Dawn of the Power Walkers

They were easy targets. Teenagers- too scrawny for their leather jackets, loud and careless. The three of them were grouped around one of the many rusted cars on the side of the highway, gas pooling in the plastic container at their feet.

​

And then- a rustle in the bushes. The teenagers looked up, hands flying to the pistols holstered at their hips. From amidst the dense foliage, an arm emerged. Then a leg. Then a face. Skin sagging and rotting like an egg left out too long on hot pavement. Knees soft and crooked. Eyes both wide and vacant, searching without seeing anything at all. 

​

The zombie staggered towards the teenagers, grunting as his feet dragged across the scraps littered along the verge. His hands were outstretched, drool gathering in the corners of his moldering, cracked lips as he set his sights on his next meal.

​

The teenagers’ mouths fell open… and they laughed.

​

“If you can catch me, you can eat me!” The one with an eyepatch cried, leaping forward into the zombie’s path. The creature lumbered towards him, but the boy stepped deftly out of the way, blowing a huge raspberry in what was left of his face. “Don’t waste your bullets on Draggers, boys. Save ‘em for the real threats.”

​

 

After a short, pitiful chase around the car, the zombie returned to the woods. What little moisture his shriveled cells were able to conjure was gathered in thick, mucus-y pools under his eyes. He sniveled, the worm that gave him his name, Worm-Nose, bobbling in and out of his nostril.

​

“Teenagers mean,” Worm-Nose grunted, joining a second zombie behind the trunk of an old, dead Oak.

​

“No brain?” the other zombie, Pinky-Rot, asked. 

​

“No brain.”

​

Something in Pinky-Rot’s chest stirred as she stared at Worm-Nose’s quivering lip. It wasn’t the only time she’d felt this. At first, she’d thought the stirring thing was maggots. But the cavernous hole in her chest allowed her to see straight through to her decaying heart and there were no thrashing white bodies there. For some reason, she felt the urge to wrap her arms around Worm-Nose. Maybe she wanted to eat his brain? That wouldn’t be enough sustenance for even a light snack, she thought. And then there was that wriggling thing again, tickling her heart, gnawing at her throat.

​

“Teenagers always mean,” Pinky-Rot said. She wasn’t sure why she said it, but it felt right. She saw vague images of bubblegum in long, brown hair, folded up notes passed through classrooms.

​

She shook her head. The images were gone. Only the pounding need for brain remained.

​

“Us not scary now,” Worm-Nose grumbled. “Too dumb. Too slow.”

​

“Remember old days? Pinky fall off and big gun men scream?” Pinky-Rot waggled her decaying stub at Worm-Nose. 

​

He gave a half-hearted smile. Or maybe it was whole-hearted. It was hard to tell with his atrophied muscles. “Times good.”

​

“Times good.”

​

They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the birds chirping, the teenagers shouting and jeering as they siphoned their gas. 

​

“Worm-Nose,” Pinky-Rot began. “You remember before life?”

​

“Before dead mean?” Worm-rot gnawed his flaky lip. “Remember nothing. Always dead maybe.”

​

“Maybe.” Pinky-Rot shrugged. “But remember things sometimes. Remember air. Big air. On arms and face. Remember move, like this.” With great effort, Pinky-Rot bent her arms until they rested at 90-degree angles by her sides. Slowly, she slid them back and forth in opposite directions.

​

Worm-Nose’s brow furrowed. “Why move that when hands out mean closer to brain?”

​

“Not sure but remember air. Remember… fast.” Pinky-Rot blinked, her vision momentarily filled with racing numbers against backlit screens. “Fast, yes. Arms like this and legs…”

​

She shuffled forward. Her feet dragged across the forest floor. No, that wasn’t right. Not sliding but…

​

Slowly, she lifted her foot from the ground. She felt the bones creak and sigh. Her other leg wobbled and buckled against the weight. She brought the leg back to the ground. 

​

“Worm-Nose think you ate bad brain. Caught case of stupids.”

​

But Pinky-Rot barely heard what he said. The stirring feeling in her chest had spread to the ends of her fingers, the tips of her toes. She remembered shoelaces twisted between fingers, hard ground beneath padded feet. The smell of a summer breeze racing by her. Sweat sticking to the tender hollows of her skin. “Lift leg, Worm-Nose. Then lift other. Like this.”

​

She demonstrated the action, bringing her left knee up and down, then right knee up and down.

​

With a grunt, Worm-Nose followed her lead. A couple toes broke off, but otherwise he repeated it well.

​

“Now do arms and make walk while lift.”

​

Worm-Nose shook his head. “Cannot do! Too much.”

​

“Must try. Teenagers mean, us cry. No want bad feeling in chest more times, Worm-Nose. We show strong.” And as if the summer breeze had swept in and possessed her own hollow, rotten body, Pinky-Rot lifted her legs, glided her arms, and moved forward.

​

The result was unmistakable. She’d moved faster. Faster than she ever had before. Granted, she would still be outpaced by a blind, one-footed squirrel, but the stirring feeling shifted into something that bloomed and swelled in her chest.

​

Worm-Nose gasped. “Pinky-Rot, you move almost like human!”

​

Pinky-Rot turned back to Worm-Nose, grinning with her mouth full of Swiss cheese teeth. “We scare teenagers now.”

​

The worm bobbled out of Worm-Nose’s nostril as he stared at her, expression falling. “But not enough fast.”

​

“Teenagers not know that. Us fake until we make.”

​

“Make what? Brain stew?”

​

“Not sure. But words feel right.”

​

 

The teenagers stood huddled around the pickup truck, a long line of gas trailing their path from car to car. Stubs of cigarettes stuck out of their mouths, puffing gray clouds into the hazy dawn. 

​

“How long ‘till our next raid?” moaned the red-head, twisting the barrel of her gun. “It’s been way too long since I shot anyone.”

​

“Afternoon’s free,” the eyepatch one said. “We can make a whole day of it. Take hostages and everything.”

​

“Sounds awesome,” the third, heavily-bandaged one said.

​

There was a rustle in the bushes. 

​

Eyepatch groaned. “Don’t tell me that idiot’s back. With all the brains they eat you’d think they’d grow a couple smarts.”

​

He strutted to the edge of the highway and whistled. “Go on. Shoo, shoo.”

​

From amidst the dense foliage, an arm emerged. Then another. Then a leg. Then another. Then a face. Then another.

​

The two zombies shot out from the bushes, arms bent at their sides, legs carrying them quickly across the grass.

​

“I’ve never seen Draggers move so fast,” Red-Head said, jolting up. “Are they… power walking?”

​

“I’m not sticking around for this shit,” said Bandages, taking off with the red-head.

​

Eyepatch stumbled back against the car, but it was too late. The zombies’ soft, rotten feet crushed through the grass right to his side. 

​

As Pinky-Rot brushed by him, she remembered the feeling of ribbon giving way to her arms, a crowd cheering, a gold circle dangling from red, white, and blue straps. She could almost feel the weight of it around her neck as she sunk her teeth into the boy’s tender skull. And although she knew her heart had shriveled and died long ago, as the boy screamed and squirmed beneath her grasp, she remembered what it felt like pounding against her rib cage, adrenaline shooting through her veins. And this, this was a feeling she had a name for: Victory.