed it down was the extreme cold, but the entire state was in a fire advisory. The winds picked up, and the drought entered its second decade. Trees blew down and crushed houses and cars. Entire counties out west caught fire. The smoke still covered the morning sky. The damage caused farms to fail, animals to flee their habitats, and even destroyed artefacts like John Wayne’s Saddle.
Worse yet, the disease caused conditions in the city to get worse. Power outages, unemployment, gun violence, more and more Zombie Response Task Force vehicles went to the city. More journalists entered the city, but fewer and fewer made it out alive. Some damning reports even claimed that the bodies disposed off in the mass graves crawled out and attacked the National Guard. Some said that those who rose from the mass grave walked the streets around it’s many sums and skid rows. They found places like morgues and beat on the doors. They tore down graveyard gates and started digging dirt with their hands until they found the lids of caskets. Some even said they discovered frozen bodies of homeless drug addicts who died in the night, and drug them off to places unknown. The broadcasters kept advising people to stay home, and wait for the emergency broadcast to give them instructions.
Fake News. Lila shut it off. They just want to scare us for some reason, and she couldn’t miss work. She started scrolling through her social media. Her friends posted pictures of their kid’s birthdays, funny memes, the occasional cry for help. Yet none of them sent her any messages or said good morning. A few of her friends that left town for the city stated they were safe at home with their parents or elsewhere away from the turmoil. One friend who lived in the city made a post about feeling sick. Some videos appeared from smart phones. She thought she saw a horde of burned bodies and walking skeletons marching in the street when she heard her child cry to her.
“WHERE’S BREAKFAST I’M HUNGRY!”
Lila turned around and went inside.
“I taught you how to make cereal.”
“There’s no milk.”
“Ok, how about toast?”
“We’re out of bread too.”
“Don't we have any food in this house?” She opened the fridge to see a box of baking soda and a carton of orange judge with a tablespoon or two left at the bottom. “Ok we’ll get breakfast from McDonalds on our way to school.”
‘No way. They will give us pizza for breakfast at school if we give them two dollars.”
Lila dug through her purse. She found empty med bottles, her VAPE, but no cartridges. Deep inside, she picked out some change but didn’t bother counting it. She dropped it for him to take.
“Will we have to move again?”
“No. The City is far far away, whatever is going on there can’t bother us. When I have time off, we’ll go to the pumpkin patch and pick out a pumpkin for Halloween. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“School says that if we get attacked then we can’t leave. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“No one is going to attack you.”
At work, Elysium Grove Nursing Home, Lila the Charge Nurse cleaned up shit with a rag while an old man beat her over the head. Fog covered the windows. Despite the Home being full staffed and at full capacity, it was so quiet you could hear the girls giggling in the break room. Footsteps echoed down the hall. The girls talked about how they wanted off work if the new plague was so bad.
“I mean, how can they expect us to come to work if we catch this?”
“It sucks but we can’t change it.”
A sign posted said IF YOU ARE SICK DON’T COME TO WORK! But anyone who skipped work for any reason got fired… if they were lucky.
The Director of Nursing, Nurse Stevens, not only pressured her CNAs to come to work sick, she expected them to rat on each other for the slightest infraction. One time Lila got written up because she was vaping on the curb. Rules state that you can’t smoke on the sidewalk. The nurse who reported her got rewarded with extra time off work. Lila had to cover for her time off, and was doing twelve hour days with no time off for two entire weeks.
Lila called her “Bird’s Nest” when she wasn’t around, because her hair was dyed poorly and flat in the middle like a bird’s nest.
Bird’s Nest also made the immigrants working there watch anti union propaganda tapes which featured bad accents and outrageous lies about what their rights REALLY were. “Younions Jest WANT my Mowney!” The women in the video insisted.
