Oomblaug Day – Part II
“Listen,” said Linda. “I have a plan. One of my friends has a business on the side. Counselling amputees. We met at the hospital this afternoon, after the amputation. I’ll talk to him. The pay isn’t good, but it’s better than nothing. We’ll make do. Less food, fewer clothes. At least we don’t have children.
Francis gave a silent prayer of thanks for the hospital’s underground sterilization clinic. It was risky. The penalty was death. Despite the threat, there was a huge backlog. At least hospitals were livey territory. Dealing with that biological stuff was a step down the social ladder for any self-respecting zombie.
Francis and Linda ate their meals in silence. Next door, a television set blared out the dialogue from a zombie movie. There were’t any livey productions showing anymore, except for Night of the Living Dead. Typical.
***
Morning was grey and wet. Putrefaction weather. The newest recruits were out soaking up the rain, trying to rot as much as possible. Ancient zombies preferred to stay in and wait for hot dry weather, the kind that mummified you just right.
Oomblaug celebrations were gearing up. Francis covered himself with a baggy rubber poncho, hoping to pass unnoticed. As if. He felt like a walking target as soon as he left the building. He strode with purpose, taking side streets, ignoring slobbering glances cast his way. His appointment was in half an hour.
He passed a zombie holo-cade. The brick façade featured simulated blood and plastic replicas of internal organs. The sound of zombie teleholos reached him, with its screams of liveys projected into labyrinths, trapped against the precipices, sliced, diced and joyfully dismembered. Zombie songs blasted out in accompaniment. “Hey jiggle flesh/ Let me splash your warm delicious blood all over my tooth stumps.”
This kind of material was supposed to be an improvement over actual swarming. Francis didn’t care. One thing he did know. It made him feel even worse about life.
He hurried onward. The clinic was small, located in a crumbling storefront that used to be a greengrocers.
Francis peered into the room, his leg outside, trying to decide if he should go in right away and introduce himself. Linda’s friend, Danny, was giving a pep talk.
“It’s not your fault. You did the right thing when you tried to fight back,” said the counsellor to the legless man. He then patted a woman’s lap. “You sold your breasts because you needed to buy food. It’s OK. You’re OK.”
One old man, a new member who was missing his left arm, cut into the spiel.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come here. My doctor’s a horse’s ass. This is useless. Why don’t we all just quit whining? My cousin lost an arm and a leg during the resistance. He didn’t complain. He was proud. Always looked on the bright side. As he used to say: ‘Well, I can still smile and breathe, even if I can’t dance!’”
An old woman, her leg cut off below the knee, nodded in response. “I remember how awful it was back then! They didn’t feed us right – just old, rotten animal carcasses. Then they figured out we were dropping like flies and not having babies. Now liveys have it easy, compared to when I was a young lass. It really isn’t so bad. Sure there’s the odd attack. Random, it is. Not like the old days.”
One young livey stood up and sputtered: “But how can you just have accepted it? Why didn’t you do something?”
The old woman shook her head in disbelief. “Do something? Do what? What are you doing, my young man?”
Her interlocutor stood silent. She nodded slowly. “We couldn’t do anything then, and we can’t do anything now. For all your talk, I don’t see you heading any armies. What kind of armies can you have against creatures that are already dead?”
Francis cleared his throat to signal his presence. “What about the Outsiders?”
The old armless man harrumphed. “Outsiders? Why, they’re just stories. The kind that keeps your hopes up for nothing. I tried to escape once. Didn’t get far. Out there in the country, they go hunting for you. Dozens of them. I was lucky. I bribed a zombie to take my wife’s right arm and my son’s leg. Tastier than my old body. They consented to it. To this day, I’m eternally grateful for the sacrifice.”
The old woman chimed in: “Even if they’re not stories, we can’t all be Outsiders. The zombies just wouldn’t let that happen. And there’s nothing out there. How’s a body supposed to live out in the cold and the rain like that? It might be bad over here, but at least we know what to expect…”
Danny interrupted, walking toward Francis. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m the head counsellor. And you are?”
“Francis. Linda’s husband. Pleased to meet you. My wife suggested I come over. She called first thing this morning.”
Danny smiled. “Oh yes. The rebel. It’s an honour to have you here. I’m so sorry about Linda’s court case. Please, sit down.”
