Dead Men (and Women) Walking (24 page)

With a grim shudder and
lurch,

he resumes his world weary
search

of grotesque curiosity
shops.

His well worn pain and borne
disdain

of the macabre mad gadabout
crowd:

putting on freakish
sideshows

in castoff carnival
clothes,

coveting garish and obscene
trinkets,

on their junkets to flea
market hangouts.

Through jumbles of rummage
sales

they dicker, bicker and
bray

like the asses they
are.

He musn’t stray too
far

from cluttered tables and
stalls

as he softly
calls

   
my Love 
my Life

   
my beautiful
Wife

   
my
Blood  my Child

   
So sweet and
mild

   
I am your
beggar beguiled

but only his echo rises and
falls.

By Donna Taylor
Burgess

Sam Clark knew he’d kept her
locked in that back bedroom too long when she began to eat chunks
of her own face. Pinched off with ragged nails, and when he peered
in through the keyhole at her, he could see the hard white flashes
of sharp cheekbone stark against her dusky complexion. She had
taken her own top lip first and was now wearing this awful
permanent grin. Her speech was odd, like a person who had been
loaded with Novocain. Her teeth were stained with her own
blood.

He moved away from the
keyhole and sat back down against the door. He cried into his
hands. Should have done it when the first symptoms hit.

At the onset, she’d wanted
to argue with him one moment, then the next, she wanted to make up,
to make love. He was afraid of her. When he indicated that he did
not want to touch her, she scratched his cheek with those ragged
nails and called him a weak little fuck.

Later, she begged him to do
it--to put a bullet into her head. He promised he would as she
slept. But it’s hard to shoot your first love in the head. No
matter that she was becoming something from a cheap horror movie.
And even harder when it was beginning to appear that he might well
be completely alone in the world when Ellie was gone.

She later asked for the gun,
so she could do it herself, but she had been in one of those
irrational moods when she’d asked. He was afraid to hand the gun
over, lest she put a hole in his head instead.

Now he sat, a broken man, a
weak man, smelling the scent of feces and blood and sickness
wafting up from under the door.

***

The beginning of the end did
not happen like in the movies. There was no slow spreading, no
sense of building dread. No media-generated suspense. This was the
blink of an eye. An anticlimax, that was what it was. It was
Christmas morning and realizing that there was really nothing there
to be excited over. It was a trip to the doctor to check a lump
that turned out to be a pimple. Most of the major cities along the
eastern seaboard had fallen by the time the first headlines hit the
streets.

He’d seen a segment about it
on the evening news. He’d been sitting at Kelsey’s Pub, overlooking
the beach, drinking after work. Not that work was all that
stressful. That weak thing, again. Four years of college to get
paid for teaching little tourist kids to surf. He got paid--not
very well, of course--to play on the beach. The television sat
virtually ignored above the bar, the anchor’s voice muted out in
favor of Buffet on the jukebox. Film footage--it was the end of the
world, played out to the strains of “Come Monday.” The guy on the
stool next to him stopped gnawing a buffalo wing long enough to
comment, “Some government monkey must have dropped a vial.” He
snorted bitterly and wiped away greasy orange smear of hot sauce
from his chin.

“
Must have,” Sam agreed.
Then he thought nothing more of it. He had a dozen sessions lined
up for tomorrow. Besides, Maine was a long way from where he sat
then. Government mistake or not, things would be back under control
in no time.

He pulled up out front of
his place--a little beach cottage rental, just this side of falling
in. Katy had locked the door and shut off all the lights,
evidentially pissed that he was out so late. He fumbled clumsily
with his keys in the dark, half-expecting the cool-leather touch of
a snake or a lizard against his bare ankle.

Inside, he weaved through
the dark living room and into the bedroom where he saw that Katy
had put the baby there in bed with her. Despite the fact that this
was Katy’s little signal to him that the sofa was his spot for the
night, he smiled drunkenly as he looked down at his little daughter
in the pale moonlight. Then he shrugged and went back out into the
living room.

He found another beer in the
fridge and downed it, then passed out to a grainy old science
fiction movie.

It was just before 6:00 a.m.
when he heard the screaming. He sprang up, not even awake yet, his
heart thudding inside his chest painfully. He stumbled over the
cocktail table, fell sprawling and wracking both knees on the
floor, and scrambled down the hall to his bedroom.

He stopped dead at the
door.

Thinking back upon that
moment now, he realized that was the precise moment he went a
little mad.

Katy was kneeling on the
bed. One of baby Chance’s chubby eighteen month-old legs in each
straining fist.

It took a horrible moment
for him to register exactly what he was seeing. Then he saw that
part of Chance’s torso was gaping open. The child writhed, howling
in agony. Blood gushed from the wound. It was painted on Katy’s
mouth and up onto her fish-white cheeks like a clown’s
smile.

“
Katy?” he croaked. “Katy,
what the hell have you done?”

Katy glared at him through
cloudy eyes. Her always perfect blond hair was now a tangled
nest.

“
Young meat is tender meat,
but you’re next, you drunk motherfucker!” she snarled. Then she
tossed the baby to the floor. Chance landed with a terrible thunk
and howled even louder, if that was possible.

Katy slid off the bed and
shambled toward Sam. She hiked up her blood-soaked cotton nightie
and did a sick parody of seduction.

“
You know you want it,
Sammy. Come and get it.”

He stepped back, shaking his
head. “No.”

“
I’ll bite your little dick
right the fuck off.”

