Zombie Chaos Book 1: Bloodbath in the Big Easy Read online

  Lastly, I picked up Azazel’s bowls and tucked them inside my “go-bag” — the supply-laden satchel preppers usually grab when they have to leave somewhere in a hurry. Just a glorified backpack, my go-bag still lay unzipped on the bed, waiting for any last-minute weapons, tools, food, or other supplies.

  I spotted my cellphone beside the bag and picked it up, hoping for a message from Clare. But, even though I’d been unconscious all night, no voice-mail or text messages awaited me. I was worried; it would’ve eased my mind to hear her voice. So, I tried calling her, but not surprisingly, the circuits were jammed. For the foreseeable future, nobody would be able to reach anyone.

  Gazing at the open satchel, I felt so stupid for having painted myself into a corner. I might’ve had my go-bag, but I’d actually stowed all of the guns, crossbows, blades, and other weapons in the van. I hadn’t wanted to carry them out in the open, afraid that, if a cop stopped me, he’d arrest me for my illegal arsenal, so I’d packed them earlier in the process and failed to leave myself anything to fight with. The zombie-killing axe would have to do.

  While considering the stained weapon, I noticed the gore on my T-shirt and jeans. Although I was eager to reunite with Clare, I didn’t think my wife would appreciate seeing me covered in zombie brains and blood. So, I stripped off my clothes and shoes, jumped in the shower, and wiped the guck off my face and hair. Then, after donning some fresh apparel, I checked each room for any other necessities.

  Satisfied I had everything I needed, I zipped up the go-bag, swung it over my shoulder, and slipped my wallet and the van keys in my back pockets. I dumped my soiled clothes and sneakers in the last garbage bag and secured it with a twist-tie. Though unwilling to let the trash rot in our former home, I fully realized no city worker would ever claim it from the can in the courtyard. Lastly, I tucked the axe behind my belt and picked up Azazel’s carrier.

  Taking one more look around — at the apartment I’d never see again, at the stove where I’d prepared so many yummy pots of gumbo, at the couch where Clare and I had watched so many movies on our huge-ass screen — the sadness suddenly left me. Anger quickly replaced it.

  “Fucking assholes, you screwed the whole world,” I muttered to myself, loud enough to wake up Azazel, her wide green eyes watching me warily through the slits of her carrier.

  Right then, the lights in the kitchen went off, the ceiling fan above me slowed down, and the refrigerator’s hum fell silent. The apartment was eerily quiet, with meager streams of daylight coming through the frosted kitchen window and the glass panes in the foyer door.

  “Just fucking perfect. Couldn’t wait another forty minutes before going off?”

  If the power had gone out in the entire Quarter, that would make my exodus from the city even tougher. Our van sat in a parking lot behind two giant swinging doors, controlled by the electric garage-door opener in my backpack.

  Oh, well. I’d deal with that minor dilemma once I got there. Just needed to make one quick stop first — and pray I wouldn’t run into any complications along the way.

  Chapter 8

  “This is no dream! This is really happening!”

  – Rosemary Woodhouse, Rosemaryʼs Baby (1968)

  After pointlessly dumping my trash in the outdoor garbage can and momentarily lingering in our former-sanctuary-turned-zombie-graveyard, I headed up the alley one last time. At the front gate, I protectively held Azazel’s carrier behind me, leaned against the wood, and listened for any sounds coming from the street. Besides the persistent buzzing of the flies, I could make out a strange thwacking sound, like someone repeatedly hitting a wet punching bag.

  Slowly, I opened the gate. Just a crack. Just in case.

  When no undead face greeted my own, I swung open the gate and stepped onto the sidewalk. Immediately, I spotted Robert, standing on his front stoop, hunched over the zombie bartender, who had apparently slithered up the steps and almost reached his door.

  Granted, she was no longer in a condition to slither anywhere. Her head now resembled the consistency, if not the vibrant color, of a smashed overripe watermelon at a Gallagher comedy show, and yet, Robert continued to beat her brain pulp with his gore-covered baseball bat.

  “That’s for cutting me off!” he shouted, whacking her again.

