16. Holmesburg Prison

Author Note: A lot of my inspiration for this blovel entry came from this site's photos of Holmesburg Prison. The photo is from Amanda Capasso. 

Yeah. I had this seventh grade math teacher. Thought he was a tough guy, took us on a field trip to Holmesburg. Check it out kids. Hallways spoked off a center hub, each hallway lined with cells. A massive three story wall around the place. "You act a fool, this is where you’ll be," teach said. "Or some place like it." I looked around, thought about the joints I smoked, the video games I played. Yeah, whatever. It didn’t seem scary, and it didn’t seem lonelier than my life.

It was the perfect place to become a jailer for blood-mouths, to wait, against all hope for one of them to maybe turn back. 

It’s a journey up there. The streets are almost empty, only occasional packs of VBs less interested in me than rats. The blood-faces may be seeing what I’m seeing. There are no people left. If there are no people there is nothing to hunt. Will they start hunting one another?

A group of blood-faces come by while I’m walking a block of row homes, via the roof. That way I can see. I drop down and watch them. SHIT.  I think it’s Angie, the hair color is right. It’s a small VB too. Then I see the jaw, it’s a hard line. Not her. The face. Not her.  But I’m shaking and then I fall down on the roof and wish I believed in praying to say I was sorry. Sorry, Angie. Sorry, VB that’s not Angie. Stop being a little bitch, TC. You got shit to do.

The prison is the same fucked up place. I don’t notice the loneliness because that’s everywhere, until I start reading the walls.Stuff my twelve year old self didn't see but I see it now. I see it because its humans trying to say something.

I wish Alisha was here.

A lot of things about wanting pussy. That was lonely too.

A picture, careful details, rear view mirrors, wheel wells, the swerving lines of a Corvette. Must have been a lot of work on these pocked walls.

I didn’t see the kid there. Motherfucker. Why a kid there?

I’m sorry, mama. I fucked up. He couldn’t say it to her. I guess that’s why he wrote it on the wall, an unsaid confession, shit that would never be forgiven.   

I feel an echo through time. These men wanting to speak to someone so hard, to say some shit like, I love cars, I love pussy, I love Malik. Not able to speak they wrote it on the walls, and nobody cared, until I came here.

I’m not that different. I carry some shit for which there is no forgiveness, because all the priests, every human who could either say, “That shit is terrible, but we all do bad shit,” or “It’s okay,” or, “Even though you are terrible, I like you anyway,” is gone. 

A writing on another wall. I’ve lost track of time because these voices, these wall scribbles make me feel like I am hearing a human voice.

Worse than dragons, the many tearings of the end!

Not one thousand lions, not a million hyenas, the breaking of all!

God. NO. NO NO. Hold BACK. 
He listens not.

The END cometh, cometh COMETH!!! 

Theses scrawlings are the shape of wolf teeth, savagely slashed in crayon. The vicious lines remind me of the VBs.

I bet the guards and the inmates hated the writer. "Crazy Bob, shut the fuck up. We’re trying to sleep." 

"I see the end," he screams. "All is going to end." They punch him, but he still speaks. They stick him in solitary, but he still sees. Still cries out. He knew about the blood mouths, the All-Fucked Era. Weird shit.

I put U-locks and stuff on the gates and prison cell doors, it takes some days. Walking around I feel their ghosts, the men who fought for their freedom and died in the riots, and the men who fought for order and justice and died in the riots. I like the haunting. Talk to me in my sleep, dead men. At least it's conversation.

I need that shit.

15. Zoo?

             They’ve got a lot of names. VBs. Viral bodies or beasts. That was what one scientist called them, in the first few days and it stuck. I’ve heard them called wolf-men, The Enraged, and the soulless. I believe that I am the foremost expert on their behavior living. Of course, I’m the foremost expert on everything ‘cause everyone else is dead.

Note: Click on the photo to see a series of Amanda Capasso photos that illustrate Philly is kind of in its own pretty little apocalypse right now.

What else about them? They have some kind of intelligence. I’ve heard the theory, from survivors, back when there were some, that each VB didn’t serve itself, or it’s hunger, but that they served the virus. Like they will more often than not bite a victim, gnashing their teeth and bloody gums into them, and then not eat them. The victim has only a short time, depending on the person, between fifteen minutes to three hours, before he’s a VB too.

That intelligence is the problem with trying to capture them. It’s a big complication. I thought

long and hard about where to put them. I need to be able to isolate them, and monitor them. I started thinking about prisons. That is what a prison is, right?

