Kings of the Concrete Jungle

K. I. Borrowman

 

It’s been a few years, and you know who has really come out a winner in the zombie apocalypse?

Cats.

That’s right; our furry little feline friends have instinctually avoided being eaten, and now they pretty much rule the planet.

They’re everywhere; they’ve taken over the cities, countryside, and wild lands. Those who were once the kings of the jungle are now the kings of the world.

And us, the few upright apes who still have functioning brains; when we noticed that cats were everywhere, we studied their ways, adopted their approach, and we, too, survived.

 

Cat Survival Tip #1 – Stay High

I’m standing on top of a four-story building that was once a medical center, looking down on all I survey, when I see her.

She’s tiny; petite, in fact. About my age, although at this distance and this height it’s difficult to tell. I know she’s a follower of the cat method because she, too, is on top of a building.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen another person, living, not from our group, so I watch, mesmerized.

She moves with catlike fluidity, creeps tiptoe inch by inch, her lithe body a shimmering silhouette against the blazing sky. She maintains a posture: head erect, spear held high in her right hand, left hand hovering out beside her to create feline balance. She’s like a tightrope walker, floating across the roof towards a flock of pigeons.

Yes, pigeons have also survived, but not so much because of their instinctual advantages. Pigeons have survived only because the stupid gits can freakin' fly, and if they detect any movement, they take off in a flapping frenzy. But, like the zombies, if they don’t notice you, they just keep shuffling around, cooing, looking for something to peck at.

By now, she’s about an arm’s length from the pigeons. She takes aim, raises her spear, and brings it down in artful silence. A gray cloud erupts around her and she disappears for a moment as the 99 birds she didn’t skewer flap up and away, and then she is once again in my sight, walking away with a fat feathery lump slung over her shoulder as a few discarded feathers settle around her like dirty snow.

 

Cat Survival Tip #2 – Shut Up

She’s the most magnificent creature I’ve ever seen, and I want nothing more than to call out to her. But I keep my mouth shut. Cats and I know those shuffling idiots down on the remains of the street would come swarming up here in pursuit of the slightest sound. As it stands, they’re currently climbing up and over each other to scale the walls of the building across the street, a former condo complex, as the love of my life disappears down the other side.

I take advantage of their distracted state to creep away myself. Like everyone else who has survived, I wear moccasins strapped to my feet like ballet slippers so I can move on silent cat feet.

I enter the roof-top stairwell and retrace my steps, rappelling down the elevator shaft like a weird, rag-covered Spidergirl, and creeping along the second-floor footbridge to the car park.

From here, I can keep an eye on the mob below as I swing my leg over the cross-bar of my ten-speed and sail away.

 

Cat Survival Tip #3 – Be Quick

Cats don’t pussyfoot around, and neither do we. If you want to keep your skin on you and your guts inside you, you need to move faster than the braindead can shamble, and the best way to do that is by bike. It’s silent (see Tip #2), you can get around most things that would block a car, and it’s fast.

By the time I emerge from the car park ramp onto the street, I’m flying. As I have been successful at the medical center, finding everything on my shopping list plus a few extra goodies in an unmolested vending machine in the waiting room, I head back towards our camp, pitched on top of an ex strip mall.

But I’m an over-rated idiot. I’m so distracted thinking about her that I nearly pedal right into a nest of them.

Braindead heads pop up and look around, their sunken eyes swiveling in gray sockets and jagged yellow teeth peeking between sun-ravaged lips which part in meaningless utterances. I squeeze both hand brakes and do a sharp U-turn, nearly capsizing.

Teeth gnash and guttural moans quiver on the air behind me as I flip it into low gear and pump up speed.

I’m heading in a different direction than planned now; my mental map is ripped away and beneath my wheels the road is jagged. You thought pot holes were bad before the zombie apocalypse; I jerkily pick my way among juts of cracked asphalt.

The noise of the hungry gang draws more of them. They pop out of alleyways and from between long-ago-smashed cars.

Unbelievably, the road gets worse; it’s like someone dropped a bomb here. To be fair, someone probably did. But there’s another mall up ahead, the glass front smashed and the floor beyond it smooth.

I careen into it.

