When the Dead (30 page)

If Markus can leave, I can leave. I’ve been out there
before. I know what it takes to survive,
Molly thought. She’d taken stock
of her food and even gone to take an extra ration from the third floor but it
still wasn’t enough. It would only last her a few days with her new plan to stop
fighting the bulimia. She was going to check the houses near the hospital. Someone
over there had killed the people in the street. That someone had to have food
if they were still alive.

            She left as the sun was going down, hoping she
wouldn’t run into Vaughn. If he found her alone no one would be there to rescue
her. There were few dead on the street in front of Willow Brook and she
attributed it to the fact that last night and today Markus had been making his
presence known to them, drawing them away from the building and toward wherever
he was running to. 

            It took some nerve for her to walk by the
cemetery. It was large, covering over 144 acres, and she had seen movies where
the dead had clawed their way out of their graves. She looked through a hole in
the hedge that surrounded it and saw that save for a few vandalized headstones,
the grounds were undisturbed. Maybe Rob was right about the infection. People
caught it when they were alive and then when they died, whether from a
super-infected bite or natural cause, it took over. The people in the cemetery
died before they could catch it, whatever it was. They were still at peace.
Molly did notice some undead wandering through the burial grounds but they
hadn’t been buried, she could see the wounds.

            She made it to the vehicles she’d seen from the
roof. All of them empty of people but still holding personal belongings; none
of them loaded with anything edible unless moldy coffee and sandwiches were
suddenly safe to consume. As she moved among the cars she stayed low to the
ground. She still was unsure whether or not there was anyone alive in the
houses she was about to break into.
They could be watching me, training
their guns on my head,
she thought. It was at that moment, when she was
thinking of being killed, that she realized she hadn’t brought a weapon with
her, only a flashlight and an empty bag to carry food.

            “It’s too late to go back home,” a voice said
behind her. A man, looking close to sixty in age and pointing a shotgun at her,
walked into the street. “What’cha looking for anyway?”

            “Um . . .” was all she could get out on her
first attempt to speak.

            “Nothing but a bunch of dead folk out here and I
know you aren’t looking for them.” He smiled, exposing his yellowed teeth.

            “Food,” she managed to say. Her body was jittery
with nerves. Who was this man and why hadn’t he shot her yet?

            “Well you don’t look hungry but I’ve got plenty
of it. If you come inside I’ll share some with you.”

            It would have been a nice offer if he wasn’t
still pointing the shotgun at her. The polished wood of the stock and the
flawless barrel told her that the man spent hours keeping it clean. He had it
low, against one of his hips, and he held it comfortably, like an old friend.
She knew she couldn’t refuse his offer or she would end up lying on the street
amongst the other bodies.

He moved the shotgun to signal her
to walk in front of him, like a captive. He led her to a gated home just up the
road. She assumed it was his house but he could have taken it from someone
else. It was made of brick and had two levels. It looked like an old English
house; with its small windows and steep roof. Inside it lacked the benefits of
natural light and the man quickly went room to room lighting candles. It smelled
like mothballs, which made Molly want to gag. She was about to make a run for
it when the man came back into the foyer.

            “The food is this way.” He gestured to his
right. She followed him through a library and into a formal dining room. The
table top was covered with canned food. A smile crept across her face. She
opened her bag and started dumping food into it. When it was full she made
toward the front door. The man was in front of her with his shotgun before she
knew it.

“Not even a thank you? Can’t you
stay awhile?” he asked, blocking the only exit she knew of. “I’ve been rather
lonely.”

“No, I really can’t. I have to get
back to my family,” she lied, hoping that he had a compassionate bone in his
body that wouldn’t kill a mother or that he might think they’d come looking for
her if she didn’t turn up.

            “The food isn’t free,” the man said, again
showing his yellow teeth in a grin. He took one hand off of the shotgun and
started to undo his pants.

Markus was not ready to die. He wanted to run for the Jeep
in the distance but he’d have to run through the dead and he couldn’t tell how
large the group was. The vehicle was also abandoned and that surely meant it
was in some way unusable, out of gas or damaged from the crash. He pulled himself
up on to one of the raised cement platforms. From there he felt he might be
able to fight off a few of them instead of the horde that was approaching down
the road of the tunnel. Hugging the wall he moved toward the noise; he would
not return to the fence on the other side for he knew the dead awaited him
there. Using the darkness to his advantage he made it another thirty feet
before the platform ended and he was forced to climb down.

            He could smell them now and that meant they were
closer, by how much he wasn’t sure but he knew he had to get out of the tunnel
as fast as possible. Markus walked with the bat parallel in front of him as a
barrier. With his fingertips he felt in the darkness for the start of another
platform. He reached the cool surface of one and he began to pull himself up. A
hand, so cold he could feel it through his pants, grabbed his right ankle. A
sharp tug nearly brought him back to the ground but he kicked and fought with
such energy brought on by sheer terror that he managed to break free. Safely on
top of the platform he made for the first door he could feel. Locked. He
continued on but each door was locked like the first.

