It’s been sunny ever since the dead started walking. They get closer with every sunrise, their groans a chasing echo on the highway. I’ve been riding this bike for days with my weight leaning over the handlebars, feet slipping off the pedals, breath heaving, weak, dehydrated, gravity taking hold.
There’s a dishevelled bed and breakfast off the road, its windows boarded. The zombies approach and I stumble off my bike and run. I round the building. I pry at the boards, bloodying my fingers until there’s a crawl space big enough to climb through. Inside, the front lobby is littered with the fragmented wood of a demolished staircase. A rope hangs from the second floor and I struggle to pull myself up.
There’s a man on the landing pointing a gun.
He says, “This isn’t your property.”
“There’s nowhere else to go,” I say, collapsing on the floor, pleading. “You have to help me.”
His fingers flinch over the trigger. “You think I care what happens to you?”
“Please,” I say. “I lost my apartment. Looters broke into the building and took everything. They would have killed me if I hadn’t run.” The words shudder up my throat and I blink, eyes stinging and hot. “I haven’t eaten in days.”
His gaze drifts away from mine. He looks me over. He runs his tongue along his bottom lip and he says, “You can suck my dick if you want.”
He steps forward, his eyes dark. I crawl back, looking down the open landing below. Outside, the zombies pound against the boards, the sound throbbing with my chest.
“I haven’t even seen a woman in months,” he says. “What else could you possibly do for me?”
I shake my head. He takes another step, closing in, towering over me.
He says, “You can either give me a blowjob or I can kick you back down there.”
He says, “Come on,” and he unzips his fly.
He says, “This is about survival, not your fucking dignity.”
He leans against the wall and pulls his dick out. He smiles when I crawl to him. His lap of pubic hair smells of sour sweat and piss. I hold my breath and close my mouth over his hard warmth. He wraps his hand around the back of my head. He presses the cold metal of the gun against my scalp and he says, “Put in some effort.”
I try not to retch.
He was prepared.
He spends all his time in the solarium on the third floor. It used to be the breakfast room but now it’s his domain. He has crates of canned food and bottled water. He has guns and crowbars and knives. He has jigsaw puzzles on every table, a collection of different places, better places: The Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls—the Venetian Canal.
He says, “You’ve got to have something to do.”
He opens a can of beans and sits at the table with a half-finished puzzle on top. The picture on the box is of a historical park in Thailand, a grey bell tower monument before a river of lily pads and pink flowers. Everything is bright, alive.
He says, “It’s like every puzzle is its own apocalypse. No people. Just scenery.”
He hands me the can of beans and I take a bite. All I can taste is him.
He asks, “What’s your name?”
I tell him. He smiles and I pass the can back.
“I haven’t talked to a woman since this all started,” he says, spooning the beans into his mouth. “All I ever see out there is zombies and bandits. You’re like a unicorn.”
My fingers flinch over the puzzle pieces.
“Do you really want to stay here?” he asks.
I look at him, his gaze the first human one I’ve seen in days.
He says, “You don’t have much of a choice, do you?”
His voice is gentle, but my stomach tightens at the sound of his masculine tone. He slides the can across the table and I stare at the beans, little organs floating in red.
He says, “Don’t worry. Judah will take care of you.”
The grit on his sheets rubs against my skin.
He tosses and turns in the dark, his presence warm beside me. He reaches across the bed and grabs my wrist. My muscles tense.
“Take your clothes off,” he says.
“No, please.”
He climbs over me, his darkness heavy. His hair hangs in sweaty strings over my face. He slips his fingers under my shirt. A whimper shakes up my throat as he forces my arms through the sleeves. I moan, but he covers my mouth.
He says, “You don’t want them to hear you, do you?”
He presses his hand down the front of my jeans. He yanks them down, pries them off my ankles before he shoves me back.
He says, “Spread your fucking legs.” He looms over me, waits until I open up, and he rubs there, rough fingers in my folds, pushing in. My shaking, he likes it. He gets hard. He forces himself on me.
He says, “Stop crying.”
I bite my lip, wincing when he pulls my knees around his waist. The mattress creaks and his laboured grunts echo in the empty room. I distract myself by thinking of the zombies. When he comes, his groan sounds just like them.
It’s barely dawn and the sound of motorcycles echoes outside, spit sizzling on hot pavement. Judah jolts from the bed. He grabs his gun from the nightstand and tucks it into the waist of his jeans.
Glass shatters in another room. Heavy footsteps echo through the halls. This was how my apartment was lost. Looters. Bandits. Men in leather, with aggression, more agile than the undead.
