1. An Absurd Apocalypse

SUMMER 2023

THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY

NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA

“The guinea pig and I are enemies,” I told Mina, my blue pit bull, as I gathered a small carrot and some lettuce from our backyard garden. “He besieges himself, but sees me as the besieger. And when he needs food or water — fuck me — those squeals and whistles echo through the house at a volume seemingly impossible for such a runt. The little bastard is ungrateful.”

“As are all living things,” Mina replied.

“You never seem so,” I said.

“Let me revise,” Mina said. “Gratitude is fleeting. We are grateful in the moment. Then the feeling leaves because we need or want again.”

“Your platitude doesn’t differentiate,” I argued. “Regardless, the rat is never grateful.”

“Because he is entitled,” Mina said, “and you must acknowledge the difference to understand him.”

“Come with me.”

“Okay,” she wagged her tail, “just don’t accuse me of banality again. I was attempting to engage you in a meaningful way despite my boredom with the topic.”

“You want a treat?”

Mina danced around me and licked her jowls as we walked through the house. I gave her a biscuit and her indignity disappeared. We made our way to the living room and the guinea pig’s cage. I looked inside. As always, his food bowl was flipped over and he was hiding in his chewed up pine hut. I opened the cage, righted the bowl, and placed the produce.

“Hey, rat!” I called.

“Fuck you!” he growled.

“Come out. We need to talk.”

“I will end you, motherfucker!”

“This is always pointless,” Mina said. “You will curse at him and pull him from his home and try to pet him. He will gnash his teeth, spit at you, and threaten to kill you again before he succumbs to one of his agoraphobic panic attacks.”

“I know,” I sighed, “but maybe if I can understand him — as you say — I won’t hate him so much.”

“Understanding does not equal acceptance,” she said.

“I don’t want to hate him.”

“What’s the difference?” Mina asked. “He will squeal and you will feed him. He will whistle and you will water him. Your hate is irrelevant.”

I laughed, “I feed him because I hate the squealing.”

“You feed him because he needs.”

“I could kill him,” I said.

“No,” the dog said, “you are cruel in certain ways, perhaps necessary ways. But not that way.”

Before I could reply, the cat entered the room and purred, “What’s up, cunts?”

“Pardon me,” Mina smiled, “I have my own futility in which to engage.” She whined and snapped to her play-with-me position.

The cat hissed and jetted away.

The dog pursued.

The guinea pig screamed, “Get off my lawn!”

I closed the cage and turned to see that my wife had entered the living room. Her favorite grenade launcher was strapped to her back, her cargo pants bulged with explosive rounds, and her tactical vest was stuffed with magazines for the rifle she slung. Matching Bowie knives hung from her hips, and her blue curls cascaded from beneath an antique doughboy helmet. “Come on, Jack,” she said, “we have inbound.”

“Where’s our son?” I asked.

“Upstairs on the front balcony with the machine gun.”

“He’s only ten, Betty.”

“Well,” she shrugged, “he’s already prepped it. I promised he could use it the next time they show up.”

“Fine,” I conceded. “Support him and keep an eye on our right.”

Betty grunted, “I was happier when we were the middle of the block, not the right flank.”

“That was five houses ago,” I said.

“Six” she countered.

I nodded, “Yeah. That’s right. Let’s not be the seventh.”

I slapped my plaid scally cap onto my freshly shaven head before grabbing my lever action Winchester Model 1886 and my bandolier of .45-70 ammunition. I exited onto the front porch and looked to my right. I frowned at the heaps that had been my neighbors’ homes. “Six,” I muttered to myself and chambered a round.

“Still using that antique, huh?”

I turned to my left and waved across my driveway. Kyle was on his porch slinging two AKs over his Nickelback tank top.

“You’re still sporting that mullet,” I said.

“Want a beer?” Kyle asked.

“Is it cold?”

He laughed at me and brought me a can. I drank too quickly and the tepid beer dribbled down my ever-lengthening beard. I dried my whiskers with the bottom of my shirt and surveyed the newly erected breastwork running along the opposite side of the street where the edge of the road met the killing field. It was a clear summer afternoon. I could see right across that pocked field — past the ruins of our many failed walls, past the piles of charred bones — all the way to the river about half a mile away.

“Crazy, right?” Kyle said. “Anyway, I was thinking last night. The field across the street. No houses rebuilt on that side of Valley Avenue after the ’72 flood. Now the enemy floods it. Still can’t figure that out. Zombies coming out of our very own Lackawanna River. Zombies coming out of every fucking river.” He pulled a bent cigarette and a lighter from his camouflage shorts. “So I figure we should start calling them,” he paused to light up, “we should start calling them The Flood.”

