The freeing power of flies

Frankie, and that’s just short for Francesco, is sure of it: the heat will save us.

I have my doubts. Especially since I’m stuck with the day shift at Porta Montana at exactly 1 PM on an August Monday.

The upside? It’s the most fortified spot on the perimeter. Middle-age walls and all.

The downside? My water ration tastes like broth, and I’m sweating like a pig.

Zs can smell sweat. They struggle up Macerata’s slanted walls, slip in their own filth, moan. Constant moaning.

The stink of rotten flesh clings to everything. I remember when my mom left a piece of beef on the kitchen counter and, after two hours, the whole room stank like something wet and sour. Now, that stink is lodged in my nose for good.

The upside? The smell kills your appetite. Actually, it kills any desire to eat at all. Pretty handy, considering Just Eat isn’t working so great anymore.

I lean over the stone battlement to take a look. There’s a woman with platinum hair leading the pack. Her gray hands find a grip on a brick, and for a second, it looks like she might make it up. Then her rotten muscles give out, her arm tears under the weight of her own decaying flesh. The other Z’s pull her down, trying to climb over her. For a second, the arm stays there, still gripping the wall, then it drops too.

Not exactly team players, the Zs.

I count the heads. Thirty, thirty-five... The gas canister just sits there, watching me. The student collective was clear: fewer than fifty Zs, no barbecue.

I go back to my little shady spot under the Peppa Pig's umbrella I welded to my spot up on the wall. It hasn’t rained in two weeks. The collection barrels have forgotten what water looks like. Over at Roxy Bar, they’re taking bets on when the summer storms will start. I bet a box of condoms on August the 23rd. I realize I’m a shitty gambler. Instead of using my brain, I let myself get scammed by my own hope for rain.

It’s August 18th. The sky is bright and empty, like an ice cream commercial. My feet are boiling in my shoes, and I miss those dumb summer hits and girls in flip-flops at Rimini Beach.

Frankie, the wise guy, bet on September 10. He says to trust him. Says the storms always come late. And that it’d be better if climate change pushed them even further. We should be grateful, he says. We should be grateful for this goddamn heat.

Because the flesh melts, and the flies are happy. A lot of those Zs down there are crawling with maggots. The woman who tried to climb must’ve been far gone to lose an arm like that. So, Frankie says, summer is a blessing. We just have to wait for the horde to rot away.

A fly lands on my arm and frantically laps up my sweat with its tiny proboscis. I smack it flat without even trying to be sneaky. It doesn’t move. Doesn’t even buzz when I crush it.

And that’s the problem with Frankie’s grand prediction.

Half of these flies are already dead, and dead flies lay no eggs.

If we were still in God’s grace, we’d say it’s a blessing to be in a walled city.

Me and the other out-of-town students who never went home. Who stayed for summer exams, before all this shit went down.

If we were still in God’s grace, we wouldn’t meet at church just because the walls are thick and the air blowing up from the crypt keeps us cool.

Saint John the Baptist's Cathedral is still white inside, still clean. The stink's on us. I walked here straight from Porta Montana, dripping sweat, gripping my makeshift spear—a broom handle with a knife from the weapons shop. New rules: nobody walks around unarmed.

Alice runs the meeting, her round glasses missing a lens. Next to her, an art academy tutor translates for the survivors who are even more out of place than I am. Scattered across the pews, the usual heads of our little survival crew—at least the ones who aren’t on guard duty. We even have two priests. Don Pablo, still in his cassock, and Don Pino, in shorts and Birkenstocks, looking like a janitor with the same goddamn attitude.

And of course, Frankie, sprawled in the front row, baseball bat between his legs.

A year ago, when we were freshmen, he used to get drunk and talk about the future his dad had planned for him at the shoe factory. College was his last three years of freedom.

Now the outbreak gave us all a sabbatical. And there he is, eyeing two literature students like the apocalypse is just another Friday night.

Alice pretends not to notice. Reads out the supply list with the same solemnity we use to count the dead. The linen shirt she’s wearing is yellowed at the collar. If we were still in God’s grace, we’d be in a city with a river. Instead, we’re stuck having the same argument about raiding the aqueduct.

