Our Living Funeral Read online

  The red haired man, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, suddenly lifted an index finger. “What if we pull the emergency brake? The conductor will instantly be notified that something is wrong,” he said.

  Riley shook her head, scratching at her skin. “The emergency brake should only be pulled when we are beside a platform,” she argued. “If we pull the brake now, we will be stuck in this tunnel and police won’t be able to reach us.”

  Nancy frowned up at the ceiling. Above the sound of the teenager’s sobs, she heard a faint tinkling sound, like the first sprinkling of rain on a window. The train was still underground, enveloped in a tunnel of concrete.

  The teen opened her mouth to speak, but Nancy shushed her, holding her hand up in the air. “Hold on,” she said. “Do you guys hear that noise? What is that?”

  Everyone sat still, their eyes unfocused as they concentrated on the sound.

  “Where is that coming from?” Riley asked, looking out the window behind her.

  Within seconds the noise became louder. Nancy and the other passengers watched in horror as pieces of glass fell from the cracked window of the emergency window. The sick man had somehow realized that the window had been broken, and was trying to crawl through.

  “Ahh!” the Asian man cried and stood up from his seat. He grabbed onto the teen’s black lacy shirt and pulled her with him towards the other end of the car as she screamed.

  Within seconds, the black man was back on his feet, frantically rapping his knuckles against the emergency door the blonde man had gone through. “Open up!” he cried. “The man is coming in, open up!”

  The passengers of the train looked at him and then to the blonde man. He sat in the first seat beside the emergency door, adjusting the collar of his shirt nervously. He was shaking his head, speaking to his fellow passengers. None of them looked happy, but they each nodded their heads, keeping their gaze down at the ceiling.

  They weren’t willing to risk their own lives to save anyone else.

  “What do we do? What do we do?” asked the olive skinned woman, clutching at the seat in front of her with white knuckles.

  “I…I’ll try to take care of it,” said the red haired man. He fished into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a Swiss army knife.

  The sick man had already burrowed through the window, seemingly not concerned that shards of glass were digging into his skin as he crawled through and fell to the floor head first. He growled and stood up again, looking at the passengers of the train with a hungry look in his eyes.

  The red haired man clutched at his small knife and took a deep breath. With a noise of resolve, he ran forward, raising the knife up high above his head in a striking motion.

  The freckled man sunk the knife deep into the man’s neck as he bent forward, sinking his teeth into his forearm. Blood began to spurt from the knife wound, but the sick man still didn’t seem to notice. He used the weight of his body to pull the red haired man down the ground. Hearing the man’s screams made bile rise in Riley’s throat.

  Nancy took the steps to go from one side of the train to the other, hovering beside the black man. “You’re the strongest one here, do you think you can break one of the side windows with your feet? We could get onto the roof!”

  The man nodded and turned, raising his right black boot towards his waist. He gritted his teeth together as he kicked out against the glass over and over again.

  “Oh god,” the teenaged girl said, watching the red haired man scream and struggle against the sick man’s mouth. She bent over and vomited on the floor at her feet.

  Riley stared at the knife, which still protruded from the sick man’s neck as he continued to attack the freckled man. “Everyone, pull out anything and everything in your pockets and bags that could be used as a weapon” she ordered.

  Nancy looked down at her purse, surprised to see that it was still securely on her shoulders. She dug into the soft brown leather, feeling around until her fingers felt the long metal nail file she always kept in there.

  The goth teen took off her spiked collar and wrapped it around her fingers so the spikes faced outward.

  Riley had never liked purses, and typically carried her ID and phone in her jeans. She felt the outsides of her pockets, but the only thing she had on her person was a blue Bic lighter.

  The overhead lights shut off as the passengers continued to search through their belongings. There were small yellow colored lights every few feet in the tunnel, but the car was mostly dark.

  Nancy peered through the darkness, watching as the sick man continue to ingest the freckled man. His victim had stopped moving and making noise…

  She let out a noise of despair and turned her attention back to the black man, who grunted as he thrust his boot against the window over and over again.

  “Hurry!” she begged him, frantically waving her arms.

  “I am!” he growled and thrust his foot against the window. The glass finally gave way. It broke into several pieces, some of which fell into the train while others fell out onto the tunnel. Riley could hear some of the shards crunch underneath the tracks of the train cars.

  “Okay,” she told herself and ran to where her mother stood. With deft fingers she snatched the nail file out of her mother’s hand and held it as though it were a knife.

  “Help everyone through the window,” Riley yelled to her. “I’ll take the rear.”

  Nancy shook her head, staring at her daughter by the faint yellow glow. “Absolutely not,” she said.

  “There’s no time to argue, just do it!” Riley screamed back. She waved at everyone toward the very back of the car.

