Twisted Beyond Recognition Box Set by Nicky Drayden

Author:Nicky Drayden [Drayden, Nicky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nicky Drayden
Published: 2014-10-20T04:30:00+00:00

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YOU HAD ME AT RARRRGG

BY NICKY DRAYDEN

First Published by Shimmer Magazine, 2010

Few folks know that zombies prefer cat brains over human ones, cats being a smidge smarter and all. Problem is cats are just so damned quick. Then again, few folks know anything these days on account of there just being two of us left. And I can't rightly call myself human anymore, now can I?

Dr. Arbuckle performs last-minute tests on the machine as I watch. She swats me away when I get too close. Not in a mean sort of way, but like Renée used to when I'd lift the lid off the stew pot to sneak a taste. Way back then, before Renée got the side of her head all chewed up. Back then, when I still ate stew.

"I'm nearly done," Dr. Arbuckle says to me. She stands up from the instrument panel and the light from the fluorescent lamps hanging overhead hits her just right. Strands of sweaty hair cling to her face. She's beautiful and I tell her so.

"Rarrrgg!" I say, but she never understands. She treats me real good, though. We've got a sort of unspoken contract, her and me. She promises to catch me stray cats with those contraptions she's set up about town, and in return, I promise to keep her in good company. And to not eat her.

"June sixth, 2041," she says adjusting the dial on the machine. "That should give the world enough time to mount proper defenses."

"Rarrrgg!" I agree. That's two months before the first confirmed case of the Rochester flu, which came out of nowhere and killed over forty-eight thousand in just a few weeks. Six months before the deadly mutation of the virus that now crawls through my veins. Eighteen months before mankind stares into the hungry jowls of extinction.

Dr. Arbuckle works herself into a straight tizzy, stuffing a small duffle bag with test tubes and pages and pages of her chicken-scratch formulas. I try to shuffle out of her way, but I never move fast enough.

"Steven!" she yells, giving me a bump with her hip. "A little room, please?"

That's what she calls me when she's frustrated. Most often, it's just Steve, or sometimes Stevie when she's feeling sweet on me. My real name's Chet, like I've tried to tell her, but yeah...

It's a good thing we found each other when we did. I'd smelled the sweet scent of her brain--must have been from thirty miles away. That's plenty far when you top out at a quarter mile an hour. I remember it clearly: her scavenging the local grocery for scraps. Me scavenging for her. Probably the last two survivors left on this war-torn planet.

She shot me six times before her bullets ran out. Blew my left arm straight off, too! But then our eyes met, and my fetid heart fluttered. I led off with one of my old pickup lines. "If I told you you had an amazing body, would you hold it

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