The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella by Rob W. Hart Page B

killed it. I’ve never not killed one with a single swing, and I’ve killed hundreds of them with this bat. I crouch down next to the body, out of its reach. I should have split the skull clean in half. Instead there’s a dent and a faint crack.
    Up close now I can tell it used to be a man. Its eyes have since clouded over, its hair fallen out, leaving brittle strands of black sticking out of its scalp. The flesh is thick and translucent. The thing looks up at me, helpless. I wonder what its name was. Then I stop thinking about it.
    I stand and swing three more times, straight down into the skull. On the third swing, it stops moving.
    *
    The rotter is stripped and sprawled out on an old operating table. Its skin is a topography map of dead black flesh and lumps of a grey stone-like material. The remains of its face are twisted in an accusatory glare.
    This long and it still bothers me to kill these things. Maybe I should be worried. Or maybe that’s the only thing keeping me human.
    Doc uses a hammer and chisel to break off a piece of its stone skin, then puts it on a table. He smacks it with the hammer and cracks it into pieces. We rub the shards between our fingers. They’re rough and slick at the same time, like rocks coated in a thin layer of bacon grease.
    “Dude,” he says. “I do not know. Did you really find this on the island?”
    “Near the Manhattan dock.”
    He hands me a bottle of alcohol. I pour it over my hands and into a sink, but there’s still an oil-like coating on my skin. I scrub at it with some soap and that helps. Doc stares at the body, pushing a pile of blonde hair out of his eyes.
    He picks up the shirt the thing had been wearing, the style and color indeterminate. It’s covered in brown stains and slime. He sniffs it, shakes his head, says “Fuck me,” and touches the tip of his tongue to it.
    He immediately pukes. I come close to joining him but manage to hold it back. I hand him the bottle of alcohol and he takes a big swig and rinses his mouth. He retches again. I yell at him even though I don’t mean to. “Why would you even do that?”
    “Right. I should have just run it through my electron spectroscopy machine. That would have made much more sense.” He coughs and spits.
    “But, Doc, c’mon.” The shirt is balled up in the corner where he threw it. The sight of it makes my throat seize again. “Why?”
    “It tastes like salt.”
    That makes me forget the sick taste in my mouth pretty quick.
    Just to be sure I heard right I ask, “What?”
    “That thing. It was in the harbor. Some of the decomposition is consistent with water, and it tastes like salt.”
    “Okay. One thing at a time. What do you mean, some of the decomposition? Why does this thing look like it’s got rocks in its skin?”
    Doc tapped on the shards on the table. “It’s not stone, exactly. It’s organic. I have no idea what it is.”
    “I thought you went to med school.”
    “A year out from graduating. I didn’t ask for this job. You should be impressed that I haven’t killed anyone yet.”
    “Fine.” The body is festering. I open a window and stand by the stream of fresh air. “We have books, right? Medical books?”
    “I know every one, back and forth. We don’t have anything on corpse decomposition.”
    “How did this thing get onto the island? They can’t swim. They don’t have the coordination for it.”
    “Maybe it walked.”
    “Across the bottom of the harbor? It’s not a flat surface, and it’s not an easy climb onto the island. The storm walls are steep.”
    Doc nods. “But on the southern and eastern shores there are rocks.”
    “These things aren’t mountain climbers. They don’t have the dexterity. What they do have is the brainpower of slugs.”
    Doc shrugs. “I don’t know.”
    If the island isn’t safe anymore then I’ve got three hundred people to move. Most of them are weak, starving, angry, and I’ve got no place to put them. Plus, there’s June. The move