When the Dead (7 page)

“Maybe
we should stay, Austin.” Jill had her bags packed and stacked next to their
front door but she was standing in the nursery. The smell of fresh paint, pale
lavender, had finally faded from the air just two days prior. It felt like a
room now instead of an idea.

            Austin
had come into the room. He had his jacket on and the car keys in his hand.
“Don’t start with that again . . .
please
. There is no way that baby is
coming out of you anywhere but in a hospital.”

            Jill
slowly sat down in the rocking chair and placed a hand on her belly. “Too bad
the baby doesn’t know about the world. If she knew, she could wait for a bit.
Stay safe inside of me.”

            “You
are being weird. Can you focus? The neighbors are going to lock us in here if
we don’t hurry.” He extended a hand to his wife. “We should go downstairs.”

            “Are
you sure about this?”

            “We
can’t risk a home birth without help. I’ve been waiting for nine months to meet
our first child. I’m not going to let what is going on outside take this
opportunity from me.”

The
moving of the Cabels and Markus only took twenty minutes. Ben and Rob brought
hammers and nails down for everyone to share. The decision was made to board up
the doors on the first floor with cabinets, more doors, and furniture from the other
apartments. There were just too many windows to worry about within each unit. It
was noisy work and it attracted a lot of unwanted attention from the dead
outside.

            “Phew.
I didn’t think it would take that long,” Ben said as he wiped the sweat from
his forehead some forty-five minutes after they started.

            There
was one door left, the front entrance, and then the complex would be sealed
from the crypt that was the world. The Coopers were standing by, waiting for
the perfect moment to make a run for the car. Most of the dead had left the
front entrance area for the sides of the building but a few stragglers remained.

            “Are
you ready?” Austin asked his wife as he grabbed her hand and pushed open the
front door.

            She
didn’t answer; she only followed him with her eyes closed tight. She couldn’t
stand to look at what they were running into. But the cold air of the evening
hit her body like a brick and her eyes shot open. An involuntary scream emitted
from her mouth.

            “Shhh!”
Austin shot back as he squeezed her hand.

The other tenants watched as the couple finished crossing the lawn in
front of the building.

            “I
think they are going to make it!” Isobel cautiously hoped.

            “Look!
The zombies are moving toward them. Austin better pick up the pace.” Rob was
standing next to Isobel at the windowed front door.

They
finally reached the car and dumped the bags near the trunk. Austin took Jill to
the passenger side door and, despite his shaky hand, had it quickly unlocked
and open for his wife. Jill slowly lowered herself into the seat and closed and
locked the door. She watched nervously as her husband returned to the bags at
the back of the vehicle.

            The
dead were headed towards the car. Austin was able to get the luggage in the
trunk and get around the car to the driver’s side door. His adrenaline had
kicked in and his hands were shaking more than before. The keys weren’t cooperating
in his hand.

            “Come
on!” Jill yelled. She was trying to lean over and unlock the door for her
husband. In that moment she cursed herself for not getting automatic locks. Her
belly was too large to allow her to stretch across the center console and
driver’s seat to the small lock in the door.

            Austin
leaned down to the window. “I love you, Jill,” he said before breaking into a
run. He planned on doubling back when the crowd of dead had thinned out.

Isobel was pounding on the thick pane of glass set in the front door.
“Austin, keep moving!”

“Where is he going?” Moira asked. She couldn’t see well in the darkening
evening.

“He ran behind the building across the street,” Rob answered.

Jill was looking around frantically; yelling her husband’s name. Behind
the building Austin ran straight into a horde of no less than fifty of the
undead.

“Shit!” He yelled and turned back around. A hand gripped his arm. One set
of teeth and then another fell on his jacket. The leather would protect him for
a moment but he had to get away so he slid out of his jacket. Free from them he
ran back around the building and into another group of corpses.

Jill saw him reemerge from the south side of the building. She resumed
yelling his name but it only drew more dead into the path between him and the
car. It seemed that with each minute that passed, another two bodies came
shuffling into the mix.

Austin had only twenty more feet to cover before reaching the car. He
pushed past body after rotting body. The moaning was increasing as the dead
grew agitated at the passing meal. They became more determined than ever to get
a piece of Austin. He made it to the car door but stopped short when he
realized that the keys were back in his jacket pocket behind the office
building across the street.

Even if he could make it back, even if he could find the keys in the
little daylight left, it would be too late because a set of teeth caught his
bare arm. He looked at his wife as his body was pulled to the ground; he looked
at her until he disappeared under the dead.

“They got him,” Isobel said as she backed away from the window, her
stomach reeling from what she had witnessed. Moira embraced her.

Ben moved closer to the door and caught a glimpse of the growing pile of
dead, all trying to feed on Austin’s body. “He’ll be covered in wounds if they
don’t tear him completely apart,” he observed.

Jill was screaming but forced herself to stop and mourn silently with
hope that the zombies would slowly lose interest.

“What do we do now?” Markus was sitting on the floor leaning against a
wall of the hallway, his head in his hands.

“I’m not going out there,” Jeff said as he climbed the stairs to the
second floor.

“We won’t be able to do anything tonight. It’s too dark to send anyone
out,” Isobel reasoned, but really she didn’t want to go out there either. She
hoped that someone would volunteer by morning.

“They insisted on leaving,” Moira added. “They didn’t listen to any of
us.”

“But she is pregnant. She could have that baby at any moment,” Edward
said.

“We should board the door for the night and discuss it in the morning.
It’s been a long day for everyone.” Ben picked up a hammer and some nails. Markus
grabbed some wood and they set to it.

