When the Dead (5 page)

The
hallway was slightly smoky when they reached the top of the stairs. 302 was
empty, as the tenant list had said. In apartment 301 they expected to find 2
people but it was also empty except for some moving boxes and packing supplies.

There was no answer when they knocked on 303’s door. Ben unlocked it with
the master keys taken from Susanne and found that no one was home. He locked it
back up to give Mr. Lee a chance to come back. If he didn’t show up within a
day or two, they decided they would come back up and take his food and anything
else useful.

304’s tenant was the cause of the smoke. The door was open and a heavy
fog came from the apartment. Music played loudly and no one responded to Isobel
or Ben as they called out from the door jam. They entered with guns drawn on
high alert and, in the kitchen, gave Molly Mathay quite a scare.

“I thought you were one of them!” She was screaming with a dirty spatula
raised in one hand, the other hand resting on her heart. Isobel and Ben lowered
the guns and Isobel ran forward and hugged Molly. She was so overjoyed to see
another survivor, especially another woman.

“Maybe you shouldn’t leave your door open with only a spatula to defend
yourself,” Ben suggested, laughing a hearty laugh that made Isobel smile. The
sight of the fully-loaded spatula truly was so funny that even Molly started
laughing.

“I burned something and had to air out the smoke but I didn’t want to
open the window and let the dead smell in. Maybe you shouldn’t come in without
knocking,” Molly reprimanded her visitors.

“We did knock, and yell,” Isobel said as she pointed to the stereo system
that was pumping out a foreign band, “but you can’t hear anything when it’s
turned up to 11.”

Molly jogged over to the radio and turned it down. “Sorry about that. I
don’t like
hearing
them outside either. So, what’s up?”

“We are checking out who is left in the building and making sure that it’s
secure.”

“Glad somebody is doing something nice for others, unlike the asshole in
306. He came over yesterday and asked me if I wanted to screw him, just because
the world was ending! I’ve had my door locked and closed because of him, until
the burnt food anyway.”

“We were about to check in with him. Hopefully he doesn’t greet us with
the same proposition,” Ben joked. Isobel thought it was nice to see him smile
some more.

Molly laughed too but her face turned grim. “Be careful around him. And
if you guys need me for anything,” she offered, “you know where to find me;
just follow the smoke.” She walked them to her door and watched as they walked
to 306.

Tom Vaughn greeted Ben and Isobel with a hunting rifle. Even before
knowing he had asked Molly for sex, Isobel never liked the guy. He
double-parked, complained to the office about trivial things, and left
cigarette butts smoldering everywhere he went. He was an all-around dick so she
wasn’t surprised to have the gun in her face. Ben felt the same as Isobel,
except for the surprised part. He never expected to have a gun in his face.
They tried to explain to Tom what they were doing but he didn’t care.

“I have enough supplies to keep me alive in here for months. I don’t see
the point in being friendly. If they get in and you run up here and they follow
you, I’ll shoot all of you, alive or undead. Have fun in your little club.” He
finished his impolite declination by slamming his apartment door in their
faces.

Ben looked at Isobel and she nodded in silent agreement.

“We won’t come back to him unless we absolutely have to,” Ben declared.

That
left one more apartment on the third floor for the pair to check. The Coopers,
a young, very pregnant and very determined couple, were set on getting to a
hospital in case their baby decided to arrive.

            “We
aren’t risking a home birth without a trained midwife! We’ve been up for days
discussing it. There isn’t another option. She could die here!” Austin was
standing in front of Jill.
A woman can always convince another woman. I
can’t let them talk alone,
Austin thought as he kept an eye on Isobel.

            “Jill,
do you agree with him?” Isobel pressed on.

            “I
do; he’s my husband. I’m scared to go outside but you have to sacrifice for
your child. You’ll feel the same way when you have a baby.”

She kept her eyes down as she replied, staying focused on the task of
getting everything she would need into two bags, a duffle bag and suitcase, with
the awkward movements her large belly caused. Austin had stopped paying
attention to Isobel and Ben and was attempting to make phone calls, each as
unsuccessful as its predecessor.

            “You
won’t get through. We’re too far into this,” Ben tried once more to get through
to Austin. “The hospital is one of the worst places to go, haven’t you been
listening to what the news is telling us!” But Ben was as unsuccessful at
convincing him to stop as Austin was at making the calls connect.

            “We
are adults and until today you haven’t shown any interest in us or our lives so
I’m not quite sure why we would trust the life of our child to you now.”

With that said, Austin forced Ben and Isobel out of the apartment. Just
before the door closed, Austin had one more thing to add.

            “You’d
better let us leave before you board up the front door! We won’t be held
prisoner.”

The door closed and Isobel wanted to cry. “Have they looked outside
lately? Their car is parked across the street. That’s impossible.”

“That is their mistake to make, I guess,” Ben said as they returned to
the stairwell to check the second floor.

Ben and
Isobel knew that Angela Turner of 204 was dead. While eating breakfast that
morning they watched her corpse walk by the building. She must have been bitten
while jogging on one of the first days because she was wearing spandex and
tennis shoes; splatters of her own blood covering the workout gear.

206 was empty and smelled of fresh paint. Rob Pace was supposedly living
in 203 with his son but no one answered when Ben knocked. Isobel waited a
moment and then knocked herself. This time the door opened.

“I’m glad to see you are alive,” Rob commented with relief in his voice.
“I saw Ben here walk by the other day covered in blood with a gun in his hand,
he went to your place so I was sure you were a goner. I can see now that I
misinterpreted the scene.”

