You Would Too- [Part 9]
Through the window behind me, the yellow and green lights flashed. Suddenly, Rach__l let go of me, screeched some kind of inhuman garbled moan, and shrank back from the lights. With her scream, several black bugs also issued themselves forth from her mouth. Nathan kept going, but slowed when he saw Rach__l shrink back.
I think it’s about right here when I realized that the zombies weren’t just mindless, chemically driven instinctual animals. I realized they could perform logic and reason just about as well as us. Rach__l grabbed Nathan’s arm, very much like how she had grabbed me seconds earlier. But it wasn’t with a hungry malevolence. It was with fear. Rach__l recognized those lights.
I think, somewhere along her travel between where she was buried, and our apartment in Worcester, Rach__l had either witnessed the VCP in action, or had been caught and escaped. Rach__l knew those lights allright. And she was afraid of them. Robert had gotten ahead of me in the seconds that Rach__l had floored me with her death clutch, and then grabbed Nathan. He was exiting the front door when I finally got my feet back under me and flew down the last flight of steps. When I finally got out the front door, I ran directly into Robert, standing stiffly on the steps, looking out into the street. Directly in front of our apartment was a large white van with blue lettering that read “VCP.” All the doors were open, and out of it, about ten zombies were climbing, calmly munching on very officially dressed limbs. “oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh-“ I don’t know whether it was Robert or me who was whispering it, but I could hear it like a soft, persistent mantra. The zombies hadn’t caught sight of us yet, but I could bet that if we stood there long enough, they would, and then we’d end up like those ex-VCP officers the van belonged to. I grabbed Robert’s arm and pulled him back into the darkness of the stairwell. Above us, I could hear the mewling sounds of Rach__l and Nathan. It sounded like they were discussing something almost. I closed the front door. Robert looked alarmed.“RACH__L” I shouted, craning my neck above to me direct it towards Zombie-Rach__l and Zombie-Nathan. The mewling stopped. A bug dropped off the second floor and fell a foot or two to my left. “Can you understand me?” I asked. Zombie Rach__l slowly crept into my sight, still on the second floor, wary of the green and yellow flashes accosting her from the second floor window. She opened her mouth and another couple of bugs fell to the main floor. A fat earthworm plopped wetly onto the railing and then onto the floor. “I want a truce.”
Now, I don’t know if you can picture this, but if you can imagine a rotted human face, and you can imagine the facial expression of someone completely perplexed and hopeful at the same time, meld those together, and try to slap that onto Rach__l’s bug riddled corpse.
Nathan came into view now too, wary as well. I looked at his face and saw that the time he had spent on the back porch had turned him into a bug motel as well. His head hung heavily forward and to the right, probably as a result of me breaking his spike with a hammer. They both gripped the railing, looking like worried children, Rach__l leaning forward and tense, Nathan’s head rolling slightly back and forth.
“I won’t go outside and get the VCP, if, you don’t chomp on us. AND, if you keep out other zombies.” I realized how ridiculous this sounded as it came out of my mouth. The idea of making a truce with a zombie talking to a zombie seeing a zombie … the very word “zombie” sounds really fucking ridiculous. But ultimately; sure, they could say “ok” now, but then chomp on us tomorrow when the VCP, or what they thought was the VCP was gone. “The VCP is getting stronger, bigger. They are doing house checks now, going from door to door all the time.” At least I wasn’t completely bullshitting the story, yet still my head was spinning in circles, grasping at any words that would come out of my mouth. I'm surprised I could talk at all. “You are going to run out of places to hide. You need us to keep the VCP from searching this place, or else you’ll just end up as another log in a bonfire on the quad.”
Zombie-Rach__l’s face crumpled at that thought. I saw a beetle scuttle across her forehead in the yellow and green lights. Zombie-Rach__l and Zombie-Nathan exchanged glances and looked back at us. Zombie Nathan nodded and his head rolled wildly on his neck. They shuffled back upstairs.
“Fucking world. Goddamn this fucking world.” I thought to myself, as I slowly worked my way back up to my apartment. “Goddamn this entire fucking existence and this entire fucking universe!” I was tired. When I have to resort to making truces with zombies, truces that probably wouldn’t amount to anything but me as a one course meal, I get pretty fucking mad at god or whatever other shit head who put me on this earth. Robert, stunned and probably lost, just followed me. Where else was he going to go?
09.14.01