Last Four Cigarettes
by Andy Adams

   The zombies were attacking. They pressed their mush heads into the windows, clawed with their shredded fingers on the glass, leaving streaks of dark muck. We could smell their stench, a horrible mix of shit and decomposing tissue, and we could hear the sound they made as they lusted after our warm flesh. You've never heard such an awful sound. longing a soft slurping sound.

   There was me, John, Slip, and Art. We were in a house that wasn't ours. Where the owners were, I don't know. There had been no one here when we broke in. Maybe zombies ate them. Whatever had happened to them, we didn't much care. We were taking their house regardless of their fate.

   I'm not going to fill you in on a bunch of boring back story. All you need to know is that not too long ago, the dead started to get up and eat people. I have no idea why. No one does. Some folk say that if we could figure out why this was happening, then we could put a stop to it. But I don't believe that. I don't think anything could stop this.

   Sometimes I wonder why we keep fighting. I wonder why we came into this house and boarded up the windows and doors. If this the end, the irrevocable scourge of mankind, then there's no point in fighting. No point at all.

   But that's what me and my three buddies are doing in this house - fighting. For some strange reason, we‘re still fighting. Just ask our friend Bob. A few zombies tackled him outside of a gas station somewhere in Ohio. We rushed
over to try and help him, but by the time we got there, his intestines were already scattered all over the asphalt. We shot the zombies that were burying their faces in his abdomen, chewing on his shiny digestive tract, but not in an
effort to save him. We knew he was already dead. We just didn't figure he'd appreciate being eaten.

   I think that's what most people are afraid of. Getting eaten. It's not the dying part. Just the part about being eaten. No one wants to be digested. No one wants to turn into zombie shit. Maybe that's why most people keep fighting. Fear of becoming food. But sometimes a person can become so desperate, that they stop caring altogether, and don't really mind becoming a meal for the zombies. These people usually kill themselves.

   Our other dead friend, Derek, he did that. Killed himself. We were all sitting around in some strange house, having a solemn moment, and our friend Derek starts crying. Before long we're all crying. Then Derek goes outside, and we hear a loud shot. We all stopped crying, and just sat there, looking at each other. We knew what had just happened, but no one wanted to go outside and make sure. We didn't want to see Derek with his head exploded. So we just left the house through the other door, and never looked in the backyard.

   The zombies were getting louder, their incessant slurping becoming a wet and rotten cacophony. They pushed on the windows and doors. Eventually, all the force would just break right through the boards we had put up. We could already hear the breaking glass sound of the windows giving way. It was only a matter of time.

   Me and Art were sitting on the sofa, each of us smoking a cigarette. Every cigarette you smoked in these days, you smoked hard. You took long deep hits, as many as you could manage, because you never knew when you might smoke another. And that's what me and Art were doing now; we were smoking those things like there was no tomorrow, because there was no tomorrow.

   We all had shotguns in our hands and shells bulging out our pockets. We stole these guns from some dead hick in Pennsylvania. We'd gone into this house looking for supplies, and saw this redneck laid out on his kitchen floor. This hillbilly had a shotgun cradled in his arms, the barrel nestled against his neck, and the back of his skull was completely blown off, scattered on the wall. There was blood and brain everywhere. My friends had gone searching the
house and found their guns. I took the dead man's gun, and picked a few skull fragments out of the mess. These were for a necklace I was making.

   And now, sitting on this couch with my suicide gun and my bone jewelry, I'm smoking a cigarette like I'm going to die in an hour, and I'm listening to the slurping song of the dead. Breaking glass and cracking wood. We're fucking doomed.

   John and Slip come over to where me and Art are sitting, and they each ask for a cigarette, even though they both quit years ago. Something interesting about apocalyptic situations is that everyone smokes. I give them both a cigarette and then light up another one for myself. And then we smoke.

   This one time, our friend Denver was smoking a cigarette when a zombie came up from nowhere and jumped him. This was before any of us had guns, so there was nothing we could do but watch. So our friend Denver, he was on the
ground wrestling with this zombie, and he jams his lit cigarette into this things filmy eye. You could actually hear a popping sound as this things eyeball popped open and squirted dark pus all over Denver's face. But I guess that zombies aren't fazed much by pain, because this one barely winced before it ripped into his throat, splashing the pavement with blood.

   I look at my three friends, and I wonder what their thinking. After awhile, getting chased by an awful smelling decomposed horde starts to wear away at you. I know I've had about enough. I'm really starting to lose my grip.

   "Maybe we should go upstairs," I say. They shake their heads, and then we all stamp out our cigarettes on the carpet. Me and Art stand up and follow the others up the narrow stairs. Me with my suicide gun and my bone jewelry, I stop in the small landing to look out one of the few uncovered windows in the house. There's an ocean of zombies stretching all the way back to the highway, and I think to myself, how could four people feed so many zombies? I guess those undead fools think there's more of us in here. It'd be kind of funny to see all those hundreds of zombies fighting over the four of us.

   I turn away from the window and join my friends in what was probably the master bedroom. They all three ask for another cigarette, and I take out my pack. Only four left. I hand them out and take one for myself, then we all light
up.