The Nurses rolled their eyes at the young and often uneducated CNAs. Lila left the old man’s room with her ears swollen and her forehead red and beaten. Bruises went up and down her arms. Her knees and scrubs were covered in piss, shit, and other fluids that came from god knows where. The breakfast bell rang. Lila sighed because she’d get in trouble if she wasn’t ready by then. She went to the bathroom to scrub off the filth. She was late bringing in the old people. Nurse Stevens, scowled at her from across the room. The old people often complained. Meat right out of the cooker is too cold. My plate is too far away. I can’t unfold my napkin. Bird’s Nest stormed over to Lila, her teeth cracked and gritted in anger.
“Where is Ms. Jenkins? Did you forget about her?”
“I didn’t forget, I was cleaning up after Mr. Snodgress.” Her head still throbbed in pain. She balled up her fists.
“If I hear another excuse from you, I’ll put you back in the dementia ward.”
“Get off my case. I’m getting her right now.”
Lila stomped down the hall. Stale air trapped in the building tasted bitter. She breathed out of her mouth as she passed corridor after corridor of closed doors cursing under her breath until she found an open one. Ms. Jenkins sat against the window with her chin in one hand, smiling at something outside. The fog began to dissolve but clouds shielded the sun. A shadow staggered in the courtyard.
“Ms. Jenkins, you’re missing breakfast.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to trouble you. I was just watching the birds when that funny man appeared.”
Lila looked out the window. The man wore a mail carrier uniform, but his pants were falling down, his shirt was open. His head wobbled back and forth. A mail bag still hung over his shoulder. He limped, fell down, then stood back up. Mud covered his knees and bare feet. He staggered back and forth in one direction, then turned around and shifted a few feet in the other direction before tripping again.
Ms. Jenkins laughed, but Lila stood silent. She held her apron by the strap, and stared until the man looked towards the window, and straightened his neck. With clumsy steps he drifted lazily through the fog towards them. Lila reached over and snapped the lamp off. She watched, counting her breaths, as the man lost his concentration again and turned towards the bird feeder. The birds all flew away, and he stood there waiting for them to return.
“C’mon now it's time to get you to breakfast.” Lila took the old woman by the hand and helped her out of her room. All the while wearing her most accommodating smile, but before she went down the hallway she looked outside once more. The man stood perfectly still, his arms hanging at his side, his vision fixed on the window. His clothes disheveled and ripped, his face vacant, his mouth open.
II
All Is Good
“Don’t be afraid of him. That’s just Old Henry. He’s lost again.” Ms. Jenkins laughed.
The other CNAs joked about it.
“I think I see your next boyfriend, Lucy.”
“Well, he can’t be worse than my last boyfriend.”
Not Lila. She gathered the residents and hurried them back to their rooms. Call lights went on and off. Bells rang. She ran back and forth between rooms.
“I’m hot.”
“Okay let me take off that blanket.” Lila rushed to the other room to clean up pissy sheets only to hear the bell ring again.
“I’m cold.”
“Okay, I’ll put the blanket back on.”
“I want two blankets.”
“Okay.”
“Now I’m hot again…”
She wiped crumbs from blood swollen lips. She hurried with trays of drugs.
“Lucy, I thought I told you to bring these drugs to South Ward.” Lila told one of her CNAs.
Lucy facetimed with her boyfriend and shrugged amid bells ringing and dirty laundry heaps.
Lila took the tray and hurried into the flurry of bells and blinking lights.
“I can’t take my pills without water.”
“Okay, let me get you some water.”
Nurse Stevens marched up and put big fat boobs in Lila’s face.
“Why are the residents' lights on?”
“I’m doing as much as I can, the girls aren’t helping me.”
“Mr. Johnson hasn’t gotten his pills yet.”
“I was just about to take his pills to him.”
“Good! Because you need to set up an arts and crafts hour next.”
“I don’t want to take my pills.” Mr Johnson threw them to the floor.
“They help you sleep.”
“It’s god damn near 10 am why would I need pills?”
Mr. Johnson was new and hadn’t given up on his life yet.
“Everyone needs to take them. They help with your mood and your-”
“You mean they dope me up so I just sit here like a zombie until the next stupid game or the dinner. Well, no thanks!”