What about the zoo? It’s the same thing, except for animals, and it’s close. I start creeping South house to house. I avoid a few packs, just lay low, when I run into something that you don’t see too much. It is a pack, and out in front of it is a dog. A VB dog. I get low in the house I’m in, just ducked down so none of them would see me, but then I hear him bark a couple times.

Most animals realized that people had turned crazy and they ran for it. They got away. Some, usually dogs, didn’t catch the change. You know dogs. They love people no matter what. Just imagine poor Blackie running up to his master, wagging his tail- and then he gets bit.

Those dogs turned into VB dog. I’d only seen a few when we were with the Baptist Army. What they did was they came at you, super hard. They also could sniff you out way better than humans. Of course, we weren’t really hiding when we were in the Baptist Army. We waited for them and we killed- so we were ready when barking dogs came through the door.

When we where waiting there, baiting them, fully armed, there was usually a person in reserve. Usually a smaller person or a less fit person, like myself. I was still chunky then. That person was armed with a gun, and anytime the fight got crazy they were to fire. The rule was, the second a dog comes in, shoot them. They are too fast to go hand to hand combat.

Jim also said to me once, “If the human VBs are hunting you,  you evaluate. You look at your chances, and if they’re okay, you fight. If they’re bad, try to run away and hide. If a dog is after you, you got to kill that fucker. He can smell you no matter what, so there isn’t any hiding.” I kind of hoped it never came down to that.

The dog is barking, getting closer, to the window, I can tell by the volume. I already got Ackee out, in my hand. The window is got no glass so he’s going to come right in. I stand up, figuring I want to get a good swing, and human VBs know, from this things barking, that a normal is here. No use hiding. He’s big, some kind of German Shepherd, and as he comes up the steps I see his teeth, blood-drenched, virus ridden, snapping with each bark, and then he’s flying through the window.

I swing too early, too nervous. He sees the many tines of Ackee flying at him and twists in the air. It was weird, like this thing turned in midair. He lands, squares on me. Snarling, darting forward and back. I’m shitting my pants ‘cause I know his human buddies are seconds away. We circle there, in the rowhome living room, jumping over broken chairs, slipping on magazines about how to go on a diet and die your hair red, until my back is toward the stairs. I back up them,  Ackee out in front of me, toward the second floor.

He leaps at me. I meet his teeth with a stabbing motion from Ackee, but ‘cause the weapon was already out in front of me, I don’t do much damage. In fact, the only difference is that now more blood is pouring out from his mouth, and if anything, he’s angrier, his snarling filling the house, his body low toward the stairs, cocked like a pistol.

I have to act now, time is not on my side. I hear them piling through the windows below, screeching. I lift Ackee to get a proper swing. He springs.  His teeth are inches from my belly. I bring my knee up, hard into his chest. As he twists in the air, I bring down Ackee. It catches and buries in his hind-section. No babies for this hound. Then I bring it up and hammer it into his head.

A male human VB is charging up the stairs. “Come on, blood-face!” I slam Ackee accurately, with one swing. He tumbles down. Philly row-home stairs are narrow, and this gives me a second. I run down the second floor hall toward the back room. It’s got a window, glass still in.

Oh well.

I run and leap into it. Full commitment- CRASH- tinkle tinkle. They’ll be after me. I leap fences, and find a house with a basement to hole up. They screech around for a while, give up, go back and eat the dog and the man.

As I’m hiding, I think about the zoo. And I think what if-right, a hyena got bit? They’re locked in cages, they got nowhere to run. Those things can bite through anything. Or worse. A lion. Me and Ackee vs.  a lion, with the virus? I’m not going to win. An elephant? Imagine being chased by an elephant with a virus. Those things can run thirty miles an hour, and throw trees. Of course, could an elephant bite you? Maybe they got blood on the tusks. Those are technically teeth, you know.

So when I thought about all that, I decided to stay away from the zoo.

10. Plan

So life became boring. Not like a little boring. Like, I’m about to fucking crush my head with a concrete block boring. I realize that it’s ‘cause I’m alone and that man is a social beast. I’m not satisfied living alone.

But really I had a whole other reason which was way more complicated, but I can’t tell you about that. I’m working up to it. That reason is the one that makes me do it- because it involves more than necessary risk.  

Part of the plan was to find some people for myself. I already told you that the VBs sometimes come out of it. They look around, and it’s like, “What the fuck is going on?” Like when a sleepwalker wakes up, or a possessed person get’s unpossessed.

