Stay Dead 2: The Dead and The Dying (14 page)

He turned his head to the side and
tried not to think about it.

20 BIG BAD WOLF

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top)

Sarah and Jim sat near the window most
of the day. Jim was nervous with how many deaders had been visible
today. This was more than he’d seen in a number of days and he
attributed it to he and Sarah attempting to flee earlier. They
lingered far longer than they had been and a number of them had
even come to the home clawing at it and shambling around, searching
for a way in.

It kept both of them in a state of
unease. Jim’s mind was taken off his earlier dark thoughts and now
focused on the deaders outside. They needed something big to divert
their attention. He hoped a car would drive by, a gunshot would go
off—hell, he didn’t care what it was, so long as it made them go
away.

Sarah grabbed the binoculars from
Jim’s desk and peered outside once again. She paused on each of the
deaders. Taking in their grotesque appearances and their individual
nuances distorted through the lens of death; one deader walked with
his arm bent in front of him as if shielding his eyes with his
forearm; another dragged its leg along the pavement and shrugged
it’s shoulder; one had facial tics; another was buck-naked and
pale, her milky white skin contrasting against the dried blood that
covered her forearms and hands that evidently poured from the
gashes in her wrists.

She saw another one in the distance.
There was something familiar about the deader and as it stepped out
of the shadows his face could be seen more clearly.

“
No…”

His eyes were wide. His cheeks sunken
in and the skin of his lips shriveled tightly around his
teeth.

“
Oh God, no…”

“
What? What’s
wrong?”

His shirt was in shreds and covered in
dried blood. She could see his innards hanging out from underneath
it and draping over his pants down into the street.

“
Oh, fuck.”

“
Let me see.”

His intestinal track dragged dryly
along the black top, shredding more with each step.

“
Goddamnit.”

“
Here, give me the
binoculars.”

It was Boone.

“
I don’t see anything
special. What was it? What did you see?”

She was crying now, “Boone, my
friend.”

“
Shit. He’s out there?” He
felt stupid even as the question came out of his mouth but there it
was.

She nodded, putting her hand over her
lips.

“
I-I’m sorry. Jeez, that’s
awful,” Jim didn’t know what else to say. He was grasping for
something. Anything. “Why don’t you go lay down? I’ll keep an eye
on things. You should rest up.”

“
Yeah, okay,” she said, as
she walked out of the room looking just as pale and hollow as the
dead things in the street.

The daylight seemingly took forever to
die, but in the dusk the only thing that changed was how much of
the dead Jim could see. He knew they were out there. Scraping at
the door, prodding at the siding, walking down the streets. They
knew he was in there. Somehow, they knew it and it creeped Jim the
fuck out. He sat at the top of his stairway, listening to the
sounds of the dead as they inspected the home. He could hear Sarah
sleeping now, too. She went from sobbing to snoring, snoring to
sobbing, and then back again to sobbing.

He looked back to the window, too
afraid to go over and look out. It was a window into hell—the
window of his tomb.

This must be hell, Jim
thought.

Would it get any better?

Would it get any worse?

***

Sarah slept till daybreak and she woke
with a feeling that could only be described as numb. The tears of
yesterday were gone and it would seem the well had run dry. She
wasn’t all that sad anymore—just numb—hollow.

There was a burning feeling in her
stomach. Hunger. But she didn’t feel like doing anything about it.
She was numb and hungry and at least being hungry meant she still
felt something. Despite everything it meant she was still alive,
and she guessed that was something.

She walked out of the room and jumped
back when she found Jim asleep on the floor at the top of the
staircase. He was curled up into a fetal position and looked so
peaceful in that way that only sleep could offer.

She sat down next to him, and hearing
the creak of the floor he woke up with a start.

“
Morning,” she
offered.

“
Hey,” he said, groggily,
wiping the drool from the corners of his mouth.

“
Fell asleep on the stairs,
I see.”

“
Yeah, I guessed I just
passed out.”

Then they heard the rumbling of a
truck down the street, and they both smiled at each
other.

“
Come on!”

They ran to the window to see if they
could catch a glimpse but they saw nothing and the noise faded
away.

“
Fuck.”

“
At least it might draw
their attention away from us.”

“
Yeah, I guess.”

“
That’s a good thing. It’ll
give us some breathing room.”

Then the doorbell rang.

21 NOTHING BUT
DARKNESS

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top)

From Eddie’s vantage point he could
see a clearing form in the landscape. There were tall apartment
complexes in the distance framed out by a warehousing district.
Further up, and closer to the road, as it turned into an overpass
crossing a bisecting highway was a large cemetery with what looked
like deaders walking around its grounds. Eddie pounded on the roof
a few times and Scott slowed the truck down. He honked the horn to
alert Abdul and in a moment both vehicles came to a stop in the
road that overlooked the cemetery.

“
What is it?” Scott called
out.

“
Look over
there.”

Eddie pointed out the cemetery and
watched intently as deaders pulled themselves out of the earth. He
couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Joseph was watching as well,
as was everyone else in the group by now save Carrie and the
children.

These were nothing like the dead
they’ve seen so far. Some of these things rising up from the earth
were dead for a long time—some for decades, some longer, and of
course some for less.

