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That’s the thing, though, about zombies, isn’t it? You look into their eyes and there’s nothing there, just anger and hunger, but they’re wearing the clothes of your friend. A union pin on the lapel of a predator. A police vest – protect and serve – taking the bullets that eventually, once they get through, will save your life.
Down in the sewers Leon finds three shuffling, moaning bodies all in high vis, all still wearing their hard hats. Three coworkers – probably three friends – who died down here together in the dark. Which of them went first? Who was it that went up to the break room for a snack and came back down as not-quite-right? Did the other two try to help him, save him, even as he began to snap his teeth?
He tries not to think about it. Or about the clear, eerie, almost-beautiful singing that echoes against the bricks. These were people, and now they aren’t, and his only way out is through.
Was a Licker ever a person? Surely a Licker was never a person. Except that when he looks close, they vary a little. This Licker would be taller than that Licker, if Lickers stood up straight. This one is a little slimmer, this one’s skin a slightly different shade of grey.
The grenades he lobs at them work just the same. He imagines lobbing them at some evil scientist instead, and feels better.
He’s hungry – not much food left in a rotten burnt out city – but feels grateful that he’s not fighting for what he does find. Everything wants a bite of him, but that means no one wants a bite of this ham sandwich he found in the break room fridge. He offers a silent, half-mournful salute to the nearest blown-apart body he had to get past to reach the kitchenette. Sorry about your lunch, officer. Extenuating circumstances. He thinks again about the “Welcome Leon” banner above what would have been his desk and takes a second to breathe.
These people would have been so kind to him, had they been given the chance.
He eats his ham sandwich alone at the break table, the light from the fridge illuminating a little island where just for a second, things are a tiny bit familiar.
The city isn’t quiet. Or it is, but not in the way it should be. There are no cars, no machines, no hums of televisions or radios or bars full of people, but there are other things that fill the night instead. Screeches, wild and furious, howling at the betrayal of an empty stomach and a restless death. Rumbles of falling brick and stone, the smash of glass, as flailing bodies propel themselves in and out of spaces with brute force rather than the dexterity they had in life. Occasionally, the horrifying thud of things very large that Leon doesn’t want to dwell on, walking over or under or alongside his hidden places in the corridors of the police station.
He misses the wind and the rain. Everyone is dead, he should be able to hear the sky. He’s never really been one for the great outdoors but every noise around him is wrong and he’s so, so sick of jumping at the slightest sound. He’s always right, it’s always something hideous. Once, when he finds a tv in one of the evidence rooms, he barricades the doors for a half hour or so and switches it on to static. He lets himself rest there, pretending the hiss of white noise is enough to drown out the banging and wailing outside.