The thing is, and I’ve seen this multiple times, the other VBs know. Most times it’s kind of obvious when a pack of naked humans are hunting, and one stops and looks around with an expression like, “Why are you guys naked? Why is there blood on your teeth?”

What would you do? You’d cry, and scream, maybe run, maybe fight. You wouldn’t just keep marching along like everything is okay. So the VBs know pretty quick, and they go for this person so fast, so vicious. They always kill them and eat them all the way. It’s fucking terrible to see. One second you wake up in this broken eggshell city, and the next you’re being eaten alive. They never bite these people, with an infecting bite. No. Kill them.

Jim said he thought he was immune, because he already had it. He thought that was why they killed them. They knew they were immune.

There was one guy at the Baptist Army who told a story about it. He woke up and he was sleeping in a pile of raggedy humans. There was a smell. It was the human animal. Sweat, sex, dirt. He felt really weird but he was so disoriented he didn’t move. He watched. And the others started stirring. Scratching themselves, stretching. He copied them. He was waiting for someone to say something, “Good orgy. See you next time.” But they didn’t just looked around with sullen eyes, and then a big one grunted and they all started following him. This guy jumps in. They went about two blocks before they started chasing someone. He fell behind, freaked out but what was happening. He could taste blood in his mouth. But one dropped back, a female that was kind of fat. She turned to him, while the others were hunting and sniffed. Then she screeched. He’s still bewildered, but he’s also scared as fuck, and when she did this he started jogging away. Good thing to, because in a second the VBs were surrounding him, chasing him. He ran. He said all the physical work-out of being a VB helped him because even though he was gassed, he could keep running. He made it. Like I said, he was in the Baptist Army.

He was also a story teller. But that one, I believed.

The point is, people needed an opportunity to come out of it in safety. If you could get them isolated, as VBs from the pack, there was a chance. That’s the plan.

Now you’re saying, what are the odds. And I’m asking that. Because lots of people came out of it at the beginning, but I haven’t seen it happen recently. Of course, I’m not on the streets except for food and forage runs. And then, how many would I have to have, in isolation- before one came out? It might never happen.

And then I’d keep living as before.

I picture a building. Something big with lots of rooms, I can lock them in there. And watch. The day they say, “Help?” I’ll have a friend. Of course, right now, I’m snugged into a sewer listening to them screech and smash through my carefully constructed den. It’s going to take some work.

4. Hope(less) at the End of the World

                Sometimes I watched Angie. Her legs looked nice. She called me a creep but I was only doing what boys have always done. I told Angie, about a week after she told me she wouldn’t be with me even if I was the last man, “You shouldn’t have said that.”

                “What?”

                “That I had no chance.”

                “I was just trying to be real with you.”

                “Yeah, but now I’ve got nothing to live for.” It was a bitch-ass thing to say, but hopeless people say those things.

                “Yeah you do. Stop being a baby. You can live to kill these VBs so we can have the city back.”

                Jim, Kwanesha, and I first met in a group of people that followed this guy. He was a big man, some kind of Baptist preacher, with a beard that looked tough. His signature weapon was a truck jack, and he swung that thing like god’s own hammer.

                His people were pretty organized and they picked us all up at different points, and we all got the same speech at different times. “I’m Pastor John. I don’t know what you believe, but I believe in a God that cares about us. He wants to save us, and we are about salvation. Even if you don’t believe in God, you got to agree, this city is a mess, these crazies are tearing it to pieces. It wasn’t meant to be this way, and we’ve survived, I mean, God has saved us, so we can save this city. There are other people out there need saving. Now, you join up with us, we’re systematic, and we kill VBs.”

                He didn’t demand that you believed anything, just that you fought. It was a nice idea and none of us needed any more convincing. We’d been aimlessly surviving for a few weeks, hiding in corners.  Most of us hadn’t faced off with one VB yet, and here is this guy leading an army. We wanted to fight back.

                He had systems. We’d get into a warehouse, with an escape route set, usually with a vehicle out back or something. Then someone, usually a small fast person, would go outside, until one of the VBs saw them, then they’d run back, we’d be set up in a gauntlet, two rows of armed people, and the VBs would get killed. At first it was kind of amazing.

                Pastor John gave sermons about the city after we killed off the VBs. It would be green again. Whatever cancer-causing, tower of Babel technology we’d unleashed that’d brought on the plague, would no longer be used. We’d live a good life, a simple life.