I smiled, “What? Like from Halo?”

“I miss getting new video games,” Kyle said.

I looked at the breastwork across the street, “I miss my awnings.”

“Contact!” Betty’s voice rang out. “Eleven o’clock!”

Kyle looked through his binoculars, “Yep, here they come. Right up out of that fucking river.” He ran back to his porch and released three long blasts from an air horn. The eastern sentry tower confirmed with three honks of its own.

“Hey,” I called to Kyle, “is Bob ready on the left this time? We don’t need to lose another garden.”

“What’s the matter?” Kyle laughed. “Sick of roasted river zombie?”

“Liam!” I leaned out past the eave of my porch and called up to my son on the balcony. “Don’t open up until they reach the old utility pole with the yellow stripes.”

“Five hundred yards!” Liam yelled.

“Five hundred yards,” I confirmed.

I watched the monsters approach. The bass line of their groans and snarls became audible as they marched closer. The dog joined me on the porch, wagging and panting.

“Tired of chasing the cat?” I asked.

“I’ll return to that,” Mina said. “I don’t want to miss you killing river zombies. Oh, can you get me a femur?”

Kyle interjected from across the driveway, “We’re calling them The Flood now.”

“Not very original,” Mina said. “Since they come from the river, why not call them The Crest?”

“No, no, no,” Kyle disapproved. “A river can crest below flood stage. Hell, Jack, your dog doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.”

The monsters neared the painted pole. Their groans and snarls became violent roars.

“Come at me, bruh!” Liam shouted.

The machine gun erupted.

Between the bursts, I heard the guinea pig squeal and whistle.

As after each attack, the field across the street became a crematorium and we lit the stacks of zombie remains after sunset. We had concluded that burning them wasn’t necessary to keep them down, but it stopped the birds and the flies from coming. And after enough drinking, the pyre became beautiful.

On my recently repainted front porch, Kyle and I lounged in a pair of squeaky wicker rockers. We had found the matching set on our last salvage mission, along with a bottle of 30-year-old Scotch and some well-preserved cigars. Wrapped in our summer bath robes, we rocked in our rockers, complimented the whiskey, and criticized the cigars. It wasn’t long before the pyre became beautiful.

“Never thought I’d get used to that smell,” Kyle sighed. “A lot of blue in the flames tonight.”

I shrugged, “Lead burns blue.”

“Yep,” Kyle laughed, “that it does.”

I pondered that for a moment and then became concerned about our ammunition supply as one does when whiskey takes hold. When do we need to go find more? We should go soon, or we’ll be making spears and everyone will be cutting their fingers trying to whittle the tips. Will we have enough bandages? How are we on basic medical supplies? Fuel for the generators? Holy shit! Do we have enough toilet paper?

Kyle slapped my arm, “I’m talking to you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was taking inventory.”

“I said I have an idea. I think that when we sit together like this — after a long day of killing and stacking — that we should try to think of something positive about the current state of the world.”

I poured another drink. “Why do you always have to find a way to be an asshole?”

“Just for that, you get to go first.”

“Pointless.”

“Your fatalism,” Kyle groaned. “If you think it ain’t worth fighting then why do you aim so carefully when they come? Next time, just walk out into them. Let them tear you apart.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I admitted. “My son and my wife —”

“Bullshit!” Kyle puffed. “Don’t use your family as an excuse for being afraid to die. Look at me. I got nobody. No family. I’m in that house next door all by myself, but I fight because I don’t want to die. There ain’t nothing after this life. I know it. You know it. In the middle of the zombie apocalypse, life is worth living. Now we are going to sit here and think about something positive among all this suffering, and if you don’t participate, I’m going to punch you. Really hard.”

“Okay,” I relented, “if it will shut you up.”

I drank some more and stared at the fire in the killing field. I could only think about those things that I missed. During the end of the world, I counted nostalgia as a weakness. Kyle knew that, and I had this overwhelming feeling that he was trying to trap me. Then it came to me — something positive — but I was saved from voicing my thoughts.

”Did you see that?” I asked. “To the left of the fire?”

Kyle leaned forward and squinted.

“Movement!” my wife called down from our front balcony. “Four hundred yards at ten o’clock.”

“What is it?” I stood up and tried to make it out.

“Unclear,” Betty yelled. Then her voice broke over the radios, “Sentry East; Gray House.”

“East. Go ahead, Gray.”

While Betty checked with the tower, I called my dog, “Mina! Come here, girl!”