Bells and lights went off. Lila hadn’t heard a word from the school or her son. Everytime she looked out the window, the strange man was vacant, yet she thought she saw his shadow peering around corners. Lila picked up the pills as quickly as she could and carried them out to the dump. While carrying a new tray of drugs she heard the shrill calling of an old person in pain. She raced down the hall to see Mrs. Rutters laying on the floor of her room in a puddle of what looked like coffee grounds.
“Help me, I'm sick.”. At first Lila hoped she could stand up on her own, but the crying and screaming only got louder as more fluid surged from her mouth. She cleaned up her face, and inspected her body. Bruising and pus ran down her leg. She put on a glove and ran her fingers through the substance. Digested blood.
“Oh my god, we need an ambulance!” Lila ran out of the room to alert the nurses.
“Please don’t leave me alone!” The shrill cries echoed down the hall behind her.
First she ran to the nurses office, but no one was there. She ran to the front counter and asked the girl to radio the nurses. Meanwhile the cart of drugs sat unattended, and Lucy walked by. She noticed an open bottle of pain killer. She knew it by the shape and color. They induced a pleasant trip with euphoric hallucinations. She took the bottle and put it in her pocket.
Bells, lights, screaming. As the old lady cried and screamed, the shadow of the strange man came through the fog and rested against the window. He leaned with his forehead scraping against the glass. When he raised his hand, a fractured wrist tapped the glass.
The fog rolled over the grass. His hand was crooked, his fingers twisted and dangled like a keychain. The familiar soiled clothing, and the vacant pale face seemed to be searching. While the old lady screamed in pain and covered her stomach, the man outside seemed to hear. He raised his second hand to the glass and pressed so hard that he left muddy prints through the screen.
Mrs. Rutters looked closely, concerned it was a resident who had gotten out, until she noticed his eyes. Glazed over and crooked. Both laser focused on the screaming woman. His open jaw widened. Black fluid pooled in his lips and dripped down his shirt and the window.
“Nurses, where are you?”
As she called on the nurses, the man outside started scraping his face against the screen back and forth back and forth until his cheek cut open. Small smears of dark blood stained the window. One of the man’s eyes hung out of its socket by a thread.
Lila ran out of the room to find the Nurses. Not in the North Ward, not in the South Ward, not in the Dementia Ward. Not in the laundry room. The front counter didn’t know. The front office didn’t know. No one was in the break room or the nurse's room. She hurried into the kitchen where felons with motley tattoos worked. Outside she found Nurse Stevens smoking a cigarette with the rest of the nurses by the garbage.
“You’ve got to help! Mrs. Rutters needs an ambulance!”
“The nurses can’t help right now they’re on break. Put her back to bed. She’ll be fine.” Bird’s Nest said. The CNAs didn’t get a break. If a bell rang on their “lunch” they were expected to leave the breakroom.
“We’ve got to do something! There’s blood in her stomach!”
“Just do your job. You’re here til after dinner, so you better hope your relief shows up or you’ll be here all night too.”
The nurses always got to go home on time. If the CNAs had a slow day then the nurses had to stay longer, and they raised hell about it. Zombie outbreak or no zombie outbreak.
“What if she’s got that disease from the city?” Lila protested. “We can’t have her around the girls. Everyone will catch it.”
“Now, what? That little sniffle that’s going around? I don’t want to hear about it. I was a little girl during the Zombie outbreak of ‘68. This is no big deal. Now get back inside and do your job.”
“I have to go find my son.” Lila wanted to grab Nurse Stevens by the hair and pound her face into a pulp. “and I can’t stay here if he’s in danger. I’m calling the school.”
“No phones during your shift.”
“What of Mrs. Rutters? We need to call the paramedics and get her to the hospital.”
“You don’t tell me what to do, miss. Now get back inside, and don’t say a word about this this anyone. Everything is fine.”