  The black man was already halfway through the window, slowly raising his body up, careful not to scrape himself against the rough cement walls of the subway.

  The Asian man helped keep the teen steady as they stood in front of the broken window. The woman with the olive toned skin had her hands out by the frame, prepared to help the black man in case he lost his balance. Nancy watched as his torso disappeared, then his thighs. All that was left on the frame were his worn black boots.

  “Once I get up there, I will reach down and help everyone up!” he bellowed to the passengers below him.

  He laid his body flat against the metal frame of the L train. The roof had thin grooves etched into the metal, but they weren’t deep enough for the man to hold onto. He stared down the tunnel, trying to grip the train as it began to go around a sharp bend. Despite his strength, he could not find a good handhold on the metal.

  “Shiiiiiiiit!” he cried, as his body began to slip sideways. He dug his fingernails into the metal but they were sweaty and betrayed him.

  Nancy, Riley, and the other passengers stared in terror as the watched the black man’s boots reappear, dangling from the roof of the train. They all tried to reach out for him, but the train swiftly turned, and his body moved with the momentum.

  With one last agonizing cry, the black man lost his grip entirely and flew through the air. Gravity pulled him down until he tumbled onto the tracks…and was pulverized underneath the car that immediately followed.

  “NOOO!” the teenaged girl shrieked, shaking her fists into the air as fresh tears careened down her pale cheeks.

  “Oh my god,” Nancy murmured as she poked her head out of the broken window. Blood was smeared along the bottom of the next car. Her stomach lurched and she forced herself to look away.

  Inside the train, the sick man seemed to be tiring of his meal. Riley stared at his face, studying the way his eyes continued to yellow, and his skin seemed to go grey. “Guys, I think he’s turning into a zombie,” she murmured.

  The Asian man gawked at her from beside the window. “Impossible,” he said. “Zombies do not exist.”

  Riley watched as the sick man licked at the puddle of blood that had grown underneath the freckled man’s body. “I think they do now,” she said.

  The woman with the olive toned skin walked to the neares
t seat and set her black purse down. She rifled through it until she said “Aha!” and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and a pen. In capital letters she wrote INFECTED MAN, PEOPLE DYING, PLEASE LET US IN. Once she was done, she tossed the pen over her shoulder and marched to the emergency door.

  “Hey!” she yelled, and slammed the piece of paper against the window.

  Nancy could make out a few people on the train from where she stood. The blonde man continued to sit in the chair closest to the door. He read the sign and swallowed again. Someone must have said something behind him because he turned in his chair and moved his arms about as though he were arguing.

  The passengers watched as the pedestrians of the other car gestured wildly, and debated. Riley felt dread creep up her body from the tips of her toes as she tried to read their lips. If it had been her, she would have been at that door in the span of two seconds, cranking it open, saving lives.

  It seemed that some people on the train felt the very same. They pointed at the sign, visible tears in their eyes as they yelled at the man in the suit.

  After a few minutes of this, the blonde man moved his arms up and down as if to calm everyone. He spoke for a few minutes and then people began to raise their hands.

  They were voting.

  Nancy tried to count the hands, but it hardly mattered. She couldn’t tell which hands voted for what. What was sickening was how close both rounds seemed to be…

  The blonde man finished counting and nodded his head. He reached into the pocket of his dark grey suit and pulled out his cell phone. He worked his fingers on the screen then brought the phone over to the window. He had it open to a text message which read, SORRY U GUYS COULD BE CONTAGIOUS TOO. MORE DEATH.

  The teen lurched forward and vomited again, splattering her shiny black Doc Martens.

  Fed up, Riley walked to the door. She stared at the blonde man, wishing—not for the first time in her life--that she could set fire by sheer will alone. His mouth was grim, but his eyes were guarded, almost steely as he looked back.

  He did not want this to happen to them. But he was not willing to risk his own life to save anyone else’s, either.

  Riley slowly raised both hands and stuck her middle fingers up. If she was going to die, she was going to die without whimpering.

  She was going to die fighting.

  Suddenly, her mother was beside her, pulling her arms back down. Riley was about to snarl at her, but she looked up at Nancy’s face and knew her mother wasn’t trying to chastise her. Nancy’s eyes were wide but steady as she looked down at her daughter.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I love you,” she murmured, gently putting a hand underneath Riley’s chin.

  “I… I never meant for anything like this to happen,” Riley whispered back, feeling tears begin to well at the bottom of her eyes.

  Nancy looked into her daughter’s green eyes, and knew what she meant. She meant that she never meant to get addicted to heroin. She never meant to cause problems for her family.

  She had never meant to cause any of them pain.

  “I know,” Nancy said, forcing her mouth into a weak smile. “I know.”

