Steampunk Zombie

It first started with a little sniffle and a small drop of snot falling across his thin, stretched lips. Felix had wiped it away with the back of his hand. Then came the cough. It wasn’t loud and it didn’t claw at the back of his throat like how a cat scratches a post, so he assumed that he was fine. Even after a drop of blood appeared on his pillow one morning, Felix did not worry. In fact, Felix went to work.

Charleston, South Carolina was changing. Steam and smoke now created a dark haze throughout the bustling city. The industrial Western civilization of the 19th century flourished with anachronistic warehouses and retro-futuristic buildings. Men and women loitered the streets in their stylishly small top hats and fogged goggles, blabbering about science and steam-powered machinery that now made their beautiful city roar. These folks would gather at every corner to take in what new inventors were trying to sell. While one spoke of a balloon that could lift people into the air with just fire, another cried out about the golden watches that he had adorning his arms. It was the time of industrial revolution infused with Victorian apparel. The fire that once fueled machines was now being replaced by steam. Felix did that.

His build was massive, with broad shoulders and a thick neck that allowed for him to stand and work for many hours without feeling fatigued. He held a Columbian heritage, his father having brought over a wife and eight children during the great migration. After his father had died working in the quarry, Felix took up a job along the harbor. He would often return home covered in black, sticky soot. Felix’s warm, amber skin was permanently stained by years of arduous work. His small brown eyes only lit up from the flames in the stone cast that he labored over. Even his three small children and petite Westerner wife could no longer bring him joy. He was breaking.

Felix coughed into the smoky material of his black gloves. He paused for a moment, keeping the iron pick under his arm to support him. The only light came from the sun and sky that seeped through the gapping rafters of the building. A gentle sea breeze fought against the steam and smog for residence in the man’s lungs. The boards below him rocked, waves splashing up between the wide cracks and soaking the rotting wood. A large ship was tethered along the supports of the rickety building, out from the weather so that its battered body could get some work done. Felix was in charge of stirring the black tar. His nostrils burned.

His head abruptly ticked so that his chin was pulled to the left. He frowned, his vision clouding for a brief moment. He stopped the stirring once more. He felt a lurching deep inside his stomach and placed a large hand over his belly. Felix swayed.

“Siente bien, amigo?” a fellow Columbian called over, taking a quick break from his own smoldering vat of tar.

“Si, soy fino,” Felix assured him, waving him away.

His head twitched again. Felix forced a yawn, trying to get his ears to pop. He repeated the action, clenching his jaw shut and clicking his teeth. His ears focused on a new sound as he snapped his head in that direction to admire the cause of it with unadulterated affection. He took in the crackling of the fire and the deep gulps of the bubbling tar. His upper lip curled as he watched a young boy drop a bag of gilded woodcarvings and at the old overseer who chastised him for his clumsiness.

“No parece tan bien,” murmured the same man from before.

“Marchese!” hissed Felix.

Felix’s right eye twitched and he felt himself start to fall. His left hand slid off of the slimy floorboards and he almost crashed into the black water of the murky harbor. Many of the surrounding laborers rushed to the man’s side. Felix used his forearm to roughly pushed them all away with a growl.

“Rojas, get home,” the overseer ordered as he peered over a clipboard through the thin frames of his big and round glasses. A busty white beard fell along the corners of his lips in two long tassels. A top hat rested over the wiry curls of the older gentleman’s head. “I don’t need your sickly filth clogging the air.”

Felix yanked free from the grip of those who had helped him up. He pushed past the crowd of gawkers. His heavy boots hit the boards of the dock hard. The lid of his right eye continued to flutter like the wings of a newborn bird. Frustration coursed through the veins of the man as he left the shipyard.

“Felix, you are home so early!” Lisbette exclaimed when she caught sight of her husband removing his shoes.

“Kappa sent me home. Thought I was sick. ¡Pendejo!” Felix huffed.

“I warned you; I said that you would only grow worse if you pushed yourself in the shipyard,” his wife sighed. She was young, only twenty-eight, but the corners of her lips and the strands of brown hair behind her ears were already beginning to show age.

Lisbette had once been a respectable woman. Although her family had not been at the top of the financial pyramid, her father had played a big roll in the introduction of steam technology and found comfort in the upper middle class. Her downfall had been her marriage to a Columbian migrant of the Caribbean district whose religious beliefs did not mirror those of Lisbette’s Christian family.