  OK, so I did get the chance to see my skinny old neighbor one more time. Honestly, though, I wished I hadn’t.

  Cuz, holy shit, he’s a horrifying mess!

  Following the epic smackdown between the young woman’s skull and Robert’s trusty bat, he couldn’t hide the evidence. Blood, brain bits, and black ooze clung to his hands, face, and worn terrycloth robe. Each downward swing onto the unfortunate girl’s head resulted in a new spatter of zombie goo. And all for what? Some end-of-shift stinginess in a French Quarter bar? OK, the zombified version of her likely deserved that.

  Somehow, though, I suspected his anger was misdirected. Like me, he had long been a grouch and a misanthrope, but also like me, he probably didn’t think a zombie apocalypse would be the best solution for humanity’s problems. Thumping the undead buzzkill on his front stoop was merely a substitute for taking down the powers-that-be who’d allowed this end-of-the-world crisis to happen. For all we knew, though, those people — along with Samir and Dibya — were already dead. Or deadish.

  Gazing past my neighbor’s stoop, I observed a large undead herd shambling along Burgundy. “Robert, you better go back inside. Those zombies might spot you.”

  Sure enough, two of the creatures swiveled their heads toward my old neighbor. Lured by either the whomping sounds or his tempting smell, they abruptly turned onto St. Ann and made a beeline for his front steps. Like mindless lemmings, the rest followed suit, but unlike the bludgeoned bartender, those zombies weren’t crawling. In fact, they appeared to be trotting.

  All at once, Robert stopped hitting the girl’s motionless body. “Fuck.”

  I set Azazel’s carrier on the ground, closed the gate, and made sure it was locked. More out of habit than from any real concern for the belongings I’d left behind — though, I had to admit, I hated the idea of looters or zombies trashing our house.

  As Robert retreated from the dead bartender and stepped into his open doorway, he paused to gaze down at me. “Goin’ to get Clare?”

  I nodded, smiling at the thought of seeing my wife again. But my grin soon morphed into a frown. Abruptly, I’d realized that, while his harsh beating of the poor bartender had alerted the zombies to our presence, I was the one who would need to make a break for it.

  “Good luck, boy,” he said, slipping inside his apartment.

  Shit. I didn’t have time to say goodbye — much less tell him about the blocked fence in the courtyard — before he slammed the front door and shoved something heavy against it, blocking the window that, as with my own door, inconveniently filled the upper half.

  Without further hesitation, I picked up Azazel’s carrier, pulled the axe from my belt, and darted to the corner. I turned toward the Lower Quarter and hastened down Dauphine Street, hurdling over dead, fly-peppered, rat-covered bodies wherever they lay. Given my poor conditioning and the awkward imbalance of toting a thirteen-pound cat over decomposing obstacles — with the carrier banging against my left thigh and the go-bag whacking my lower back — I wasn’t shocked when I felt winded a half-block later.

  Unfortunately, while pausing to catch my breath, I spotted several zombies stumbling down Dauphine, headed directly toward me. Still a couple blocks away, they were closing fast, and considering my next turn lay between me and them, I didn’t have time to rest. Even if my lungs cried out for a break.

  Although Samir and Dibya had given me fair warning about the imminent apocalypse and granted me enough time to amass a bunch of survival gear, I would’ve needed at least six months (if not more) to get into solid fighting and running shape. I wasn’t in the worst condition for my age — maybe I’d put on twenty pounds since Clare and I had gotten married (OK, more like forty pounds) �
� but I typically walked three miles, twice a day, so I wasn’t exactly inactive.

  Still, the stitch in my side had already made me its bitch, and my heart threatened to pound itself out of my chest — not from exertion but from fear. I hadn’t had time to get scared when the zombies attacked me (one at a time, I might add) in the courtyard, but staring at a slew of undead about to get a whiff of my tasty flesh, I panicked I wouldn’t be able to withstand a gang attack.

  Luckily, a woman’s startling shriek diverted most of them onto St. Philip Street. Even with a few of them still headed my way, I decided I shouldn’t bolt. Smarter to opt for a power walk or maybe a slow jog, but not a full-out run. As I moved toward Dumaine, the next cross street, the woman’s screams abruptly ended. Sorry, lady.

