Johnny America

 

Af­ter The Zom­bies Came: Day 31

by

“I’m fucked,” Re­my re­peat­ed to himself.

He’d grown care­less and bold — the zom­bies had ar­rived three weeks pri­or, by his reck­on­ing, and he’d nev­er come close to his end. Re­my dashed through Aisle 6 at Key Food, un­afraid of the un­dead in the ce­re­al sec­tion. It was the twi­light of his sum­mer break when the zom­bies came, but he’d kept his train­ing up — he had a shot at Na­tion­als in the Fall.

Re­my’d bare­ly slowed to snatch a jar of chunky peanut but­ter, for his sis­ter An­nie’s sand­wich­es. He’d tucked a car­ton of New­ports in the draw­string of his track suit for his fa­ther, who fre­quent­ly won­dered aloud what the point of not smok­ing was, what with the end of days. Re­my did­n’t share his fa­ther’s pessimism.

“I’m fuck­ing fucked,” he sighed again.

Re­my lay in the trunk of a de­sert­ed Chevy Mal­ibu on Av­enue A, clutch­ing his bro­ken an­kle. The hoard had al­most over­tak­en him, and it was the on­ly shel­ter he could find.

“Fuck­ing Italians.”

He’d leaped over an up­turned case of ravi­o­li in Aisle 8 and slipped in an un­no­ticed pond of mari­nara sauce.

The calm of a doomed an­i­mal washed over Re­my. He re­cit­ed the Lord’s Prayer un­der the din of strained sheet met­al. The gang out­side beat against the Mal­ibu with hands and head and feet. The trunk res­onat­ed to the dull rhythm. It would take them a long time to pound through, he knew, but they were per­sis­tent and hun­gry for brains.

Filed under Fiction & Zombies, of or Relating to on June 16th, 2006

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