“I am not sick, Lisbette,” insisted the man. “Just tired.”

Felix excused himself to take a bath. The lukewarm water quickly turned to a chunky brown as he lowered himself into the bronze bowl. Ash and grime floated around the man. His knees came above the water. He was already cold.

His bath was brief. There was no sense in trying to completely remove all traces of tar and smog when he would just become covered with them the next day. He would go to bed smelling like muddy water while he wife lay next to him smelling of rose petals and honey. He brushed off the smell as water splashed to the floor when he stood. He used a stiff towel to dry himself. Little droplets lingered on the wiry black beard that wrapped his face.

Felix drained the water from the bronze tub. He heard it trickle down the copper pipe and into the cobblestone street. The screams of his young children rang in his ears. His head pounded. He brushed a layer of condensation from the square mirror above the white pedestal sink. His caramel skin was beginning to gray. He clenched his teeth and curled his lips back. His gums were spotted, swollen and on the brink of bleeding.

“Alejandro!” Felix yelled as he threw open the small bathroom door.

A heavy pitter-patter of small feet soon filled the hallway. A minutiae version of Felix turned the corner. The only sign of Lisbette in his appearance was his fair complexion contrasting the dark curls atop his head. “Yes, papa?” the six-year-old said.

Felix thrust his hand deep into the pockets of his brown pants. A few coins jingled against his soiled fingernails. “Go to the market and buy your papa some lemons,” he instructed.

“Why for?” Alejandro asked.

“Papa is sick,” Felix was finally able to say.

Felix went back to the mirror. He pulled at his teeth. One came loose. Horrified, Felix let it drop into the drain, a splatter of bright blood hitting the porcelain on its way down. A slight inkling of fear tugged at the back of his mind. Perhaps this was more than just a minor case of scurvy brought on by the men who made port at the harbor and not just some minor cold that he had first rendered it to be. He did not understand these worsening symptoms.

“Felix?” He could only faintly recall his wife speaking to him later that night. “Felix!”

His eyes were yellow. White strips of light flickered above him. He was moving. His limbs were immobile. He could feel the tug of leather restraining him. Felix snapped his teeth as he pulled against the fetters. A woman screamed beside him. The pace of the gurney faltered for a moment as she let go of the gurney to took a step back from the convulsing man.

“Anne, focus,” instructed the male doctor.

Felix clicked his head towards the voice. Shapes blurred all around him. Spit filled his throat. He choked. His body ached. He could hear his wife’s exasperated cries behind him as she was kept back.

The skin on Felix’s wrists where the leather straps were holding him down was beginning to break. The smell of blood hit his senses before the pain from the tearing did. He could hear his own heartbeat. A chorus of deep drums ensued as the beats of four other hearts joined in. Felix had a headache. Felix was hungry.

“Doctor, his pulse is slowing. He is so cold!” Anne cried.

“Impossible. Let me feel,” muttered an older woman. “He has too much energy to have such a slow pulse. Look how he moves!”

The muscles in his stomach tensed as Felix tried to sit up, but the brown leather straps pulled him back yet again. He hissed, thick spit flying from beneath his teeth. His heart was swelling. The blurs in the room were beginning to swirl together. The skin around his neck was coming loose.

“Doctor!”

Felix locked his jaw. Another tooth fell from his mouth. The veins across his forehead were bulging and his eyes were burning from the single light cast above him. It was a cold cement room in the deepest part of the hospital’s basement. This was where they took all of their severely ailed patients. This was where they did all of their experiments. And this was where Felix felt himself die.

A nurse lifted a needle. She held it against the man’s wide arm. Felix began to slow. Sounds began to blend. His lungs hardened.

“Mr. Rojas?”

Nothing.

“Doctor…he doesn’t have a pulse.”

Felix didn’t need one. He screamed, his voice much higher and shrill than the deep melodic sound that it had once been. He locked his eyes on the vein that was moving beneath the doctor’s wrinkled neck. He lunged, tearing from the restrains so that his big white teeth could sink into the mound of flesh. Felix chewed, blood and skin sticking beneath his tongue. His brittle teeth broke against the bits of bones and rubbery cartilage. It tasted delicious. He wanted more.