End of the World Afterparty: Part Five

For End of the World Afterparty: Part One, click here. 

For End of the World Afterparty: Part Four, click here. 

 

CHAPTER NINE

Someone turned off the speakers then, and the silence rushed into the void like blood filling a wound. For a moment, it felt like I’d gone deaf. “I’m not dying here with you,” I snapped. Gun still clenched in a death grip, I pushed Jason as hard as I could. He took a step back, palms up as I turned to the others. “You all deserve what happened to him, and you know it.” If I was trying to win them over as allies, this wasn’t the way to do it, but somewhere along the line I’d lost control. I watched myself from a distance, ranting and waving the gun, and I didn’t recognize myself. No one was listening anyway—they were just too afraid to move. When I got home I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain all this to my mom. 

I didn’t realize Ian had been creeping around behind me until it was too late. An arm snaked across my body, pinning my own to my side. He gripped my wrist with one hand and took the gun from me with the other. I tried to resist, but my muscles were sluggish, whether from the alcohol or the fading adrenaline, I couldn’t tell you. “It’s okay, Singh,” he kept insisting as he clicked the safety on and slid the gun into his waistband. “It’s okay, we’re all sorry it happened. But Jason’s right that Filch—Viltch was a liability. Right now we need to focus our energy on getting out of here, instead of getting worked up about something we can’t change. I really hate to say this, but while they’re eating him, they’re more distracted than they’ll be later. This might be our only chance to make a run for the car.” 

I held my breath to keep from hyperventilating or possibly screaming. Across from me, Ann slid to the floor, face white. “Didn’t kill that many people,” she muttered, before blacking out again. I didn’t feel charitable enough to point out that some of us were probably too drunk to make the trip safely. 

“I think some of the zombie blood got on me,” Alana blurted out. Everyone turned to her, momentarily frozen. It was like being outside of my body, hearing my own fears coming from her mouth. “I think I ate some of it, and now I’m turning. I have the Spanish Flu, so my immune system is already weak. I won’t be able to fight it off.” 

Ian cocked his head. “The modern flu is descended from the Spanish Flu, but the Spanish Flu itself no longer exists. You couldn’t possibly have it.” 

“Yeah, you look healthy to me,” Brandon chimed in. 

“That’s what every doctor tries to tell me, but I have it, I know I do. If they’d just perform the right blood tests, they’d see. They’ve been gaslighting me. It’s medical abuse. When I die, my family will be forced to sue them.” 

“Uhuh.” Mr. President nodded slowly, turning to survey us one at a time as he smiled and made the universal sign for crazy. “Should we call the local asylum, maybe see if they’re missing someone?” 

Brandon chose that moment to start shrieking hysterically. “Turning into a zombie,” he yelled. “We’ll shoot you before you turn into a zombie.” He made a grab for one of the guns, but Ian tackled him and put him in a sleeper hold, knee pressed into the small of his back. Despite Brandon’s size, it didn’t look like it took that much effort. “I think you need to take a break, buddy,” he said, watching the bigger man’s eyes slide shut. “I think you need to take a little nap and sleep it off.” 

As if through some telepathic communication, Jason was already there, holding out a fistful of industrial-sized zip ties like they were the most normal things in the world to have on hand. Watching Ian secure Brandon felt oddly like watching my mom prepare a rotisserie chicken, the way she’d truss it up with string to keep its wings from slipping loose and catching fire on the heating element. I felt the sudden, horrible need to cry, and for a moment it was all I could do to swallow back the lump in my throat. I’d shown enough weakness already. 

“Let’s start working on the armor I mentioned earlier,” Ian suggested, looking to Jason for approval. “I don’t think we’re in a good place to hunker down, no offense to your den of iniquity, Jason. Too many windows, not enough material to keep everyone out.” 

Jason shrugged. “If we make a break for it, I’m guaranteed to get some good footage. When you put it like that, who am I to complain? Plus, once we get to my garage, we can swim in my pool.” I didn’t like the gleam in his eyes when he said that; it lacked meaning inside our current context. I had a sudden premonition, then, which I couldn’t put into words, and which I should not have ignored. 