I pull the sheets around me. My limbs stiffen. Judah picks up the crowbar beside the bed. He grabs my wrist and drags me behind him just as the bandits tear into the room. Judah pummels the first with the flat side of the crowbar. Then he pulls out the gun, cocks it. The second bandit backs away, holding his jagged metal pipe raised. He’s young, blonde, and he screams, “What you got, faggot!”
Judah points the gun, finger on the trigger. “I’ve got a whole lot more than you,” he says.
The blonde holds his arms up, pushes his chest out. “Go ahead,” he says. “You’ll have a hell of a time disposing of my corpse out there, shithead.”
Judah tenses.
The bandit on the floor heaves. He grasps the edge of the table with the Thailand puzzle and he pulls himself up. He staggers back, his gaze falling on me.
“Do you want to fuck her?” Judah asks. “You wanna fuck my bitch? You’re not looting any of my shit, but you can fuck her and then you can leave.”
The blonde bandit says, “What?”
The gasping bandit hesitates, staring stupid, struggling to take a breath. “You fucking serious, dude?” he asks.
I look at Judah and his face is expressionless, empty. A tightness burns through my chest. I shake my head. My eyes are hot, wet, stinging.
Judah says, “Do it.”
“No.”
“Let them see you.” He kicks me forward. I turn back to look at him but he points the gun at my face. “Serve our guests,” he says. He grabs the sheet and pries it out of my grasp.
The bandits take turns.
The blonde bends me over a puzzle of the Eiffel Tower, the pieces sticking to my chest, crumbling. Then the second bandit shoves me back on the Empire State, the force of his thrusts tearing the building apart. The blonde joins in, pulls my head over the edge of the table, forces my mouth around his dick so I’m fucked both ways in the rubble.
They leave satisfied, calm, and it’s not until their motorcycles grunt outside that I gather my breath and slide off the table.
Judah looks up from Thailand. He’s already opened another can of beans.
He says, “You saved us. You did your part.”
The bandits come back. They want more. They empty their backpacks of luxuries: toothbrushes and mouthwash and razors.
Judah smiles and says, “Sure, do whatever you want with her.”
He shaves while the bandits ride me. They take out their aggression on my flesh, hitting my face, my ass, my tits. Then they leave, burning heat on the pavement, spit and semen on my face. Judah cups my chin in his hands, his face fresh, smelling of aftershave, his new gaze darker, taking ownership.
He pushes me on top of Thailand. He’s got a bottle of perfume, the glass cut like a diamond. He holds it up and he sprays the delicate pink fragrance in my face.
He says, “You smell like a unicorn now.”
More men, different men. The word spreads and I get taken over and over again.
The apocalypse isn’t about the zombies. The men bring liquor and cigarettes and luxury and Judah gets all primped up while I get fucked in the Swiss Alps, in the Mayan Rivera, in the middle of Westminster Abbey.
The space between my legs is a dull ache. My tits are darkened with bruises. My throat’s hoarse, rubbed raw. The solarium is littered with puzzle pieces, the world a wreck.
At night Judah dresses in his new silk bathrobe. He takes me to Thailand and says, “There’s no better place than here.”
He always gets his turn.
He says, “You couldn’t do this alone.”
He says, “Without me, you’d just be a dead little unicorn.”
He says, “Say you’re my little unicorn. Say it.”
Survival.
The next time the bandits come, one of them spits on my asshole and shoves his dick inside. The tight ache winds into my stomach. All I do is scream. Afterwards, Judah sits beside me on the mattress. He strokes my hair and I wipe my tears on the lapel of his robe.
He wraps a sheet around me. We eat canned beef ravioli paired with vintage Chianti and we put Thailand back together. He works on the land and the sky and asks me to piece together the lilies and the water. I have to lean forward because it hurts too much to sit.
He says, “The next time you scream, I’ll fuck you with my crowbar while holding a plastic bag over your head.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
I fit together two pieces, the biggest pink flower in the river.
All the returning visitors attract the attention of the undead.
Judah’s got his fingers in my ass, teaching me how to take it without crying. Over my whimpers is the sound of pounding, undead hands on the boarded windows downstairs.
He says, “You moan too much. They probably heard you.”
He brings his crowbar outside and he kills the zombies in his bathrobe, standing back so he can take them out one by one, swinging the bar at their faces, taking them to the ground. He stands over them, defiant, driving curved titanium teeth into flesh and bone. The sound of the cracking vibrates through the window.
Judah returns angry, his chest heaving, blood splatter all over his robe. He takes it off and holds it up, shaking the stained silk in my face.
He says, “You’re going to get me a new one.”
It’s all my fault. I’m a bad little unicorn, bent over Thailand. He punishes me, forces his whole fist up my backside.
The sunlight beams in through the solarium windows. Outside there’s groaning.
Judah’s asleep in his new plaid flannel robe. It’s not as nice, but I did my best.
