Part 11 (1/2)

I'd killed before, mostly with Bradley, but we had to. When they come for you, faster than anything, eyes so desperate, you learn to think on that level. You get in their mindset, and it's okay. Before I killed Bradley, I'd killed or helped kill four of those beasts, but when I did it I was a beast myself. Bradley was the first one I had to murder as a person.

No one should have to do that.

#21.

Shot of my ”family” I ran with for a few months down south by the Castro. After Bradley died, I thought I was dead. No way I could hope to stand off against one of those things face-to-face, not even with my bat. It was pure luck that got me in with some looters over by the Haight, then I wandered down into the Castro after half of those guys died in an ambush.

The old guy with the rifle, that's Jamal. Peter and his boyfriend Graham are in the center. Terence is the one saluting, his wife Alicia's the one laughing and raising up the bottle of champagne. They used to be both into computers or something before this whole mess. The small one is Karen. Always had a soft spot for her, really.

#22.

Picture of San Francisco from the hills in South S.F. You probably recognize the Transamerica building. There are other buildings here, but I can't name them. The center bit of rubble there used to have a bunch of those buildings. Some people say the military bombed that area but I'm pretty sure it was just a gas explosion of some kind.

Up on the hills to the left of the city you can see the lovely Sutro Tower as the fog rolls in like a white blanket to cover the city. We were on our way out, hearing about some army forming up on the Peninsula. It seemed like a good idea to me. After Karen died, I just...I knew I had to leave. I'd had enough.

They say there's less of them out in the country, but they're more dangerous. One's likely to stalk you for miles without you knowing, I hear. It'll follow you like it has nothing better to do in the world, dog you down until you're tired and afraid and used up any ammo or reserves you might have. But I didn't care. I was willing to take that risk.

Recently, I've started to think about May again, to tell you the truth. It's like every once in a while I remember her, just something little, like the way her hair smelled or how confused she got by sitcoms. Never the important things. Just, you know, dumb stuff.

I wonder what it would have been like if I had gotten on that truck. I don't know why I didn't go. I think I was still in the pre-disaster mindset. Things weren't working really well there, towards the end. It was a lot of little things, you know? The day those attacks started happening, the day our civilization was brought to its knees, all the rules changed with it. All that petty bulls.h.i.+t, it was nothing, but we had no perspective to see that. Until the end, but out of habit, I pushed her away anyways.

I guess I still have pictures of her, though.

#23.

No, it's not one of the beasts attacking me. But it sure looks like one, doesn't it? This is actually a picture of the guy who developed my film for me. I traded him my camera because I can't find film for it anyways. He and I sort of set up this shot because we thought it'd be funny. He could mimic one of the monsters really well, just sort of huff up and get all tense and bug-eyed.

Smart guy, too. Haven't found anyone that knew how to develop pictures until him. He even had the chemicals. Some of them came out sort of weird, but what can you do? No matter what happens now, even if I twitch out and become one of them, I have my pictures, I have my memories.

Even if they are fragments, I don't care. I can't make a story out of my life, it's never worked out that way. I just remember things as a collection of moments, you have to fill in the rest. That's maybe why I got so upset the other night. The way people tell stories, it's dishonest. They stretch those moments together, they put a framework that's not there.

These pictures are my life, at least at that time. Like memories, only fragments. Impressions, really.

Like memories, incomplete. Twenty-three snapshots from a roll of twenty-four. Like the rest of my life, those pictures came out odd.

Some nights, when I feel the cold breezes come off the Pacific, I stare up at the sky and the thousands of stars I never knew existed, wondering how I'll doc.u.ment these memories of mine: the sunsets over the sea, the valleys of redwoods that feel like sacred groves. The trees that are starting to grow through suburban homes. The people I've met, both good and bad. The scars on their faces, the calluses on their hands. Is it right to live life knowing every detail will die?

I've never been good at endings either, to tell you the truth. I mess them up all over the place. May could tell you that. She used to tell me that my stories were all jokes without punch lines. I never did figure out what she meant by that. I bet Kyoko'd say I was bad at endings, too. And Bradley, and Karen in her own way. So you might have to help me: Breathe in, keep breathing. Shut your eyes, then open them again. Take a good look around you, then back at me. Try to remember every little detail, no matter how unimportant. Freeze this split second in time.

