Doug Sterns Is A Zombie - Chapter1

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A quick note:
I am in the process of writing this short novel and have posted this draft to be carved up and critiqued so the final product can be the most enjoyable read possible.  Please make any comments you can.
Thanks!
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Day One) Water Spritzer
1)
         Doug Sterns spritzes water into his mouth because his saliva glands have decayed and this is how he swallows without the feeling of sandpaper grinding on skin and alcohol aftertaste.
         The city speeds around him in the prework rush.  Rickshaws pulling employees wrapped in black fabric, ties.  Cars puttering over potholes and riding the curbs.
         He stands in the middle of it (literally the middle of the street), frozen and spritzing, looking up at tickertape news:
         JUNE 3RD 2019- INFLICTED ESCPAES NEW YORK CITY REHABILITATION HOSPITAL ATTACKS FAMILY BITES DOG
         The sky gives up to gray steel-work clouds and black smog.  No one complains about iron clanging and scraping into the shape of new buildings, the canvassers asking for donations to cure the emphysema epidemic, the carts with bent bicycle wheels selling the new processed meats and canned vegetables.  It is all so much easier than two decades before.  When a good night started with gutting a rotten deer carcass or morning with time to wipe after defecating.
         A taxicar cuts city rhythm with a high chord of screech and horn.  Front fender inches from Doug Sterns' shin.
         “'Ey!  What yoo doin', hah!?”  The driver yells, voice quivering close to a frightened scream, half his body out of the car window, arms above him.
         Doug Sterns turns his head slowly to the right, not hearing the words but realizing the dissyncopation.  Mind on the dog.  It's name, color, the cuts veterinarians will make to ensure that infliction cannot pass species.  His Infitted Cosmetics water spritzer pumping like a plastic heart in his hand.
         The driver turns pink, sits low into his seat, stares at the wheel mumbling humble and politically correct words only because he cannot afford a fine.  Especially for a bigoted hate-crime.  A crime against an addition to the human population that entered history fifty-seven years ago with an apocalyptic shout.  Different not as physically as Olympic swimmer and quadriplegic, nor as Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal, but on a scale science barely has explanation for.  Unlike the fully human driver, Doug Sterns is a zombie.
         As the taxi swerves into traffic Doug blinks, reenters this world of sanity and realizes he will be late for work.

2)
         Rickshaws are built per demand by hand from salvaged fortress defenses restructured to suit a new era.  A broom stick, crowbar, and pillow case can all be used on the same rig.  Their quality makes bumps and breakdowns customary.  All rickshaw runners are both athletes and streetside mechanics.  Doug Sterns is used the sudden jolts and sharp turns during prework traffic, but today he watches the city like a tourist.
         New York City – no longer the “big” apple because it is the last city of America.  He lives in the heart of it: Manhattan.  During the worst of The Apocalypse it was the only place between the Pacific and Atlantic a large group of humans could thrive.  Where the Hegeltokman Foundation developed the antidote and now is second largest megacity in the world, supporting 40,000,000 Americans, immigrants, Inflicted.
         Doug Sterns watches only a window of it all.  The elderly (fifty to sixty years) who twenty years ago traded in shotguns and chainsaws to carry briefcases and order coffee with goat's milk; children, like a chorus, making harmless, hopeful screams; a group of teenagers with backwards hats, noise-blaster, spray-painted cardboard, and dancing the new “break” style; mix-breed wolf-doberman-shepard-hounds chasing pigeons; Inflicteds reviewing business models, tightening ties.
         Doug pictures a dog, white fur with a spot of black around its left eye, running with tail curved down.  He knows a dog like this (a puppy-dog type from his childhood, the 1930's) doesn't exist anymore because, in ways, humanity regressed to stone age philosophy.  With shock collars, domesticated wolves; with atomic fire, fought beasts much more terrifying than mammoths.  A dog skidding on tiled floor and eyes sad, wide.  Behind her: a bleeding, drooling man with half-head of black hair pulled to just clumps of spikes.  Orange shirt ripped and a kitchen knife in throat.  The dog so full of terror she doesn't whimper.  His stomach open, squirting acid onto cabinets and rumbling Hunger.  Sandpaper grinding on skin and alcohol aftertaste.  He spritzes.
         The rickshaw rolls to stop in front of the Hegeltokman Building.  A sky-scraping business complex of brick and reflective glass with fire-escape scaffolding.  The ten-foot-tall front doors open.  Employees flooding in.
         Doug Sterns steps off the rickshaw with his right leg first and pays the runner his fare in hemp bills, smiles.  Hunched at the top of his back, with right leg never fully extended, he limps to the front door.  Lands on left ankle with each step.  The foot, shoed, bent leftways and pointing slightly up.  Nerves do not scream pain.