  At that precise moment, I finally noticed the level of yelling and gunfire around me. Beside my gate, I’d heard the terrifying sounds in the distance, but the havoc was much closer than I’d realized. The odors of fire and rotting flesh had grown more pronounced — the fires were almost as disconcerting as the zombies. In a neighborhood like the Quarter, where the buildings huddled close together — with few gaps, plenty of trees, and too many wooden fences — fire could spread like a wrathful god had soaked the neighborhood in gasoline.

  Prior to the zombie apocalypse, the local fire department had taken blazes seriously in the Quarter; its response time was certainly way more prompt than that of incompetent NOPD officers to the scene of a mugging, rape, or murder. No one wanted a repeat of the Great New Orleans Fires of 1788 and 1794 that had destroyed most of the structures in the historic neighborhood, particularly since, by the twenty-first century, it had become ground zero for the city’s tourism industry. But I doubted many firefighters were left to operate the hoses.

  I couldn’t believe I’d been so clueless — and not just about the encroaching fires. I’d been so focused on my own situation back at the house, the truth simply hadn’t registered. Amid the decomposing corpses, a lot of people — living people — were still fighting for their lives against hungry zombies. In both directions on Dauphine and Dumaine, I witnessed life-or-death battles taking place in the streets and alleys, on the sidewalks and driveways, even on rickety galleries and balconies.

  I needed to get the hell out of there and reach my wife as soon as possible. So, striving to ignore the angry shouts, tearful pleas, breaking glass, and frenzied gunshots in all directions, I bypassed the zombies in my path and continued toward St. Philip.

  Chapter 9

  “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

  – Veronica Quaife, The Fly (1986)

  Farther along Dauphine, a preppy guy clung to an old-fashioned gas lamppost. Given his bloodshot eyes and wobbly legs, he was obviously drunk. Never a shocking sight on All Saints’ Day, but how the idiot had managed to stay alive was a complete mystery to me. The only weapon he carried was a bottle of tequila. Empty, of course.

  Our eyes locked, and he smiled faintly, but from his squinting expression, I assumed he couldn’t see me all that clearly. When my focus shifted past him, to the scantily-clad, blood-splattered, zombified teenager shuffling toward him, he lazily followed my gaze to the approaching girl.

  Unfortunately, he was either too bleary-eyed or too brain-numbed (or both) to recognize the danger, so when she was merely twenty feet from him, he slurred, “Hey, baby! Show me your tits!”

  An only-in-New-Orleans kind of thing, it was a commonly heard request at Mardi Gras parades — and every night on Bourbon Street. During crowded weekends, for instance, the balconies along Bourbon would be packed with horny guys — and even more than a few gals, eager to take part in the action. As women of all colors, shapes, sizes, and ages strolled on the street below, the balcony hogheads would holler, “Show us your tits!” If a lady complied, the guys and gals would toss her a set of cheap plastic beads — made for pennies in China.

  Every time I witnessed the all-too-familiar spectacle, I felt grateful Clare and I had never had any kids… at least none of the non-furry type.

  As soon as the preppy dude propositioned the zombie chick, she closed the gap between them and, without preamble, bit a huge chunk of cloth-draped flesh from his shoulder. The consequence for offering her nothing in return — not even a cheap set of Carnival beads.

  Releasing the lamppost and stumbling backward, he tried to push her away. From the look on his face, though, he’d barely felt the actual bite. He seemed too inebriated to register pain. Of course, when the zombie girl lunged toward him again and chomped off part of his nose, he seemed to notice that. With an anguished yelp, he crumpled onto the sidewalk and clutched his bloody face.

  That’s what you get, asshole, I thought as I sidestepped the ill-fated couple.

  Clare and I might’ve lived in the French Quarter — the place where the party had never seemed to end — but except for Halloween, we hadn’t usually hung out in our own neighborhood. Naturally, we had our favorite bar — The Kerry Irish Pub, over on Decatur — but that cozy, music-filled joint had always been more popular with the locals.