Francis didn’t feel like much of a hero. More like a loser. He took a seat nonetheless. Danny surveyed the group and concluded, “Well, our fifty minutes are up for now. Keep up your spirits. Remember, liveys have to stick together. We’re here to help you. We share your pain.”
The clanking of metal chairs, crutches and canes resounded as the assembly prepared to leave. Danny steered Francis into his office. Three wooden chairs, adapted with special bars and supports, faced a battered oak desk, its polish scratched and worn.
Dozens of files overflowed from the top of the desk and from rusted filing cabinets. Danny waved his hand at them in a mock gesture of despair. “Case histories. Five years’ worth. They need to be sorted and filed, A to Z, by date. Right now, it’s a nightmare to try to refer back to anyone. We finally rounded up enough donations to pay for one year of help. So, glad to have you aboard. You’ve got half an hour for lunch and two breaks a day. Dig in. I have another group coming in. Sorry for the abrupt introduction. We’ll talk at noon. See ya.”
He closed the door behind him. Francis surveyed the mounds of paper. He sighed and grabbed a handful of files.
Within these pages lay the broken lives of hundreds like Linda’s. People who broke the rules or were desperate enough to sell themselves. Brady, S., 03/54. Sheldon, H., 04/55. He made 26 separate piles on the floor, on the desk and on top of the filing cabinet. The dates would be sorted later.
As he sifted through, a few pages slipped out of and especially thick file, four years old. He cursed and gathered up the stray papers.
Gold, Marilyn. He froze. It was one of his old girlfriends. Despite himself, he read through the file. To make sure.
It was her. Born in ’44. Beautiful, golden girl Marilyn. He read further. Marilyn was in bad shape. Both arms, one leg and both breasts were gone. Voluntary amputations. She must have had trouble finding work. Two children. One dead during a swarming.
Francis closed the file.
He felt a bottombless sorrow, then fury.
All those years held in check, from fear, from a sense of the inevitable, his rage erupted through his every pore, shaking his body.
Had a swarm of zombies walked into the office at that moment, he would have died striking at them.
***
Oomblaug Day.
Menace hung in the air like a thickening fog. The clinic was clsoed to ensure everyone’s safety.
Looking out the window, through the bards and the double-glass panes, Francis felt nothing. His fear had deserted him. Rage and hatred had subsided to a dull, constant throb. Outside the garrison, zombies were streaming toward the graveyards to drink a little blood, crunch a few bones and swap feasting stories. For liveys, it was a time to stay indoors.
Dozens of files lay scattered across the apartment floor. As he ordered them, he thought of Linda. And Marilyn. Linda was at the hospital. There might be survivors. He had entreated her not to go, but she was adamant.
A frantic pounding at the door and a hoarse voice calling his name startled him out of his brooding. He jumped up. Zombies. They must have broken into the building. Whoever was outside the door was probably half shredded by now. If he let the person in, he was sealing his own death warrant. He picked up a heavy wooden chair and walked up to the door. All he heard was panting and sobs. No other footsteps, no moans, shrieks or cries. Strange. He opened the door.
Danny stumbled in, his face and clothing spattered with blood, his left arm badly mangled. He trembled spasmodically, his eyes wild and desperate.
“I’m so sorry,” he gasped out. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. Please. We have to stay here. Barricade the apartment. I had things downstairs but I couldn’t carry them up.”
“Linda,” muttered Francis, and sank to his knees on the floor.
Danny nodded, his features contorted with pain. “They swarmed the hospital. I was there, talking to Linda. Everything happened so fast. They got to her first.”
Francis covered his face with his hands, his body rocking in silent anguish. Slowly, he raised his lead up to face Danny. “There’s gauze and antiseptic in the washroom. I’ll get them.”
He moved as if caught in a web, his shoulders sunk as he attended to the living. As Danny yelped in pain, alternately offering words of comfort, he washed, set and bandaged the mass of dangling muscle and splintered bone.
There was a shuffling and scraping noise in the hall. Danny’s voice rose by an octave in hysteria.
“The door!”
It was too late. The zombies pushed through, snarling and snuffling. There were three of them, one a recent initiate, lipless rictus followed by purplish stumps. The bombastic voice crowed, “Well, well, hello there.” Danny screamed in terror.
Electrified with rage, Francis grabbed the oak chair and swung blindly. One of the zombies was behind him. Danny leaped forward, his last gesture of courage. Enough time for Francis to hack off a few more limbs.
