The Dead & Dying: A Zombie Novel (5 page)

Through a shimmering veil of tears, I saw the silhouette rush forward. He dropped to his knees beside me and gently pulled my face into the hollow of his shoulder; the jacket he wore was scratchy and smelled like stale sweat with an undercurrent of decay, perhaps from the splotches of blood that had dried dark against the khaki colored material. But he was alive, he was warm, he was like me....

He spoke in soft tones as his hand stroked my hair, whispering in a way that reminded me of my mother as she sat day after day in the hospital, watching my father waste away. Despite all the empirical evidence to the contrary, everything was going to be okay, it would all work out in the end: we just had to be strong and believe.

Later, I would learn that the man's name was Doc. The group he was traveling with had noticed a couple of zombies, what they called
rotters
, stumbling along outside the silo, their hands running over the smooth metal as if searching for a way in.

“We figured if they were that interested in what was inside, it had to be survivors.”

There were four people in their group, so dispatching the rotters wasn't too difficult for them: it only took a few blows to the head with an ax while the others created a diversion.

By the time Doc led me out of the silo, my eyes had adjusted to the glare of sunlight on snow. Two people were standing off to the side, bundled so tightly in layers of clothing that it was impossible to tell if they were men or women and they appeared to be talking. Another man, however, was squatting next to one of the bodies that had fallen. If he smelled the stench wafting from the blackened flesh of the corpse, he gave no sign; he simply continued to plunge his hands into the pockets of the rotter, turning them out onto the ground.

“What's he doing?” I whispered to Doc.

The man looked up at me and I was struck by what I saw in his eyes. I had always read about people who have a haunted look to them and had always thought I understood. But mere words can never do justice to something that so thoroughly penetrates the soul. It was almost as time and space had no meaning in those brown irises: he was an old man with a lifetime of sorrow and regret; he was a young boy coping with his first experience with death; he was every age in between... every pang, every ounce of remorse and pain, all trapped behind those eyes.

“What's it look like I'm doing? I'm goin' through its pockets.”

His voice held no malice, but reflected what I had seen in his eyes. It was as if the landscape of his soul was as desolate and barren as the post-apocalypse prairie.

“I can see that. Why?”

“Very few people,” Doc said, “die with empty pockets. Never can tell what you might find in there.”

The other man had pulled a wallet out of the corpse's hip pocket and thumbed through its contents. He fanned out a wad of cash before tossing the billfold to the side.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “there's people out there who still think this is worth something. More than you'd reckon.”

“That's Carl, by the way.” Doc said with a grin. “He's mostly harmless. As long as you've got a pulse that is.”

Doc nodded toward the two androgynous bundles of cloth across from us.

“Over there. That's Sadie and Watchmaker.”

“He's blind, ya know.” Carl chimed in as he stood. “I reckon he was so hard up for a shot of hooch he chugged some rubbin' alcohol. He's a bit of an old soak, if'n ya know what I mean.”

From somewhere beneath the sweaters and scarves, a voice as coarse and scratchy as the fibers croaked.

“I'm blind not deaf, you asshole.”

Doc laughed, releasing a plume of breath into the air; for the first time in God knows how long, I began to feel something I thought would never again grace my spirit. If there was laughter still in the world, then surely there could also be hope.

I found myself grinning and, even though I have always had a difficult time fitting in with other people, wanting to join in with the good natured banter of this group.

“It's okay.” I called out with a smile. “You may be an old soak but at least you're not a grave robber.”

The words had barely passed my lips when Carl pulled a pistol from his waistband with the speed of an Old West gunslinger. He leveled it in front of him, advanced toward me with quick steps, his face devoid of any emotion what-so-ever.

In the time it took for a snowflake to melt on the tip of a warm tongue, I had went from having an almost family-like feeling for this group of travelers to looking down into the dark barrel of a gun.

“Look,” I stammered as I scrambled backward, “it was just a joke, you know. I was just.... ”

But Carl was still advancing, if anything his pace quickening to almost a run. My stomach felt as if I had just dropped eighty feet on a roller coaster and the words dried up.