We won’t do it.

We can’t do it.

Running an hour uphill with the horde on our asses isn’t a plan. It’s a death sentence.

I get déjà vu. Without the student collective organizing these meetings, we’d be animals. We’d be tearing each other apart for the last scraps from the supermarkets. But we have order. Order that rations the precious few bottles left. Order that makes spaghetti soft with spit.

The church smells like limestone, incense, and the salt of sweating bodies. It almost makes me sleepy. Routine is a kind of comfort.

Then Alice clears her throat. And that means trouble.

“Now, onto new business... There’s something important.”

The word “important” crackles through the empty nave like an electric jolt. I get up and sit next to Frankie. He’s abandoned his attempt to flirt and is tracing circles on the knob of his bat.

“The radio at the police station got a message this morning.”

Frankie looks at me and mutters, not quite whispering: “Shit, the government’s still up. We’re saved.”

“It was a civilian frequency. From Rimini. They said a bus of survivors is passing through. Should be here tomorrow.”

Silence. I can hear a lone fly slamming itself against a stained-glass window.

“Do they have supplies?” asks Don Pino. “Do we open the gates?”

“No. They don’t want in.” Alice licks her cracked lips. “They’re asking if anyone wants to leave with them.”

I never passed calculus, but I can still do basic math. There are a hundred of us left in Macerata. That bus must be driven by a ghost to fit us all. But maybe the people from Rimini already know that. I raise a hand.

“What is this, a field trip?”

No laughs. Tough crowd.

“No. It’s a chance for anyone who wants to leave.”

“Leave where?”

Alice just stares at me. Heavy silence.

Don Pablo stands with a rustle of cassock. “This is wonderful news,” he says in his South American accent. “It means there are still people out there. People who want to live.”

I think about my post at Porta Montana, the Peppa Pig umbrella, and wonder if it's really worth trading that for a rotting bus seat.

"Anyway, the collective wants everyone to feel free to choose—stay or go. The bus will pass along the boulevards tomorrow afternoon, above the Diaz Gardens. If someone wants to get on..."

If someone wants to get on, the subtext says, that’s one less mouth to feed.

Or maybe that’s just me thinking it. Back in school I had an asshole streak. The truth is, that kind of comment is more of a Frankie thing. But he’s frozen. Not even swinging his bat. No smirk, not even when the Chinese interpreter stops translating and leaves with the Lit students. He looks different. Like one of these crucified Christs on the walls. Watching him think for more than five seconds is trippy. Like a glitch in reality.

He’s got that look. The one he gets before he pulls some dumb shit.

I shove him with my shoulder. “You having a stroke?”

He grunts something vague. Something like, don’t bust my balls. Two minutes ago, he was cracking jokes about the system. Now this.

My gut twists. "Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about it."

"If they have gas, we can make it to Ancona," he mutters.

"And after Ancona?"

"We get a boat."

He stands, dragging his bat behind him like he doesn’t really care.

Nice one, dumbass. Instead of dying of thirst here, you can die in the middle of the ocean surrounded by salt water. But maybe I shouldn’t take him too seriously. Frankie is like this. Like his theory on flies. He says things he doesn’t really mean. But the way he says them, the way he acts, makes you think maybe anything is possible.

Alice stares at me for a long moment. I nod, slow.

That night, I haul a load of old university theses to the guys on night watch at the gates.

Even if we ration, we still need fire and light, to make sure the Zs don’t slip through the iron bars of the fence, all Art Nouveau and useless. The covers of old dissertations burn great. Tonight, it’s the economics section, 1996-97. The first title to plead for mercy: "Analysis of the Dot-Com Surge in Light of Inflationary Models," by some E. Bernardini. We're so far from the Dot-Com surge, Bernardini.

Afterward, I meet Alice.

We always end up at the walls, by Via Garibaldi. Even with the stench of rotting flesh, there’s something romantic about watching the hills bleed from red to black. Alice has a half-liter bottle of water and two tissues. She soaks one carefully, wipes it around her neck, then hands me the bottle.