   Once, back around when this all started, we had known a guy named Randy. He was one of those people that seem to get off on chaos and disorder, so you know he was having a hell of a time. None of us really liked him a whole lot, but Randy was a fighter, and we needed someone like that.

   We were out in the country, in one of those scenic woods that you might hear about in a story. We thought we would be safe there. This assumption wasn't based on anything like logic, but its just that nothing horrible is supposed
to happen in such a beautiful place. Bloodthirsty monsters aren't suppose to step foot in wonderland, but real life always seems to work different than fantasy.

   We had a good fire going, and we we're all feeling not too bad, when one of them undead fellers steps in and fucks it all up. This one was looking particularly unhealthy. Half of its face was missing, eaten by worms probably, and you could see the slimy surface of its bisected brain, catching the sunlight and throwing it back in our faces. It didn't have any eyes on its half-head, just one deep red cavern that was still seeping noxious zombie goo. Really, most zombies are just walking dirt clods, with a whole lot of dead and infected looking tissue thrown into the mix.

   This one, it comes up on us from behind, and pounces on Randy with its rotten maw wide open and ready to chomp. It took a good sized chunk of meat out of Randy's cheek, but Randy, he barely seems upset. He got up of the log he'd
been sitting on, and clocks the zombie upside the head, sending a steaming jet of pus out of its ear. I just happened to be sitting on a nearby log with my mouth gaping open, and this oily black zombie gunk lands right inside. I threw up.

   While I'm doing that, Randy is still fighting this thing, still smacking packets of goo out from underneath its skin. He grabs the thing by its shoulders, and I could only imagine how that rotten flesh must feel underneath his fingers. I myself have never touched a zombie. I guess it doesn't bother Randy too much, because he actually takes the thing into his arms, almost hugging it. The zombie takes advantage of its proximity and takes another chunk out of Randy, this time from his shoulder. If you would freeze-frame that moment, you'd probably laugh real hard, what with Randy hugging the zombie, and the zombie kissing Randy's shoulder. You'd say, oh look, how romantic.

   With his arms completely around the walking dirt clod, Randy whips himself around and pushes his weight forward. The two fall to the ground, which is obviously what Randy had intended. But I guess he had forgotten about our enormous bonfire.

   They topple into the fire, and you can see the total look of surprise on Randy's face. He's probably thinking, oh shit, I'm a dumbass. He goes to get up, but there's still this zombie in there with him, who's still pretty hungry. The thing rolls on top of him, and starts tearing into his neck, squirting blood onto the burning logs. The blood starts to sizzle and pop on contact, and you can hear Randy start to scream, but then his larynx is torn away, and all he can do is make these soft gurgling noises.

   We stand there for awhile, but then the smell of burning zombie flesh starts to get to us. We left Randy and his new friend roasting in our nice warm bonfire, and all of us agreed that maybe the woods wasn't such a safe place after all.

   Back in the present, I go over and sit down on a strangers bed in this strange house. Me and my friends, we're all still smoking our last cigarettes, and not a word passes between us. We're all just waiting, waiting for our cigarettes to burn.

   I eye the can of gas that sits in the corner. Earlier, me and my friends had been talking. Serious fucking talk, too. We all decided on something, and then Slip went into this house's garage looking for that can of gas. We weren't sure we would find any, but that didn't really matter. The gas wasn't the really important part. We all four of us already had what we needed.

   I look at my cigarette, and the damn things just about burned down to the filter. I look at Slip, and I say, my cigarettes about done with. He walks over to the corner and picks up that gas can, and there's some kind of air that all of sudden settles down on us, and its really fucked up. There's something about getting ready to burn down your world that really gives things a new slant.

   Slip unscrews the plastic gas cap, and walks out of the room. Me, John, and Art, we're still smoking our cigarettes. Somewhere downstairs, Slip is splashing gas on the drapes, on the sofa, all over the walls, and he's making a trail of it up the stairs. We see him come back in, and I'm wondering how much gas is left in that can. He goes over and dowses the curtains, and then asks me to get up before soaking the bed. This room smells like a filling station.

   Slip throws the can out into the hall, and then there's just the four of us, staring at each other and looking oh so solemn. We all four throw our burning cigarettes onto the bed, and we watch the flames spring to life, swallowing up the bedspread, jumping onto the curtains, singing our eyebrows. It's really very magical.

   I take my suicide gun and raise it up in one arm. Slip steps beside it, grabs the barrel, and holds it level against his forehead. He raises his gun, and John grabs that, holds it level against his forehead. Art grabs Johns barrel, holds it level against his forehead. And me, I grab Arts barrel, hold it level against my forehead.

   If you were to get an aerial view of this, you would see a perfect little quadrilateral.

   So me and my four friends, the perfect quadrilateral that we are, we all look at each other for the last time. We see the inferno that's raging around us, and we wonder how long that blaze will last once we do what we do. Either it burns for along time, saving us from being transformed into zombie feces, or it putters out quickly, giving those undead assholes a nice cooked meal. We'd prefer the former, but either way, it doesn't really matter.

   We count down from four. From three. From two. From one.

   Four triggers are pulled simultaneously, but none of us four have the time to even register the shot before our brains make an exit through our exploded skulls.

©2004 Andy Adams