The living fought back. With whatever makeshift weapons they could find, including severed body parts and heads.

What had started as a sprawling rumble between opposing groups of demonstrators quickly deteriorated into an out-for-blood free-for-all when ravenous zombies began popping up on both sides and even within the ranks of the riot squad. It seemed to Bobby that a disproportionate number of zombies wore the purple shirts of union thugs. One such unlucky ghoul stumbled along the sidewalk with a teargas canister spewing acrid fog from a big hole in his belly.

Fires broke out. Streets became h.e.l.lishly fogged with smoke and teargas.

Streets ran with blood. With bile. With urine. Feces. Phlegm. Pus. With every kind of bodily fluid there was, including s.e.m.e.n spilled during various instances of rape, gang-rape and all manner of rock-out-with-your-c.o.c.k-out b.u.g.g.e.ry. It was a veritable orgy of carnal degradation and neo-death. Death is the new life, Bobby mused.

He saw it all from the relatively safe remove of the arched balcony of a church tower, one tier below the bell tower. He stood transfixed. Unable to stop watching the carnage. Writing anything in the Devil's Book was impossible. His job now was to witness and remember. Later, he would set it down on unholy paper. What he was seeing now he would never forget, so long as he lived, and probably longer.

A helicopter fell out of the sky and crashed into the side of an apartment building just before noon. There was no fiery explosion, as there most certainly would've been in the movies. Just the impact, and then the flying machine tumbled lazily to the pavement below, crushing a handful of rioters or demonstrators or whatever the h.e.l.l you wanted to call them now.

Cruz figured demonstrators had it about right. Demonstrators at the end of the world. As we know it. And love it. So ... Goodbye to All That. You Can't Go Home Again. But It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleedin'. Look Homeward, Angel, but you can't get there because of this Idiot Wind so all you can do is Ring Them Bells down on Desolation Row and forget those Subterranean Homesick Blues 'cause When The Deal goes Down It's A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall. Bob Dylan and Thomas Wolfe warred in his head, and that seemed to Bobby to be about right, given what was going on round about him.

To remain sane you had to go a little mad.

At noon a U-haul truck came barreling up a street that was supposed to be closed to traffic and slammed into a gaggle of street fighters interspersed with blood-crazed dead.

It was at this moment that the cartoon lightbulb went on in Bobby's head: The ranks of the living-dead crazies were growing exponentially. At this rate, the dead undoubtedly would triumph in the end. It was a mathematical certainty, short of divine intervention, which Cruz didn't expect, not after his tete-a-tete with Satan. The dead had the numbers advantage and it wouldn't take long for this zombie craze (what else could you call it?) to break out of Arizona and spread to other states, even other countries as long as planes remained flying. For all he knew, it could've started in other states as well, if Beelzebub or his minions had gone there with his zombie-making flies.

On the other hand, it seemed fitting that the original outbreak was at the Arizona-Mexico border, the site of so much hostility, hate, fear, envy, violence and specific depravity related to drug cartels, human trafficking and political huckstering. Surely h.e.l.l's dark forces were drawn to such places like flies to s.h.i.t. Surely Satan (Old Nick 'Beelzebub' Scratch himself) loved such sinful symmetry. And if Big Red Riding Hood wasn't lying about G.o.d being the author of civilization's crazy cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k entire, then there it was in a G.o.d-given nutsh.e.l.l.

Zombies Gone Wild. Mankind mostly gone.

In the distance, about a mile from where he stood on the church-tower balcony, a jetliner came screaming out of the sky and crashed into a tall building.

Jet-fuel fireball.

Cruz could easily imagine the sort of onboard zombie drama that likely brought down the plane. How could he not?

He yawned. He was very tired. He could quite easily curl up right here for a catnap.

What's the matter, old man, is this end-of-the-world action boring you?

Was the voice asking the question his or Satan's. In the end, Bobby Cruz didn't figure there was that much difference.

25.

Virulence

Clint was sick as a dog. Sick as a mangy coyote with half its guts hanging out and dragging the ground. Sicker than cancer-ward s.h.i.t. He felt like he was sure as s.h.i.t dying. He said so to Wyatt. But Wyatt didn't hear him. Wyatt was on the floor, delirious and puking his guts up. And from the smell of him, s.h.i.tting his britches.

The world was made of s.h.i.t.