Mina lumbered through the front door onto the porch. She squealed a wide pit bull yawn, flexed the muscles beneath her blue-gray coat, and snorted her hello, “What is it?”

“There’s something out in the field, left of the fire,” I explained.

“Gray House; Sentry East,” the radio crackled. “I got nothing, Betty. It’s past me if it’s out there.”

Betty came to the porch loading a shotgun. A bandolier of 12-gauge shells was sashed over her cotton pajamas and her blue hair was set in curlers. “What do you think?” she asked. “A straggler?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “When was the last time we saw one at night?”

“And when the hell have we ever seen just one?” Kyle grunted.

“Mina,” I said to my dog, “go around the right side of the fire. Use the light to mask your approach and see if you can get behind it. Find out what it is and report back. Do not engage.”

I sat back down in my rocker and poured another whiskey.

“What are you doing?” Betty judged.

“Waiting,” I said. “I’m a bit drunk. Kyle, too. You don’t want us handling guns right now.”

Kyle leaned back in his rocker, smoothed out his blonde mullet, and finished off his drink.

Betty stood ready, scanning the field. After about three minutes of silence, she whispered, “Jack!”

“What?” I stiffened. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” she said. “What do you want for dinner tomorrow night?”

“Books in the shitter!” Kyle exclaimed. “There are books in the shitter again. We can’t stare at our phones anymore while we’re doing our business. No internet for how long now? So we have to read actual books again. Something positive.”

“We have that venison,” Betty said, “or I could kill a chicken.”

Kyle and I leapt from our rockers as two silhouettes appeared in front of the flames and approached the house. I recognized one as Mina and what looked like another dog running next to her. She guided a tall, mottled, floppy-eared mutt onto the porch.

“I thought I told you not to engage,” I chided Mina.

“Bringing this poor thing to our home was hardly engaging,” she scoffed.

“Hello,” I said to the stray, “my name is Jack. What’s yours?”

“I am a dog,” he replied.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, “we can see that. I’m Kyle. Do you have a name?”

He barked and said, “I am a dog.”

“That’s all he says,” Mina sighed.

“Are you hungry?” Betty asked.

The mutt cocked his head and smiled, “Food? I am a dog.”

“We can get you some food,” I said. “Do you have a family? Where have you come from?”

“The other place,” he panted. “I don’t like the other place now. Food?”

“Let me try again,” Mina said. She barked and squeaked and groaned at the newcomer. He answered in their natural language.

“Well,” Kyle prodded, “what did he say?”

Mina cleared her throat, “He said, ‘The other place had food but now it is bad. I don’t like the other place. I am a dog. I like meat. Carrots are good, too. Hey, you are a dog. I am a dog!’”

“So it’s not a language barrier,” Betty confirmed.

“No,” Mina agreed, “he’s just stupid.”

The radio crackled, “Gray House; Sentry East. Betty, did you find out what that was? Everything okay?”

Kyle pulled his radio from his robe pocket, “East; Kyle. It was just a dog, Billy.”

“Son of a bitch!” Billy scowled. “Why are you scaring us like that, Betty?”

“Will you fuckers shut up and go to bed already?” Susan Draper squawked from nine houses away. “And you’re supposed to say ‘over’ when you’re done talking. Over.”

Billy replied, “I’m just doing my goddamn job, Susie. Over!”

“Okay,” I rubbed my eyes. I snatched the radio from Kyle and keyed it, “Enough. It’s over. Over!”

“What about him?” Betty asked me as she petted the new dog.

“Feed him, water him, and find him a blanket,” I said. “We’ll sort this out in the morning. I’m drunk. I want to go to bed.”

Betty and Mina brought the stray into the house. I went to follow, but Kyle stopped me.

“You still owe me an affirmation of positivity,” he said as he took back his radio.

I collected my thoughts from earlier and nodded, “Right now… Right now, there are people in the world who are fucking. Some of those people will make babies, even if that isn’t their goal. They think they’re fucking because they’re bored and what else is there to do? But that’s the wrong question, isn’t it?” I paused. I was doing a poor job of making my point, so I clarified, “Now that I’ve accepted that there isn’t a future for any of us, I’m finally free. It’s total war, and I love it so.”

Kyle laughed, “Lighten up, dude.”

From within the house, I heard my son shout with glee, “Is that a new dog? Did we get a new dog? I love him! What’s his name?”

Kyle took one more shot of Scotch and pulled on his cigar. “There it is,” he chuckled. “Right there…” He stumbled off my porch. “Right there, Jack!” he repeated as he staggered across the driveway toward his house.