The doorway was momentarily clear. Francis ran out, throwing the chair at his attackers. The stairwell was empty, littered with bone, blood and gristle. He slipped and slid down.
The street was deserted. Outside was Danny’s car, locked, with the windows closed. Inside were pipes, beams and blocks of heavy wood.
In the garrison entrance, guttural moans of malice resounded. The sounds drew closer.
Francis smashed through the car window with a nearby rock, unlocked the door, jumped in and sped forward, out of the city, through the side streets in disaffected areas, not stopping, praying no other vehicle would smash into his. As he drove, he forced himself not to look at the carnage and prayed no one would stop him. The blockades out of the city would be likely less guarded, with most zombies at city graveyards. His stomach tightened in white hatred.
As he approached the city limits, he saw his conjectures confirmed. A lone zombie, ancient as parchment, stood at the exit gate. It was tightly shut, enmeshed in barbed wire, its thick steel railings the diameter of lampposts. The sides of the road were an impassable jumble of concrete blocks, heaped two metres high, spread out as far as the eye could see.
Francis slowed and grabbed a heavy jagged pipe, cradling it between the seat and the door. The zombie guard shuffled forward, armed with a massive, nail-studded beam. Francis stopped the car at a safe distance, 25 metres from the barricade, and reached over for a panel of wood. It was a wardrobe door. He used the handle to lift the door like a shield above his head and emerged from the car.
The zombie swung at him with obvious contempt. Francis blocked the blow easily and slashed at the guard’s leg, his adrenaline pumping furious strength into his livey body. The leg flew off in a cloud of dust. Francis sliced off the mummified head and quickly kicked it out of the way. The body was still moving.
He sliced off the other leg, and ran toward the control house. The barricade clanged open. Francis dropped his shield, sprinted back toward the car and drove through. He then shut the gates again as tightly as he could and destroyed the controls.
No one followed him. The guard had evidently not believed it necessary to alert any comrades. So much the better.
He drove on for hours, his fists knotted against the steering wheel, his stomach a ball of molten lava. The roads were in an advanced state of disrepair. The countryside beyond the designated farms, where livey workers sweated under zombie overlords, was a mass of tangled forest, littered with blanched bones, devoid of animal life.
The road stopped. Logs piled high onto the broken concrete. There was nowhere to swerve, the surrounding woods thick with heavy oak and pine.
Francis braked sharply. He sat, shaken and numb, sweating on the cracked red vinyl, despite the increasing cold. His anger melted, replaced by a creeping terror that grew with the night shadows rapidly encircling the barricade of fallen trees. There was nowhere else to go. This was the Outside.
He grabbed the battle-pipe and carefully opened the car door. Only the sound of stirring leaves greeted him. He walked up to the stump of a fallen oak. The cut was clean. No accident of flash of lightning had tipped the mighty trunks.
Was this the work of Outsiders or zombies? His trembling increased, approaching hysteria.
Careful, he commanded himself. Panic won’t help you. Even against zombies. He willed himself to the cold stark fury that had gotten him out of the citadel. Remember Linda. Remember Danny. Remember Marilyn. He marched forward into the woods.
No path had been ripped into the wilderness. If the Outsiders lived here, they left no obvious traces. He scanned the tall grasses, the thorn bushes and the pine needles on the undisturbed ground.
Then he saw it. A gold-plated eagle on a chain. Like the one that dangled from Ernestine’s neck, the janitor, the last he’d seen her, before she disappeared.
Ernestine never spoke much. She just looked stubborn, her eyes hard. She was tough, defiant, always swaggering about with her floppy coveralls and loud, brightly-colored checkered shirts. She always spat out at “the dirty rotten maggot-breaths.”
That was years ago.
The eagle was just hanging there from a branch, as if someone, or something, had placed it there. Francis reached up to grab it, then stopped his hand in mid-air.
Why was it there? Was it some kind of signal?
Out here, it wouldn’t have any value. It was best left alone.
Then the noises came. From all around, dozens of footsteps. Francis gripped the pipe tighter. He caught sight of a faded, mud-encrusted overall and a distinctive, if tattered, tartan flannel, moving faster than the rest, partly hidden by the dense foliage.
It was Ernestine. She was alive.
Francis whooped in relief and ran up to greet her.
Ernestine’s face emerged from the moving shadows of surrounding foliage. She was grinning.
A permanent, lipless grin, with just a touch of green, mottled, surrounding flesh…
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