“Okay.” Ian began to pace, stepping over Ann’s prone form. She was awake again, eyes still unfocused. “Let’s see what we have to work with. There’s the couch cushions. We could use the fabric from those. If we line our clothes with the stuffing, that will make it harder for us to move, but I’m also thinking about how difficult it will be for a zombie to bite through a couch, and I’m liking our odds.” 

“Damn, I liked that couch,” Jason said, but he was nodding along. “I have a couple tactical vests lying around. Let me see if I can find them. I’ve got a whole bunch of hoodies, too.” 

For the next half hour, they hastily constructed enough body armor for us all to wear something. Jason, of course, claimed one of the vests for himself. Mr. President grabbed the other, claiming the secret service always made him wear one, and he was indispensable to the nation anyway. Nobody bothered to argue with him. The whole set-up was ridiculous, the idea that we were capitalizing on the zombie’s distraction. Realistically, how could anyone think there was still something left of Viltch for them to be eating at this point? 

Finally, we gathered by the door. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to bruise my sternum, and my legs seemed unsure of their ability to support me. I had the overwhelming sense that I was in a dream, that when I tried to run, I’d find myself barely able to crawl, much less stand upright. In front of me, the doorway seemed like it stood at the end of a long and poorly-lit tunnel. Jason was talking, but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying. 

I wasn’t so sure this was a good idea after all. If I’d been able to get my vocal cords to work, I think I would have spoken up then, said never mind, I’m going to stay behind, we’ll get eaten if we go outside. When I thought about Viltch’s final moments, everything became unbearably real, the concept of my horrific death more a guarantee than a suggestion. Leaving the house this morning, I hadn’t prepared myself for this; I hadn’t known I was signing up for skirmishes behind enemy lines. At the very least, I would have worn my lucky socks. 

Ian must have given the sawed-off shotgun back to me because there it was, gripped in one sweat-slicked hand. In the other, a six-inch blade I had no memory of grabbing. Jason threw the door wide without ceremony, and kicked a zombie in the chest. It went sprawling head over heels and did a backflip off the porch railing, sundress billowing. I caught a flash of yellow underwear as it tumbled to the ground below, and suddenly I was back at school watching the tower of cheerleaders collapse as the boys hooted and whistled. Something zipped past my ear. I heard a wet, sucking gasp, like the last of the water draining from a sink. Blood arced out the back of a little old lady’s head, and then the world returned to me all at once in painful clarity. 

The 911 wasn’t far. I saw the headlights flash as Jason clicked the key fob over his head, unlocking the doors. As if, with the top down, we actually needed to use the doors. 

Before I could advance, I spotted movement on my left. Hands grabbed for me, and I didn’t stop to check if it was someone living or dead before stabbing blindly. When my knife got stuck, I pressed the gun next to it and fired without looking, and after that my knife came loose. 

I bolted down the porch steps—they seemed to multiply beneath my feet—and threw myself into the car, landing directly in Ian’s lap as the others pushed and shoved to cram into the back two seats. Behind us, I heard high-pitched screaming, laughter too, laughter that was its own form of screaming. There was this terrible ripping sound, wet and solid, impossible to process or deny. 

I felt a dense thicket of hands brushing up against the sleeves of the hoodie I was wearing. Even through the barrier of stuffing, they were hard and insistent. I knew there would be bruises. 

The engine wailed to life. Jason sat next to me in the driver’s seat, one hand on the gearshift, the other lifting his gun to fire. It took a couple seconds to realize he was going to shoot Brandon, and that before the bullet even left the chamber, half of Brandon’s face was missing. 

Then the 911 spun in such a tight circle, I could feel the g forces trying to flip us, two wheels lifting in a high spray of gravel as Jason peeled off down the driveway. I felt myself being pulled sideways by those insistent hands. Two or three zombies still clung to the car somehow, trying to drag me out with the weight of their bodies. 

I emptied both barrels, one after the other, as Ian locked his arms around me to keep me in, and then the hands were gone. Everything was gone. I went dark for a while, stuck behind my eyelids, my heart a set of fists against my ribcage. 