Lila knew that nothing was fine. Lucy already got into her car and left the parking lot. She didn’t do a damn duty assigned to her, so Lila was expected to pick it up.
The other CNAs attended to Mrs. Rutters and curiously leveled an eye at the damage to the window. Something, perhaps the wind, tore the screen off and even nibbled at the fleshing. Mrs. Rutters kept whimpering as the nurses held her legs and head.
“Where’s the paramedics? When do they get here?”
“They’re on the way. Just stay calm. Everything is under control. Do you want a glass of water?”
“I think I’m dying.” Her eyes turned ruddy and glassy, she bit her lips to pulp, and huge bruises serpentined down her neck and stomach.
The nurses looked around at each other in doubt.
“We don’t have the supplies to tend to anything like this. We couldn’t even tell what was wrong without a blood test.”
“Just leave her in this room.” Bird’s Nest insisted. She kept wiping her nose on a tissue and rubbing sores on her neck. “I don’t want anyone mentioning this to anyone. Do not say anything about the fake disease. I won’t have it tonight. Everything is fine.”
III
Nothing is Fine
Lila called the school from the break room. She kept watching the dim fog outside as the phone rang. The clouds got heavier and darker. The forest and fields blew apart in the wind. She thought she saw someone standing in the grass. It rang and rang as sweat dripped down her neck. Her heart beat so hard that the ID badge around her neck trembled. She tried to control her breathing. The dial tone rang and rang. A fear gripped her, she kept holding her breath , until a secretary answered and told her that everything was fine at the school, and the emergency lockdown would end after the police secured the building.
“What happened?”
“Just a normal routine for when the threat level rises from a 3 to a 4. But we are asking all parents to come pick up their kids.”
A CNA cracked through the door. The secretary hung up.
“Lila, there’s this really weird guy outside. You should come see him.”
The CNAs behind her giggled. “Yeah it looks like he’s lost or something.”
“Shut up, Sara. You’re afraid of one little zombie.”
“Oh I am so not.”
“Where is he?” Lila asked.
“The front door. He’s just standing there. It’s weird.”
Lila walked fast down the hall because running was against the rules. He kept squeezing her fist and swinging them against her chest.
Lila's teeth grinded and her neck muscles stretched. The school should’ve called me! My son is in there with those things on the loose!
Lila never talked much about it to anyone, but the child’s father died of a disease that crippled his spine and rotted his brain. Though alive in a hospital bed for weeks, his body slowly died. First his feet turned black. Then his organs turned to liquid. Then spinal fluid drained into his body. A feeding tube and a ventilator got attached to his mouth. Finally at the very end his brain slowly degenerated so that the hemispheres came apart. He languished in this condition for days kept alive by special machines that whirled and shot lasers through glass capsules. He moaned and groveled until his finals hours. Lila never forgot seeing his face age like a squash or the way his rib cage protruded. It looked like he had tiny, veiny arms and a shrunken skull on top of a huge mass of bones.
When Lila looked at the front door, she saw the zombie from before. Rain started to fall but he stood there and let the freezing cold soak him. His face drooped as one hand fell from his body. His flesh looked more red than green, and his bones looked visible as the bloating went down. A single maggot squirmed in his neck. He died for 8 days ago more or less, he reminded her of her late husband on the hospital bed.
The CNAs looked fascinated.
“Ew, look at him.”
“Who do you think he was? Where did he came from?”
“Should we do anything?”
“What if there’s more?”
“Then I’m leaving.”
“If you leave they’ll fire you.” Lila said. “Even in an emergency. We can’t just leave the residents behind.”
Lila didn’t see the amusement. She saw staggering shadows behind him. It’s true, Zombie Outbreaks happen. The whole world can’t stop just because a dead body cannibalizes another person. There’s a homeless guy stabbing someone to death over a pizza crust right now, we don’t cancel Church over that, do we? Many succumb to the extreme cold, pit falls, paralysing rigor mortis, some even decay completely and one day just sit until the sun blows their bones away. But when Lila was a child riding the car she’d look out the window and see them on the side of the road eating road kill, or even other zombies gathered around a tree reaching for a cat in the branches. The blood stains they left never washed away. No matter how much it rained or snowed. No matter how many chemicals the workers applied to the scrub. She hated trees, and had nightmares every night. In them she picked berries from a tree until a zombie came down the road and waited at the bottom. She woke up when the branch broke and she fell. She avoided ponds because zombies don't need oxygen. They floated there at the bottom.
