The Most Uncommon Cold I - Life in the Time of Zombies (13 page)

      “Well, I don
’t know about you,” I began as I checked my watch to see it was one thirty in the morning, “but I have had a very long, very strange day and... well... I think I may still be in a state of shock.”  Glen nodded.  “The only thing that sounds good right now is getting some sleep. Maybe some of this will make sense after that.”  I did not put much hope in that part about any of this making sense.

     “Lucky for you, top-notch accommodations are available in the storage shed,” Glen commented with a laugh.

     Whether it was the lack of sleep or the shock of losing Bonnie or seeing people become mindless killing machines, I cannot say for sure.  All that is sure is that I joined Glen in the laugh.

     “Yes, the luxurious storage shed,” I began in my
best television announcer voice as soon as my laughter allowed, “conveniently located near the heart of the city.”

     We began laughing energetically, but a glance at the ladder full of those things squirming around, over and under each other
instantly ended any thought of humor.  Glen and I stood there silently staring for a few minutes. 

     “What do you think?”  Glen
asked to break the silence. “I don’t think there’s any reason to watch them.  It doesn’t look like there’s any way for them to get up here.”

     “No, they
seem pretty well stuck.  And even if we watched...” I realized that there was no sense in pointing out that if those things managed to get on the roof we had no means to defend ourselves and would be screwed. “Well, let’s get some sleep.” 

     I began walking slowly toward the shed, and Glen showed a sudden burst of energy by jogging past me with the lantern swinging.  He had the padlock off and the door open before I got there.  

     “I guess all the time I spent up here relaxing is finally going to pay off!”   He rushed inside the building.

     “Well, before you give me the grand tour, I think we
oughta find a way to block that door.  I don’t think there’s any way for those things to get up here, but it-“

    
“It is better to be safe than sorry,” Glen finished my thought and straightened up with pride.  “We should be able to find some rope or wire to tie up that door.  I’m not sure what else of use we might find.” 

     He led me over to the wall on the right where a long work
table was scattered with various things like a couple of tin cans full of nails, a large, dusty crowbar, a few screwdrivers, and an old claw hammer with a cracked wooden handle.  I didn’t spot anything that would help.

     Glen
stooped and slid a dirty, worn cardboard box out from under the table.  He pulled out a coil of thin white rope, the kind used for clothesline.  He put the rope on the table and turned to peer back into the box.  He stood there carefully considering its contents.

     I walked over to see what else was in the
box and asked, “Anything else in there we can use?”

     My words seemed as if they startled him. He quickly shifted his body to block my view of the
box’s interior.  “No, that’s it,” he said as he pushed the cardboard box back under the table.  I wondered about Glen’s odd behavior, but it was soon forgotten as we set to work on tying up the door.

     Once satisfied that we were
secure, I was suddenly extremely tired and followed Glen without comment as he headed to the dark back corner.  I was surprised by what was there.  Glen slid back a sheet of plywood to reveal a sort of hidden area containing a couple of cots and armchairs.  There was even an old television set up on a card table against the wall. 

     “So, Glen, you didn
’t tell me that you had a series of sanctuaries! Pretty sweet!  Another man cave!”  I laughed.

      The young pastor blushed and said, “I...
uh...I don’t know about a man cave, but everyone needs a place to relax.”

     He was clearly uncomfortable talking about the subject, so I changed topics.  “You haven
’t got any food stored up here, have you?”  

     Glen grinned and squatted next to the table holding the television.  “What would you like?  A deli sandwich and a soda?  How about a candy bar?”

     I turned on the television to find some news but found only snow. Glen let me know that there had never been much a signal so the set had just been used to watch videos.  I moved down next to him to look in the small refrigerator. 

     “I don
’t suppose you’ve got a beer in there, do you?”

     “No, sorry I didn
’t go quite that far,” he answered apologetically.

     I smiled to show him that I was joking.  “One of those sandwiches and a Coke would be great.”

     We each sat in an armchair and devoured the food without much talk.  I waited until Glen seemed quite comfortable before I broached the subject of what was going on outside.

     “So have you got any idea about how those things outside became those things outside?” 

     Glen appeared to take the question very seriously. “I honestly can’t even imagine how... uh... how that could happen.”

     “Sort of goes against the idea of us
‘all being God’s creatures’, doesn’t it?”  I chuckled. 

     Once again, my attempt at humor was
totally ignored, and my companion looked at me blankly.

     “It does seem like the world is turned upside down,” Glen observed.  “It is like the literal version of hell on earth.  Certainly not the
glorious promise of rebirth; your dead will live; their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, for your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits, Isaiah twenty-six nineteen. But I sure didn’t see anybody shouting for joy.”

     I considered the words for a moment. 
As horrible as the things that I had seen that day were, a religious person must feel that the rug had been completely pulled out from underneath.  Where could God possibly fit into the events?  How about the promise of everlasting life in heaven?  No one could tell me that those mindless, soulless things shuffling around outside were enjoying everlasting life in heaven.

     My mental
debate must have shown clearly on my face, because Glen was watching me carefully and with concern. 

    “I...
uh... Well, you might have noticed that I am not a particularly big fan of religion. I guess, it sort of represents the opposite of everything that I believe,” I saw Glen’s concern but kept going, “I mean, I was a teacher trying to teach kids to think for themselves which goes directly against the church’s idea that people should let God make all the decisions.  Now, I work trying to bring the truth to people, but the church wants people to ignore reality and accept the truth as the church presents it.”