It's important, this moment. Every stupid detail about it. It's you and me, unwilling to forget we're alive.

The Mexican Bus By Walter Greatsh.e.l.l

Walter Greatsh.e.l.l is the author of the novels Xombies: Apocalypse Blues Xombies: Apocalypse Blues and and Xombies: Apocalypticon Xombies: Apocalypticon. A non-zombie novel, Mad Skillz Mad Skillz, is forthcoming. On his website, waltergreatsh.e.l.l.com, Greatsh.e.l.l says that the last real job he had was as a graveyard-s.h.i.+ft nuclear-submarine technician, and before that he was the general manager of the Avon Cinema, a Providence, Rhode Island, landmark. In addition to writing, he currently dabbles in freelance ill.u.s.tration, numerous examples of which are available on his website.

In 1957 Jack Kerouac published On the Road On the Road, a lightly fictionalized memoir of his road trips crisscrossing the U.S. and Mexico. The novel was written single-s.p.a.ced and without paragraph breaks on a 120-foot long roll of tracing paper that Kerouac called ”the scroll.” (It originally used the real names of Kerouac's friends and acquaintances, including the free-spirited ex-con Neal Ca.s.sady and the poet Allen Ginsberg, but their names were changed in the published ma.n.u.script, at the publisher's insistence, to Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx.) The book has been ma.s.sively popular, influencing artists from Bob Dylan to Jim Morrison to Hunter S. Thompson, most obviously in the latter's 1972 road novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

On the Road also seems to have exerted an influence on our next author, who writes, ”This story is an offshoot of my Xombies storyline. It's about a young guy, a college dropout, who is b.u.mming around Mexico and has the extreme misfortune of being caught in the middle of a zombie-type epidemic-what I call the Sadie Hawkins Day Ma.s.sacre. Almost every woman in the world simultaneously turns blue and goes berserk.” He adds, ”I actually was a college dropout, because once I discovered hitchhiking I was done with school. I have all these notebooks of stuff I wrote while on the road, hundreds of pages of obsessive beatnik musings that I hoped might come in handy someday. Who knew it would be for a zombie story?” also seems to have exerted an influence on our next author, who writes, ”This story is an offshoot of my Xombies storyline. It's about a young guy, a college dropout, who is b.u.mming around Mexico and has the extreme misfortune of being caught in the middle of a zombie-type epidemic-what I call the Sadie Hawkins Day Ma.s.sacre. Almost every woman in the world simultaneously turns blue and goes berserk.” He adds, ”I actually was a college dropout, because once I discovered hitchhiking I was done with school. I have all these notebooks of stuff I wrote while on the road, hundreds of pages of obsessive beatnik musings that I hoped might come in handy someday. Who knew it would be for a zombie story?”

Tres Estrellas de Oro. Three gold stars on a green medallion, possibly signifying the Holy Trinity-or perhaps nothing at all. It didn't matter; what was important was that his two years of high school Spanish were not completely wasted. He was not just a college dropout with little money, no prospects, and all his remaining possessions stuffed into a rain-soaked dufflebag, but a romantic figure: a bohemian man of the world. What did he need with Aristotle and Copernicus?

Tres Estrellas de Oro-beautiful.

This wasn't the bus he had started out on. That one had been red and white, with the words Norte de Sonora Norte de Sonora on the side. But heavy rains had washed out the road, and the bus had been forced to turn back. All that headway south, hours of travel, just to return to the border and start over! But it was okay; he had nothing but time, and no place he would rather spend New Year's Eve than on a Mexican bus going anywhere. He had learned what was possible if you had a map...and time...and a little money. Just follow the dotted line. on the side. But heavy rains had washed out the road, and the bus had been forced to turn back. All that headway south, hours of travel, just to return to the border and start over! But it was okay; he had nothing but time, and no place he would rather spend New Year's Eve than on a Mexican bus going anywhere. He had learned what was possible if you had a map...and time...and a little money. Just follow the dotted line.

It was near midnight when the second bus stopped.

