The Flavor of Salt City: A Zombie Novel -- CHAPTER ONE

The white Mercury Sable rolled to a halt in front of The Galleries of Syracuse, neglected brakes grinding with shrill insistence. Laughlin bumped the curb, cursed, and shifted into park, jabbing the switch to roll down his window automatically. From the next block he could hear a cover band playing loudly and badly. People milled about in Clinton Square and in adjacent streets closed for the annual Flavor of Salt City festival. He saw fat locals carrying plastic cups of beer, slim women with bare midriffs, couples eating fried dough and falafel. Stands nearby proclaimed their affiliation with local restaurants. The crowds were dense.

That was bad.

Sweating, Laughlin scanned the street, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. Where the hell was it? He didn’t have much time. He might not have any time; it might already be too late. He prayed it wasn’t.

He exited the car, slamming the door behind him, his ID badge still hanging around his neck on the Caesars lanyard his wife had bought him in the Poconos. Sheryl, he thought. Forgive me for what I’ve done. Gods forgive me if you can’t. He tucked into his shirt pocket the transponder badge bearing his photo and the Syracuse Chemical Research logo. It was an old habit. Employees of SCR were encouraged not to advertise that fact.

The gun was heavy in his waistband, under his rumpled shirt. He started to pull his tie to half mast, stopped himself, and yanked it free completely, dropping it onto the litter-strewn sidewalk. To hell with it. If the world didn’t end, he’d buy another.

He stood on the sidewalk, moving towards the entrance to the Galleries. He wondered where to go. Stay on the street? He’d never find anything in the crowd. Where would his quarry have gone? He tried to remember what the expansive glass building contained. He hadn’t been here in years. There had been a food court, some shops, a newsstand. There was the public library. The architecture inside confused him, he remembered, with small hallways that seemed to creep off at random angles.

Would it have gone in here?

Sitting on the sidewalk next to a battered metal ashcan was a homeless man. Laughlin watched him closely as he pulled open the nearest glass door. The panhandler looked up at him, his eyes clear, his face blank, shaking a Styrofoam cup with a few coins in it. Laughlin shook his head and entered the building.

Muzak played from within the open doors of a greeting card store. Laughlin hurried past, making his way to the escalators in the center of the shopping area. His mind reeled with thoughts of Bhopal, India – and worse. Would what he was doing even matter? Would it make a difference to any of them?

He paused out of reflex as a petite, strikingly attractive young woman – mid twenties, early thirties maybe – stepped gracefully and briskly past, her shoes clicking softly on the mall tile. He was suddenly aware that he must look awful. He hadn’t shaved in three days, his clothes were stained and disheveled, and he was sweating like a pig despite the mild June weather.

She spared him a glance and then was gone. Laughlin continued, rode the escalator to the second floor, and surveyed his surroundings from a railing overlooking the floor below.

Where was it?







His name was Jack. He’d had a last name once. He still knew it, of course, but he seldom used it. What was the point? A family who had no use for a broken down drunk would hardly want him spreading their name around town. No, it was better this way. He spent colder nights at the shelter and the rest of his evenings under the Route 690 Teal Avenue overpass, begging at the exit ramp on those days it didn’t rain. He did okay. In his cup rattled enough to get him a hotdog from the vendor just down the street. In his pocket he had enough for a bottle, maybe two if he stuck to the cheap stuff. He’d make his way to the liquor store on the way back to Teal tonight. He liked being downtown when he wasn’t “working,” because he could sit in one of the comfortable chairs in the library and no one was supposed to bother him. Now he was resting outside and waiting for someone to toss half a cigarette in the ash can. People wasted plenty of good smokes on the way into the “smoke free” building. Jack nursed a half-pack-a-day habit from castoffs.

He’d get up soon. He wished he felt better. His body was cold and hot all over, gnawing inside his belly and shooting up his arm under the sleeve of his filthy army jacket. The jacket let him play the homeless vet angle, though he figured fewer and fewer people bought it. He was the wrong age to have been in Desert Storm and it wasn’t likely he’d just gotten off a plane from Iraq. In reality, Jack had never been in the military at all. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like his cardboard “will work for food” sign told the gospel truth, either.