Clint wanted to get up off the bed and look again in the mirror to see what those sores under his armpits and on his neck looked like now. He was afraid to look at the ones he felt in his groin. He sat up, got dizzy and fell back onto the bed. He had already stripped down to his Joe Boxers so all he had to do to check out the sores in his pits was turn his head, lift his arm a little and look. He got up the nerve and looked.

"Jesus f.u.c.k! Gah!" The sores were hideously swollen and leaking b.l.o.o.d.y pus like big infected blisters. And the leakage stank to high heaven. The ugly sores had gone from red, to purple and now to black. Oozing that vile s.h.i.t. Clint retched but didn't hurl, not yet. The steak & eggs breakfast he and Wyatt had had at the Waffle House after they'd stashed the dope was not agreeing with his stomach, and in fact it felt like the breakfast was eating him.

Feverish, aching, coughing.

"Dying," he said in a terrifying rasp. Because of that f.u.c.king zombie mule with those silver cylinders in his backpack that looked like hardware from a sci-fi movie, the cold shiny ones that always contained Very Deadly s.h.i.t.

f.u.c.king terrorist!

Clint clumsily grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand, flipped it open and touched up his mother's number. His thumb made a b.l.o.o.d.y smear on the touchpad. f.u.c.k that. Call 9-1-1. No! You can't do that. Not with that bag of dope in your room. s.h.i.t! Oh s.h.i.t, I just did. s.h.i.t myself. Mom!

He hit SEND. No answer. She always answered. Where the h.e.l.l was she? Her car was still in the driveway. Here he was, still living in the little cinderblock bunkhouse in his mother's backyard, a grown man of twenty-one f.u.c.king years.

And that's all the years you get, numb nuts. All because you and jerkoff over there on the floor decided to cowboy up and go outlaw on the border. f.u.c.k me!

He wanted to get in the shower and wash this oozing s.h.i.t-bloodpus off himself. Escape the stench if he could. But he knew he couldn't. Couldn't make it, not even if he crawled to the shower stall, which was no more than a hearty fart's distance away. As a f.u.c.king crow flies. Or farts. Crowfart. Losing my mind. Call mind-one-one. f.u.c.kme-momma-it-hurts!

Someone at the door. Mom? He managed to call out: "Ma!"

The doork.n.o.b rattled. Had he locked it? No. It was swinging open. Somebody just standing there. Mom! Thank G.o.d. She shuffled into the room. Shuffled? Mom didn't shuffle, unless she was soused on Johnnie Walker Black Label. This was not good.

Clint said, "Mom, I'm sick."

She said nothing. Just shuffled forward, coming toward his bed.

"Take me to the hospital," he said. "Bad sick."

He retched. Vomit gushed from his mouth and nose. He rolled onto his side, coughing to keep from choking on his lumpy puke.

Mom shuffled.

Clint puked.

Mom shuffled.

Clint panicked when he saw her face. It was pasty white, her smoker's wrinkles deepened in shadow, her eyes cloudy with deaddog fogginess. There was a blood smear across her mouth, skewed like lipstick applied by a drunken hand.

Mom was a f.u.c.king zombie.

"Mombie," he said, giggling stupidly, deliriously.

The rifle. In the corner of the room. If he could make it all the way over there ...

He scooted to the edge of the befouled bed but he was too slow and it was already too late. His mother fell upon him with all of her two hundred pounds and sank her teeth into his painfully inflamed groin.

He screamed.

She ripped and tore with her teeth. She chewed his flesh and slurped the brackish b.l.o.o.d.y stew pouring out of him.

Black blood. Black Death. Dead mother.

"Wyatt!" he screamed. Clint was too weak to fight off the mombie, and all he could think to do was call on his friend to help him. Save him. But Wyatt was probably weaker than he was.

G.o.d it hurts! Killing me.

But wait.

Wait, what?

Wyatt was getting up. Thank you Jesus, he was up on his feet. Shuffling toward the bed.

Wyatt elbowed Clint's mother aside, bent down and chomped into Clint's throat with his picture-perfect teeth, devouring his friend's final scream.

26.

Out of the Box

Pedro felt the world turn upside down and rolled with it because that was all he could do. Over and over the truck tumbled, finally crashing into something big enough to stop it.

And Pedro was out of the hatbox, his mouth ending up miraculously close to the neck of the hombre who'd hacked off his head with the machete.

There was a G.o.d after all!