As the shadows emerged from the fog, she noticed gas station uniforms, fast food uniforms, neon vests covered in blood, scrubs, some were even nude or draped in funeral shrouds. Down the hall a bunch of old people shoved their walkers along as others drooled and moaned at their TVs. “There’s good old Henry again. And Tom, and Esther.”
“Ms. Jenkins, we need you to get back into your room. Maybe with tea and a good TV show?”
“Oh that does sound okay but I think we should let those men in so they can play a card game with us.”
“Oh no, Ms. Jenkins, we mustn't do that.”
“Oh, no. That’s too bad. They look so lonely and bored.”
Lila turned to the CNAs. “We need to get them back to their rooms now.”
“But It’s Arts and Crafts hour. We usually get to sit in the communal parlor.”
“It’s only until those men go away.”
“Those men? Why, look. It’s good old Henry again. And Tom, and Esther…” Ms. Jenkins repeated.
Lila looked out the window. One of the shadows creeping out of the grass had been dead for years. It’s skin looked like a mossy suit slipping off of a skeleton. The ribs and hips and skull were free of flesh. The rest of the decay just hung there like a dirty tarp on it’s shoulders.
“Look at it.” Lila told the CNAs. “There’s nothing left.”
“That thing must’ve been in the ground for years.”
“Get the residents back inside.”
“Are you really nervous?”
“Are we really in any danger?”
“My dad always said he could just run up the stairs and shoot the zombies from a window.”
“No one is shooting their way out of this. If there’s more than one, then there's more coming.”
“Why would they come here?”
“Because we stay open! They follow the food supply, and though they're dead, perhaps it's magic, they can sense the presence of the disease. They know there’s people here because they know the disease is here.”
“No way. I bet we can run them all over with our cars.”
“Those were fucking people!” Lila pointed a finger at the girls. “Get the residents back to their rooms now.”
Lila began moving the old people with gentleness and poise, despite the fact that she suffered from aches that got worse and worse. One of the nurses came up to Lila.
“Excuse me, Arts and Crafts hour isn’t over yet.”
“There’s ten minutes left and we need to get the residents away from the zombies outside.”
“You know, we don’t call them that anymore. It’s a little inappropriate. Haiti has ‘Zombies’ and it’s a voodoo thing. The correct term might be “undead” or “living dead”. It’s important to distinguish because the word ‘zombi’ or “nzambi” derives from African language and is related to their beliefs of the soul and their Gods. George Romero himself said that ‘zombie’ corresponds to undead slaves of Haitian voodoo, not his monsters.”
“Zombie. Zombie. ZOMBIE.” Lila cursed at the nurse. “No one’s going to care what they’re called if they rip your arm off! We’re getting the residents back into their rooms now, and then we’re letting the CNAs go home.”
“Stop whining. I’m getting sick of your thoughts and opinions. You can’t follow simple instructions. You can’t just shut up and work like everyone else. Now you’re leaving us to do all that work?”
“We can’t have them exposed to this infection. There’s no choice.”
“They’re just standing outside. What are you so worried about?”
“Until they find what they’re looking for.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The nurse sneered. The ‘Im going to report you’.
Lila punched the nurse in the nose. And brought her into the bathroom to clean the blood up. All the residents hustled as fast as they could after seeing it. No one got water. No one got extra blankets. No one went to the bathroom. Once the doors shut, they stayed shut, and Lila told the CNAs to get out while they still could.