I don’t think I passed out, but I came close. Through a haze, I heard someone moaning and someone else letting out short, gasping shrieks. There were quiet voices too—which I couldn’t understand from the depth at which I was swimming—discussing something that existed in a world so far from my own, I could only view it as a distant speck in the viewfinder of a high-powered telescope. When we reached Jason’s garage, I dimly remember someone carrying me inside while I whispered, over and over, “Just like in the video games.” 

I sounded like Ann.  

CHAPTER TEN

Gradually I became aware of the sound of water splashing and voices echoing off an unexpectedly high ceiling. I was lying on a couch, something expensive and uncomfortable, and my first coherent thought was that, apparently, you couldn’t travel very far in Jason’s world without encountering a couch. 

Slowly, I sat up and began removing my layers of protection—Jason’s hoodie with all the stuffing inside it and the pieces of cardboard box taped around my calves. There were teeth marks, though nothing had gone down all the way to the skin. Of that, I made sure. But it had been close—closer, even, than I’d remembered it being. 

Next I grabbed my gun from the coffee table, slipped it into the holster on my leg, and spent another minute searching unsuccessfully for my knife. After that, I just sat for a bit, taking in my surroundings, letting my head catch up to where I was now. When Jason had called it a garage, I’d pictured something built for two or three cars, but this could have held at least six, and that wasn’t including the space taken up by the lounge area and the pool. There was a kitchenette across the way and a door next to it that opened onto a bathroom. And another door further down, that seemed cloaked in some vague menace. Calling the whole set up a garage was a gross oversimplification. 

The square footage of the space rivaled the entirety of Jason’s farmhouse, basement included. In one corner, a pair of desks sat loaded with wires and cameras and computer monitors, surrounded by a forest of ring lights. A large section of open floor was taken up by gym equipment, squat racks, stacks of weights, various machines whose uses I could only guess. My prior experiences at the gym had been limited and unpleasant, and I had a feeling this would be no exception. The wall to my left sported another rack of guns, equally as impressive as the one in the basement. To my right, the wall boasted row upon row of wire shelves lined with boxes and canisters. Even from this distance I could read the too-large handwriting on all the labels, every word written in capital letters, as if Jason could do nothing but shout. Most of it seemed to be MREs and cans of freeze-dried food, along with lines of five-gallon jugs, enough to hold us over for a while. There had been provisions like that in his basement, too, though maybe not as much. It was strange to think of him as such an avid prepper. 

I focused back in on the splashing sounds still echoing through the garage. From my angle, I couldn’t see directly into the pool, but every now and then, Jason’s head surfaced, golden hair streaming water; he looked like someone’s artistic rendering of a god. 

The main bay door creaked from time to time (there were five bay doors in all, but the one in the center was the biggest)—I wanted to think it was the wind, but I could hear the soft scrabble of hands on the other side. Down where the door met the cement, a body lay in a pool of dark, congealed blood, with the back of its head sprayed across the white metal finish like a halo; the iron stink of it seemed to linger at the back of my throat. And then there were the arms, hacked off at the wrists and elbows, jagged edges oozing red. The whole scene played out in my head in horrifying clarity as I tried to reconstruct what had happened during the time I was drifting, the zombies reaching under the door as it closed, the mad scramble to fight them back before they overwhelmed the mechanism and poured inside. 

A TV played in the corner opposite me, the source of the voices I’d been hearing, rising and falling in volume. Everyone aside from Jason was clustered around the screen on oversized bean bag chairs. Brandon was gone, obviously; it was a little sobering, how quickly our number was dwindling. But at least it looked like the rest had made it unscathed. 

To be honest, though, I was surprised to see Mr. President huddled around the TV with the others, when he’d been so adamant about staying behind and waiting for his people to rescue him. What had changed his mind? Maybe to him the difference in location was no great thing—his team would just as easily find him there as here. Or maybe he felt no need to fix the internal inconsistencies of his own delusion. I looked back at the body by the garage door, and then at Mr. President again, and that squidgy feeling in my stomach returned as I made a mental note to keep an eye on him. Nothing good could come from having the dead woman inside. 

