are capable of. There’s nothing I can do to make this laptop boot any faster.”
What I really wanted to do was wrap my arms around Jamal and let him know everything would be fine. There was one problem with that wish—I didn’t know if it would come true. Everything was rotting from the inside out. Every plan, every connection, every hope—it all had gone to shit since Jacob was taken from me; Jacob my lover and now Jacob my baby. If I really dug deep into the viscera of my emotions, I’d discover the truth was…I needed someone to reassure me that everything was going to be fine.
The laptop was still in the boot process, the kernel rushing through its processes. For the first time in my life I hated technology; hated it for the fact that without it, we’d be dead. I wasn’t ready to die. Not now, not when I was unmade, un-whole. Out of nowhere, a song slammed into the core of my memory, the lyrics far too apt.
Awake and lift the blindness from your eyes
Stumble forth in this land of newborn irony
Our lives are past, our deaths ahead
Give rise to question
Give alms to the poor masses
Bring to the blinding, apocalyptic sun
A greeting of need and want
The smash of fist and bone on glass yanked me from my musical nostalgia. The Screamers had arrived. The Hummer thrashed about as if it would rock and roll over and give up the ghost.
“ Bethany!” Echo’s fear-induced shriek slashed through the air and assaulted my eardrums.
The laptop bounced out of my grasp and landed on the floor of the truck. I placed my feet down and pressed the palm of my right hand against the ceiling. My left hand snaked down to reach for the precious cargo. I could feel the device on my left foot, but my hand wouldn’t reach. I released my right hand from the ceiling, knowing my balance would be shot to hell, and reached down until my fingers grasped the familiar carbon shell of the laptop.
As soon as I had the PC on my lap, the login screen appeared.
“ I swear, Jamal, I’m switching to Slackware after this.”
“ B, if I weren’t scared for my life I’d crack some serious wise on you for threatening to quit on Ubuntu. But at the moment, there are machines of death and destruction mere feet away and only a sheet of quarter-inch-thick glass keeping them from ripping my neck off my shoulders and sucking my brain from my skull. So you’ll have to excuse me for going lame on you.”
A broken and rotted fist cracked through one of the rear windows of the Hummer. One of the Screamers smashed his head against the now-ruined glass pane and forced his way through the hole. The sound of gnashing teeth and the smell of fetid breath filled the interior of the truck. A thick, glistening string of brown slop fell from the mouth of the zombie and landed on Echo’s shoulder. Her face went immediately pale and her eyes maddening-wide.
“ Apology accepted,” I said, as my finger hit the key combination to fire off the Obliterator. The undead symphony immediately returned in full. The Screamer who’d crossed the glass boundary between the living and the dead panicked at the sound of undead-death and flailed about until the glass sliced through the meat of his neck. For reasons I could not explain, Echo turned and dug her fingers into the hair of the zombie as it continued to thrash. The glass bit deeper into its rotten flesh. Once the spinal cord had been severed, the undead bastard dropped lifeless to the ground. The head fell between Echo’s legs and landed on the floorboard of the back seat. Survival immediately kicked in and Echo grabbed the severed head and tossed it through the hole in the glass.
“ Don’t mess with me, you undead prick!” Echo shouted after the head.
The remaining members of the horror-fueled horde once again scrambled to get clear of the zombie-crushing sound.
I held my breath, waiting for some other tragic twist of fate to befall our little band of brothers and sisters.
“ What do we do
What I really wanted to do was wrap my arms around Jamal and let him know everything would be fine. There was one problem with that wish—I didn’t know if it would come true. Everything was rotting from the inside out. Every plan, every connection, every hope—it all had gone to shit since Jacob was taken from me; Jacob my lover and now Jacob my baby. If I really dug deep into the viscera of my emotions, I’d discover the truth was…I needed someone to reassure me that everything was going to be fine.
The laptop was still in the boot process, the kernel rushing through its processes. For the first time in my life I hated technology; hated it for the fact that without it, we’d be dead. I wasn’t ready to die. Not now, not when I was unmade, un-whole. Out of nowhere, a song slammed into the core of my memory, the lyrics far too apt.
Awake and lift the blindness from your eyes
Stumble forth in this land of newborn irony
Our lives are past, our deaths ahead
Give rise to question
Give alms to the poor masses
Bring to the blinding, apocalyptic sun
A greeting of need and want
The smash of fist and bone on glass yanked me from my musical nostalgia. The Screamers had arrived. The Hummer thrashed about as if it would rock and roll over and give up the ghost.
“ Bethany!” Echo’s fear-induced shriek slashed through the air and assaulted my eardrums.
The laptop bounced out of my grasp and landed on the floor of the truck. I placed my feet down and pressed the palm of my right hand against the ceiling. My left hand snaked down to reach for the precious cargo. I could feel the device on my left foot, but my hand wouldn’t reach. I released my right hand from the ceiling, knowing my balance would be shot to hell, and reached down until my fingers grasped the familiar carbon shell of the laptop.
As soon as I had the PC on my lap, the login screen appeared.
“ I swear, Jamal, I’m switching to Slackware after this.”
“ B, if I weren’t scared for my life I’d crack some serious wise on you for threatening to quit on Ubuntu. But at the moment, there are machines of death and destruction mere feet away and only a sheet of quarter-inch-thick glass keeping them from ripping my neck off my shoulders and sucking my brain from my skull. So you’ll have to excuse me for going lame on you.”
A broken and rotted fist cracked through one of the rear windows of the Hummer. One of the Screamers smashed his head against the now-ruined glass pane and forced his way through the hole. The sound of gnashing teeth and the smell of fetid breath filled the interior of the truck. A thick, glistening string of brown slop fell from the mouth of the zombie and landed on Echo’s shoulder. Her face went immediately pale and her eyes maddening-wide.
“ Apology accepted,” I said, as my finger hit the key combination to fire off the Obliterator. The undead symphony immediately returned in full. The Screamer who’d crossed the glass boundary between the living and the dead panicked at the sound of undead-death and flailed about until the glass sliced through the meat of his neck. For reasons I could not explain, Echo turned and dug her fingers into the hair of the zombie as it continued to thrash. The glass bit deeper into its rotten flesh. Once the spinal cord had been severed, the undead bastard dropped lifeless to the ground. The head fell between Echo’s legs and landed on the floorboard of the back seat. Survival immediately kicked in and Echo grabbed the severed head and tossed it through the hole in the glass.
“ Don’t mess with me, you undead prick!” Echo shouted after the head.
The remaining members of the horror-fueled horde once again scrambled to get clear of the zombie-crushing sound.
I held my breath, waiting for some other tragic twist of fate to befall our little band of brothers and sisters.
“ What do we do
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