Pedro worked his wrecked jaw just enough to inch his head closer to paydirt. He didn't know if the crash had killed the dude or not. He didn't care. He was going to eat out his throat. He worked his mangled jaw. Snapped his teeth, though they were badly out of alignment. His lips brushed the man's jugular. A pulse!

Pedro bit into the warm flesh and drank deep.

It didn't matter that the blood he imbibed immediately dribbled out of his neck by way of his dissected esophagus. It was the sweetest drink he'd ever had.

27.

Jake Moon Snake Rides Again

Jake Moon Snake took a hit of tequila, set the bottle between his legs and then gunned the Mustang down a stretch of Oklahoma highway not far from Anadarko, steering with his right hand while drawing a bead with his left on the sudden target of opportunity. He wasn't a natural lefty but he was getting pretty d.a.m.n good at picking off deadheads with the .357 S&W Magnum snugged in his left fist.

Few things in life were more important to Jake than keeping his Magnum and his Mustang in good working order, well-oiled and loaded.

His new thing in life was shooting deadheads in the face. Maybe you couldn't kill these zomboys and zombabes with headshots like in all the horror flicks but if you blew their jawbones apart they wouldn't be eating anybody. Jake figured he was doing his civic duty with his drive-by roadkill shooting.

Wasn't like he was actually killing anybody. The deadmeat d.i.c.kheads were already dead. No harm, no foul. Still, he worried sometimes that he was enjoying it too much. But tequila kept his worries at bay and kept him as well-oiled as his Magnum and Mustang. Even so though, he could never quite shake the feeling that that creepoid eye up in the sky was watching him extra close. Keeping an eye on him. Judging him.

The Mustang was a vintage 1965 red beauty with a rebuilt engine. The Magnum was a monster with a scary-long Dirty Harry barrel. The tequila wasn't top-shelf but it did the job just the same.

He glided over into the opposite lane and fired when he was less than ten yards from the target.

It was a good hit. The zomboy's face blew apart, the lower jaw suddenly just gone. The dead dude kept on walking. Jake saw this in the rearview and gave a little salute with the smoking barrel to the brow. "Walk on, freakoid," he said.

Several miles later he came upon a couple of hitchhikers. Boy, girl. Young, scared. Scared to death the zomboids would find them and eat them. Jake wouldn't have stopped for them but for his soft heart. You grow up soft when your Mom and Pop are hippies who have their kid (namely Jake) too late in life and give you a groovy name like Jake Moon Snake and proceed to fill your head with every counterculture cliche in the book. Peace, Love & f.u.c.k the Man! Kick out the jams! Up against the wall! And while you're at it, how about some of that far-out free love and some trippy-dippy acid.

When he was old enough to figure out the contradictions, Jake called Bulls.h.i.t! How can you be into peace and love while you're starting the revolution? Besides that, you're both too late. All this hippie s.h.i.t ended when the war in Nam did. The revolution went undercover into the heart of America and now the radicals are running the government. Congrats on that. Now we're all f.u.c.ked, the whole freaking world. G.o.d is dead and the dead are on the move, taking over and looking to eat us for fast food.

Still and all, Jake didn't hold any of that too harshly against them now that he was grown and they were dead (really dead). He dug the nomadic life and staying mostly on the road. And his name was pretty cool most of the time, like now with these two young hitchhikers.

Amanda and Todd. They wanted to know if Moon Snake was an Indian name.

"Native American," Jake corrected them, pretending to be PC. "And yeah, it is." Thinking: naive American. He might have a little Hopi in his blood, but he doubted it.

He laughed to himself. He gave them the romanticized version of his personal story. He left his home in Tombstone when the world went into Dead & Gone mode, took his act on the road and became a road warrior for the Truth, Justice and the American Way. Right, like Superman. No way to stay in Arizona, not unless you were dead.

Arizona was Ground Zero. Arizona was Arizombie. Zomboid Central. Stick a giant fork in it, it's done.

Jake was making his way back east, back to his Florida roots (his roots never went that deep anywhere, but he figured that when the powergrids failed he would fair best in a warm clime). Gasoline was going to be a problem too. Staying on constant move like a shark took a lot of gas. His bada.s.s 'Tang was a thirsty guzzler. He would need an out-of-the-way homebase, a place to keep a s.h.i.tload of full canned gas and guns and ammo. Not to even mention dried and canned food and bottled water out the yin-yang. There was going to be a lot of gasoline left in underground tanks after the power dried up and Jake was going to have to figure out how to get it out of the ground and into the 'Tang's tank.