“Ah, look who’s awake,” Jason exclaimed, pulling himself out of the pool. For a moment, I expected him to emerge naked, and I fought the urge to clamp a hand over my eyes. Turns out he was wearing boxers, which wasn’t much better. He lingered on the edge as the water dripped down his legs, turning the pink tiles dark like blood, and against my will I found myself eying his exposed skin for bites. When his smile became a smirk, I pivoted sharply, feeling my gorge rise. All I’d seen were bruises or perhaps old hickeys, nothing to indicate he’d been infected. But I couldn’t shake the fear that one of us could have been bitten, that the danger we’d been trying to escape had made it inside with us anyway. There were so many moving elements I couldn’t control, another reason why I needed to strike out on my own as soon as possible. 

Eventually I was going to have to face the music, so I pulled myself to my feet and waited for my knees to stop shaking, trying to remember how long it had been since I’d eaten anything. “Do you have a security system set up around your garage? Can we get a look at what’s happening outside?” I told myself it was a logical precaution. But I was filled with an irrational horror, an image in my mind that consisted mainly of Brandon and Viltch with their faces torn off, sobbing and moaning on the other side of the door, begging us to let them in. 

“I have a couple,” Jason said, but didn’t offer any more information as he dried himself with an oversized towel, keeping his eyes locked on me the whole time. I could tell he wanted me to ask for permission to check them out. Everything about him made me sick to my stomach, and it didn’t help that Alana had turned around to watch us, one step away from actually drooling. There was something dark and twisted crawling around inside the confines of Jason’s skull, and somehow I seemed to be the only one capable of recognizing it, which is probably why he enjoyed intimidating me so much. He liked being seen, regardless of what that meant. 

Instead of asking, I stomped over to the monitors and hit the spacebar to wake them. 

“Woah woah woah.” Jason shuffled after me, awkwardly wrapping the towel around his waist. “Don’t touch my junk.” 

“Wasn’t planning to,” I muttered. Three shots split themselves across the screen; I dragged one of the windows to the second monitor, another to the third, so I could get a better look at everything. Sitting at the desk, watching the gray, hazy security feed, I got a new impression of Jason, a sense that he was more concerned with concealing things than keeping out intruders, I wouldn’t have been able to explain the exact distinction. 

He clamped a hand over mine, trapping it on the mouse. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. No one needs to see what’s going on out there. Are you trying to lower morale?” he asked, staring pointedly at the others. They were still huddled around the TV, watching Night of the Living Dead, which felt pretty bizarre under the circumstances. 

“You’re one to talk—have you seen how that movie ends? Besides, I think morale is already so low, we’ll need to scrape it off the floor.” I flicked my eyes to the zombie lying prone by the door. “Might as well name that dead person over there Morale and keep it as our mascot.” 

 He smirked. “We should all relax a little. What do you say?” Something in his eyes made me feel like a rabbit spotting a fox. I tried to stand but found I couldn’t—he was leaning over me with his chin resting on my shoulder, his hand a prison over mine, palm still clammy from the pool. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say flatly. “I’m not sure any of your ideas are good ideas. The last time we all relaxed, someone died. And I’m starting to get a hangover. Also, get off me.” At least, I hoped that the pounding in my head was from the alcohol alone, and not some sign that I was turning. “We need to focus on getting out.” I eyed the available vehicles—a black G Wagon and an orange Hellcat—gauging the thickness of their frames, their impregnability. The G Wagon was a beast—you could maybe drive over twenty zombies at once, the tires spinning up a slurry of zombie guts like mud, without it phasing her. But I wanted the horses under the Hellcat’s hood, and anyway, she looked like she could stand up for herself, too. 

Thinking about driving over piles of zombies, their heads popping like grapes, made me sicker than ever, and I glanced at the severed hands and arms on the floor. In a way they looked like starfish, or like something you might find crawling on the bottom of the ocean, down where the light never reaches. I imagined them regenerating when we weren’t looking, growing new bodies to replace the ones they lost, converging on us when we least expected it; it seemed only natural. 