  For the most part, we’d stopped walking down Bourbon Street several years prior, before we’d even moved into our most recent apartment. We’d long had a distaste for the smelly, garish street, but our disgust increased the night we’d witnessed a large group of college-aged guys on a hotel balcony, tossing plastic beads at a girl who had collapsed on the sidewalk. Her friends had done nothing to help, so the assholes had just continued to hurl crappy necklaces at the poor young woman, vying to hit her in the head and cackling each time one of them scored. Like it was a righteous sport — or an innocent rite of passage in the Big Sleazy.

  On second thought, maybe the world was better off with the zombies. Frankly, most of mankind sucked.

  Beyond the Kerry, Clare and I had mainly stuck to the Marigny, the residential neighborhood adjacent to the Quarter. We were especially fond of the clubs on Frenchmen Street.

  Goddammit. I would seriously miss the old-time jazz and blues music routinely blasting from The Spotted Cat and d.b.a., providing a rhythmic backdrop for the young dancers who often gathered in those clubs, twirling and twisting like colored feathers in the wind. On more than one occasion, Clare and I had promised each other we’d learn to dance like that, but perhaps knowing we’d never look as graceful had kept us from trying. That and being a couple of old lazy asses.

  Hey, most of those kids were just over twenty; we had an entire generation on them. Morbidly, I wondered how graceful the zombie versions of those dancers would seem now. Yeah, I’d really shown them: the graceless, overweight, old guy had endured among the zombies longer than most of the slender youngsters that once frequented Frenchmen Street. Quite the victory.

  Keeping an eye out for zombies, I turned onto St. Philip and, amid a smoky haze, promptly spotted a small group of people running for their lives down Bourbon Street, only a block away. I ducked behind an SUV, just as a horde of zombies, moving way too fast for my liking, chased after the free meal. Luckily, the walking dead (or, in that case, the running dead) and their victims were headed in the opposite direction from my destination, and once the path seemed clear, I resumed my trek across the French Quarter.

  Someone familiar with the city’s geography might ask why I was moving away from the parking lot on Rampart Street — where my ride out of Zombietown currently awaited me. Well, besides not leaving any guns in my apartment, I’d done something else pretty stupid.

  Since I actually hadn’t had enough money to buy all the shit I thought we would need during the impending apocalypse, I had applied for every high-interest credit card I could (all of which I’d happily never have to pay back). I’d also pawned Clare’s maternal grandmother’s wedding ring, given to my wife after her beloved grandmother had passed away — and like a real asshole, I hadn’t told Clare.

  Yep, I had to get that damn ring back before I headed out of town. Even if Clare preferred my safety over her grandmother’s ring, I still wouldn’t have felt r
ight betraying my best friend and soulmate like that.

  The pawn shop where I’d gotten eight grand for the ring was located in Mid-City, but I knew the owner, Troy Blanville (who I’d occasionally sipped beers with at the Kerry), lived in the Quarter. I also knew he kept the ring at his house, not in the shop. I just hoped nothing had happened to him — or the ring — during the night.

  As I neared the city’s notorious party street, the smoke from nearby fires grew thicker and more pungent. Closer to the intersection, I realized flames engulfed several buildings on Bourbon, including my postal shop on one corner and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar on another.

  For a moment, I paused to consider the irony: Lafitte’s was one of only a handful of structures to have survived the Great Fires of the 18th century. Who could’ve guessed it would be a zombie apocalypse that finally destroyed it?

  Many New Orleanians claimed the tavern had been haunted by two pirates said to have died after a bloody knife fight over a woman. Though a diehard horror nut, I’d never believed in ghosts. Well, before recent events, I never would’ve believed in zombies either. So, if the story about Lafitte’s was true, I supposed some pissed-off ghosts would soon be roaming the streets of the French Quarter, looking for a new place to haunt.

  The fires were so intense I could feel them from the other side of the street; one look at Azazel’s unhappy face told me she felt them, too. So, after glancing to the southwest and watching as the herd of undead caught up with a few of the unlucky souls I’d seen running, I turned northeast and edged closer to my destination.