I, Zombie

He scrambled down the rungs, the cries from the baby louder now and somehow soothing. The noise it made was a sign that it was still alive, that the woman hadn’t gotten it free. Jeffery didn’t know what he’d do to take care of the thing. Maybe it’d be his ticket onto one of the rescue helicopters he’d heard about but had never seen. If they were real, the baby would be his way on board. Jeffery could be that soldier helping a friend cradle his guts for a change. He remembered. They always took that other soldier out of the shit-storm. They saw him helping like that, squeezing a friend’s grave wound, and they treated him like some necessary bandage, some emotional tourniquet. Jeffery would save the baby and be saved himself. That became the plan.

Working down to the last rung, he dangled there for a moment, feet swinging high over the windswept garbage in the alley, the grunts from the woman changing as she spotted him there, as she caught his scent.

Jeffery let go and dropped through the air to the pavement. He landed in a crouch, moving from a safe world to one of danger, a slender bridge having been crazily crossed.

The woman staggered toward him, hands opening and closing like a crab’s pinchers. Jeffery hadn’t thought this through. He scrambled backwards, feet kicking through loose newspaper and swollen bags of trash chewed open by rats.

The lady moved like a drunk. Jeffery’s heart pounded through his sweatshirt. He thought he heard the whistle of mortars whizzing down toward his base in the middle of the night, that feeling that death was everywhere and it could suddenly choose you. But this weren’t mortars. He could see her coming. Could outrun her. He told himself there weren’t nothin’ to be afraid of.

Hurrying backwards, Jeffery made some space between him and her. One thing about the chompers was that they never stopped. Always coming forward, lips flapping, eyes unblinking, arms out. They were fuckin’ tireless. He grabbed a lid off one of the metal trashcans. The baby had fallen quiet. The damn thing had better make it, risking his neck like this. An aluminum painter’s pole rested against the pipes that ran up the side of the building, a crusted roller still on the end. He grabbed it as well and glanced up at the boy watching from the window, wondering how crazy he looked down in that alley with a lid and a stick, a shield and a sword.

The woman in the dress kept coming. Jeffery waited, a tight grip on the lid’s handle, the dented metal resting against his forearm, the pole in his other hand. She was nearly within reach when he finally spotted the wound that’d turned her. It was at the base of her neck, a nasty bite, the gurgles and moans leaking from there rather than her lips. The dried blood running down her neck and chest was like a red scarf tucked into her dress. Her crab-claws pinched for him. Jeffery swung his shield and knocked her arms aside. The woman did a pirouette, bending at the waist as she flailed for balance. He lunged forward and shoved her in the back, tried to get his feet tangled in hers, but in a drunken stagger she shuffled out of the way. He tried again, the baby watching him with wide, white eyes, and this time the bitch flopped forward into the garbage.

Jeffery was on her before she could push her way to her feet. He kept a knee at the base of her spine, easy as pie, dropped the pole and the lid and fumbled with the clasps on the pack. He should have brought a knife from the kitchen to cut the damn thing free. The woman’s arms slid back and forth through the trash, the rotten fruit rinds, the empty tin cans, like it was trying to make a snow angel. An alley angel, Jeffery thought to himself. He was giddy. Laughing. The adrenaline was melting away, the fear fading to a tingling sense of relief now that she was pinned on her belly, jaws well away from him. It reminded Jeffery of the sound of a distant mortar blast, knowing a tent down the row had caught the whistling reaper and not you. He worked one buckle loose and moved to the other. The baby’s little arms twirled in mimicry of its mother’s, little pink lips kissing the air, mother and son both hungry and grunting and crying from being so close to each other, so close to the sustenance they needed, neither of them able to reach it.

The other buckle finally came free. Jeffery yanked the straps out from under the pinned and writhing woman. He slid his knee up her spine to where the baby had been, listened to her teeth clack shut over and over, head turned to the side, eyes straining for a sight of him, eager to eat them both.

The baby cried. Jeffery took his time strapping the kid to his back, made sure the buckles were tight. He eyed the jump down the alley, thinking how heavy the kid was, if he could still make the leap. Hadn’t thought this shit through. Not at all.