I barely have time to scrub the worst of the grime from my scalp before she drops the bomb.

"Have you thought about it?"

I lean my makeshift spear against the ledge and sit on the wall. Below us, a Z in flip-flops stumbles between overturned cars, moaning like a sad cat. "Better to take the bus to Piediripa, stock up at the mall. But heading any farther..."

"Suicidal."

Her hand finds mine on the ledge.

News spreads fast in Macerata.

Maybe because there are only a hundred of us left. By the time the heat slams into three o’clock, twenty people are waiting along the walls facing the boulevards. The engine noise in the distance is like a promise. Also a huge fucking problem.

We hear it. The Zs hear it.

My hand falls onto the gas can. Don Pablo stops me before I can baptize some rotting heads for a barbecue. "Wait."

The road is clear—except for the avalanche of dead meat. No way we’re opening Porta Montana today. There’s still the old staircase exit, blocked off with layers of heavy furniture. But with all those drooling Zs below, trying to slip by is signing up for slaughter.

We all know this. And yet the audience stands, swaying like cypress trees. I take my hand off the gas can.

Then, the bus appears.

Only scraps of its original neon green remain. The rest is rusted metal, jury-rigged armor, and layers of bungee cords. It skids between an Iveco van and a decomposing motorcycle, plows over two already-rotting corpses, and splatters through putrid flesh. The crowd stirs. We can barely make out the driver—some grizzled guy in a sweat-stained tank top.

He can’t stop.

If the bus loses momentum, it’s done. The Z horde, drawn by the sound, throws itself at the wheels with religious conviction. Worst case? They’re doing us a solid by cleaning up this part of town.

As fast as it came, the bus disappears beyond the curve leading to the main gates, the one we keep locked at all times.

"They’ll circle back." Don Pablo has the certainty of a man whose god still whispers to him. "Whoever wants on has to be down there..."

"There’s the elevator underpass." The words slip out. "It leads to the tunnel that comes out at Diaz Gardens. There’s the old bus station. More room to stop."

The elevator shaft is only sealed off by fire doors. Obviously, the elevators don’t work, but the stairs do. We kept it clear as an escape route. No smell in the tunnel, so the Zs can’t sniff us out. But I have no clue what the Gardens look like now.

Some art student stares at me like I’m supposed to guide them there. I hold up my hands.

"But how the hell do we tell the bus to go to the Gardens?"

We hear the engine roar, coming up again from the left.

This isn’t the Grand Prix of Monza. Just a patched-up bus racing itself. I barely finish the thought before Frankie steps onto the ledge of the wall. He looks at me, points at the bat he left behind, nods.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"I’ll tell them."

I shove past Don Pablo and run down from the watchtower. The bus is close. Macerata's refugees are torn - watch from the walls or bolt for the elevators. I see Frankie from behind—knees bent on the ledge, a saint before his congregation.

They haven’t pulled him down.

I reach for him just as the tires shriek.

Frankie jumps.

A metal thud. A screech.

I slam into the wall, look up. Frankie lands on the roof of the bus, rolls onto his back, barely clings to the radio antenna. His legs skid as the bus swerves toward the gates. The crowd erupts in gasps.

"You fucking idiot. Get to the Gardens! Now!"

I’m yelling. Somehow I find myself herding people towards the elevator entrance, then stopping, my heart in my throat, watching the fire door swing shut.

I left everything at Porta Montana.

My spear. The gas. Peppa Pig's parasol.

And Alice. Alice, who’s organizing the survivors in Piazza della Libertà.

I go back. Don Pablo is gone. I lean over the ledge, but the parking lot is obscured by trees. I should climb the clock tower and see what's happening there, but I can't make it in time.

The bus doesn’t return.

The Zs thin out, some feasting on the mush of their squashed kin. Five minutes later, I hear a engine humming in the distance.

I pick up Frankie’s metal bat, weigh it in my hands. Imagine him slipping through a window, rolling inside like some damn superhero. Or maybe they just opened the doors for him.

I have to believe he made it. That he’s out there, leading the Rimini crew with his signature bullshit charm.

He’s gone, while we stay here.

Waiting for the flies to set us free.