3)
         Doug Sterns wears a special security uniform that sticks to the concave curves of his emaciated frame.  It is a navy-blue, size 4-Z suit manufactured by Infitted Cosmetics.  The “Z” referring to the suit's “Zero Dimension” class of clothing size.
         Before his infliction Doug Sterns would not be able to stop a robbery, having trained in the art of filing papers, crunching numbers, accounting for assets.  Even now his eyes are fragile blue that circle the pupils in white disks.  He watches employees and thinks again how fortunate he is Mr. Hegeltokman seems to understand the Inflicted situation.  Without his initiative, Doug would still be in the Safe House, alone in his closet-sized dormitory room staring at the bare wall trying to understand how forty years had passed and he did not age one day.  Trying to remember how his foot twisted and his throat was torn open, always revealing pink, thumping flesh and dark blue veins.  Feeling the Hunger and sandpaper and tasting alcohol. 
         He pats his left pocket.  Hears the plastic jingle of red capsules on medicinal pill bottle.  Hegeltokman's little red pill that crushes Hunger; that opened the Safe Houses under the provision that all Inflicted citizens participate in rehabilitation; rehabilitation which provides work (mostly dangerous construction).
         He smiles to Kamalkali, the Indian girl studying abroad at Manhattan U with his friend Kiko.  She always smiles to him.  Some of the employees are still uneasy that an Inflicted works security.  Some are afraid if they get too close they will contract the virus.  Sometimes he catches people staring at the left side of his face and throat.  Sometimes he sees his reflection and jumps.
         He removes his hat, runs hand across bald head.  The skin tight, glitters.  He is, in a strange way, alive.  And this pleases him.  It is because Doug Sterns is not the kind to drive with sword above head into the setting sun and change the world; because he flows with the sudden jolts and sharp turns present in society.  So this life is enough.
         Mrs. Hegeltokman enters the building through a gauntlet of persons.  She is tall for a Guatemalan (always cramped on the bus) but it is not height that allows her to withdraw and control attention.  She does not apply creams to her face but embraces the creases at the corners of her mouth.  A dieing fashion began when age itself explained success.  Wrapped in a tight, black overcoat and knee-high leather boots, Doug feels she holds secrets so true, to tell them now would initiate Armageddon.
         “Good morning, Mrs. Hegeltokman.”  Doug says with a smile.  Although morning interactions with her are short (she never stops walking) they have always been reassuring.
         Her Spanish accent is minuscule, only appears on mistranslated idioms and the letter V.  “Morning, Mr. Sterns.”
         “How are you today?”
         “I have a feeling our world is on the brink of complete and utter change.”
         The elevator opens itself for her and she enters, does not turn, faces the back wall as doors close.

4)
         Samuel Chemist thinks he's figured out what is so different about New York.  It is not the wide streets and lack of subway he is used to in London.  It is not the constant banging of iron or hip-hop that's beginning to catch on at home.  Not the Infitted Cosmetics posters plastered on any visible surface.  Not the slow-food restaurant chains.  It is in this pen that has a knife-cap. 
         Hold the pen normally: it writes.  Flip it around, remove the cap: it cuts.
         They can't escape from The 'Poc, he thinks.  They prepare for another end of the world.  A mutation of the virus immune to Hegeltokman's antidote.  The day when red pills fail to quench Hunger.
         He turns from desk to window.  Buildings are high.  A wall that blocks anything beyond Manhattan from view.  It is still a fortress.  Sun sets early here.  Brick walls and steel windows, wooden escape ladders, wolf-dogs. . .  Their technology is backwards, or is it just barbaric?  Evolved from the necessity of daily killing, or waiting in silence.
         The door opens.
         “Good morn', Mrs. Hegeltokman” Chemist's voice is deep, matches his bristling red beard more than his long, thin shape.
         “Mr. Chemist.”
         They shake hands firmly.  Chemist dressed in a shined, black leather tuxedo and long-sleeved blue shirt with large collar unbuttoned at the top.  The bottoms of his pant legs bell out.
         “Admiring New York?”
         “Yes.  Actually, I was just thinkin' how diff'rnt it 'll be when we've box'd this serum.”
         “Yes.”  She crosses her arms.  “I only hope it works fast.”
         “Aye.  Think humanity's 'ad enough apocalypses fir one existence.”