I could only look on in horror as I saw him pull back the hammer with the tip of his thumb and heard that little click that can never be confused with any other sound in the world.

CHAPTER NINE: THE CHILD

I got that feeling again. The one like I'm in two places at the same time and everything seems all confusing and stuff. I'm still with a bunch of blurry people, but somehow I still feel so lonely. Almost like I don't even realize they're there or anything.

And it hurts, it really hurts, like every inch of my body has done been skinned up and bruised but much worse than I ever got from just fallin' off my bike. At the same time, I'm glad that I'm there and also here all at the same time. Somehow, I know that if I wasn't here in this little room then the pain would be so much worse, so bad that I probably wouldn't even be able to cry 'cause I'd be afraid that the tears would hurt as they ran down my face.

And I wonder if that other me feels the same thing. If it can tell somethin' isn't really right too. Does it see me and this room over top what it’s lookin' at? Does it see a ghost-like Mr. Carl layin' there on the floor in all that blood? If it does, I bet it’s as happy that he's dyin' as I am.

See, I know that this is all his fault, too. He split me off into two parts somehow, maybe like one of those evil wizards in the stories Mommy used to tell me before bed. I wouldn't put it past him to do somethin' like that.

But the other me is kinda fading now and I can barely see the trees and bushes and that smoke in the distance that we all seem to be headin' toward. The pain is going away too, but I can still feel that loneliness inside. Almost like it latched onto me with a hundred tiny little claws and can't be shaken off no matter what. And I think the lady somehow knows. She's lookin' at me the same way people used to when I told 'em my Daddy died when I was just a little baby. Kinda like she feels sorry for me but doesn't know what to do or say to make it all better.

What she doesn't know is that she can't make it all better. No one can. The only thing that'll help is if Mr. Carl takes forever to die and I know that he's been sufferin' every stinkin' minute. And even that won't make it all go away. It'll just make it easier somehow.

I remember, that day in the woods when he was cryin' and Mommy was tryin' to talk to him, he yelled out, “It was just a little girl, for Christ's sake!”. And I heard Mommy say back to him that no it wasn't, not anymore. I didn't really know what she meant, but I really wasn't payin' too much attention to tell the truth.

I was still standin' there when I heard 'em say those things, still watchin' the bushes shakin' and tryin' my hardest not to start cryin' and needing to pee so bad it almost hurt. Still waitin' for the monster to jump out at me the moment I turned to run.

Only it wasn't no monster after all. I musta been standin' really still because while I stood there watchin' I saw this little white tail through some of the branches. It was headin' farther into the woods and it only took a second for me to see the rest of its body. It's brown fur looked so soft that I just wanted to go up and pet it but the antlers looked like maybe they could be sharp. So I decided to keep watchin' it but also to keep away from it a little bit.

I tried to step real soft like they do in movies when they are trackin' somethin'; but every couple minutes I would step on a twig and it would snap. When that happened the deer would stop and his head would jerk up and he would kinda look around like Pepper used to before she'd go outside with the other cats.

So I would stand really still and 'ventually the deer would go back to eatin' and walkin'. For the first time since Mommy and me ran away from the house, I wasn't scared at all. I was pretendin' that I was an explorer deep in the jungle and that the deer was magic and it would lead me to the Lost City if I was just able to follow it long enough.

And I did a good job, too. That deer just kept walkin' and I just kept followin'. Until I tripped over that darn root.

When that happened, I kinda fell forward and into some bushes. The bushes had thorns all over 'em and they scratched my face and arms and I musta yelled 'cause when I stood up again the deer was way off in the distance, jumpin' and runnin' as fast as it could.

I turned around to ask Mommy if she had saw the deer, too. But the clearing where Mommy and Carl were wasn't there no more. Around me all I could see was trees and bushes and I couldn't hear Mommy talkin' no more. I heard birds chirpin' and this weird cluckin' kind of noise I hadn't noticed before but everything else was so quiet.