I knew about cordyceps, how scientists said the ants under its control were conscious and screaming the whole time as they climbed trees to their doom, as the fungus split open their abdomens and burst out, that it must have hurt a great deal. Imagine being locked in your brain, trapped in agony, reaching for flesh you’d rather die than eat and yet unable to stop yourself. The horror they must have felt, knowing the door was going to crush them and not being able to pull themselves back in time. Or maybe the zombies were relieved when that happened, when Jason and the others hacked off their limbs, maybe they thanked God. 

“I don’t think we’re going to get out,” Jason said. “I think we can call time of death on that dream. But we have enough supplies to last at least several months, and of course there’s what’s at the farmhouse if we decide to go back. More than enough time for the military to sort this out.” He added that last part in a tone of voice that told me he thought the whole thing was a joke. 

I was shaking my head, but he kept going, his hand tightening over mine. “You saw how many zombies were back there, and look,” he pointed at the camera, “there’s at least several dozen more outside. You know what that means? It means the infection is spreading through the population like wildfire, and our best bet is to stay hunkered down and out of the way. We’re safe here. We don’t need to test our odds elsewhere. Why ruin a good thing?” 

It made sense now, the way he talked, throwing out line after line and still failing to form a logically cohesive argument. He was so used to editing his footage and keeping only the best wording, he didn’t need to bother being more than just a rough draft of himself. 

I cut him off before he could keep going, because I could tell he was gearing up for more. “I know you want us to believe we’re safe, but I don’t. As the numbers grow, the government will come to view the situation differently. The more zombies there are in general, the less those in charge are going to care about individual survivors trapped in the disaster zone. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—if this situation keeps getting worse, they’re going to decide that firebombing the county is the most reasonable solution. It’s only a matter of time. Hell, maybe they’ll even nuke us.” 

“And how can you be so sure they’ll do that?” he scoffed. 

“Because if it were me in charge, I’d have pressed the big red button already.” I didn’t know if that was actually true, but it felt true in the moment. When you ignored emotions and morals, it was the most logical course of action, and I attributed neither emotions nor morals to our lizard-in-chief. 

“I, uh, I don’t think there’s an actual big red button,” Ian said, coming up behind us. His tone was guarded, like he was holding something back. 

“It was metaphorical. I was making a point.” I glared in his direction, daring him to say something, to stand up to Jason. I could feel the unstable power dynamic, tectonic plates shifting beneath my feet. If I wasn’t able to do it, I wanted someone else to grab the steering wheel before Jason drove us off a cliff. I didn’t want to be the only voice of reason—already it was exhausting, pitting my mind against Jason’s. I’d seen the edges where the others were fragmenting; Ian seemed like the only other potentially sane person here. 

“I don’t think the government is going to firebomb us,” he said, studying me with something bordering on suspicion. “I think they want everyone to be zombies. They were saying on the news that it was a fungus, but we all know that’s bullshit. They came up with that explanation way too soon, anyway. Remember that this is flu season—everyone’s getting their vaccine. That’s what’s causing this.” His eyes widened with intensity, and I felt my stomach sinking again. “It could be incubating in you right now, as we speak. Did you get a vaccine?” 

“No, I didn’t,” I said slowly. “I’m immunocompromised. I can’t get most vaccines, because—” 

“Ah, a hypochondriac like Alana. Not surprising, but at least this time it’s saved your life. What about you, Jason?” 

“I don’t get sick. I’m the picture of health.” He flexed and kissed his bicep, finally releasing me. “The flu wishes it could vaccinate itself against Jason Vanderbilt.” 

Just like that, my hopes died at the look of triumph on Ian’s face. Whatever sanity he’d exhibited previously, the stress of the transfer must have knocked it loose. “See! You’re here because you didn’t get a vaccine—that’s why we’re all here. All those people outside—they got their jabs like good little sheeple, so the military isn’t going to firebomb us, because it’s not a localized phenomenon like they’re claiming. I bet if we go on the internet right now—Facebook or Reddit—take your pick, you’ll see people all over the world are in the same situation. Everyone who’s ever had a vaccine is likely zombified by now. The World Health Organization was behind this, or else it’s the UN itself.” 

