Dead Sea

    A scream woke me. I bolted upright, eyes snapping open, fists clutching the sheets. The sound had already faded, and I wondered if it had been real or if I'd imagined it. Maybe I was finally becoming conscious of my dreams. Out of habit, I turned to the alarm clock to see what time it was, but of course the clock wasn't working. With no watch and no other way of knowing, I decided to try going back to sleep.

    Then I smelled smoke. Burning wood, melted plastic… maybe burned flesh, too. I glanced around. My pulse hammered in my throat. There was an orange glow coming through the bedroom window. I'd nailed boards over it, both outside and inside, and had closed the shades and the curtains, but a few rays of light crept around the edges. Another scream echoed through the night. I sat up the rest of the way and slid my bare feet onto the floor. The room was hotter now-hotter than it had been when I'd fallen asleep. I listened for another scream and instead heard a crackling sound.

    Smoke. Light. Heat. Sound.

    Fire…

    I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. One of the pieces of plywood that I'd nailed over my picture window had a small knothole in its center. Not enough for the zombies to see inside, but enough for me to see out into the yard and the street beyond. Alan and I had used it to spy on the neghborhood, making sure that the coast was clear and our defenses would hold. Still naked, I knelt in front of the peephole and looked outside. The sky was on fire, lit up with shades of orange, red, and yellow. The houses across the street were smoldering, and beyond them, the neighborhood was ablaze. I didn't live in a row home exactly, but most of the houses for blocks around were similar in size and shape-little run-down, one-bedroom boxes with tiny yards. They were grouped close together, and the flames leaped from one home to the next. The street was filled with thick clouds of smoke-and filled with those fleeing the inferno, both the living and dead.

    It was terrifying and surreal. The parade of survivors came first. Some were naked or in their underwear, others wore pajamas, and a select few were dressed for survival: Kevlar vests, combat boots, camouflage, and stuff like that. All of them were trying to escape the inferno. There were probably two dozen total. I wondered where they'd all come from. I'd thought all along that Alan and I were the only people left alive in our immediate neighborhood, but obviously I'd been wrong. It was weird to think that while I'd been huddled inside my home, my neighbors had been doing the same, hiding in basements and attics, waiting for whatever happened next, fighting to stay alive one more day. I'd felt alone and miserable, and meanwhile, these people had probably been feeling the same way.

    Most of them were on foot, some without shoes. They ran down the street without looking back. The survivalist types were armed with assault rifles. I wasn't sure what type, but they were the kind you saw in movies. A few of the others clutched weapons or belongings, but most of the people in the fleeing crowd were empty-handed. A black Lexus coasted among them, car horn blaring, the driver trying to get through. A man dressed like he was going deer hunting spun around and fired three shots through the windshield. Screaming, the people around him scattered. The man calmly approached the car, opened the door, tossed the driver to the pavement, and then slid behind the wheel. Another guy raced by on a motorcycle, weaving in and out of the pedestrians.

    The dead came next. They were mostly human, but there were a few animals as well. Some of the zombies were missing limbs. Others had huge, ugly wounds that wept blood and pus-injuries that should have been fatal. One shirtless corpse was missing its entire abdomen. A few strands of gristle hung down to its crotch. The gaping stomach cavity was empty-no organs, just pink meat and bones. I wondered if it still craved living flesh, and if so, what happened after it had eaten. How could it digest anything without a fucking stomach? How could they process food when they were dead? And why didn't they eat each other instead of munching on the living?

    A naked dead man stepped out of the alley and passed through my yard. He was covered with dirt and blood, and his skin was a dark bluish-purple, the color of a bruise. There was something else wrong with him, too, but I couldn't tell what it was until he turned toward my house again. Then I saw what was wrong. His genitals were missing- replaced by a big, bloody hole. 1 recognized the dead man as one of my former neighbors. Never knew his name, never talked to him while he was living. Just the occasional head nod from over the fence. And now here he was, dickless and dead.