He says I can do better.
I spray perfume on my neck. I smell like magical lilies in spring water and I tiptoe down the hallway with a crowbar and a switchblade hung from a string around my neck. I climb down the rope and stand outside for the first time since earning my survival.
Goosebumps form as the breeze hits my naked flesh.
The switchblade hangs between my breasts, bobs with my chest, my aching heartbeat.
There’s a lone zombie, a former male with a dead gaze, his arms outstretched, wanting me. His footsteps waver over the uneven ground as he approaches. He groans, makes it so easy to lift the bar up, to let everything out because he sounds just like all the grunting men.
I pry hunks of flesh from his face, one swing at a time. I knock him over, mashing his skull into a red mess, kidney beans and lukewarm beef ravioli in tomato sauce. Then I open the switchblade and I cut through the meat, digging in deep, covering the knife with blood and infection, Chianti red.
I fold up the knife and I take it with me, tucking the streaked metal underneath my pile of collected river pieces. Water and lilium.
I can do better.
Judah gets out of bed and pushes me back on the table. I wrap my legs around him. I dig into my pile of puzzle pieces. I wrap my arms around his broad shoulders and I hold him close. He fucks me hard, too preoccupied to notice the knife clutched tight in my grasp, too preoccupied to feel when I cut through the flannel and into his flesh.
He says, “You love it when I ride you in Thailand, don’t you, little unicorn?”
I tell him, “Yes, I love it. I love it. I love it.”
We rebuild Thailand.
I finish the river. All the pieces are sticky with bodily fluids, blood and semen and sweat. Across the table, Judah reaches behind him, trying to scratch his back. He winces and unties the sash of his robe. He stands and takes it off, taking notice of the stain, the circle of red on the back. His finger slips through the slit in the fabric.
He looks at me.
He doesn’t say anything because it’s too late.
My toes curl as he sits down. He bites his lip and he picks up another piece of the puzzle. It’s a part of the bell monument, a piece of grey brick. His fingers start to shake as he tries to fit the piece in place. The vein in his neck throbs. His face goes red. He exhales, heavy. He makes a fist and pounds the table, shoves the puzzle at me, the pieces flying. He knocks the table over.
“You cunt! You fucking cunt!”
He smacks my face and tackles me to the floor. He snatches my wrists and he holds me down, his shaking grasp vibrating through me.
“I’m going to eat you,” he says. “I’m going to fucking devour you! I’m going to chew your fucking snatch off, you fucking shit whore!”
I writhe out of his grasp, crawling to the mattress, reaching for the nightstand where his gun is. The trigger is cold and hard. He grabs my ankle, digs his nails into my skin. I groan and turn over, aiming the barrel. My finger tightens and a deafening bang fills the room, making a hole in his shoulder, red filling in, spreading.
His groan echoes loud, guttural. A male cry.
He says, “I fucking saved you.” He groans and heaves, showing his pain, gritting his teeth. “I protected you. You’d just be another dead little bitch out on that highway if it wasn’t for me.”
I shoot him again, this time in the knee. He starts heaving. His breaths become moans. His body shakes when he tries to stand, but I grab his crowbar and I swing it against his forehead. He falls face down, letting out one hopeless moan before his head hits the floor.
It takes all day for him to turn. I finish Thailand while I wait, fitting together the soggy pieces while he shifts and shudders, his skin fading to a bruised shade of grey. His lips purse and sputter nonsense.
Bitch. Cunt. Whore. Unicorn.
He comes to and breaks into a fever sweat, his forehead greasy, hair hanging in strings down his face. He moans, chokes up vomit, and it spreads; a bile yellow river, the puzzle pieces floating like lily pads.
He tries to stand but his limbs are stiff.
I fill a backpack with canned food and bottled water. He watches me get dressed.
He says, “You’ll die out there. You can’t survive on your own.” He groans and lifts his head, the vomit trickling off the sweaty ringlets of his hair.
I pick up the crowbar and I stand over him.
He’s still human, his gaze still dark, still angry. He says, “Not yet.”
He tries to say my name but it just sounds like he’s coming. His groan fills the room and I swing the crowbar over his head, cracking his skull, making a hole big enough to fuck him. I dig deep, chipping at the bone until his groan drowns in sick. It’s just like beating the other zombie, only Judah’s dead gaze has humanity. I take it from him. I cut it from him. I gut his stomach. I flood the floor with his gall.
The heat burns in my lungs and I heave. The tears streak down my cheeks, flushing my dry skin hot.
My bike’s still where I left it. I pedal out into the summer heat. There are zombies on the horizon, walking in the sunset like strewn puzzle pieces. The highway’s quiet and long.
There’s no better place than here.