 

Cat Survival Tip #4 – Stick to the Shadows

In the shadowy darkness of the mall, I know from the smell that they’re all around me, but the braindeads’ vision is even worse than their hearing. The bike tires are silent on the linoleum floor, and although the mob follows me in, they lose sight of me in the dimness and end up shambling around near the entrance, muttering nonsense.

There’s enough sunlight entering through the various smashed entranceways that I can just make out a glint on the floor. I pedal my way down a few corridors and out the other side, free and clear, emerging on the mall parking lot.

Not the best place to avoid zombies; it’s filled with cars, hundreds of places for them to lurk. I wonder for a moment why so many cars are parked at the mall; seriously, was everyone in town shopping when the outbreak hit? Then I pass under a stack of signs: Addition Elle, Sears, Domino’s Pizza, and I flash back to a typical day in the mall behind me, before the first bite: silent mobs shuffling around in fluorescent corridors, aware of nothing but the little screens in front of them, and I realize what I’m currently running from are not the world’s first zombies.

I manage to sail on silent tires out of the desolate auto graveyard without attracting the attention of any of its denizens and I get back to camp undetected.

I’m on first shift, so it’s late by the time I finally crawl into my tent and hit the sack, but I can’t sleep. I keep seeing her exquisite outline, the way she stood, spear raised, like the ancient Roman Javelin Thrower statue. I don’t know anything about her except she’s cat-like. I don’t know if she’s single or attached, if she’s even into girls, or how I would go about finding her. But I keep turning over and over, listening to the crickets, and imagining what I would say to her.

 

Cat Survival Tip #5 – Stick with the Colony

As a former vegan running with a pack of Texan meat-eaters, I’ve never fit in here. But it’s ten times harder to survive on your own, so when I first met Jed, running for my life down a San Antonio alleyway with a growing herd munching at my tail, before we knew about the cat thing, and he took a liking to me and stuck me on the back of his motorbike, I figured it was better to have a pack of rednecks surrounding me than nobody at all. And we’ve dwindled, but we’ve learned and survived, and we’ve done it together. However, I’ve always felt alone in this community.

By the time the crickets silence and the birds are chirping, I’ve settled into a restless sleep, but the bright blue sunshine glowing through the thin vinyl of my little tent burns through my eyelids and I’m up and at ’em.

Today I’m heading farther afield with Jed in search of food. Sam and Paul are fishing; our job is to find fruits and veggies. These small towns are always surrounded by farms with gardens and orchards, and even though they’ve gone wild, there are still apples and carrots and potatoes and whatever else growing wild within their fences.

As we pedal through the streets, I dart my eyes around looking for a sign of her.

“Lookie here,” Jed mutters as we pass some fresh carcasses. My heart springs. Was it her? Did she do this?

“Sam and Paul musta surprised a nest of ‘em.”

Of course he’s right. I’m so preoccupied I forgot we’re heading in the same direction Sam and Paul went. In a few minutes, we’ll pass by them as we cross the bridge out of town.

 

Cat Survival Tip #6 – Stay Out of Sight

Have you ever noticed how cats like to sleep tucked away in boxes or up on top of cabinets? As I sail along, I scan the tops of buildings for evidence of her camp, but she has left nary a sign.

It’s hopeless. Sam and Paul raise their free hands to us as we cross a small bridge over a creek. Around the next corner we’ll be in farm country.

 

Cat Survival Tip #7 – Be a Ninja

Jed raises a fist in a signal to me as he slows in front of the high, white-painted posts marking the first farm. I pull up next to him and raise my spear, at the lookout as he fiddles with the latch.

Jed was a noisy ruffian when we first met, but he has become one of the most silent cats I know. He lifts this rusty old hook out of a loop covered in weeds and dust, and it doesn’t make a sound.

He pushes the gate just far enough that we can get in with our bikes, inch by inch so the old unused hinges won’t squeal.

I’m at the ready. I squeeze in first, holding my spear above my head, and glance around. Nothing moves.

I wave my hand to Jed. He passes my bike to me and then his. He leaves the gate ajar in case we need to make a speedy exit.

It’s more of an acreage than a farm. The house sprawls at the end of a long, overgrown driveway. Beyond the weathered old building, birds chirp cheerily in a broad forest. The biggest trees are evenly spaced—this was once an orchard. We wheel towards it.

