Dead Cities: Adrian's March. Part Four (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 12)

by Chris Philbrook

  “I’m so tired,” he said, looking at her, straight into her soul. “And lonely. The days are long, and the nights are endless. These dreams are like sweets. Intense, but they aren’t filling, and don’t last for shit. Seeing you like this is a gift, but one I have to give back every morning.”

  “I know this is challenging, but it’s all for Hal, and his baby, and the woman he loves.”

  “They should be married.”

  “Ernest, standing in front of a judge or priest sits in the back seat for a bit, yeah?”

  “I suppose,” the old man grumbled. “But they should get married as soon as they can. He’s with a white girl, and things will be easier if they’re married. Call me old fashioned.”

  “Enough, Ernest. Old fashions can’t dress up this dead mannequin of a world right now. Stay the course. Get done what you need to get done, and soon enough, you won’t really be alone, and you’ll get to hold our grandson Gavin.”

  His face finally cracked a smile, but like their time together, it didn’t last long. He sighed deep, and looked down at his pants piled on the floor near his feet. Nearby were his worn brown leather shoes, a button-down shirt and a stained sweater with several holes in.

  “You ever going to toss those?”

  “Nope. I’m ornery, and I like things my way.”

  “Well, you stubborn shit, wear a jacket then. Be safe today. I’ll hopefully see you tonight, or tomorrow. It’s getting easier to visit night by night. Feels like lights being turned on in a dark room.”

  “Practice makes perfect. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Ernest’s eyes opened in the real world. Just like in his dream, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his clothes arrayed about just as in the dream. This outfit was his favorite; it predated the monsters, and the end of the world, thought it looked more like the sweater and pants were salvaged off a dead body long after the fall of mankind. He reached over the sweater to the nightstand and grabbed his rectangular plastic pill management box. With stiff fingers he snapped the lid of Tuesday up, and poured out the baby aspirin and two paracetamol. He sat the container down and picked up the glass of water to wash down the medicines that lubricated the decaying, rusty machine he called a body.

  In life, Ernest made a decent living driving a public transit bus in the London borough of Croydon. He was born there, was married there, had his son there, and if things proceeded on the path they seemed to be heading on, he’d die there. He didn’t have many baby aspirin left, and his heart relied on them to keep ticking. Harold better hurry.

  Frankly, Ernest was shocked he hadn’t already died. He’d lost his wife Linda early on in the nightmare the world had become, and for a long time after that, he coasted, destroyed emotionally, drifting from moment to moment, finding purpose by helping the few people who lived in his eight-flat building as he could, and laying as low as humanly possible to conserve the water and food he had scrounged for, or had been given by younger neighbors before they departed the building, never to return.

  The last of the people in the small apartment building he and his wife shared a flat in for a decade of their late adult life had been gone for over a month now. All the food had been retrieved from each dwelling, and in order for them to survive—one by one—they ventured out, foraging into other nearby houses and apartment buildings for something to eat, or drink. The first few runs, all done by young, healthy lads and ladies went reasonably well. No one got hurt, and they returned with at least a little prize each time.

  Luck didn’t last, and eventually one of their runs didn’t go well at all, and those people didn’t come back. In one case, they came most of the way back, but collapsed in the street, either mauled by the undead, or beaten half to death by living survivors who felt threatened by people trying to feed themselves. The young couple stayed down in the street, crawling to the building as best they could, but they were set upon by roving packs of the dead, and their deaths came soon after.

  The remaining few behind watched it all in horror. Just another scene in the horror story they were living in.

  With no other choice, trips out were steady for a year, but Ernest had been alone for six weeks now, and his food was near out. He had some tins left, a few pots with cucumbers and tomatoes that offered up meager meals, and some old packets of crisps and a few biscuits that he was saving. Ernest loved sweets, and they were his rewards for all this work he was doing.

  He’d rather have Linda at his side, but a sugary treat would have to suffice, for now.