     “So you don
’t think the church and religion do any good at all?”  Glen asked quietly. 

     Not even I am that much of a
prick to think that churches don’t help people.  All I had to do was remember how much comfort my mother got from talking to a priest and believing that my father had gone to a better place.  Even if I hadn’t had this clear example to draw upon, there was no reason to attack Glen’s beliefs. 

     “Of course, it...
well, it helps some people.  Nobody can deny that,” I said slowly.

     Glen looked at me for a moment before replying, “But you
’re thinking that is also responsible for a lot of the bad things in the world.”

     The young
pastor had put my thoughts into words precisely.  “Well, yes.  Don’t you ever question things?”                                   

      “Of course, I do,” he responded with
surprising force.  “Anybody who says they never doubt anything about the church is either a liar or an idiot!” 

    
I did not know how precisely to react to Glen’s impassioned response, so, for one of the few times in my life, I did the wise thing and kept quiet.

     Glen appeared to find something
extraordinarily intriguing on the floor of the storage shed and kept his eyes focused there for a long time.  Finally, just as I was nodding off, he jumped up and said, “Well, I know you’re exhausted.  Let’s check out that cot.”

     The cot was surprisingly clean as if the blankets and sheet had been recently washed.  Not that the condition of the cot made any difference to me.  I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Chapter 10

     Although my body was exhausted and
quickly went to sleep, my brain refused to shut down. 

     In my dream, I was near a lake.  It must have been Lake Pillsbury where my grandparents had a
cabin when I was a boy.  My brother Ben and I were running around barefoot and shirtless as usual during our summer visits.  There was a large smile stretching across my face.  It may have been brought on by the warm sun on my back or by Ben’s presence.  I looked at my brother and was struck by how thin and healthy he had once been.  We were both holding our magnifying glasses. 

     “Over here!” Ben yelled as he flopped down on some grass and looked closely at the ground.  He positioned his magnifying glass so that a tiny triangle of light was focused on a brown, dried leaf.  I joined him on the grass and watched until after thirty seconds a
thin trail of smoke rose up from the leaf.

     “Hey!  You kids are gonna burn down the place!”   We turned to see Grandpa
Ed’s short, round figure yelling from the cabin’s porch.

     Ben stuck the magnifying glass into his back pocket, patted the
leaf to make sure there was no more smoke and said, “C’mon, let’s go!”

    He popped up and started running towards the lake
, and I followed close behind.  Like so many other warm summer afternoons, we ran along the banks of the lake, stopping often to pick up flat stones and skip them across the calm water. 

     At the edge of the water next to the dock, we found a
trail of ants.  The black line led from a soda can next to a trash can across the dirt to the trunk of an elm tree and up into the branches.  We amused ourselves by putting impediments such as rocks and moats in the path of the ants and then watched with glee as they struggled to get past.  After a bit, I had a new idea and set the soda can which was full of ants onto a broken board near the water.  Just before I moved the board into the lake to set the ants adrift, Ben ran up and stuck a twig into the can.  I set the board on the water and gave it a little shove to move it away from the shore.  We watched as the ants frantically streamed out of the can up the twig.  Instantly, the end of the twig became a ball of wildly squirming ants.  Then they were not ants.

     I stood on the shore watching as the tiny ants on the twig grew into those things on the ladder bending
back from the roof.  Only this time it wasn’t a bunch of strangers crowded at the top of the ladder. Amid the mass of bodies, I found the dead eyes of my grandfather as he scrambled on to the top rung.  Trying to climb around him was Ben, not the young slim boy I had seen previously but the hulking, bald man he would become.  Below both of them among many others was my grandmother still wearing the curly, unnaturally silver wig that I always remembered.  Still lower on the ladder within the group of bodies scrambling upward was Bonnie.  She looked beautiful like when we got married.  She looked directly into my eyes and said, “I still love you, Kevin.”

     The next thing I knew, Glen was talking to me.  “Kevin, are you okay?”  He was standing right over me and said, “You
’re having a bad dream.”

     I looked around to see the inside of the storage shed and felt everything inside of me drop. 

     Glen was still standing over me watching carefully.  “You were yelling pretty good and thrashing around.”

     After a moment, the dream faded and lost its impact.  “Sorry,” I said not
quite sure why I was apologizing. 

     “No need to be sorry,” he answered.  “I just thought you were going to hurt yourself.”

     I looked at him for a moment and mumbled, “Just a nightmare...like the one we’re still in.”

     Glen nodded slowly as if confirming my
view.  “So who’s Bonnie?”  He asked brightly hoping to change the subject.

      “She
’s my...she was my wife, but...um...she became one of...”  I was unable to hold back any longer, and uncontrollable sobs sent tremors through me. 

     Glen
paced around the bed and then sat in an armchair obviously trying to decide what to do for me.

     After a few minutes, the sobs
quit, and I managed to ask, “How did you know about Bonnie?”

     The young
pastor’s head shot up, hopeful that the crying had ended.  “You were screaming her name a lot a few minutes ago.”

     “Just a dream,” I repeated as the last fragments of the dream floated out of my consciousness. I forced myself back to the present by asking, “So anyway, why do you think this is happening?  What the hell is going on?”  I shook my head at the insanity of it all.