  A strange gurgling sound caused everyone to look at the opposite end of the train. The zombie was staring up at them from the meager remains of the red haired man—some fragments of his sweater and a pile of bloody, half eaten organs.

  The zombie gurgled again. Blood oozed from the corners of his mouth, down onto his chin. His eyes were neon yellow in color, and no longer contained any semblance of human emotion in their irises.

  With mechanical movements, the zombie steadily rose to his feet. His eyes trailed from one passenger to another, looking at each as though they were a dish laid out on the dinner table. He stepped through the remains of the corpse, intent on selecting his next victim.

  The passengers huddled together at the other end of the train. The woman with olive skin began to pound her fists against the window, tears streaming down her cheeks as she begged them to open the door.

  The teen girl whispered a prayer under her breath, her eyes closed. The Asian man stood beside her, muttering under his breath in Vietnamese.

  It seemed that everyone was giving up.

  Riley gritted her teeth and walked to the broken window. Carefully she grabbed the largest shard of glass she could find. It looked almost like a thunderbolt, narrowing to a sharp point at one end. She could feel its edges bite into her palm, but she just took a deep breath and gripped it all the more tightly.

  She turned to look at her mother.

  “I don’t think we can take him on alone, but we if work together….”

  Nancy sucked in a deep breath, and looked from the zombie down to the shard of glass clutched in her daughter’s hand.

  “No matter what, I am not getting off this train without you,” Riley insisted vehemently. “Either we work together and try to kill him, or we die trying. We die together.”

  Nancy looked at the resolve in her daughter’s eyes and felt a tear spill down her right cheek. She didn’t want to die, but as she faced her potential—likely inevitable end—she was surprised to find she was not afraid. Her tears were for her daughter, for her courage, for her selflessness. She saw a layer of depth and beauty she had never noticed before, etched into the planes of her daughter’s face.

  At last Nancy nodded, brushing at her tears with an impatient hand. “Together,” she said.

  And she, too, grabbed a large shard of glass.

  They resolved to flank the zombie, hoping having two people approach him would cause him to remain unsure and unfocused. Riley felt as though her heart would leap up her chest and out of her throat at any moment, it pounded so furiously.

  As she stepped forward, a fraction of her brain imagined how things would have pained out if she had had heroin coursing through her veins at the time of the first attack. She would have been dead. She would have been killed and eaten and her mother would have had to have watched it all.

  I’m never getting high again, she told herself.

  “Where should we strike first?” Nancy asked. She tried to keep her voice steady as she walked forward.

  “Let’s gouge his eyes out first,” Riley said. “We will have the advantage if he can’t see.”

  She saw her mother nod in her periphery.

  “On three?” Riley said, looking to her mother. She forced her mouth into a smile, one last attempt at bravado.

  “On three,” Nancy repeated.

  “1… 2… 3!” Mother and daughter said in unison and raced forward, holding the glass high above their heads.

  The zombie growled, clumsily bringing his arms forward. His sickly yellow eyes darted between both of them, seemingly unsure as to who to attack first. It was this hesitation that Riley had been banking on. She cried out as she lunged forward, and swung her arm forward. She used the momentum to gather power behind her strike and thrust the glass deep into the man’s left pupil.

  On the right, Nancy was doing the same thing. She wasn’t as physically strong as her daughter, so she twirled in a tight circle, swinging her arm out wide to strike against the zombie. The glass sunk into his iris with a nauseating noise.

  The zombie howled in pain, taking several steps backward as he frantically waved his arms about. He recognized that he was in pain, but seemed incapable of removing the glass from his eyes.

  “Now, let’s grab them back out and strike him!” Riley cried out. Blood ebbed from her hand as she grappled the glass, but she did not register the pain. Adrenaline coursed through every vein in her body.

  Mother and daughter held onto their shards and repeatedly stabbed them into the sallow, grey flesh of the zombie’s body. They struck at his heart and chest over and over again as he shrieked in agony. His stab wounds grew and spread as they worked, until it became one huge, gaping wound above his ribcage.

  The zombie faltered, his bloody eyes turned toward the ceiling as he began to sway in place. Riley extended one
of her black Chuck Taylor’s and kicked the man until he fell to the ground. His limbs spread out half-hazardly across the brown floor, unmoving.

  Nancy stared down at the zombie, her eyes wide, unable to process what had happened. Beside her, Riley fished into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out the blue Bic lighter.

  “For good measure,” she said and cranked the metal wheel. She placed the flame against the man’s clothing until it caught fire.

  “Look! We are approaching a platform!” the teen girl said, pointing out the window to the left hand side. Sure enough, Nancy could see the platform careening ever closer.

  “Hit the emergency brake!” she ordered, pointing at the red lever beside the main entry doors to the train.