“Then why would they erect a barricade around the area?” I asked, trying to keep the disdain out of my voice. “If the zombie outbreak isn’t localized, a blockade makes no sense.” 

“Ooh, erect, I like that word,” Jason muttered. 

Ian’s eyes got wider, more triumphant. “That’s where you’re wrong, Singh. The barricade is to catch any survivors trying to escape so the government can force them to get the shot, too. Wake up. They won’t be satisfied until we’re all turned.” 

“That’s some bs!” I tried to keep my voice down, to avoid dragging the others into this, so I ended up whisper-yelling. “This is a government snafu, nothing more elaborate than that. Probably one of their bio labs accidentally released a pathogen. They wouldn’t do something of this scale on purpose—what they did with Lyme's disease was bad enough, and obvious too, considering how there’s an alarming number of cases contracted around important government areas. It has to be nanotech.” I realized I was getting lost on a tangent and tried to rein myself in—I was so used to letting myself follow rabbit trails on my streams. “But this would be pushing it too far. They’re not stupid; they didn’t want this to happen, and they’re going to try to end it as soon as possible so they can start sweeping it under the rug. And—what the hell, Mr. President?” My voice rose an octave, and Jason’s head snapped around as he followed my line of sight. “Stop kissing that corpse.” 

“I was doing CPR to see if I could resuscitate her,” Mr. President insisted, looking miffed. 

“You can’t do mouth to mouth if she doesn’t have a mouth anymore. And stop, just stop with the chest compressions. She’s missing the back of her head and half her brain. What on earth makes you think she still has a chance? I can’t believe I have to say this, but dammit, keep your hands to yourself or I will cut them off and shove them up your butt.” 

As Jason doubled over laughing, his towel fell to the floor, revealing his boxers. There was a subsequent thump as Ann fainted onto a bean bag chair and slid to the floor. “Oh yeah?” I yelled, so angry I forgot to be afraid. “Oh yeah, think this is funny, Jason? Put some effing clothes on. Nobody wants to see your dick.” 

Tears streamed from his eyes, he was laughing so hard. “God, I love it,” he said, straightening and putting his hands on his hips. “I’m glad my cameras are rolling. If I hadn’t gotten that on film, it would have been a tragedy.” 

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about what Mr. President was doing or my response, and not knowing made me even angrier. “You think it’s funny?” I demanded, pulling myself to my full height, all five foot four inches of me, my voice so loud it echoed through the room. I knew I probably looked insane and that my shouting was going to attract more zombies, but I’d stopped caring; if I didn’t rage at him, I was going to panic instead. Red was creeping into the corners of my vision. I’d always thought that was something people spoke about in metaphors, not something that could actually happen. “Wait till her blood gets in his mouth and he turns. Pretty soon you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night to find him chewing on your face. Better make sure you get that on camera, too.” 

“Holy shit, you look like that video of the lemming that was going around a while back,” Jason said. “You know, where it’s screeching and trying to scare the dude away, but it’s so cute, you can’t take it seriously. Ian, doesn’t she look like a lemming?” 

“I do not look like a lemming!” I shouted, at the same time that Ian shrugged, and said, “Yeah, she kind of does.” 

“Okay, calm down.” Jason put his hands on my shoulders; they were too heavy, his grip too tight. “I know you’re probably on your period, so all your hormones are turning you into a crazy little lemming, which is adorable and all, but my boy, Ian, and I, we’ve got this. Everything’s under control. There’s probably some chocolate around here somewhere, if you think that might help, you know, with the cramps or whatever.” 

Without stopping to consider if it was smart or not, I hauled back and punched him in the xiphoid as hard as I could. He doubled over, this time gasping for air; somehow I’d knocked the wind clean out of him. When he finally straightened back up, he wasn’t laughing anymore. There was something shark-like in his eyes. “Good, good,” he said, closing the space between us as the anger in my chest drained away, leaving only fear. “I like girls who fight back.” 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Brooks