An orange cat peers down from the eaves as we pass by the house. Two others dart into the forest when we round the corner.

Behind the house, a trampoline, two faded plastic ride-on toys, and a rusted swing set, all buried in the weeds. Over to one side lies a rectangle of wild that was probably once the garden.

We’ll check that on our way out. We’ve hit the jackpot: an apple orchard. There’s even a ladder leaning against one of the trees, nearly hidden behind a tangle of growth. Jed signals to me that he’s going up.

We leave our bikes and collect apples, Jed tossing them down and me catching them and putting them into my pack.

The birds suddenly fall silent. A braindead kid appears out of nowhere, shambling towards us. I catch Jed’s eye and gingerly put the pack down on the ground so I can wield the spear in both hands.

They’re not zombies in the traditional sense. That is, they’re not entirely dead. The virus just wipes out one important part of the brain, which happens to be the part that makes you human. What you’re left with makes you less than mammalian. I guess you’d call it the lizard brain.

This little reptilian shuffles towards me, a dull gleam in its dumb eyes. It starts to open its mouth to groan its excitement about having found someone to bite. I don’t know why, but the braindead are very aggressive, and the virus is very transferrable.

The movies lied. So did TV and comics. It is not a simple matter to stick a sharp object through a human skull. The trick is to go for the eye socket and shove hard enough to take out what’s left of the brain. I do so. The kid blinks with the one gray, swimmy eye he has left, and a guttural murmur escapes his open mouth before he slumps to the ground. I put a foot on his now entirely dead head to hold it down while I yank out my spear. Dark blood spurts over the carpet of rotting apples.

I take a step back and jab my spear into the ground a couple of times to clean it off. You don’t want any of it getting on you. Never know. The way the thing first spread, and the fact that the planet went from seven billion people to three billion in just over a year, you know you don’t want to get any of it on you.

I look up at Jed and signal for him to carry on.

End of the day’s work, we have a pack full of apples, a pack full of carrots and potatoes, and a small dead farmer family, which we leave behind.

The cats watch us leave from their perches.

 

Cat Survival Tip #8 – Bury your Shit

Jed is in front, so when I see what looks like a thin line of smoke rising from a flat-roofed condo complex a block over, I can’t signal him. But I know it has to be her.

I take the next corner and head back there. I’ll catch up; I know where the camp is and Jed knows I’m fine on my own.

I lean my bike up against the wall next to the fire escape, a rusty ladder inside a rusty chute of steel circles. There is definitely someone up there; a rope ladder hangs from the bottom of the fire escape. Could it be I’ve found her? I keep my pack on and go up.

There’s a camp on the roof all right, but a small one. Three tents and a small awning over a fire pit. Nobody’s around. I hunker down to wait.

I’m sitting eating an apple when she arrives. They’re all right; small galas, wormy for extra goodness. She comes out of the roof stairwell, not the fire escape, and she’s panting.

Her breath stops when she sees me. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad. She starts towards me. I rise.

“I saw you yesterday. Hunting pigeons.” I smile, but inside I cringe. Probably not the best way to woo her. Stalk much?

She glances at my spear, which sticks out the top of my pack, my moccasins, and the apple in my hand as I stutter, “I’m Celia.”

She says nothing. Just stares at me with those brilliant obsidian eyes, no expression on her brown, cherubic face. She’s at least two inches shorter than me, and I’m small.

“I just wanted to meet you.” I shrug. “Do you want an apple?”

As I start to take off my pack, she goes into a crouch and raises her spear. Not good.

“Okay, you know what? I’m sorry. I’ll go. I just thought you looked... interesting.”

I leave my pack on, raise my hands palms out, and start to back up towards the fire escape from whence I came.

The blaze in her eyes starts to subside.

“Cole.”

“Pardon?” This is good. I stop backing up.

She lowers her spear, but not all the way. “I’m Cole.”

I glance at the gleaming tip. She keeps that thing in immaculate condition. It’s a heavy, thick meat-cutter’s knife bound to what was probably once a hockey stick with about an inch thick of leather strapping, black from the blood of all the zombies she’s killed.

“Thanks for not putting that through my eye. I probably shouldn’t have trespassed.”