“I’ve got to check up on Molly and Gabe. See you guys upstairs.” Rob
trudged wearily up the stairwell.

Isobel stayed and watched until the last nail was in.

“Hey
guys. How’d it go?” Rob asked Molly but Gabe answered.

            “She
ate
all
the crackers,” he said, lifting the empty box upside down to
prove the point.

            “Sorry.
I burned my breakfast and my lunch was small.”

            “It’s
fine. You can come eat our crackers anytime you want.”

            “Dad!
No she can’t! I like crackers too,” Gabe pouted and ran to his bedroom.

            “Thanks
for watching him. I’d better go comfort him over his cracker loss,” Rob smiled.

            “Is
there anyone alive downstairs?” Molly asked.

            “Three
people. But Austin died trying to leave and Jill is trapped in their car
outside,” he said sadly.

            “What?”

            “I
don’t want to talk about it anymore right now. We’re dealing with it tomorrow.”

            “Ok.
Night,” Molly said briskly. She was a little pissed that Rob was unwilling to
fill her in completely on the events that had unfolded below. Molly returned to
her third floor apartment. She felt sadness for Jill, who had always looked
after Molly like a mother; though Jill was more like a sister at only two years
her senior.

A knock on her door startled her from her sorrow. She jumped up from her
couch and opened the door, hoping to see Rob standing before her.

“Hey baby,” Tom Vaughn barely slurred out. He was so completely sloshed
that he was leaning on the door frame for support.

“Tom, I’m not in the mood. I’m
never
in the mood. Austin is dead.
Jill is trapped and I’m alone up here with you.”

“I’ve got something that will make you feel better.” His hand travelled
down to his crouch. “You said it yourself; we got the whole third floor.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Molly had fear building in her chest. The
sadness was making her feel small and vulnerable. She knew Tom could see that.
She knew he could take advantage of that and she wouldn’t be able to fight him
off. She was trapped now too.

“Shit I have to crap. I’ll be back,” Vaughn excused himself back down the
hall.

Molly closed her door and ran to pack her things. She found herself
praying for Vaughn to be constipated which was strange and made her laugh a
little. She didn’t care if she’d have to sleep in the second floor hallway, she
was moving no matter what.

An hour
had passed and the dead people had gone off in search of easier meals than
Jill; a sardine in a sealed tin.

            She
had seen Austin when they were done with him. She couldn’t cry anymore, only
watch as he rose again, covered in his own blood, to join in the hunt as one of
them. She felt nothing; as though she herself had the symptoms of the infection
spreading through her limbs.

“Edward
and Moira, you can move into 206. It’s a bit empty but we can all donate some
items tomorrow to help supplement what you brought up.” Isobel gestured to the
door across the hall from hers.

            “I’ve
always loved moving into an empty apartment,”

Moira
said happily but Edward looked unhappy. 104 had been his home for many years
and it would take a lot to make 206 feel like home to him.

            Markus
was about to move his things into Angela Turner’s apartment when Molly came
down from the third floor, a suitcase in her hand.

            “Tom
is going to do something horrible one of these days and I won’t let it happen
to me. Do you have any spare room?”

            “You
can take 204,” Markus offered.

            “No
one’s heard from Angela?” Molly frowned. She was overjoyed to have the
opportunity to move away from Vaughn but she felt a bit odd taking someone’s
place that was unaccounted for.

            “Ben
and I saw her outside, Molly. She hasn’t left the neighborhood but she is . . .
gone,” Isobel assured.

Rob and Gabe were naturally in their own apartment and Ben and Isobel
were happy with their arrangement. That left Markus without a place to stay.

“I guess I’ll have to ask Jeff if I can room with him.”

“Neither of you will have a choice. Ben’s place is out of commission,”
Isobel reminded everyone. “Don’t try to go in there.”

Everyone was ready to go to sleep but the zombies were relentless.
Smashing glass could be heard down on the first floor. The undead battering on
the building had increased ten-fold since the hammering and Austin and Jill’s
botched escape earlier in the evening.

“Let’s gather as much crap as we can and throw it in the stairwell. We
have to block it in case they get in and figure out how to climb stairs,” Ben
said. “We can take a lot from my place and then reseal it.”

“There’s stuff in Angela’s place that I could do without,” Molly offered
after reemerging from her new apartment.

When the stairwell barricade was finished, a few of the residents stood
around surveying their work.

“What happens if we need to get out?” Markus asked.

“We have fire escapes from our balconies,” Isobel pointed out.

“Ah, we can climb right into the arms of the loving dead,” Edward said
poetically as he walked toward 206 and to bed.

An hour later, Isobel was standing at her living room window, looking
into the pitch black night.

            “Do
you think we did the right thing?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure if Ben was
still awake.

            “What
do you mean?” Ben asked, from the couch-turned-bed behind her.

            “Leaving
Jill out there. Do you think she understands why we couldn’t come after her?”

            “It
was a suicide mission to begin with and she didn’t look back, not even once, to
see if anyone would come for her. Go to sleep Isobel.” Ben turned over and
pulled his blanket up to his chin.

            “What
happens if she tries to get back in?”

            “She
dies trying. Even if the door wasn’t boarded up, she doesn’t have any keys.
Even if she had keys, we filled the stairwell up.”

            “So
that’s it? We just move on without her?”

            “No.
I didn’t say that. It’s been a long day and I think we’ll be better equipped to
tackle the problem with some rest.”

            “See
you in the morning then,” Isobel sighed and walked to her bedroom.