He ran from her then,
believing every word she said. He could not recall her ever using
that type of language with him. She had never raised her voice to
him before, not in their three years of marriage. Not even when
he’d deserved it.

He fled the house, and he
was screaming like a child running from the boogieman. “Oh God! Oh
God!” and out the door, clearing the front porch steps like a
hurdle. He tugged the door of the Wrangler open and tore open the
glove box. He kept a loaded .38 in there. He’d bought it after a
failed car jacking attempt back when he was in school. He had never
fired it.

Every few seconds, he
glanced back toward the house to see if Katy was coming for him. He
waited a moment, but she never appeared.

***

Back inside the baby was
silent. The entire house was silent, for that matter, except for
that dratted leaking faucet he had promised to tighten. He held the
gun out in front of him and he could not stop it from shaking. The
thing felt too heavy and awkward in his fist.

He moved slowly through the
little house, rubbing at his sleep-blurred eyes with the back of
his hand.

“
Katy?”

Drip. Drip.

Outside the bedroom and he
could smell the patchouli incense Katy burned sometimes. But now it
was mingled with a foul stench of waste--vomit or shit. And the
metallic air of freshly spilled blood. A lot of it.

Closer and he could hear
Katy. Chewing. Chewing on what? Jesus! Lips smacking wet and
loud.

He screamed again--could not
help himself and plunged through the half-closed bedroom
door.

He shot his wife in the face
three times before he ever realized he had actually pulled the
trigger.

Katy fell back and Chance’s
legs dropped from her dead grip. Katy had started in on the baby’s
thick, soft thighs. Bone and muscle peeked through,
glistening.

The baby twitched on the
floor between the bed and her crib. Then she twisted around to face
him, a look of recognition in her clouding blue eyes. Blood was
everywhere--on the walls, the bedcovers, the drapes. It pooled on
the floor like spilled paint. The twitching worsened and then the
baby began to howl again. Sam shot the baby, his lack of experience
with the gun causing him to only graze her face. He moved the gun
up a fraction of an inch and then he turned away.

He pulled the trigger again
and all was silent except for the drip drip of that fucking faucet.
In a breath, his entire world was gone.

His knees turned to mush and
he sank to the floor, too confused to know what to do. Then he
pressed the gun to his own head.

But he was weak. So fucking
weak.

***

He fled the island and
headed back home to his parent’s place. The drive was perilous
thing, the interstate an obstacle course, a scenic tour of
horror.

Here and there vehicles were
stalled and he kept expecting to finally reach a stretch that was
impassable. Along the way, he spotted a number of the shambling
infected along the shoulder of the road. Some chased the Wrangler
and others stood and screamed at him as he passed. He drove faster
than he should have through the maze of twisted steel, but
amazingly he did not wreck.

There was a big pile-up
about fifteen miles from his parent’s place and he managed to
maneuver along the shoulder, the needle hovering at a steady five
miles per hour for a quarter mile. He thought he’d never get
through it. The sun was up and already hot and he could smell death
in some of those battered cars. As he crept gingerly past the last
of the mess he thought he heard someone crying out for help. He did
not dare stop.

He prayed he could make it
back to Holly Hill before needing gas. His parents lived only 60
miles inland, in a tiny rural community. He hoped the sparse
population he had always loathed was a good thing after
all.

He found himself dwelling on
the events of the morning. He thought he might be in shock. He felt
mind-numb and outside of himself watching everything unfold as of
he were watching a particularly terrifying flick one moment, and
overcome with grief the next.

He wondered if he might have
been able to save the baby. Why hadn’t he tried? Why hadn’t he
tried to stop the blood? Tears came again, blurring the road
ahead.

He tried the radio and found
static along most of the dial. On AM, there was the faint, manic
ramblings of an evangelist and Sam quickly discovered he preferred
the static to that.

He squinted into the
midmorning sun and wondered if the entire world was gone now. And
if so, why hadn’t he been infected yet? How many others were out
there beside the crazy evangelists and himself?

***

Holly Hill was indeed the
ghost town he was expecting. He cruised slowly down Main Street,
scanning the front of the little shops for any sign of
life.

He turned up Fifth Avenue
and passed Tanner’s Hardware. The door stood ajar and he pulled to
a stop out front and tried to see inside.

At the back of the store, he
could see movement. He turned off the Jeep and climbed out, taking
the .38 and stuffing it into the waist of his jeans. He had been on
that street a thousand times but this was the first time he had
ever been afraid.

Cautiously, he approached
the door of the old shop, turning slowly to check behind him. He
stood in the doorway, the sun pouring in and casting deep shadows
along the aisles, and let his eyes adjust.

“
Mr. Tanner?” he called.
“You in here?”

He stepped inside and walked
slowly toward the back of the store. The shadowy figure continued
to move.

“
It’s Sammy Walker, Mr.
Tanner.”

Down the dusty aisles closer
to the back counter he walked. He pulled the gun from his jeans and
held it ready. On either side of him were various types of screws,
nails, bolts and washers, all in big glass pickle jars. Drill bits
followed, then big angry looking saw blades hanging neatly on long
pegs. A big proponent of organization was Joe Tanner, almost to the
point of obsession.

Sam could now make out Mr.
Tanner’s sloping shoulders and shiny bald head. The man’s back was
to him and his movements seemed strange. Jerking and spastic. Sam’s
finger danced over the trigger of his gun. He called out
again.

Joe Tanner turned slowly.
“Sammy,” he whispered. Sam could see that Mr. Tanner’s left ear and
part of his face on that side was missing.