Among the Living (9 page)

He shakes, and she feels bad for him. She works hard, sure, but her mother used to say it is good karma to share the wealth with those less fortunate from time to time. She hits the button on her key that triggers the car. Her hand slips under the trunk, and the lid pops up. She deposits her bags and then sets her purse inside. Leaning over, she takes out a few dollars and then slams the trunk.

A passerby averts his eyes as she turns, and she bets he was staring up her skirt as she leaned over. Well, let him look and let him imagine how soft her legs are. She holds the money out and walks toward the groaning man with her nose crinkled up as if she is about to root around in a trashcan.

The man doesn’t move at all. His head has slumped to the side. Did he fall asleep like that? She will just drop the money in his lap and move on.

She struts across the parking lot and stands to one side.

“Here you go, mister. I hope you spend it on food and not booze,” she says and then drops the money in his lap. Oh shit, was that a twenty? How could she be so stupid?

The dollar bills pile around his lap, and a woman walking by in a long sundress with a droopy yellow hat smiles at her in a clear attempt to acknowledge her generosity. Shylah Rae nods back, and when the woman turns, she reaches down with finger and thumb and grabs the twenty, then pulls it out as if extracting a receipt from the trash.

She lets out a little scream when the guy moves. Then she crinkles the twenty in her hand before he can see it and walks away. The man comes to his feet like a shot. She glances back at him and feels horror creep over her skin. His eyes are red, bloody, and the color around them has become a sickening gray as if devoid of any pigmentation.

He hauls himself toward her, and she notices he is bleeding from one hand where several fingers are missing. The sight of the bloody stumps is too much, and she cries out in dread.

On heels that are not designed for running, she attempts a little skitter step, but he is right there. She starts to scream when he lunges forward and wraps her in his arms.

“I gave you money, leave me alone!” she howls, but he sinks his teeth, his fucking nasty stinking teeth into her shoulder, and pain explodes in her head as she is borne to the ground. Her knees scrape against the hot black pavement. She manages to free one hand but not before a piece of broken glass rips it nearly to the bone. She hears a snap that concerns her, but her brain is still trying to come to grips with a man biting her.

The smell of him is like an alley filled with old piss and beer bottles. The overwhelming stench combined with the hot ground makes her want to gag. She swings her elbow back and manages to dislodge his teeth from her shoulder, and maybe it’s not that bad. Then the pain arrives from that area, and she nearly passes out.

He digs in again, and this time there is a tearing sound as he pulls a chunk of flesh out. It is the same sickening sound as the time she cut up a whole chicken and had to pull the leg off the thigh meat.

Then the weight is gone as a man pulls the bum off her. Another man arrives, and they commence beating the crap out of the guy. The homeless man doesn’t just resist; he goes crazy and swings his arms up to grip the first man in a bear hug, then his mouth snaps down to bite him as well.

Through tear-stained eyes, she watches him try to struggle free. Her other savior, a black guy with a shaved head, grabs the homeless man and tears him free. He grips him by the throat and thrusts him away with a loud “Back off!” but the guy only falls and then tries to stand again.

The first savior holds his own neck, and there is blood there, but it doesn’t seem to matter to her as much anymore as she faints dead away. The last thought her living brain ever has is worry for the dress, which she forgot to hang up in the back of the car. Then darkness descends as a haze of red covers her sight.

A crash outside makes Lester sit up in a panic and look around the dark room. He reaches for his gun, but it isn’t there, and when his hand doesn’t find the nightstand, he almost falls out of bed. Fell asleep facing the wrong way. How the hell did that happen? Then he looks over at Angela’s naked form and remembers them fucking like it was going out of style.

The room is hot as hell, reeks of weed, booze, and sex. Lester grabs his arm and feels along it until he locates his watch. He brings it to his face and tries to focus on the digital readout, which if his gummed-up eyes aren’t lying, says it is almost two in the afternoon. At least the day is passing quickly, getting closer to nighttime. That means it will cool off in a few hours. But they have been ignoring the deaders in the street, and Lester feels panic set in.

SHIT!

He slides along the length of the bed so his head is by his pillow. There are sheets everywhere, blankets on the floor; it looks like a tsunami hit. Then he swings his legs over the side, and now everything is where it should be. Shorts are next, then the shirt he has worn for two days. He sniffs it first, and it isn’t too bad—a little sweat, a hint of gunpowder and a whole lot of Angela.

He grabs the handgun and a box of shells. Angela rolls over and tugs a sheet over her legs and ass. How can she be cold right now? It must be ninety goddamn degrees in here. He leans over and tries to kiss her but nearly falls over in the process. His hand shoots out to stop him from tumbling into her sleeping form, and he ends up mooching his lips into her shoulder. It’s a wonder she doesn’t wake up and slap the shit out of his half-drunk ass.

Where the hell is that rum?

He locates the bottle, the big half-gallon they have been working on for the last couple of days, but it only has an inch of liquid left. At least one of them thought to put the cap on and twist it tight. In this heat, it probably would have evaporated by now. Too bad there’s no cold juice to mix it with, but the refrigerator is getting empty and is room temperature now. He takes a long pull and tries to ignore the burn. He holds his breath for a second until the urge to puke passes.

There is another loud sound from outside like someone banging into the fence. He grabs a box of shells from beside the bed and pops the magazine out of the pistol. He tries to focus on putting the bullets in the correct way. Unsteady fingers fumble with each one as he sets it in its little cradle, pushes down with a click and then loads the next.

Once the magazine is full, he slides it into the pistol with a snap and chambers a round. He fills his pocket with extra shells just in case he has to go to war. On his way out the door, he stops and looks at Angela. She is so out of it that a series of little snores matches a tremor before she turns over with a sigh and farts. That’s my girl. He almost laughs out loud. He slips out the bedroom door, closing it quietly behind him with a click.

