Zombie City: Episode 1: Zombie City, #1

By M.F. Soriano

Hipsters. Shane hates them. They dress like artists, but they think like yuppies. They drive up the cost of living in San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for people like Shane to survive. And now they're starting to act really weird, moaning and shuffling and trying to bite…

This is the first episode in the completed 5-part Zombie City serial.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.F. Soriano
• Release date: Mar 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386775317

M.F. Soriano

M.F. Soriano got his first job at the age of twelve. In the more than two decades that have passed since then, he's worked as a nurseryman in a tree farm, a deckhand on a tall ship, a front desk receptionist in a psychological services center. He's been a bartender in Britain, an English teacher in Spain, and a drummer for a rock band in Mexico. Through it all, ever since he first sat down and actually thought of what he wanted to do for a living, he's wanted to be a writer.

Book preview

Chapter 1

It was 3:37 a.m. on Saturday, and Shane was running late.

Damn, he said, looking down at his watch.  He paused his pedaling in order to tuck the watch back into his left front pocket.  And then he took hold of the handlebars with both hands again, putting a little more force into each push of his legs.

The streets were empty at this hour.  The road stretched ahead of him, lined with parked cars, punctuated by streetlights.  The only sound he could hear was the rhythmic squeaking of his bike chain.  He listened to the chain for a moment, frowning.

Gonna have to replace that chain, he said.

He looked up at the sky.  The fog was a thick blanket blocking the stars, the moon just a blur of light.

Next paycheck, he said, thinking of the chain.

At Folsom he turned left, drifted over into the bike lane.  The wet, misty air clung to his face, cold against his cheeks, but he didn't mind.  It distracted him from the throbbing pain in his head, the nagging, sick feeling in his stomach.  As hangovers went, it wasn't a bad one.  He'd had enough hangovers, especially in the past few years, to learn to deal with them.  Still, starting the work week feeling crappy was never ideal.

He pulled in a deep lungful of air, coughed it back out.  He pulled in another.

After a few blocks a thin patch in the fog revealed the moon.  It hung in the sky, round and bright, like a clean plate at the bottom of a scummy sink.  Shane glanced up at it, still pedaling, and sighed.

Be 30 next month, he said.  And what do I have to show for it?

Honey Guts, he thought.  Nothing but Honey Guts.

He frowned.  Looked at the road ahead of him.

Honey Guts was the unfinished poetry collection gathering dust on the desk in his crappy studio flat.  It was supposed to be his offering to the world, his best efforts distilled into something better than himself.  It was supposed to be a work of art, like the Beat poetry that had changed his life when he'd first come across it at age eighteen.  Back when he'd decided to come to San Francisco in the first place.

That had been almost a dozen years ago.  And now, he realized with alarm, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd sat down to write.

Shane guided the bike with his left hand on the handlebars, letting his right hand drop down to rest on his thigh.  That hand pushed down firmly with each stroke of the foot on the pedal, trying to squeeze a little more force into his pedaling.

How old was Ginsberg when he moved to San Francisco? Shane wondered aloud.  "How old was he when he finished Howl?  And what about Ferlinghetti?  He wrote his best stuff here, didn't he?"

There was no one there to answer his questions.  No sound except for that squeaking chain.

Shane frowned again.  Of course, when Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti moved here, there weren't any tech-worker hipsters driving up the goddamn rent.  Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti didn't even have to work.  They lived like monks, writing and drinking wine all day.

At 13th Street he swung right, taking the turn wide, letting his bike drift out into the middle of the car lane.  13th Street ran beneath the elevated Central Freeway.  He glanced up at the blue metal girders that held the freeway up, tasting the metal in the moisture-thickened air.

The sides of 13th were lined with parked vehicles—including a good number of RVs and camper vans—packed in so there was hardly room to walk between the bumpers.  And the sidewalks were occupied by tents and cardboard boxes and other improvised shelters for the homeless.  Shane held to the center of the lane, reached forward to grip the handlebars with both hands.  He watched the sides of the street just in case someone darted out at him.  But everything was dead still, the lonely squeaking of his bike chain the only sound.

A thought came to him: "All of it, all my time and energy, goes toward making rent.  Nothing left for Honey Guts.  I came here to write, but living in the City is keeping me from writing."

He'd had the thought before.  But being on an empty street at nearly four in the morning—at the start of another work week, with nothing to show for the days off except a hangover—it gave the thought weight.  Made it seem like a revelation.

I'm almost thirty, he said to himself.  I need to get out of San Francisco.

A red light loomed ahead of him: the traffic signal at Harrison Street.  Shane looked left and right, then blew through the intersection without stopping.

Half a block later a siren split the silence.  Shane looked over his shoulder, saw a cop car coming up fast behind him, its roof lights whirling.

Damn! he said.

He looked around quickly, thought of making a run for it.  But his head was throbbing and his stomach still felt queasy.  He was in no shape to run.

Shane squeezed the brakes, pulled over to the edge of the road.  The cop car roared past, siren screaming.  He flinched, leaned away from the gust of wind shoved at him by the speeding car.  It whipped left on 11th Street, taking the corner so fast he could hear its tires squealing above the siren.

The siren faded into the distance in less than a minute, leaving the street dead still once again.  But a jittery energy coursed through Shane's arms and legs now.  Despite the cool air, he suddenly felt clammy hot.  A drop of sweat rolled over the side of his ribcage, beneath his flannel.

Damn, he said again.

He took a deep breath, lifted his left foot back onto the bike pedal.  And then he glanced over to the sidewalk, and saw something that made him forget the cop car—and the squeaking chain and Honey Guts—all together.

There was a rolled up carpet there, near a pylon supporting the freeway overhead.  And sticking out of the bottom of the carpet roll were a pair of legs.

Shane stared at the legs, his mind blank.  The traffic signal up ahead—for the intersection the cop car had just ran through—switched lights with a click, and the street was so quiet that he heard it clearly.  He shook himself a little, blinked his eyes.  He looked back at the legs.

They were dressed in slacks, a pair of polished-leather shoes covering the feet.  If it wasn't for the fresh shine on those shoes, he probably would have assumed the legs belonged to a bum.  Plenty of homeless people camped on these sidewalks, seeking the shelter of the overhead freeway.  They slept in tents and cardboard boxes to stay warm.

But no bum shine's his shoes, Shane said quietly.

The thought of homeless people made Shane realize something else.  The bums on this part of 13th normally gathered even more thickly near the freeway pylons.  But this pylon, except for the legs in the rolled up carpet, was deserted.

Shane leaned over the trunk of the car he'd stopped next to, leaned over to look at the sidewalk.  He could see scraps of trash, even a few pieces of flattened cardboard that looked