“His girlfriend was infected and he had to . . .
help
her. He came
to my place because he was in shock and didn’t know what to do. We’re friends.”
Isobel informed him.

“If you are friends then you can come in and meet my son.” He opened the
door all the way and allowed them to enter. The apartment was messy, Isobel
noticed,
guys really don’t do well without women, do they,
she mused.
Once she was further inside she noted that the place was quite tidy but a
scattering of the child’s toys was making it look less so.

Just like Molly, they had music turned up to drown out the noise from
outside. Rob talked to Ben while Isobel and Gabe played with toys.

“I’m concerned about the first floor. With all the windows and sliders in
the apartments they are bound to get in,” Rob worried, “it’s only a matter of
time. If we can find someone to volunteer to watch Gabe, I’d be happy to help
you guys reinforce everything.”

            “Have
you met Molly from the third floor before? She’s really easy to get along with.
We could ask her to hang out with Gabe,” Ben suggested.

            “She’s
great!” Isobel added in.

            “I
have
met her actually; we’ve gone out for drinks once before. I’m sure
she wouldn’t mind at all. Gabe has met her too which will help him feel at ease
without me around for a few hours.”

Isobel went upstairs to ask Molly if her earlier offer to help still
stood. Her heart leapt. She was happy to spend more time with the Pace family.
She stopped cleaning her dishes and followed Isobel downstairs to assume her
role as “the babysitter”.  To which Gabe responded that he “wasn’t a baby”.

Molly agreed. “You’ve got it all wrong guys! I’m not a babysitter . . . I
don’t play with babies.” She sat down immediately; legs crossed Indian-style
and started to build Legos with Gabe, who was smiling ear-to-ear at Molly, a
pretty girl he remembered as liking his dad, who was nice, and who knew how to
build with the multi-colored bricks.

Now a group of three, Ben, Isobel and Rob checked the last apartment on
the second floor.

Jeff had
found no joy in killing Sheila and the dog, not in the acts themselves. His
satisfaction and content came from the silence that fell across the apartment
when the deed was done. He’d been able to enjoy one wonderfully lonely day before
the silence was broken once again.

Ben was regretting rapping his knuckles on the Browns door. He knew they
had problems and he had heard fighting from their apartment yesterday, while he
had been making coffee for his injured Anna across the hall.

“I hope the dog is tied up,” Ben said. “I hate that thing.” Last year he
had the chance to meet the dog and its owners when they moved here from New
York.

“I hate it too. It attacked me the other day,” Isobel said.

“It attacked me downstairs about a year ago when I was checking the mail.
That dog is psychotic.”

“I don’t hear any barking,” Rob observed.

“Strange. It never stops barking, I swear to God.”

Ben knocked again and Jeff, Sheila’s husband, slowly opened the door.

“Oh, hi guys. I hope I haven’t been making too much noise. Come in!” He
said happily; his eyes a subtle mix of fear and exhilaration.

Ben had never seen Jeff like that, all chipper and smiley. The contents
of the kitchen cupboards had been thoroughly emptied onto the countertops and
it looked, just as it had sounded, as though Jeff was alone.

“What happened in here Jeff?” Rob asked as he picked up a dented can of
string beans.

“Sheila was looking for some dog food. She did this. I was sick and she
wasn’t handling this well, and she just lost it. But I took care of it and
things are fine now.” Jeff strummed his fingers on the countertop impatiently.

“Did she leave?” Ben asked as he turned to look down the hallway.

“Kind of. She is . . .I . . . they are dead. I . . . strangled them. I
couldn’t handle the bitching or the barking anymore. But don’t worry, I’m not
dangerous. I won’t hurt anyone else. I’ve been putting up with her shit for
years. You all know that, don’t you?” The words spilled from his mouth. He held
his hands up in surrender.

“The dog too then, Jeff? What have you done?” Isobel was trying very hard
to figure that out.

“I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. This plague outside
has got my thinking messed up but I’m ok now.” Now that the truth was out the
look in his eyes changed from fear and exhilaration to desperation.

 Isobel had a bit of a moral dilemma. She’d taken Ben in even though he’d
shot his girlfriend, but she was a zombie! Jeff? He was a killer plain and
simple, and one without a pang of regret. Isobel and the others couldn’t stand
Sheila either but they didn’t want her dead.
I’ve seen people eating people,
touched a dead body, seen brains blown out, and heard a murder confession in
under five days time,
Isobel thought,
the world truly has been turned
inside out.
Because of this shift, everyone had to change their way of
thinking. Jeff did what he felt he had to do to survive this nightmare. What
could they do but believe that? What would they have done if the situation was
their own? With living people becoming a scarcity, they had to try to find the good
in those left, in one another. Hope their hardest that there was a speck of it
to find and cling to.

            There
was no more work to be done in 201 except help Jeff clean up the mess by
repacking his cupboards. As the group put his life back in order, they
concocted a story about Sheila’s whereabouts that sounded plausible. If the
truth came out the other residents might not be as understanding as Ben, Rob
and Isobel had been. Still the three of them felt wrong inside for the cover-up.

Before going down one more flight of stairs to the first floor, they
armed themselves the best they could. Ben and Isobel had their handguns. Rob
had a machete from Ben, who’d used it while hiking during the summertime. And
it was decided that Jeff would not be given anything sharp or loaded. He was
trusted with a baseball bat from Rob‘s apartment, a purchase Rob had made for Gabe
but he‘d yet to use it. Isobel grabbed a few pairs of rubber gloves from Angela
Turner’s apartment and an old blue tarp that Ben had used for camping. She put
Jeff in the lead so they could keep their eyes on him.