Damn, he felt bad. It must have been something he’d gotten from the dumpster behind the Indian place. They threw away plenty of good food, but it never agreed with him. It had never been this bad before. Did he have food poisoning? His arm itched beneath the grimy “camouflaged” cotton blend and he thought about his encounter with the nutjob that morning.

It didn’t figure. That guy wanted first pick on that dumpster so bad he was willing to play crazy like that… Jack had never seen anybody go quite that far. Sure, lots of street folks were a little nuts and plenty of them had conversations with people who weren’t there – but who just stands there moaning and staring? Or biting, for fuck’s sake? It made Jack mad and creeped him out all at the same time – that guy just swaying there, and then lurching at Jack and taking a big, juicy bite out of his arm. Bastard. Jack had stomped him good and left him there; he wasn’t exactly fresh off the turnip truck and he wasn’t about to let some new meat punk him.

Bite’s probably infected, he thought bitterly. On top of food poisoning, the freaking guy probably had rabies. Maybe I’ll get lucky and just die out here. There were days when quietly dying had its attractions. He wouldn’t have to sit here in his own filth, wearing the same clothes day after day, feeling his shoulder-length hair stick together and to his neck. He wouldn’t have to run scabbed hands through his tangled beard and wonder if his family would recognize him, if ever he got up the courage to face them. He wouldn’t have to eat garbage or feel like less than dirt every time he put his hand out and some business puke or housewife stared at him with contempt and pity through the window of an SUV.

If only he didn’t feel so cold and sweaty. It was like when he’d walk across town during the winter – God knew the winters were cold enough in Syracuse – and he’d get so cold he’d start to feel warm again, start to feel his legs and his arms tingle with numbness that wasn’t heat at all. Cold so cold it was hot – that’s what this was like. He hoped he didn’t start throwing up. That would get him rousted and he didn’t feel like getting up.

Rattling his cup absently, Jack huddled into himself and shivered, sweat starting to bead on his forehead.







Ann Gilmore made her way through the crushing Flavor of Salt City crowd, the precious minutes of her lunch hour ticking away as she waded through the wall of bodies. She and Bill had planned to have dinner here, as well – Bill loved to overeat at the festival almost as much as he loved the fried ravioli at the yearly Festa Italiana – but she was starting to wonder if that was a good idea. Flavor had opened at 11:00 Friday morning, effectively undercutting the lunch crowds at all the downtown restaurants (she could picture the letters to the editor in tomorrow’s Post Standard already). Only an hour later, it was packed. She could just imagine what the evening crowd would be like, especially after a few beers each.

“I said, I’M AT FLAVOR OF SALT CITY!” a man yelled into his wireless phone as he passed, juggling the phone and two plastic cups of beer. Ann rolled her eyes. She dodged one old man whom she swore was undressing her with his eyes – she was used to that, and to getting propositioned despite the wedding ring she wore. She’d learned to be careful about telling Bill, though, because it made him jealous. He would tell anyone who’d listen that he had “married above his station” and that a woman as beautiful as his wife was only with him because of some good deed he’d done in a past life. “Rescued a bus full of nuns,” he usually said. “Not just one. A whole bus full of ‘em.”

At the Italian booth on the corner near State Street she sampled some Vodka Penne. It was good. She found a corner in the lee of the booth that was free of traffic and found her phone in her bag. It was ridiculously over-complicated, the color-display-and-digital-camera flip phone that was the best Bill could find when he’d gone shopping. He’d insisted she carry it. Bill loved gadgets that way. If it wasn’t the smallest, coolest phone on the market, he wasn’t happy with it.

She hit the first preset and waited while the phone rang, the reception fuzzy but audible.

“Bill Gilmore,” was her husband’s curt greeting.

“It’s me,” she said.

“Hi!” he said, his voice going an octave higher. “I miss you.” He paused. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Flavor of Salt City,” she said, resisting the urge to shout it into the phone. “It’s pretty busy here. Do you still want to try to have dinner down here?”

Bill paused. “Whatever you want,” he said.

“I’m asking you,” she reminded him. “It wouldn’t hurt you to make a decision once in a while.”

“I guess I would, as long as you still would,” he said, his voice choppy over the wireless reception.

“Bill,” she said.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Yes, I would still like to go.”