The nurses now searched for Lila. Bird’s Nest stormed from room to room, but with the CNAs leaving one by one, she now had to address the call lights and clean the poop. Meanwhile Lila hid in the laundry room and pulled her phone back out. At this hour, her clothes and hair were coated in filth. She controlled her panic, she controlled her urge to beat Bird’s Nest to death. Instead she reeled the phone out of her pocket and called the school again trying to reach her son.
IV
Triumph of the Living Dead
A dark wind blew over the land. The clouds of rain buried the sun. Fog rolled in from the fields and enveloped the retirement home. Lila no longer detected the droves of unsteady, feeble corpses walking in the streets of the living. However their moans persisted outside. Louder and louder as the wifi reset itself over and over again and the lights dimmed.
“Old Henry” reappeared at the door. This time cloaked by the fog.
Bird’s Nest came hurrying down the hall, covered in feces and urine, out of breath, with mucus draining from her ears and eyes. No matter how much she washed her hair the smell remained. No matter what drugs she took, the burning in her guts kept torturing her. Fury overcame her as she saw the CNAs leave in mass. She threatened to fire them as they hurried down the halls with their coats in tow. She called on them all on her radio to return, only to be met with static and the droning yelps of the creatures outside. She saw Old Henry at the door, but in the murk, she failed to understand the dire threat.
“There’s a resident outside.” He called for her nurses but no one answered her.
The man just stood there, limped back and forth, and pulled at the door.
Bird’s Nest took her key card and hovered it over the lock when Lila called on her to stop.
“Don’t let him in!”
“How dare you? He needs to be in his room.”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? He’s dangerous.”
Lila got closer to Bird’s Nest, and noticed black fluid dribble leaking down her cheek. All color drained from her face, sweat pooled under her eyes, and a heavy red veins appeared in the whites of her eyes. Old Henry kicked at the door. He slammed his head against the glass, and even burped out a dreary tone that obscured his face under a layer of condensation.
“You’re in trouble. You excused the girls.”
“The residents are safe as long as they don’t leave their rooms. I’m leaving too.”
“If you leave it will be the last thing you do.”
“If this is how you want to die, then stay here. But this place is infected. If one resident has it, they all have it. I’m not going to stay here any longer.”
Bird’s Nest’s eyes crossed as her teeth chipped. She rose both fists and started pounding Lila in the stomach, the head, neck. She grabbed her hair and threw her against the wall. Old Henry put both wrists on the glass and pounded it until his bones splintered. With Lila on the ground, the director of nursing landed kick after kick on her ribs until blood burst out of her mouth. Bird’s Nest stood in the corridor, dark fluid dripping down her lips. She wiped it off with her shoulder and forearm. It left a smear of odor that only the undead could smell.
One by one they idled towards the doors, the windows, the courtyard. Bird’s Nest hit Lila over the head with the radio so hard the batteries flew out.
Lila lay on the floor, trying to get up, delirious and injured, her teeth turned red with blood. “You’re the one who carried the infection inside. You’re the reason they’re here. You’re the one who never should’ve come to work.”
Bird’s Nest looked around, almost exhausted, her eyes glassy and crooked, then she dove on top of Lila. She pressed her thumbs into her throat as Lila grabbed her hair.“This is the way it has to be. We can’t leave.”
“You’re sick! You need help!” Lila spat out.
Bird’s Nest screamed into Lila’s face, spewing blood and speckles of brown mucus. The zombies gathered, their interest piqued. Their jaws fell open, some jaws even fell off, their tongues lapped blood on the glass.
Lila tore out a fistfull of Bird’s Nest’s hair, and shoved it into her mouth. She pressed her fingers into her mouth, then her whole fist as the director of nursing bit down and bit the flesh clean to the knuckle. With her other hand, Lila pressed her thumb into her eyeball until green pus squirted out. The director of nursing began to lose strength as her breathing became obstructed with her own bodily fluids leaking from her brain into her nose and throat. Lila ripped both hands away from the woman, and then pressed both her thumbs through the flesh at the bottom of her jaw. Meat snapped, and blood washed down her arms as slowly both thumbs penetrated the thin layers of tissue. The Director of Nursing rolled off, mortally wounded, bleeding all over the floor.