Ahead of him he could see that some
of the zombies had made it onto the next platform. They were everywhere now and
he had only one more door on the zombie-free platform to try. To his surprise,
the door pushed open easily and he stumbled inside. He was in a room full of
shipping boxes and he was able to pull some of the heavier ones in front of the
door to block it from opening again. The smell of burned materials was strong
and he was unsure where the room would let out but he had to move forward,
there was nothing but death behind him. He stopped to catch his breath and
gather his thoughts. Escaping the dead had filled him with new energy to press
on.

            He could see an open door on the other side of
the room and he ran for it. The moment he made it through the door a piercing,
sharp pain erupted in his stomach. He dropped the bat and his hands went to
hold the pain but they found what felt like a kitchen knife stuck into his
belly. Blood poured from the wound and he sank to his knees.

            “I
found this place! You can’t have it! Go away! Go away!” a man yelled at him in
the darkness.

            “I
. . .” Markus started to speak but found it difficult. He couldn’t see the
source of the voice but he could smell it. Urine and old food, dirty feet and
body odor.

            “Go
away! Go away! Go away.” The man kept yelling over and over. Markus wanted to
explain that he was only passing through but no words came, only blood. He wondered
if he would die and come back, he wondered if Jeff had come looking for him, he
thought of his friends that he’d never see again. Markus lay down on his side
as he listened to the lunatic’s lullaby and the sound of undead hands hitting
the door in the other room. He lost consciousness and bled to death.

“I’m not a whore!” Molly yelled and backed away.

“We all have needs, lady. I was
only suggesting we barter with them. All the food you want for just a little
companionship.”

            “I’m done with ‘companionship’,” Molly said with
disgust.

            “I wasn’t giving you a choice,” he said as he
backed her all the way into the dining room, pushing her up against the dining
table. He kissed her neck and chest, making her squirm. Just like the house his
breath smelled like mothballs, like he’d eaten them and she was gagging
uncontrollably now. Her hands searched behind her for the heaviest jar of food
she could find. She brought the jar down hard on his head once, twice, a third
time before the glass broke and cut into his skin. He fell to the ground,
covered in pickle juice. The smell wafted up into her nostrils and filled the
room, an improvement on the mothballs. Molly was not sure if he was already dead,
just unconscious or if he might bleed to death so she moved with purpose. Pulling
up the corners of the tablecloth and bringing them together in a knot over the
food, she hefted it off the table. She dragged the load out of the front door,
along with her previously loaded food bag, into the darkening evening. Still
the dead were spread out near Willow Brook and it was easy for her to make it
back to the building.

            She managed to climb her fire escape, pushed
onward by the adrenaline coursing through her. The moment she made it safely
into her apartment she burst into tears. She cried for at least twenty minutes
as she scrubbed her skin raw where his mothballed mouth had touched her.

           
Was he my first kill?
Molly thought with
horror. She didn’t’ want to be a murderer but she’d no other option. She’d
killed to survive.

Rob wasn’t expecting much in the way of forgiveness from
Molly. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life, however long or short that
may be, knowing he hadn’t tried to mend things between them. He knocked on the
door of 204 and waited.

            “Go away Isobel!” Molly yelled from within.
Isobel was the only person she thought had the nerve to still come visit her.
She didn’t even check the peephole.

            “It’s Rob. Can we talk?” he asked as he pressed
his ear to the door to discern what she might be doing inside.

            “That’s even worse. No, we can’t talk. I’m busy,”
Molly said, and she was. Finally feeling like herself again after all the
scrubbing, she had started to sort the food she’d found.

            “What can you possibly be busy with?” Rob asked,
annoyed that she was avoiding him.

            Molly stood up from her place on the floor and
went to the door. She opened it a crack, leaving the chain in place. “I’m
eating dinner and then I’m going to bed.”

            “It’s so good to see you,” Rob smiled.

            “So now that I want nothing to do with you I
have become irresistible? Maybe Hayden wants some company or have you already
been in her bed?”

            “I haven’t touched that girl, nor do I want to.”

            “Well maybe it’s time to start because you aren’t
sleeping with me anymore,” Molly said and then closed the door.

            “Molly!” Rob yelled. “Molly, open up!”

            “She needs time, Rob. Leave her alone,” Isobel
said softly. “Besides, it’s too late to be yelling in the hall.”

Molly gorged herself that night. Twenty cans of food later
she was feeling full but disgusted. Everything she’d learned in her group
therapy came flooding into her mind. How she was beautiful, worth more than
this, and damaging her body if she continued. She looked down at the empty
cans, some of which were badly dented, some even expired, and she became
convinced that she’d done something very wrong. She was in the kitchen then,
digging under the sink for a garbage bag. She shoved a finger in her throat but
nothing came up. She’d had problems vomiting before treatment but she was able
to do it just weeks ago, why not now?

“This isn’t the disease! I need to get this food out of me!” she yelled
at herself. She’d remembered what Vaughn had said when they were in the kitchen
of the hoarder, digging through her pantry.
“If you can’t find a date or if
the can is damaged leave it, or it might kill you . . .”

“I don’t want to die!” she cried out. Sitting on the floor, tears running
down her cheeks she kept forcing more fingers in. After four fingers to no
avail, she gave up. Her stomach was cramping, or maybe she was imagining it,
and she was growing tired.

            She fell asleep on cool linoleum, an empty
garbage bag clutched in one hand.