                A couple things happened. I hit it off with Jim, because he knew comic books, and Kwanesha because she always said, “Fuck this god shit, but I’m down to kill some crazies.” She had a lot of pot, and we’d sneak up to the roof sometimes. One time we were waiting in the warehouse, and the runner popped through the door, and was like, “A lot are coming.”

                Jim was always in front with the pastor. He was big too. And then eight came through at a time. And the pastor hacked down two, and four got a hold of Jim, and they were falling on him. Jim talked about that moment, see them teeth only an inch from his face, holding a whole one in each hand. He said the thing that he hated about that moment is that he might have become one, not that he might stop living. Kwanesha screamed at us, and the rest of us yanked them off Jim, and did them in, but it changed Jim a little. He wasn’t that gung ho after that.

                But it was the next time we did it, so we’re talking maybe only two months into the All Fucked Era, it went crazy. The thing was, that was when they started with the screeching. At first, the screeching was like a battle cry, but then we realized that it was a call. One would scream, and others would come, and they’d scream too. So there was kind of like a ripple in a pond effect. I mean, us, inside that building, we didn’t know what was going on. We’d set up our gauntlet and were beating them to death. This was after guns too. If someone got tired they stepped back, and another came up. I’d taken to using an ax, which was the most common weapon. Try beating someone to death sometime. It takes a lot of effort. But if you can get an ax shot anywhere to the head or neck, it’s done.

                What happened that time, they’d scream and come in. But they kept coming. It was on my second break that I looked over and saw that there was more dead crazies than there were of us, and that they were coming to the door even harder, even faster. My arms were tired. I had a water blister on the pad of my thumb. The place smelled like blood. That’s when I thought about how it worked. Ordinary Wednesday in late May, and where is everybody? Kids are in school. Lots of people in work places. And it was only the loners, or at least the alone, who survived, or stayed sane. The ratios of them, the VBs, to us, had to be astronomical.  

                I rested until Jim’s next break. I said to him, “There is too many. We got to go.”

                He nodded and grabbed Kwanesha. Nobody noticed us walk out the back. They were too caught up in their mission. Us leaving, it meant something. It wasn’t cowardice. We weren’t afraid. Jim took his place in that line again even when they almost caught him. Us leaving was saying that there was no hope of killing them off. There were too many. That future green city of Amish farms, that wasn’t going to happen. We weren’t going to make it.

                When Angie said that my hope could be killing them all, I told her that story. She said, “You can hope you find Weapon X: Issue 4.” I still hoped she’d change her mind.

3. The Best I Can Do

                I slide under the branches of a Mulberry, and along into the backyard. I hear their shrieks of anger as I negotiate a hole in a wooden fence. Then I move in the back door of a house. It’s actually a back opening, the door is gone. Once inside, I sprint up the stairs. They hunt with smell as well as sight. When I’m escaping, I keep moving. If they discover my scent, I’ve still stretched the distance between us, and I’ve got a chance. It’s all about giving yourself a chance.  

                When I reach the third floor of the house, I duck through a pane-less window onto the back roof. Then I jump and pull myself up and roll onto the roof. I allow myself a peek back. I’m now three stories above them, and one hundred feet away and the Mulberry tree is between us. Eight of them, noses lifted into the air, peering about. They look as harmless as dogs or fat men in mental institutions, as if their gaze and sniffing are only curiosity. They haven’t caught my scent. They’d be moving already.  I know what will happen next. When they are alive, for some reason, they never rage against each other. Jim used to say they had the same goal of destruction, and they knew it. I heard a guy say it was pheromones. I don’t know. Their eyes turn down to the two I destroyed. VBs eat anything. I’ve seen them chew on sneaker leather, sidewalk weeds, anything. So it’s not surprising when they sink teeth into the dead. It’s just something I prefer not to watch. I lower my head, and get to the middle of the roof.

                I walk along the roof tops. One or two roofs are flimsy, but I know the solid beams and carefully walk them. Most of the roofs are still firm. When I get to a house with a roughly built trap door set in its roof, I swing down onto the lower roof and enter through the window. Then I climb down the stairs, which are littered with left overs from the family that once lived here, and the death battles that ended that. I enter the second floor front bedroom.