“I haven’t spoken to anyone except my folks for... I don’t know.”

“Yeah, me, too.” We stand in awkward silence. We’ve both forgotten how to talk to someone new. We’ve both forgotten all the rules. You don’t hang around in a stranger’s camp, waiting for them to come home. You don’t pull your spear on a completely alive person you find in your camp. We ruminate on these things.

Then, she says, “Is that your bike?”

I nod, thinking she’s going to commend me on such a cunning method of transport.

“There’s a zombie checking it out.”

At that moment there’s a clatter from below the fire escape. We stare at each other, mortified. We scurry to the edge of the roof, squat, and look down over the rim.

A medium-sized braindead is standing over my fallen bike, looking rather nonplussed.

“Shit,” I breathe.

In the silence of the dead world where everyone’s a ninja cat, a bike falling down is like a gunshot in the Himalayas, and it has started an avalanche of shuffling braindead, blank-faced curious almost-corpses, drawn to the sound by the instincts hovering in their lizard brains, coming from between buildings, behind cars, every street in all directions.

“Shit,” Cole whispers.

I look where she’s looking. Down the street, two figures on bicycles pedaling towards the growing mob around our perimeter.

I look at her. Her dark eyes widen. “Are those your folks?”

She nods. The shuffling masses keep moving. The cyclists seem to notice what’s going on and slow down. They come to a stop about a block from us. More zombies appear from walls, alleyways, who knows? And they’re surrounded.

“Oh my God.” We can only watch as the two try to fight off the many. The grunts of zombies getting their brains split through their eye sockets causes others to turn from our building towards the melee.

Silent, catlike, Cole starts down the fire escape.

“What are you...” I whisper, but she is not interested in me. She’s going to save her family. It’s madness; there are dozens of them now, but it’s my fault, so I leave my pack on the roof and follow her.

She straddles the bottom of the fire escape where it ends, about six feet above the ground, and the braindead there look up at her. From my perch above her, I watch her spear go into a glazed eye, her small foot brace the mildly surprised head, and her shoulders flex as she pulls the spear out again. Dark blood drips off its tip and the dead zombie slumps to the ground. Five more grab for her retreating foot and the spear enters another eye. Her foot goes out again.

“No!” I breathe, but too late. Several pairs of hands latch onto her. She jabs and I shimmy down, straddle her, try to wrangle my spear into the right direction with these damn steel hoops around me, and clawing sunburnt raw hands yank at her little foot.

“No!” My surprised throat immediately aches; I’m shouting for the first time in years, but I’m done with whispering. With the amount of noise we’re making, every zombie in the neighbourhood must be on its way anyway.

She wrestles her foot away and I get my spear into the eye of a tall, buzz-cut one just as his hands are wrenched free of her leg. He goes down and another one reaches up. She rams her spear into its eye, the others are clambering up on their fallen comrades and reaching for her, and suddenly the six feet of extension ladder rattles down into their grasping hands.

We both lose our footing. I manage to hold on but she is jerked, yanked, snatched into the midst of them.

I bellow my rage, my horror, all the pent up noise I’ve been not making for so long, and even as they tear into her, some of them look hungrily up at me.

A glance towards her folks tells me they’re gone, too.

Irresolutely, I make my way back up the ladder through the rings of steel. My spear gets jammed and I yank it out, my mind burning. I have a bag of apples and a camp up there; I could live up there fine until something distracts them and they wander off, however long that takes, but why bother? What’s the point?

 

Cat Survival Tip #9 – Don’t Care

When I was a kid, my mom used to read to me from a book called Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. One quote kind of became my zombie-apocalypse new-world-order mantra: “I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”

Cats survive mainly because they don’t give a crap. Their instincts keep them up out of harm’s way; naturally stealthy, they are good at hunting and avoiding predators. They don’t go falling in love and getting themselves and the objects of their affection into deadly situations. They don’t care about anyone else, only themselves. Although they stay with the colony, it is only because instinct dictates it; they don’t particularly care for any of those other cats they run with, and they’re perfectly satisfied with their own company. They live by instinct, and it is instinct that keeps them alive.

There’s no place for thinking, feeling, caring humans in this world any longer. Only the solitary, the emotionless, the cats. And who wants to be a cat?