The hallway is empty and dark. The door to the guest room is closed because they had to dump the trash bags in there. No one picked up stuff this week, and he doesn’t have a giant hole in the back yard in which to dump stuff. Still, he wants to crack the door and look in, make sure none of the things has somehow crawled upstairs and made a nest. Just paranoia talking, from the weed—no way one of those mindless things got inside. He creeps downstairs, head hung low, mind foggy, legs tingling, arms stiff, mouth feeling like a rat took a crap in it. Just another day in the life of Lester the drug dealer. Lester the druggie. At least he sticks to the mild stuff like weed and some occasional X. He refuses to mess with the really addictive stuff like meth and heroin. Leave that shit for the losers on the street.

The living room is dim from the drawn shades. This suits him fine, the darker the better. The blankets they sorted earlier are piled on one side of the couch. They pulled them out of closets in case they need them tonight, but the heat makes that unlikely. His mind fuzzy from the pot and booze, he brings the gun up, looking for anything or anyone out of the ordinary.

He wants to concentrate on the room, but the image of Angela dancing for him keeps intruding. Not to mention the image of Angela riding his hips and Angela pouring rum in his mouth while he rubbed her tits with his hands.

His mind turns to Marlene outside, wondering if she has wandered off yet. He thinks of the fantasy he had a few months ago where Angela was going down on Marlene, then he sees her empty face and shudders.

“Piss on that,” he mumbles.

He walks to the front door and slides aside the curtains that are bound to bars on the top and bottom so that he has to push the middle together to see anything. Most of the old curtains came with the place when they rented it. He had to put in blinds in the bedroom the day after they moved in when he was woken at six in the morning by streaming bright sunshine. Besides, Angela refused to wear clothes in that room, and who was he to discourage such behavior?

The shrubs in front obscure most of the view, but he can see shapes out there. I guess Marlene didn’t leave yet. He turns the knob and cracks the door. Stupid. In their haste to get to bed, they left it unlocked.

He slides it open a hair and peeks out. Then he slams it shut and yells “FUCK!”

There must be twenty of them out there, all milling around the fence. Has the whole world gone crazy?

Well, only one thing to do—he will have to go out there and get his AR-15. Ah, crap. That was another mistake, leaving his damn rifle outside. What if they were waiting outside the door? He would be well and truly fucked.

You were just well and truly fucked. He giggles and then smacks his own cheek to wake up. Concentrate!

His breath grows shallow as he prepares to open the door. He spins around, sensing movement behind him. But there is nothing there. The house is dark, and all his furniture and crap piled on the floor cast shadows that mess with his mind. The blankets on the couch, are they corpses? He imagines them moving, unfolding and creeping toward him with worms hanging out of their backs. Puckered red holes pulse as the creatures squirm into the shallow light.

His whole body shudders, and goose bumps break out across his arms and neck. Then a round of shivers hits, and he wants to sit down and rest. He shakes his head, trying to clear it of the pot and rum.

Then he takes a breath, cracks the front door and peers outside.

There is a clicking noise he can hear now that he is on the patio. In the front yard, his sprinkler stutters back and forth, spraying water all over the fence. Did the noise draw them? He hangs over the side of the fence and turns the knob until it shuts off. Now even the battery-powered automatic timer he put on the hose won’t turn on.

The front yard is clear, but the deaders wander around like remote partners in a slow waltz. Some run into each other and push away. Arms flop, some dangle, some drag legs, one woman’s head hangs at an odd angle like her neck is broken.

He gets a chill watching them; they disgust him with their filthy bodies. He wishes he had a bomb so he could throw it at them and watch the parts fly. He does have one little surprise of the explosive variety, but he is saving that as a last resort.

Lester slips out the door and slides forward on silent feet. He isn’t wearing shoes, and he imagines himself a ninja moving among the shadows like he is invisible to the deaders, like they can’t even smell him.

He reaches for the low table, picks up the AR-15 by the barrel and brings it to his chest. He slips the Glock into the waistband of his pants so the cold metal is against his back. In the movies, they always look cool doing this. In reality, the heavy pistol tugs at his pants and is a cold, uncomfortable lump against his ass crack.

He turns the rifle over and clicks the magazine loose so he can check how many rounds he has. A box of ammo sits next to the chair, so he should be good. The magazine has a few rounds left, enough to get started.

But what if they surge over the fence like the black guy did earlier in the day? Thinking of this, his eyes are drawn to the corpse in the yard. He shudders and slides the magazine out again so he can reload it.

One by one, the deaders take notice of him and approach the fence. One leans forward as if he can reach the twenty or so feet to Lester’s warm body.

“Stupid asshole,” he mumbles as he pops the top of the ammo box open. He grabs a shell and loads it, then another.

Motion to his left scares the ever-living shit out of Les. A deader has fallen into the yard and decided to hang around the side of the house. Help, I’m dead and I can’t get up!

When he sees the thing, a little scream bubbles past his lips like he is a six year old. It is in the direct light of the sun, and he has trouble making out its shape. He can’t even tell if it is a man or a woman. Hell, it might not even be a deader at all. He has the magazine in hand, and he tries to ram it home, but it is upside down, and he can’t seem to get it lined up with the hole. Come on, man, how many times did you play square peg, square hole when you were a kid? In frustration, he drops his thousand-plus-dollar rifle on the porch and whips the Glock around, which nearly tears his shorts off when the front sight catches on the waistband. His shorts leap sharply up against his balls, but he is too scared to recognize the pain that may race into his gut at any second.

His fingers shake around the safety. He has the handgun up and aimed before he can scream again.

“Who the fuck are you?” his voice rings scared, sounds hollow in his ears. “Hands up or I’m gonna bust one in your ass!” he yells.