                I’ve got it very organized. Weapons hang along one wall. Another is a shelf with books, and a few PSP games. There are a few stacks of books on the floor, but they are neat and even. There is a mattress in one corner. Sheets, somewhat clean. In the bureau there are a lot of different items I think I might need if I set out for somewhere. Most of the floor is clear, and swept. I wipe it down once a week. Probably, if you’ve got the picture of me right, you are thinking, this former fat kid who eats Styrofoam Cheetos is organized? That doesn’t fit. You’re right. I was that kind of kid, not just clothes and games on the floor, but food wrappers too (no wonder he struggled with finding a girlfriend). But when you live in one room, and you’ve read all your comics, newspapers, and books four times, you clean your room. Then you figure out, hey, this is kind of nice. And it’s nice to feel like this space is in control. I don’t feel like that anywhere else. I know where everything is, I know where I would put Weapon X: Issue 4, if I had it.

                I hang Ackee by the door, and tip toe down the hall to the bathroom. This room reeks, as I only flush once a day. I piss into the top basin. I can use the collected piss later to flush the bigger stuff. You might say, why not just throw your shit outside? They watch for that, and they’ve got a great sense of smell. I figure, the sewer system is still intact. That way I can live in a house, and there is no sign.  

               Water is easy. It rains often, and I’ve got a real clean trashcan set up so the room drains into it. It’s a bit of a risk drinking rain water off a roof, but not drinking water is a bigger risk.

   I could talk a little about my defense system, but it’s basically more about escape. There are trap doors in the room, going up and down, the one is below a piece of plywood, going down. I pried up some floor boards, and kicked through the plaster. It doesn’t look like an escape way from below, just wear and tear. The one going up is the same thing, but there it’s on hinges, so I can swing it up quickly if I need to. I took the hinges off some kitchen shelves. I always use what’s handy. Foraging is necessary, especially for reading, but it’s also risking your life.  I can exit out the windows and drop about twelve feet to the street, or out the hallway to the third or first floor. I’ve been here for a few months. Eventually, I’ll have to leave. I could defend against a couple, but that isn’t usually how it would work.  

The last time I had to leave a place was terrible. I heard footsteps coming through the house, this was about four months back, and I figured it was them. Not many normals left. They were coming up the stairs. That time I lived on a third floor. I went to go onto the roof, and saw about seven of them along the roofs. I ducked back down. Sounded like about three. Thing was, they see me, they scream, now the team from the roofs is coming for me. So I remembered then that I was going to die, so I thought about what I would do.

I jumped off the half roof. It was about twenty two feet, maybe more. I landed light as I could, but I sprained my ankle. I didn’t even allow myself to whisper, “Fuck.” Sprained ankle meant, they see me, I’m dead. I limped across the hard, through a hole in the fence. Then I saw they were in other houses, and on the roofs on the back of the block. It felt like I was surrounded. I did something I don’t do much. It was there though. The back up plan. I went through the a vacant lot, onto the street, and hopped into a Ford 150 out there. As I moved, I heard their screech, answered by other screeches. Like wolves, you know. One leapt off a roof, and landed a lot better than me, and sprinted toward the car. Oh you fucking starter, sing for me now. Moment of terror, and the thing started. I was pulling away when one of them rammed into the window, cracking it. I swung out. Driving is hard. Lots of random vehicles in the way. I use a bigger vehicle for that reason, banging through them. I ride around the block once, slamming into the pack. After that I realized that they were hunting. They went through a block in large groups, with waiting sentries.

What they do is, get in groups of fifty or so, and they hunt a block. Some stay outside, and others run through the house. When they spot a normal person they scream, and then it’s over. I’ve got guns, you know. But guns are a double-edged sword. You kill that one, fast and from distance, but it’s just like a car. It makes a lot of noise. Each bang calls them to you. People used guns early on, but they all died, eventually. You can only have so many rounds.

Now you’re saying, why don’t you drive everywhere. As I was smashing through them with the steel bumper on that 150, I sure liked it. The problem is, there are so many, and once they hear a car, they all come running. So once you’re in a car, you got a problem. You got to stop sometime. And when you do . . . Well, that time I drove up to the far Northeast, before I ditched the car. Out there, there is a lot of space, so I could have a running start. I made it, but I don’t drive much.

Beside those packs it’s quiet. It’s been six months since I heard VBs chase anything but cats, which means no roommates. So. Take a seat by the window, where I can see the street through the blinds. I got a Franklin busybody so I can watch the block. I have a much better exit if they come again. I pull out an episode of Batman. I read the dialogue blocks, but I look at every little feature. The costumes, the positions. I try to see something I’ve never seen before. It’s good reading. I try to ignore his softness. It always feels like he takes the death of his parents a little hard. I mean, he’s still got Albert. What would he do if everyone died? I sip slowly from a bottle of Coke, enjoying the sweetness and the little bit of bite left. This is home for today. It’s the best I can do.