“What?” I called after him.

“Positivity!” Kyle yelled back without turning. “Learn from your son.”

The next morning was alive with birdsong, zombie snarls, and gunfire. The attack was a leisurely one. Only twenty or so of the enemy crawled out of the river and shambled into the killing field across the street. We took our time picking them off. Each household in the neighborhood called their shots over the radios.

“Mine!” my wife shouted from our balcony. “All Ears; Gray House,” she broke into the frequency, “It’s Betty. I call that straggler. Hold fire. Repeat. Hold your fire.”

“Hey, Jack!” I heard Kyle yell at my left. He crossed my driveway, chugging an energy drink, while a cigarette dangled from his lips. His mullet was wild from sleep. His bathrobe was open, exposing his Superman boxers and the eagle tattoo on his chest. “Is she sure about this one?” he asked as he stepped onto my porch. “It looks like the fucking Hulk. Just needs the purple pants.”

The straggler was indeed huge. It plodded across the killing field — growling, spitting, hurling rocks and bones. Its green skin glistened in the sunlight. It seemed to ponder its dead companions, diverting to observe their bodies and then glancing back toward the river. For a moment, I thought it was going to retreat. But had that consideration actually entered its feral brain, it was quickly abandoned. The monster thumped its chest and resumed its cumbersome charge, howling its rage as it passed the piles of charred zombie bones.

Betty strode onto the porch, “What do you think for this one, Kyle?”

“I’ll surprise you,” he smiled and darted back to his house.

Betty tucked her blue hair under a Phillies cap; it had gotten so wild.

“I just washed all that,” I pointed to her tank top and cargo shorts. “Try not to get too soiled now.”

Her hazel eyes betrayed her smile. “Not this morning,” Betty shook her head. She drew both .357 magnums from her shoulder holsters, checked their cylinders, and replaced them. She kissed me on the cheek and unsheathed the pair of Bowie knives hanging off her hips. “Love you,” she said and then she walked across the street to the edge of the field.

Betty thrust her knives into the air and waved her arms at her approaching prey. “Hey!” she screamed. “Hey, over here! Yeah, that’s it! Yep, right here! Come and get me, you ugly green cunt!”

Kyle’s generator came to life. He pushed the soundboard and speakers onto his porch, checked the connections, grabbed the mic, and flipped a switch. His voice — backed by some generic 1980s filler tune — echoed through the neighborhood:

“Ladies, gentlemen, and the undead! Good morning! And what a beautiful morning it is. I’m your host, Kyle Zlogowicz, but while I’m up here spinning and sinning, you can call me DJ Zlog. I’ll be taking requests in just a little while, and we may even break out the karaoke machine. First up, though, we got an oldie but a goodie to play, along with a dazzling and dangerous warrior willing to showcase her slashing, her stabbing, and her deadly dancing. Please welcome once again to the killing field, Blue Betty!”

The stock music faded, and the air filled with the hopeful piano introduction of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Betty’s booted foot tapped out the beat. The first verse and instrumental were complete by the time the giant reached her.

A singer in a smoky room
The smell of wine and cheap perfume

Betty engaged. The zombie was faster up close. She ducked its swings and dodged its grabs, removing green flesh from it with every slash, eliciting shrieks from it with every stab. Its blue blood spattered her face and arms.

My son joined me, still in his pajamas, clutching a plush Darth Vader.

“Good morning, Liam. Where are the dogs?” I asked.

“They’re sleeping,” he shrugged. “The new pup wanted to come out and see what all the noise is, but Mina told him it’s all just a — hackneyed? — ordeal and that he should continue his nap. And yes, I fed the rat.”

I thanked him and returned my attention to Betty. The dissection continued. She swung hard at the zombie’s shoulder and its left arm fell to the ground.

“Whoah, Mom!” Liam laughed. “‘Tis but a scratch!” His freckled cheeks glowed red and he wiped tears from his eyes with the Vader doll. “Oh, man,” he sighed. “Oh, man.”

The zombie was soon overwhelmed and fell to its knees. Betty danced to the anthem and made her way behind her foe. She drove one blade through the top of its skull and used it to pry back and lift its chin. She moved her other knife across its throat, slicing until its spine was severed. She pulled the monster’s head from its shoulders in a shower of blue gore.

Don’t stop believin’
Hold on to that feelin’

The neighbors’ cheers and air horns mixed with the music. Betty held up her trophy. She panted and screamed and sobbed and sang along with Journey.

“Why?” Liam asked.

I put my hand on my son’s shoulder, “Because she is the strongest among us.”