Page 22 of Doomsdate

As if it couldn’t.

He lunges for me, but I’m already running. Running down the stairs, past my coat and shoes, out the door. I slam it shut behind me, and on some whim, fish the key from my pocket and lock the deadbolt from the outside. A second later, the sound of a body crashing down the stairs follows, and I sob in horror. He fell, hard.

No, no!

A sliding, shuffling sound breaks through my grief, and then the door begins to shake violently in its frame. My eyes widen.

How did he get up after that fall?

But there’s no click of the deadbolt sliding out of place, just brutal, animalistic pounding, and I step back, the realization rushing in.

My best friend is…a zombie?

Chapter Five

The Fan Is Now Covered in Shit

Maisie

Twenty minutes later, my solar-rigged SUV is fully packed, I’ve contacted Gramps from my portable ham radio bungeed to the dashboard, and I’ve accidentally killed four more neighbors.

Zombies.

Er, neighbor-zombies?

I didn’t want to kill them—I meant to scare them off so they’d quit rushing me as I loaded the car, but they ran at my machete until steel met flesh, and once I extracted it from their glowing, mucky brains, they didn’t move again. I wince as my back wheel crunches over something that sounds suspiciously like my landlord’s foot. In my defense, he tried to eat mine.

Driving through downtown Durham is surreal. This early, the predawn streets are always empty, except for the occasional sleepy-eyed dog owner and handful of runners. Today’s no different, really, except this time the dog owner has glowing white eyeballs, the dog’s running away from him, and the runners don’t have all their body parts.

See? Almost normal.

As I turn down the tree-lined avenue that heads out of town, my nerves crackle like live wires. My whole life I’ve spent in a fugue of anxiety, always so worried, always preparing, always waiting for catastrophe to strike so I’d be ready to run. But the doom I’ve feared ever since Mom had her big break with reality and yanked me out of kindergarten to stay home in our fortified house in the country has finally arrived. It’s here.

And I’m ready. Technically.

I know how to forage. I’m a certified EMT. I have a black belt in jujitsu, renewable energy for my rig, and a rechargeable vibrator. I’m going to kick this apocalypse’s ass.

I just wish I could kick it here. In Durham. At the very least, within the state of North Carolina. Not out there in the great unknown, where I’ll be operating at a constant disadvantage for sheer lack of familiarity with my surroundings. For years, Mom told me stories of what happened to little girls who wandered off their properties, who left their mothers, who dared venture out there, where there were people whose sole purpose in life was to hurt you. And for years, I believed her. Even once I started questioning the ghoulish nightmare version of the world my mother presented to me, quietly, and within my mind, part of me still believed her. Still shook with terror at the sound of a distant truck rumbling down the closest road to our land. It took about a week of living on the outside for my brain to realize the world wasn’t out to get me, but about five years for my body to catch up.

I had to build up to leaving my apartment, then my street. Now I get in my rig and drive all over Durham, but my progress stalled there. With work and everything, it became too easy to make excuses not to travel. The plane ticket to New York, even just the purchase of it, was a massive leap forward. One I was able to make only because it dangled the ultimate carrot in front of me—discovering who Mom was, where we came from, and who I really am. But now I’m suddenly supposed to just leave home and drive across the zombie-infested United States like it’s nothing? The thought’s given me literal hives; my arms are covered in itchy red welts.

A small crowd is gathered around a tree up ahead, just visible in the rising sun. Judging by the way they’re flailing—like drunk people swatting at an invisible fly—they’re more of the recently deceased who have ceased ceasing. But what are they trying to eat now? Some poor cat?

My eyes widen. I’ve always wanted a cat.

Maybe that’s what I need. A pet! Some company to get me through this nightmare of a journey ahead. There are probably tons of now-orphaned cats out there that need homes, like this one.

“Sorry, Walter. Your time as an only child ends here.”

I slow down and roll to a stop a few car-lengths away. There are seven zombies, all mewling and grasping with their heads tilted upward, reaching for the same thing lodged in the branches of the winter-bare tree.

Dammit. It’s a man. There’s a man up there.

Alas. I have not always wanted a man.

I unroll my window a few inches. He’s yelling something.

“Leave me alone, you creepy bastards!” he sobs. “You don’t want to eat me—I taste like sadness!”