Under a Graveyard Sky

coming home. This, really, was where he was designed by nature to be. In a team on the sharp end. “Same here.”

“All for one and all that,” Kaplan said, grinning through his mask. “I’m in. Strip my spine and put my head on a shelf.”

“I’ll do that for you, Kap,” Durante said, mock sobbing. “I’ll put your head on my mantelpiece and toast you once a year on the anniversary of you becoming a zombie. I swear, man!”

“Let’s load up,” Tom said, opening the door of the Heavy Emergency Response Vehicle. “Before you Yanks start kissing and stuff.”

They rolled out of the warehouse and down Avenue B, maneuvering carefully through the traffic. The one positive to the disaster was that traffic was getting lighter and lighter as people found anywhere but New York to exist. Everybody knew that no matter what the government was saying, things were getting bad and getting bad fast.

They didn’t even get to Houston Street before they had their first customer.

* * *

Corinda was cursing her choice of delis for lunch and blessing her decision to wear walking shoes. If she’d been in heels the zombie would already have caught her. Unfortunately, it seemed to be in better shape than she was and was obsessive in chasing one Corinda Carfora, wildcat marketer. She’d been running nearly two block and it wasn’t even swerving for other pedestrians. She’d turned the corner for God’s sake!

And, being New York, nobody was so much as giving a second glance to a naked man chasing a woman down the street. Much less helping.

“You’re passing fatter people you idiot!” she screamed, giving a glance over her shoulder. Still there. This was ridiculous. The other mercy was that lunchtime walking traffic was light in Alphabet City so she didn’t have to dodge much. But she was wearing out. “Look! That guy! He’s fat! Eat him!”

Never a cop…

That hoary adage was belied when she was half way down the first block of B Avenue. A big black truck marked “Biological Emergency Response Team” swerved into traffic with blue lights on and stopped, blocking half of north-bound to a blare of horns.

Puffing, she swerved towards it as a pair of men in moon-suits and masks exited. One of them waved for her to pass between them as they both pulled out guns. She recognized that one was holding a taser. The other was a gun-gun. Bang you’re dead gun.

“Thank you,” she panted as she passed between them. “Thank you. Thank you…”

* * *

Tom waved the woman between them and took up a position covering Durante. Kaplan was driving and prepared to move out as soon as the zombie was tagged and bagged.

“Deep breath, mate…” Tom said, soto voce.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Durante replied, then took the shot.

The zombie seemed to throw off the effect of the taser at first, nearly reaching Durante, then dropped to the ground, shuddering.

“Keep up the juice,” Tom said, stepping forward. He holstered his Glock and pulled out an ampule. The auto-injector drove 15 ccs of Dilaudid into the zombie’s thigh. Then he stepped back.

“Let up on the juice,” he said.

The zombie, a man in his early forties and previously in good condition from the looks of him, stumbled to its feet and started to lunge for the team leader, then stumbled to its knees. In a moment it was back on its face as the narcotic took hold.

“Tag and bag,” Tom said, pulling out a pair of flex-cuffs. “Ma’am, do you know this gentleman? Can you identify him?”

“Never seen him before in my life,” Corinda said, still gasping for air. “He just came around the corner as I was going in the deli. I’ve been running ever since. I mean he turned the corner off Houston to chase me! Why?”

“No idea, ma’am,” Tom said. He and Durante had already flex-cuffed the zombie and bagged his head in case he came to. As Durante started the blood test Tom pulled out a receipt and filled it out with bogus information. “If you know of anyone looking for him, please refer them to NYPD. They’ll be able to determine his disposition.” He pulled the receipt off the pad and handed it to her.

“Okay,” Corinda said, looking at the paper. “Is he… Is he going to the Warehouse?”

“I’m afraid so, ma’am,” Tom said. He looked at Durante who nodded. “He’s positive for neurological packet of H7D3.”

“I… Guess I survived my first zombie attack,” Corinda said, trying to smile. “That’s something.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tom said, taking one of the zombie’s arms. “Have a nice day.”

* * *

It had only taken an hour to collect five zombies. Three male, two female. And they’d seen more “incidents” on the way back to the warehouse.

“I can’t get that people are still just going to work,” Durante said, hooking one of the female’s flex-cuffed ankles into a hoist hook. “I mean, they’re walking right past other folks being attacked and it’s like ‘Whatever. Got to get to lunch.’”

“It’s New York,” Kaplan said, bringing over the butcher knife. “What do you expect? I mean, how do you tell the difference between a zombie apocalypse and every day?”

He drove the knife into the woman’s throat, then cut out and away. There was a spray of carotid blood that fell on the pre-spread painting tarp in a broad splatter of red.

“Hey, look,” Durante said. “We’re making modern art. We could probably sell this in a gallery for big bucks.”

“Can it,” Tom said. He understood. At a certain level they all really hated what they were doing. They hated that it was necessary. And they hated even more that they were enjoying it. They hated themselves. And so they joked. But if he let it go too far they might forget that they were, in fact, humans and under discipline. “Cut all the way up and back to the highest cervical vertebra.”

“Roger,” Kaplan said, slicing further into the neck as Durante stabilized the woman’s body. The ceramic knife slid up through the muscles, tendons and arteries of the neck like butter. The cut around the spine was somewhat ragged but serviceable.

“Okay,” Tom said, coming over. “This is the tricky bit. Gravy, hold the body firmly. Kap, get the clippers and bag ready…”

Tom applied a sharp twist and snapped the connections at the disk, then slowly and smoothly slid the spinal cord out of the spine.

“Don’t let it hit the floor,” Tom said, juggling the head in one hand and catching the falling spine with the other. “We want to reduce contamination.”

“Roger,” Kaplan said, holding the lower portion of the white cord. “This I’ve never done. I mean, slaughtering pigs, yes. I’ve done that. And goats. But I’ve never stripped a spinal cord.”

“I don’t think many people have,” Tom said, holding up the head by the woman’s hair. He tried to ignore that it was a fine, light brown. The woman was probably in her forties but she’d taken care of herself. Until she became a zombie of course. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Kaplan said, working the cord into a zip-lock bag. He gathered the ropelike material into the bag, then snipped it at the base of the woman’s spine with a pair of bandage scissors. The last of the spinal cord dropped into the bag. “That it?”

“That’s it,” Tom said, setting the head down on the floor and taking the bag. “See that red?”

“Blood?” Durante said, leaning forward to look.

“Spinal cords should be pure white or a slight yellow,” Tom said. “That red you see is virus bodies. Big bundles of millions of individual viruses. Which makes this one a winner.” He carried the bag over to a cooler, opened it up and dropped the bag on the ice.

“Four more to go…”