I wanted to cry again and I kinda spun around in circles, hopin' that maybe I had just got confused and I would be able to see her and Mr. Carl in a different direction. But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't see nothin' and I couldn't help it, I just started cryin' and my belly felt sick again.

I yelled for Mommy as loud as I could and these birds in the trees musta got scared 'cause they all took off flying at once. But I didn't care, I just wanted to be back with Mommy and not all alone in the woods with the bears and snakes and wolves and things. So I kept hollerin' for her over and over until my throat felt like it was burning.

And then I heard Mommy's voice holler my name, but it sounded so far away away that I tried to yell louder even though I was sure I was screamin' so loud now that my throat just had to be bleedin'.

Only Mommy didn't answer me this time. Instead I heard Carl's voice.

“Jason! Stop screaming! Don't scream. Stay where you are. We'll find you.”

I didn't know how he thought they were gonna be able to find me if I stayed real quiet like he wanted me to, so I yelled some more.

“Damn it, Jason,
shut up! We will find you just shut the Hell up!
”

And that was when I figured it out. He didn't want me to scream because he really didn't want them to find me. He wanted me to stay lost in the woods like those two little kids in the fairy tale. If some mean 'ole witch came along and gobbled me up, he wouldn't even care cause then he would have my Mommy all to himself.

One time Mommy said she was goin' out with Mr. Patterson from the butcher's shop. But when she picked me up at Miss Donna's that night she told me she wouldn't be goin' out with him ever again. She said that he wanted just her but we were a package deal and if he didn't love me then we didn't have no place in our lives for him. So I knew that there were people out there who wanted to take her away from me. And now I knew that Mr. Carl was one of those people, too.

But the only thing in the world that I wanted was my Mommy... even more than I wanted Pepper and Mr. Boots. So I kept yellin' no matter how many times Carl yelled back at me not to.

I had just stopped to take a really big breath so I could yell the loudest I possibly could when I heard the bushes behind me rattle. If you've never been lost then you don't really know what it’s like to be found again. How your heart feels kinda fluttery inside and how you can feel happy from the tips of your toes all the way up to your hair.

I spun 'round and was getting' ready to run to Mommy so I could give her a big hug... but then I saw that it wasn't her comin' out of the bushes and it wasn't Mr. Carl neither.

The monsters looked like marshmallows do when you've held them in the fire too long and the outside gets all burnt and bubbly. And all three of 'em were like that, but I could see bits of clothes in places and the little one had tennis shoes on but the bottoms kinda looked like they had started to melt. I'm not sure how I knew, but as I looked at 'em I could tell that it was a whole monster family: a Mommy, a Daddy, and a little kid.

I remembered the monsters from the house and how they had chased us, so I screamed and took off running as fast as I could. I didn't know if I was running toward Mommy and Mr. Carl or if I was runnin' away from where they were but I didn't really care right then.

All I could think about were the monsters behind me as I jumped over fallen logs and ran through the woods. I could hear them back there, crashin' through the brush and could almost picture those arms reachin' out to grab me.

My heart was beatin' in my chest so hard I felt like it was gonna pop and I started getting' this pain in the side of my belly that made it hurt to run. I was cryin' and the trees and everything looked blurry and I was still screaming but I can't really remember what I was sayin'.

At one point, I looked back over my shoulder and saw they were so close that I could see a little Hello Kitty on a piece of the clothes that was stuck to the kid monster.

They're gonna get me, they're gonna get me, they're gonna get me . . .

I just kept thinking that over and over and it seemed like every time I would look back they would be just a little bit closer.

Next thing I know, I was falling cause I had tripped over a root or rock or somethin'. I landed on my knees and fell forward but was only on the ground for just a second. I was racin' to get to my feet as quick as I could when I felt something on my tee shirt, a kind of tuggin' or pullin'.

I screamed and started runnin' again and heard a ripping sound. Next thing I know half my shirt is gone and briars were scratchin' my chest as I ran by.