“You brought them here, you bitch!”
Lila tried to get back up, but her throat hurt more and more. She held onto the wall while she regained her balance, slowly walking herself down the sterile and muted halls. Against every window a host of battered and partially devoured bodies gathered to watch. They scowled and barked at her. As she exited the north ward and went down the east ward, she thought she saw one of THEM standing in the games area. Every glimmering wall seemed to bear the reflection of another monster. Behind her she heard the wails of Bird’s Nest. Alarm bells sounded as the fire lights snapped on and off.
The old people began to open their doors.
“No, no. Stay inside!” Lila called at them. She pushed one old man back inside and slammed the door, but too many began flowing out.
“I don’t smell any smoke” the old people whispered amongst themselves. “Where are the nurses? Where’s the fire?”
Mrs. Rutters herself got up from her bed, her skin turned green, and her eyes almost fell out of her head. She took her tv and hurled through her window. She slipped outside, choking and gasping, as she slowly entered the courtyard. Only to be met by a mass of undead eyes and claws. Yet they didn’t touch her, they flowed past her, and reached out over the window.
Lila hurried into the dining area with all the dinner fittings ready to go. She ran into the kitchen, and out the back door. She tired to run through the parking lot but now THEY swarmed the yards. At first she felt fear paralyze her as her bones and head pounded more and more where the director of nursing struck her, but the undead moved too slow, too unsteady. When one came close she found him easy to push off balance. Unable to get up, the zombie cried with what sounded like real despair. The others stepped right over him.
All her time with the elderly, she found that the frail stood no chance. Too much rot in their spinal cords, too many bugs living in their brains. Even they took hold of her sagging clothes she just tore the scrubs off. So demented the living dead are that they tore the garment to pieces before they discovered that it contained no flesh. The amount of foul stains on it made them think otherwise. Lila
dove into the back of her truck, crawled through the back window. Some of the undead gathered and wiped their crooked palms over her windows. Some gathered in the warmth of the headilghts. Some just looked on with dumbfounded gaze, playing with the clothes on their bodies, nibbling on some raw chunk they found somewhere out there. Lila backed up slowly, knocking them down and crushing their limbs. Some hung onto the car, and when their arms broke off from their bodies, the limb remained gripping the truck. She turned on the windshield wipers to clear the blood away. The wipers kept striking and bouncing off a severed head that rested on the back of the hood. One of the monsters dropped it. She kept trying to catch a glimpse of who it was. Maybe it was someone she knew.
On her way to the school Lila stopped at the scene of an accident. Two semis collided with each other. One carried aluminum cans and the other hauled livestock. Caught between them was a motorcyclist. The cops each carried shotguns, and every so often they’d fire a round into the foggy cornfields. They told her to wait until they cleared the highway.
The dead bodies lay there on the side of the road. The police dragged more bodies out of the wreckage and didn’t hesitate to shoot them in the head, then decapitate the bodies. A stack of heads lay there away from the corpses. They learned a lot from the Zombie Response Task Force since the tragedies of 1968 and 1978. No time remained however to wait for bulldozers and cranes to remove the burning wreckage. Other cars waited at the scene. The severed head on her hood, its ear bitten off, it’s tongue bitten off, a hole in his skull where it once had brains, seemed to wink at her. She reached around her window and pulled it inside.
“Don’t let them burn me.” It pleaded to her.
“You’re dead and disgusting. I should let those things have you.”
“Please don’t. I can help you join the Zombie Response Task Force. I was in it until most recently. I’m still technically a member.”
“What would I have to do?”
“Go tell them right now. The man in the tie is the chief! Tell him that you want to join. It’ll be a better job than the one you have right now.”
“Do they train me?”
“They drill you until you are afraid of nothing.”
“Is the money good?”
“Better than you’re making. They pay you like you could die at any moment.”