The young man awoke from his doze and realized he had been drooling. His neck hurt and his face was sore from being pressed against the vibrating window, but he didn't dare move lest he disturb the beautiful Canadian girl who was using his left shoulder as a pillow. An elderly man across the aisle winked at him. There was nothing to see outside but flat black-the windows might as well have been painted over. Inside the bus it was dim and cozy, with cigarette smoke drifting across the overhead reading lights. Muted Spanish conversation simmered in the cabin, and it wasn't necessary to understand the words to know what they were saying: What now? What now?

Gears clanked and the bus moved forward, weaving around a line of cars. Another highway accident, that's all-they had pa.s.sed enough of those. The pa.s.sengers relaxed as the bus swerved clear and gathered speed. Things were looking good, but a moment later it abruptly stopped again with a hiss.

They waited. Perhaps there was still a chance this was only a short delay. The sense of collective yearning was palpable, forty people hanging on the edge of their seats. Then the driver turned off the engine and all hope collapsed. Without a word, he opened the door and got out.

Abandoned, the pa.s.sengers gave in to resignation. Actually there was a certain sense of relief, as if everyone could now relax and be themselves. No one was particularly angry or upset. This was why he loved Mexico.

The Canadian girl came half awake, taking her fragrant head off his shoulder. ”What's going on?” she groaned.

”Nothing. We've just stopped. It's probably a car accident or something.”

”Where are we?”

”I don't know. Nowhere.”

The Mexicans were making a party of it. Cigarettes were lit, snacks brought out, and the volume of conversation increased. A radio was turned on, playing a live New Year's Eve countdown from Mexico City. Some folks got up to stretch their legs, and the young man decided to do the same. He would scope out the situation and bring the girl a full report-show her he had everything under control. As if a sixteen-year-old girl traveling alone through the backlands of Mexico needed rea.s.surance from him.

Outside it was quite a scene. The bus was part of a long line of stopped traffic in the middle of the desert-a festive-looking chain of lights spanning the void. Many people had gotten out of their vehicles and some were wandering down the road trying to find out what was going on. There was a lit Pemex sign ahead, but the gas station itself was hidden by a dip in the fathomless landscape.

The young man wanted to walk down there and see, but he was reluctant to venture too far from the bus. What if the traffic started moving, or the bus turned around and went back? Last thing he needed was to be stranded out here. But he figured he was all right as long he kept the driver in sight, so when that officious old character and some other men started down the hill, he tagged along behind.

It was nice to be outside in the fresh air. He had been a prisoner for hours, afraid to budge. And it was so stupid: as if he had any chance with this incredible girl. Confidence with the opposite s.e.x was not his strong suit; his record with women was a catalogue of rejection-it was a rejection, in fact, that led to his dropping out of college and impulsively heading for Mexico. He tended to rush things, that was his problem. Unrequited love was a b.i.t.c.h.

But...he couldn't help feeling that this situation was different. For one thing, this was Mexico Mexico-a whole different universe. For another, he and the gorgeous Canadian were the only gringos on the bus. Initially they had been in separate seats, but jolly Mexican ladies had insisted they sit together, playing matchmaker for the clueless estudiantes estudiantes. Embarra.s.sed, he had been all too ready to decline-no, no, gracias-but to his amazement the girl came over and sat by him. And from that moment on, he was in love.

Yet...he didn't want everything to depend on a girl. Not again. Not here. As he walked, he tried to fully immerse himself in the moment, in the extraordinary fact that he was alive, here, now, on this beautiful G.o.dforsaken highway somewhere in Mexico. The gravel crunching under his feet, the rolling horizon like a black cardboard cutout under dimly luminous clouds, the tiny flecks of rain in the breeze-it was all marvelous.

Below the highway embankment he could see an army of tall, pale figures with arms upraised-saguaro cacti. For a second he had a wild impulse to run down there: a hike out into the desert would put things in their true perspective. But he knew he wouldn't really do it.

The Pemex station came into view, an island of sickly fluorescent light. It looked as desolate as a base on the Moon. Now he could see the trouble: there was another bus down there, a sleek white charter bus, straddling both lanes of the road. It didn't look damaged, but there must have been an accident of some kind because a lot of people were laying on the ground, with a bunch of nurses giving them CPR. Not nurses-nuns. A busload of nuns. Other people were running around frantically yelling for help.

Was he crazy or were some of the nuns chasing chasing them? them?