5)
         The Infitted Cosmetics headquarters building is an obelisk.  Tall, dressed in black reflective windows so that during the day one is either blinded by sunbeams, or viewing a colossal black stone, carved by greater forces, pierced into earth.  Cynthia, the corporate executive officer of the company, purchased the entire 14th street block (between 5th avenue and University Place), converted the land into a garden, equipped with Spanish flowers.  Nostalgia towards her earliest memory.
         At the top of the building she reviews her company's profits.  They continue to increase.  There is a knock at the door.  Elizabeth, assistant.
         “Come in.”
         Elizabeth walks quickly to Cynthia's desk and places a folder on top of the profit files.  Cynthia works with paper documents because she is not comfortable with the new “personal computer” fad sweeping the city.
         Cynthia would have berated Elizabeth for callously dropping a folder on her work.  But she opens it silently.  This is important.
         The sky begins to turn red as sun sets somewhere behind the wall of buildings.
         “Did you personally see Samuel Chemist enter the Hegeltokman Building?”
         “Yes, Ma'am.”
         “You know how they feel about Inflicteds.”  It is neither a question nor a clue to Elizabeth's beliefs.  Eyes toward the wall, focusing on a different time.
         “Ma'am, maybe if we go to the government-”
         “The government would support this.  If it is completed a massive weight would be off their shoulders.”
         “So we keep this silent.”
         Cynthia's eyes flash up, locking with Elizabeth's.
         “The slightest whisper of this will force Inflicteds into extinction.”

6)
         Drink Like A Mermaid is one of the few bars in Manhattan that supports the mingling of the alive and not-so-lucky.  Every bar allows the custom (it is punishable by fine not to) but few embrace it like the Mermaid.
         It is a basement bar on 9th avenue just South-West to Central Park.  It began as a speakeasy two years before Doug Sterns was born.
         He does not know this as he sits at a table drinking from a large mug, eating nachos, and singing happy birthday with Kamalkali and two men (one an Inflicted with no left eye, the other a cook at a diner who boasts his blueberry pancake).
         When the song finishes, the table turns to a small, 24-year-old Japanese girl, Kiko, holding her hands over her mouth, forced to wear a bright pink birthday cone-hat.
         “So embarrsing.”  She says softly.
         “What?” Doug starts, warmed by the circle of close friends and beer, “You don't look a day over twenty!” and everyone laughs.
         “Have you thought about what you're going to do when you graduate?” Kamalkali asks, refilling Kiko's glass.
         “She'z gonna keep servin' my blueberry pancakes at the dainah!” the drunk cook says, spitting a little on “blueberry.”
         “I might work for rehabiritation.  Get Inflicteds out of Safe House Slums.”
         All nod.  Built in a near-perfect square between West 23rd Street and West 42nd, from the water to 9th Ave.  Mandatoraly occupied for five years by Inflicteds while Hegeltokman's foundation created their antidote in pill form and rallied Inflicted rights into legislation.  Now, too dirty to clean, run as it's own unofficial nation.  Ruled by tribes of Zombie Gangs filled with too much pride in their immortality, or hidden fear of entering a world changed.
         “Doug,” the one-eyed Inflicted says, “you were in a Safe House, right?  What was it like?”
         The empty, rotting wall with peeling paint.  Screams and roars and disembodied pounding learned to tune out.  Iron chain attached to leg.  Door slit that would open two times a day, an empty plate replaced by one of slop.  The red gas that would drop from the ceiling to make his nibbling Hunger curl up, spasm, and flee to a gooey, melting place inside.
         “I don't really remember much, but it was kind of like being grounded.  We couldn't leave our rooms.”  Then, after a sip, with a sly smile, “I'm lucky our muscles don't atrophy.”  Laughter.
         Kiko sips at her beer.  “I think is unhumane.”
         Doug shrugs thin shoulders.  “At the time, Regulars didn't consider Inflicteds human.”