Lila got out of her car, and carried the head to the cop with a battle helmet and a tie. His badge didn’t say state police of county police, it had a large black X over a red hand print that said Z.R.
“M'am. Get back into your car!” He drew his weapon on her.
“The head says I’m to speak with you. He says that you’re in charge of the Zombie Response Task Force.”
“Dr. LeRoy? Oh god, what happened?” The cop lowered his weapon as other cops ceased the head. Quite dead, motionless, it said nothing as they carried it away.
“Are you in charge? I want to enlist.”
“I’m just a junior captain but I’m overseeing the areas outside of the hazard zone.”
“This is outside the hazard zone? My nursing home just got attacked.”
“Right now we’re clearing this road.”
“Looks like your guarding a stack of headless bodies I want to enlist.”
“We need people right now. Especially a new medical expert. You want to sign up? Are you afraid of these monsters?”
“No.”
“Then take a business card. Call the headquarters tomorrow first thing.”
The task force burned the bodies and pushed the wreckage out of the way. Lila drove off towards the school to find her boy. In the smoke of chaos, she found an opportunity to find a new role in a transitioning world. She looked forward to the chance to face the roving dead, and purge them from the earth once and for all. As the wreckage cleared a few of the cows survived and walked free into the muddy fields.
.
V
Convergeance
The Director of Nursing, Nurse Stevens, however opened all the doors in the facility, believing the dead to be her residents. She lay there on the floor, her arteries hanging down her mouth, slowly bleeding out as the zombies walked past her. Her brain, covered in concussions and regression, leaked out of her ears. The zombies kept licking it, sticking fingers and tongues down to her eardrums. She didn’t know how long it took her to die, or how long it took a body to reanimate, but in her dying moments she remembered all the events that made her emotionally stunted. Many people mistook it for being clinical and intelligent, but really she had a fissure in her brain that made her incapable of emotion. Incapable of handling the emotional needs of others. Her mother neglected her and her father whipped her with a belt. She never should’ve been in the medical field. She didn’t know how to take care of people.
As she died she thought that maybe as night drew near, she’d go visit that old farm house, visit her family and see if any reconciliation was possible. Maybe her body would begin to rise and walk amid the dead, hopelessly searching, seeking, hunting for infected flesh to consume.
Not everyone fled. Some nurses hid inside of closets. The residents didn’t notice anything peculiar. A hall of slowly, lurching men and women covered in goo and ooz didn’t bother them, and the zombies didn’t seem to notice them either. Ms. Jenkins sat down and played checkers. Old Henry sat right across from her.
“Old Henry, you always told the funniest stories.” she laughed as she waited on him to make his move. Eventually he shifted a red piece diagonally.
“Gwrrrrssssshhh.”
“Oh now, don’t be a sore loser.” She took his piece off the board as she jumped a black piece forward. “Why don’t you get me a glass of water?”
“Gragggsssh?”
“Yes that’s right I haven’t drank anything today.”
Old Henry got up. He came back a few minutes later with a glass of water with a lemon in it. His fingerprints left crud all over the glass but Ms. Jenkins didn’t seem to mind. She drank the water.
“Old Henry, you’re a good helper. I hope they keep you around.”
Even if they did try to bite the old people, most didn’t have teeth anymore. The Zombie Response Task Force started pulling teeth from the dead back in the 90s.Most just lumbered around, followed the old people, seemed to be listening, and folded their bedding. Things went well until the National Guard finally showed up. They shot all the zombies and carted the old people off to god knows where. The nurses crept out of their hiding places and were carried by helicopter to field hospitals.
The Board of Nursing met days later to decide the fate of the employees. Anyone who abandoned the site was fired and lost their nursing licenses. The Director of Nursing was never found. A new policy was instituted that the Zombie Response Task Force was NEVER to be called on again as they had to pay for the operation conducted by rescue teams. The government eventually mandated that all employees of retirement homes were entitled to sick days and paid time off, much to the chagrin of the owners of Elysium Grove Nursing Homes.