“All right then,” she said. “I’ll meet you at home and we can drive back down. I want to change first.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I love you.”

“Bye,” she said, switching the phone off. Tucking it back into her bag, she looked around and picked a path through the increasingly dense crowd. She might still have time to make it to the King David’s booth for falafel before she had to get back to the office.







Laughlin finished his sweep of the building and found himself on the street again, having exited the other side of the Galleries. He walked north for half a block, then turned left on Warren. Dodging foot traffic headed in the general direction of the festival, he turned again and found himself in an alleyway with a couple of dumpsters.

Not that way, he thought to himself – then stopped.

That smell!

There could be no doubt. From the street the odor of garbage had been noticeable but no worse than one would expect from a city trash bin in June. Now, in the alley, he fought the urge to gag. The cloying, almost sweet smell of rot and death wafted over him. You couldn’t forget that stench – not after you’d smelled it once. Certainly you couldn’t forget it after you’d smelled it for day after miserable day, dread building in your gut as you slowly realized that what was about to happen was your fault…

Praying no one would see him from the street, Laughlin pulled the nine-millimeter Glock from his waistband. He held it in front of him with both hands. Shaking, he stepped closer to the dumpster, expecting at any moment to have to shoot and then run. It was waiting in here. It would sense him, hear his hesitant steps, come lurching out to…

It was dead.

Not dead like the first time, but truly dead, lying in a tangled, wet heap at the base of the dumpster like a marionette with its strings cut. Its head was caved in and a small pool of blood – not much at all – had congealed on the grimy asphalt. Half a bloody cinder block had been tossed aside nearby, clearly the weapon used to brain the thing.

Laughlin sighed in relief.

Realizing suddenly that he was standing around with a gun in plain view, he hurriedly tucked the Glock back under his shirt and looked around. It was a miracle no one had found the body yet, but given its condition and its smell he could see why no one had gotten closer to investigate. The shadows around the dumpster made it look like just so much other trash. Risking another guilty scan to either side and behind him, Laughlin held his breath and crept closer, grabbing the thing by what was left of its ankles. It was missing one shoe; the formerly white sock was stained black from sole to ankle.

Heaving with all his might and feeling something pop in his abdomen, Laughlin wrenched the filthy thing up and into the open dumpster. Parts of it sloughed off as he did so and his shirt became smeared with its fluids. Gods, the smell of it! He couldn’t hold it in anymore. He crouched in the shadows, puking his guts out.

At least, he thought, standing bent at the waist, his hands on his thighs and his stomach clenching, it’s all over now.







Jack got up.

The Styrofoam cup fell to the sidewalk, spilling its precious cargo of change and crumpled dollar bills.

With slow, unsteady steps, Jack – no longer caring what his last name might have been – began to walk.







Ann Gilmore, hurrying back to the Galleries building, passed the homeless man as she entered the glass doors. She was more or less used to the street people, given that every weekday she walked the gauntlet of stinking, grasping paws and staring eyes. Provided they stayed out of her way, she ignored them, though she was never comfortable around them. They were a blight on downtown Syracuse that the city’s politically correct denizens seemed unable – or unwilling – to cure. A proposed ordnance to outlaw “aggressive panhandling” had been doomed before its conception. No, the homeless were a fact of life downtown and those who lived and worked in the area simply put up with them because they had no choice. Those who didn’t walk that daily gauntlet sniffed about “compassion” at those who did. Bill, being overprotective, had actually written a series of eloquent but overwrought letters to the editor of the Post Standard in support of the ordnance.

Ann smiled at the thought, shook her head, and made her way back to work.

She did not see Jack turn, his eyes red with burst blood vessels. She did not see him shamble after her, only to stop when he encountered the closing glass door.

She also did not see the African-American woman who worked at the greeting card store. She did not watch as that woman left the Galleries, only to stop when Jack blocked her path.

Ann was not watching when Jack sank his teeth into the woman’s throat. She did not see nearby people scream and run as blood sprayed from the woman’s torn carotid artery. She was not there to see Jack gnaw hungrily into the woman’s stomach for several minutes before he rose to find other, more stimulating prey.

Minutes later, Ann was not present to see the dead woman rise and, with slow, unsteady steps, begin to walk.