I, Zombie

Jeffery laughed and shuffled his feet on the unsteady plastic lid. It was fucking working. If he got out of this shit, he’d have a helluva story for the next group he bumped into. He was already retelling it as the dumpster moved a few more inches, the casters squealing as they worked free. The body of the metal container rang with the angry bangs of scrambling arms and legs trying to get up from the other side. The ones on the near side weren’t trying to climb at all, just fixating on the little feet wheeling in the air over their heads. One crowd pushed and the other did nothing, and the dumpster moved.

A hand got close to the screaming kid, a tall fucker. Jeffery bit his lip and steadied the pole. Goddamn, this was wrong. But it weren’t like he was throwing the kid over their heads and making a dash. Hell, he didn’t have to risk his neck to be down there in the first place.

The dumpster moved quite a bit, the kid swinging in its harness, Jeffery letting go with one hand and swinging his free arm for balance. He used the kid like bait to guide some of the chompers between the dumpster and the brick wall behind him. They followed like sheep. As they crowded in and scrambled for the prize, the dumpster really moved. It lurched away from the building, and more of them filed into place. Too damn easy. Too predictable.

He swung the kid around and steered the biggest crush of foul undead toward the other side of the alley, getting the hang of it. There was an urge to glance up at his audience above, the boy in the window, to shout out that he was gonna be okay, but there was so much to concentrate on. He switched hands and gave his other one a shake, fingers tingling. The plastic lid buckled some more. Jeffery had a thought of falling through, of losing his platform. The paranoia that’d built up over weeks of running told him this would happen next. The worst shit possible would always happen next. And there would be a goddam chomper in the dumpster, lying in wait. He shook this thought away. That’s not how this was going down. He was already telling the story to the next group, telling them how near he’d come from having his bones picked clean. He was gonna make it.

A few inches at a time, the dumpster crept across the alley. More of the fuckers squeezed in around the wrecked van, joining the pack. Jeffery worried it would be too many, that the crush would get so dense that the dumpster would simply stop moving. He was already out in the center of the alley, an island in a shark-infested sea. Man, this would be a story. He laughed with nerves, the metallic taste of adrenaline on his tongue, thinking of all the times he’d been shot at and how he thought it’d make for a good story back home. Fuck, he shoulda re-upped. Another tour, and he’d be safer over there than he was now.

One of the undead managed to get its armpits up on the lip of the dumpster, scrambling over some of those that’d fallen down. Jeffery kicked him in the head. He tried to keep toward the edges of the lid where it was more solid, but hands were brushing his boots. Shit, this was tenuous. Tightroping this motherfucker. Six feet away from the nearest window. Four feet. Almost three feet, when his plan hit a snag. The bastards on that side of the dumpster wouldn’t clear out. They were like a bumper, a wall, blocking progress.

He shifted hands again and tried urging them out with the kicking and screaming kid, but more took their place from the other side. Jeffery was fucked. He looked back at the kid in the window, needing to see some other living soul, and the boy’s wide eyes and slack mouth confirmed his own fears: well and truly fucked.

He pulled the kid back in. The chompers were piling up, banging into the dumpster from all sides. Soon they would start forming ramps and making their way to the top. Jeffery pictured them crashing through the lid with him, banging on the insides of the reeking container, being eaten away at from all sides, him and the baby, mixing in the same guts.

Fuck. Fuck.

He loosened the backpack from the end of the painting handle and worked his arms through the straps. “C’mon, kid,” he breathed. The groans and the stench were everywhere. This was it. This was it. He twisted the knobs on the handle again and extended it all the way, really cinched them down tight. Another fucker was up to her armpits, face caked in blood, a real hungry one. Jeffery stepped away and concentrated on the window. “C’mon, kid.” He speared the glass with the handle, punching it through panes set in place in the 50s, maybe earlier. Several more pokes and the window was busted up good. He used the pole to slap the glass out of the frame—thank God they didn’t have them damn bars on them—and kicked the bitch in the head who was biting after his boots. Fuck. Fuck. Chomper slobber on his goddamn boots.