Not looking out the window after pulling down the dark blankets to let in some light ranks right up there on the list of things I should have known to avoid. I should have known to look at everything carefully, to check my surroundings whenever possible, and then to constantly recheck them. I have to know better. My heightened sense of danger should make me more alert. My adrenaline should speed up my responses and make me focus my attention with laser accuracy. It didn’t. I wasn’t use to being in constant survival mode yet. I was rushing to leave the living room and didn’t keep my eye on the ball.
Of course, it was in that moment that it chose to attack.
Bang
The loud rattling bang made me duck instinctively, hunching my body over as my muscles tightened and I flinched away from the sound. Adrenaline surged and I turned with fear beating hard in my chest to see the Z trying to get to me..
The large window rattled in the metal sliding track as it repeatedly clawed at the glass with dirt covered fingers. The Z was outside only a few yards away, reaching up against the glass, its milky eyes staring directly at me. I noted that his lower jaw and most of his left cheek were gone as he pushed his face against the glass. A crusted hole from his esophagus, bits of bone and a row of cracked yellow teeth were all that remained of his face beneath his nose. It was covered in dried blood, most of which I guessed was probably its own, and dirt and leaves were stuck to the crusted wound.
I gagged and fought down the rising bile in my throat. As I stood there it moved slowly, raised its arms again, and then slammed them back into the closed window.
Bang
The glass was holding, though the entire thing was shaking violently each time it brought its fists down. All the apartments had old single-pane windows in simple metal frames with only the smallest amount of insulation. The buildings were old and only moderately kept in good shape. Nothing was new. Everything had been patched or painted or covered up at some point in time to make it presentable. Old apartment buildings all over Long Island were just like this, renting out ageing units under the label of “Luxury Apartments”. The only real luxuries provided were a roof over your head and a place to store your stuff. I’d rented here because it was cheap. I’d never planned to have to defend myself from the undead. Who knew if the windows would hold? I didn’t know if he’d be able to break the glass, and I sincerely didn’t want to find out.
Bang
I struggled in fear to move my feet, to take one step and then another. I felt like I was moving underwater, my limbs too slow and unresponsive. It felt like an eternity before I finally passed into the hallway and hugged up against the wall so that it wouldn’t be able to see me anymore. I fumbled with my flashlight to turn it off and extinguish the tell-tale signs that I was still there.
Experience told me that you had to get out of their site to lose their interest. I turned off the flashlight and held the bat against my chest in a white-knuckled grip as I struggled to get my breathing under control. I was regretting not losing the extra 50 lbs. I’d been carrying around for years. The repeated fear driven adrenaline surges were wearing me down quickly. It’d be just my luck to have a heart attack from the fright while hiding from the undead outside the window. Maybe someone would find my corpse here one day and wonder what the fuck this fat bastard had died of in the middle of all this junk and bloody carpet.
Fuck that. I wasn’t going out like that. I started to get angry, and I realize now that this is a normal response for me when it comes to dealing with stress. I hadn’t gone through so much anxiety and pressure before the dead started to rise, and at the time I wasn’t aware of how fear for my life can make me so damned angry. I’d come to know that I would run if I could, but I was also learning that I could fight if I had to. If every organism has a flight or fight response, I started to figure out what mine would come to be that day.
I was pissed. I just wanted to find some fucking food, some supplies, anything that could help me to stay safe and alive in my shitty little apartment, and nothing seemed to be going my way. As if being alone in the middle of an undead apocalypse wasn’t bad enough, it had to add insult to injury? The first apartment I get into has to look like a scene from a Romero film, and now this fucking Z is banging on the window?
I shook with rage against the wall in that dark hallway for what seemed an eternity. Part of me just wanted to run, to hide and get away from whatever was chasing me. Another part, the biggest part of me, wanted to heft my bat and smash the zombie’s fucking head in until there was nothing left but a lumpy mound of cranial fragments on the ground outside.
The rational part of me – the part that knew that staying right where I was until the zombie lost interest, the part that knew either of the other two options would likely get me injured or killed – held on to control by the barest of margins. I stood in that littered hallway and waited, and control slowly began to return. The rage and fear were still there, but I wasn’t going to act on them. I had to keep my shit together, so I started counting seconds the same way I did as a child when I’d play hide-and-seek with my brother. It let me time the hits and to calm down my beating heart.
Bang
….One Mississippi….Two Mississippi…..Three Mississippi….Four Mississippi….
Bang
….Thirty Mississippi…. Thirty one Mississippi…. Thirty two Mississippi…. Thirty three Mississippi….