7)
         The Mermaid is not a loud and boisterous place but there is always a crowd, especially during the Wednesday hump.  The drink selection is phenomenal, the jukebox has a large library of songs with easily memorized choruses, and the billiard's balls are never scuffed.  Overall it is a great place to get drunk with friends.
         Greg sets down his mug.  Stretches legs and lets cold beer trickle behind scarred chest.  The man is thirty six, has suffered nearly every form of damage imaginable.  Cut by knives, fences; bludgeoned by bats, fists (nose has been broken three times); shot with bullets, jagged rocks, nails; his right shin has been broken, both ankles, a large number of ribs, four fingers, left arm; three teeth are missing (only the top left canine is visibly absent); there are spots on his head hair won't grow so he keeps it short.  His tonsils have been removed.
         Amadi Wishful, twenty, the fifth and youngest Bosakaibo child, who was sent to New York as a baby for a better life, with a large afro and bright green shirt, has a scrape on his knee and left arm from falling earlier today.
         Both men work for Rolling Rick's rickshaw company, but are the only ones present for after-shift drinks.
         “See, like that group over there.”  Amadi follows Greg's muscled, wounded arm towards a table of Inflicteds and Regulars celebrating a birthday.  “That right there is revolutionary.”
         Amadi looks at Greg quizzically and laughs.  “Serious, Dude, you need new hobby.  That's as original as this place.”  Taps his finger on the table twice.
         Greg takes a long drink.  This boy won't understand.  Greg can tell him again that his last name is Runnies because he was designated runner.  Always.  He could tell Amadi how every scrape and scar from a poorly sewn stitch was drawn on his body.  How he had, at the age of eight, after dropping a humidifier on his older brother (who promised to tell him their last name when Greg turned nine), crushing his skull, accepted that his life would be defined by the necessity of killing zombies.  How he told himself that zombies are not humans just before cutting a wire that doused two hundred in napalm and made him: Mr. Runnies, the hero.  He could try to explain how, when he was the same age as Amadi, fifteen years ago, Hegeltokman's antidote ended that world he accepted – but Greg would not.  In this one long drink he knows The 'Poc is history to Amadi and history does not change.

8)
         The bedroom is dark, lit only by a television light which surrenders to black every few seconds between channels.  The remote's red light flashing.  Pressed by a thumb reattached to its hand with stitches.  They make him spasm and uncurl somewhere deep inside.
         The first part of him to come back was the brain.  Cut off from everything.  Not floating nor falling, not light nor dark, not in pain nor euphoria.  Cut off.  Simply a complex organ firing questions, receiving nothing.
         It panicked.  He hurt.  A new pain like needles entering every piece of him.  It hurt so viciously he could see it could smell it taste every moment of it.  Pain roaring in places he never knew.
         Then the organs came back.  At first, a solitary heart beat.  A heavy BA! and the shudder of cold muscle breaking into life.
         Veins reopened and for a moment, dark blood like sawdust rushed, then slowed, then stopped.  Suffocation coming from every cell.  He tasted the pain again.  BUMP!  Deep pain in his chest- he was a can torn open.  Suffocation pulled his throat tight but with each moment pain grew his vision came into focus.
         He was in a place with surgical lamps and machinery.  But he was just in his car.  Confusion hurt.  Still unable to move.  Fear hurt.
         And slowly, tasting the hurt at the tip of his pallet, tingling in extremities, circulation.  Gnawing on the hurt like gum.  The tingling faded.  He felt nothing anywhere but he was swallowing the hurt everywhere.
         He was strapped to a surgical bed.  Wires adhered to his bare body now covered in bruises, open cuts, bold black stitches.  A heart monitor beeping.
         “It actually worked.”
         His father's face.  Bright eyes sunk into dark, old shadows.
         A mask put to Danss' face and red mist swept everything to black.
         A knock on the door and it inches open.  The ancient frame of Mr. Hegeltokman leans into the room.  At eighty-nine, one of the oldest people alive, including Inflicteds, and certainly the richest.  He talks fast, like every moment he has to spend communicating his ideas is a catastrophic waste.
         “Danns, areyouinthere?”
         The television goes black.  “Yeah, Dad.”
         “Can youturnthe lightson?  Ican'tseeathing in here.”
         Answers a quick, “No, Dad.”
         Mr. Hegeltokman tightens his grip on the doorknob.  With other hand he twirls the skin dropping below throat.  There is only one reason a person lives in darkness.
         “MomandI scheduled anappointmentforyou with CynthiaVasquez, y'know, of InfittedCosmetics.”
         You bastards, Danns thinks at his father.
         “It's tomorrow evening, ataround4:30.”
         The room is large and dark.
         “'Kay, Dad.”
         “Okay.”
         When the door latches Danns turns his computer on.  He kneads his fingers into the palms of his fists but there is no feeling.  This makes him angrier.  When the computer boots, he logs into the Hegeltokman administrative account.  He accesses the employee profiles and the daily assignments.  Dis-arranges them.  The confusion at the Building tomorrow will be hilarious.


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