Somehow, Eddie thought, this was worse
than the recently deceased coming back to life. Way
worse.

The first days the news outlets had
been reporting incidents of reanimation as rare viral outbreaks.
Some had simply called it The Sickness. Others swore it was a
large-scale terror attack using bio-weapons and chemical agents. In
the end it was all noise. Nobody had known anything about what was
happening. The dead digging themselves out of their graves however,
cemented in Eddie’s mind that it couldn’t be a virus. This was no
sickness. This was no bio-weapon. This was just straight up
fucked.

“
Damn bro,” Joseph said,
“now that’s fucked up.”

Scott climbed up the truck to get a
better look and regretted doing so. “All that hard work embalming
them, and for what?”

“
Man, you can make a joke
in any situation, huh?”

“
If you can’t laugh now,
when can you?”

Eddie shook his head.

“
Think about how many
chemicals went into those bodies to keep them from rotting. Shit…
all us embalmers did was end up making them in better shape to come
back and get us. If we didn’t replace their blood with embalming
fluids most of them would be nothing but dirt and bones. Don’t you
see the irony? Our rituals for self-preservation—even if only of
our appearance after death—may be what ensures our
destruction.”

“
And you can laugh at
that?”

“
Yup.”

They watched for a bit longer, in rapt
attention, as the long dead awoke from their supposed eternal rest.
Then, realizing a few abandoned cars were nearby, they searched for
one they could drive away in.

Frankie sat on the roof of the SUV
staring out at the dead, seemingly unblinking. He wished he had a
cigarette, not that he smoked, or a drink—anything that would give
his hands something to do before they found a gun and shoved it
into his mouth.

Jon-Jon is running. There is nothing
but darkness behind him. He can hear screams of agony all around.
There is a woman laughing and an old man riding a bicycle naked in
the street. People are taunting him and pointing at him with
fingers like needles. The sky is full of eyes and the rain gutters
are spilling over from tears. Dead swollen rats with long hairless
tails flow along curbs to clog the storm drains.

Now he is in the ocean. The water is
freezing. His father is telling him to swim. Screaming at him. “If
you don’t swim, you’ll drown! You don’t want to drown do
you?”

He can’t answer. His mouth is full of
water. He is going under. This is it. His mother is down there,
shimmering like the scales of fish, moving as if one with the
water.

She looks beautiful.

There is a hand at his throat and a
tentacle at his foot. The eyes in the sky are staring at him. They
are angry. Their tears are salty. Below him is inky blackness. The
tentacles are pulling him down into the obsidian
nightmare.

His mother smiles. She is proud of her
little boy. Drowning. He kicks his feet and pushes his hands
against the water.

His lungs hurt. They need air. He is
going to die down there in the cold waters.

Then there is air. His mother is gone,
his father is clapping, and little Jon-Jon is treading
water.

Jon and his father are at a bar. He
has cancer. It doesn’t look good. He has only ever seen his father
cry for once before. He’s crying now, not because he’s dying but
because he believes he will see his wife again soon. “Very soon,”
he tells his son, and this makes him happy.

Jon is alone. He is drinking. He is
drinking alone and always drinking. He is always alone. He is
sitting on a barstool with three fingers of whiskey in a
glass.

He’s a regular here. This is
oblivion.

The darkness comes again. It is all
around him. Icy water is flooding the floor. He orders another
drink. Two fingers. A tentacle comes out of the darkness for each
one, wrapping itself around him.

“
Last call.”

He orders just a finger, but the
bartender left him the bottle hours ago. It sits empty in front of
him.

He forgets he’s alone.

He forgets how dark it is.

The tentacles pull him into the
darkness.

It smells like wet earth and
mold.

Jon-Jon is running again. He is ten
years old and doesn’t understand why his mother is dying. Jon-Jon
is running. There is nothing but darkness ahead of him.

22 SOMETHING
WICKED

(back to
top)

Sarah and Jim stared at each other in
disbelief.

“
One of them must’ve hit
the doorbell.”

“
Yeah, that’s just weird
though. I haven’t heard the doorbell ring for—well, since the first
few days of all--”

The doorbell rang again and then was
followed by a thunderous banging. A deliberate three bangs that
only another living person would do.

They returned to staring at each
other.

“
Maybe someone from your
group saw us come here?”

“
I dunno…maybe?”

“
Let’s go check it
out.”

They slowly descended the stairs, Jim
taking the lead and Sarah nervously following behind.

Jim peered through the peephole and a
dead man was smiling at him. Jim jumped back in shock. Sarah
stepped forward and took a look as well. The dead man was now
cocking his head to the side but continuing to grin his
yellow-toothed grin.

Sarah started shaking and backing away
to the steps.

“
No…no, what the fuck? How?
What? What’s happening?”

“
Please don’t tell me
that’s your friend?”

“
No. T-that’s the guy who
killed my friends.”

The door rattled in its jamb as the
dead man on the other side pounded it with his fist, “Let me in,
let me in, little pig!”

“
This can’t be
happening!”

“
He can’t get in, okay,
it’s locked. He’s…wait a minute…since when do zombies talk? That
dude looks dead as shit. And the other zombies aren’t trying to eat
him.”

“
This can’t be
real.”

“
Hey, piggy, let me in now
and I’ll make it quick.”