Bang
….One hundred six Mississippi…. One hundred seven Mississippi…. One hundred eight Mississippi…. One hundred nine Mississippi….
Bang
….Two hundred forty four Mississippi…. Two hundred forty five Mississippi…. Two hundred forty six Mississippi…. Two hundred forty seven Mississippi….
………
More than four minutes had gone by and the banging that came every few seconds had finally stopped. I’d prayed quietly that the window would hold long enough, and now thanked whatever god might still exist that the sound of breaking glass never came.
I released my grip on the baseball bat, my hands sore from clenching it so tightly. In the dim light of the hallway I could see that the dimpled lines of the tape on the handle were impressed into the flesh of my fingers as I stretched them to relieve their tension. I looked about the small space, bending down to quietly pull a piece of the broken mirror from the piles of junk left strewn along the edges. I was careful to avoid cutting my fingers as I raised it to the corner facing the living room.
I moved it slowly from side to side, taking in the entire length of the outlined window. The zombie was gone, only a smear of blackened filth left on the outside to mark its attack. I didn’t know if it was just right around the corner, if it had dropped to the ground beneath the window, or if it had moved on to find an easier meal to catch. I did know that I didn’t want to have it catch sight of me again and resume its attacks, so I waited a few more minutes just to be safe.
I was on the side of the hallway with the closed doors that I figured were the bedrooms and bathroom. As badly as I wanted to leave, that rational part of me knew that it would be best to search them, take what I could use, and lock this place up on my way out. I took a few more calming breaths and decided to go clockwise through them, starting with the door at the very end of the hall. I put my ear to the wood, listening, hearing nothing on the other side. I turned my flashlight back on, careful to keep it pointed straight ahead. I turned the knob and let the door crack open a few inches. Nothing happened. I held the flashlight in my left hand and the bat in my right as I pushed the door open with my foot.
My light illuminated a small bathroom in pretty bad shape. Just like the rest of the apartment, it had been ransacked. The contents of the vanity and cabinets were strewn about the floor and on top of the twin sinks. Unlike the living room, I didn’t see any signs of blood. The tub was filled with water, though nothing but near death by dehydration would have made me consider using it. I moved inside and began searching through the debris.
I immediately found a few rolls of toilet paper and without hesitation I pulled my backpack off and jammed them into it. Without the ability to make a quick run to the grocery store, I was running dangerously low on toilet paper. I didn’t want to have to start using newspaper or, even worse, pages ripped out of my books. I also found a bunch of prescription drug bottles lying in the left sink. As I popped them into my pack, I took note that apparently the Twit was big into pain killers and muscle relaxants. He also had the biggest bottle of Viagra I’d ever seen.
I grabbed most of the drugs and stuffed them into my bag, only leaving those with expired labels behind. I wasn’t going to mess with the expired stuff, but the rest might come in very handy at some point, and the prescription dates on the ones I kept were all still fairly new. I also grabbed some over-the-counter cold, flu and allergy meds and the last few razor refills from the opened vanity mirror. I never knew when I might need to get over another cold, and my beard was starting to get really scratchy.
I scanned around the bathroom one more time and realized that there wasn’t much else of use to me. I didn’t need any of the Twit’s expensive Egyptian cotton towels or his matching floor mats, and all the rest of the stuff on the floor had been broken or held no use to me without electricity. There’s just not much use for hair dryers, beard trimmers, and heated toilet seat cozies when the power grid is gone.
Everything I could use was in my backpack, so I zipped up, and slung it back over my shoulders. I moved quietly back into the hallway and shut the bathroom door. I turned to the next room on the right, leaned against the door listening for sound. Again, just like the bathroom and the front door, I heard nothing. I tried to turn the door knob, but it was locked. I knew that I could pop the simple lock with the survival knife I carried. This wasn’t a security lock, just the simple interior push-button locks that had been used in all the other apartments.
The question wasn’t whether I could open it. The question was, should I?
Was the door locked to keep something out, or to keep something in? There was only one way to find out, and I had to be sure this apartment was clear before I locked it all up behind me.
I leaned the bat against the wall beside the door frame and pulled out my survival knife. I easily inserted the blade between the door and its frame, and swept the lock in one try. The ease with which I completed the task was the byproduct of a misspent youth that I was very thankful for now. I opened the door a few inches and waited quietly, but heard nothing. I gave it a tap with my boot and it swung open effortlessly.
It quickly became apparent why the door had been locked as the smell of the dead body washed over me.