  Linda had a friend on the Other Side. She called him a mentor, but Ernest called him, “That old bastard who was gonna try and steal my wife.”

  Linda said his name was Gilbert, and he once lived in America. She said he fought in Vietnam.

  Gilbert visited her often, and always complained about how challenging it was to make the trip across the ocean to speak with her. Linda explained that he had served as an agent behind the veil of death, helping a still-living man named Adrian, who was apparently rather important in the big scheme of things. Adrian was with Harold, and Gilbert said that the two of them plus others were on their way to Croydon very soon, and as far as Ernest was concerned, that was the thing that made the man rather important.

  Now this Gilbert character… Ernest would have words with him when the time came.

  Linda assured him the man was already married, with motivations as pure as driven snow, but Ernest knew snow had caused a good deal of damage to things, in sufficient quantity, and or over time.

  The old man shrugged, and in a moment of self-deprecating clarity, he laughed at his protective, possessive paranoia. He hadn’t left the apartment building yet, so it was safe to laugh out loud.

  Linda arrived in Ernest’s dreams, and after many, many nights of him trying to “fall back asleep” and ignore the troubling visions of his wife, he started to listen, and she told him a story that felt unbelievable. If anyone else had told him the story, he’d have laughed them straight into a padded room. But it was her telling the story. And Ernest always believed Linda. He’d never caught her in a lie when they were alive, and that might’ve been because she was a good liar, but Ernest knew his Linda. She was the snow, and he trusted her.

  He wasn’t sure why Linda wanted him to paint arrows on the sides of buildings, but Ernest was reaching a second phase of his life where he yet again just did what his wife asked, because in the end, he always had a better life as a result.

  Sometimes, you just gotta listen to the people who love you.

  Ernest was working on his listening skills.

  Knife in its sheath on his belt, he headed to the exit. At the front door of his building sat a pile of “equipment” that he used to foray out into the world. Anyone observing would call his plan strange, but he had to work with the assets he had. Ernest was not a fast man, nor could he fight well, so he had to avoid confrontation at all costs. Ernest was not a wolf. Ernest was a chameleon.

  Using shipping boxes he’d scrounged from the back hall of the basement, Ernest had used several rolls of clear packing tape to create a set of cardboard camouflage. One large, tall box slid over his body, cut with slits near the bottom so his legs could walk easily (several falls and more than one deep gash had contributed to that advancement) and two other shorter boxes taped to the side covered his arms enough so that he could stand still (preferably leaning against something so he could steady himself) and look like no more than a pile of boxes, tossed out and forgotten. So far, the meager, deceptive armor had carried the day each time it’d been tested.

  His heart had done the same, but each time one of those things came near, it dared to seize up on him, and do the zombie’s work for it. What a shameful end that would be; a heart attack in a box, dead on the side of the street. He had to chuckle. No end was any different than any other, really.

  Ernest carefully inserted his body into the sheath of tape-reinforced cardboard, and adjusted the sit of it until he
was comfortable. He fixed the three flaps on the “head” of the box so he could see straight and to both sides through the thin, translucent, tinted mylar he’d made windows with. He was sealed in, and ready to enter shark-infested waters.

  He squatted a bit and reached down—body creaking, bones crying out in paracetamol-muffled pain—and picked up the last can of bright yellow paint and the thick brush wrapped in an old plastic grocery bag. He didn’t have the water to clean the brush, so he wrapped it tight after each use to at least keep it wet and pliable with paint.

  He was ready. He trusted his wife. He knew where he had to go.

  In his youth, Ernest had been a dedicated footballer. Light on his feet, and lean (like his son Harold after him), he could run like the wind. He yearned for that speed now, for that feeling of the wind over his face, and the burning of muscles after a good match. Those days were as far away as the dinosaurs now though, and Ernest had to shuffle along in a mosey-like gait, swaying side to side as he lifted the boxes an extra few inches off the ground; he couldn’t afford to scrape the tape-welded cardboard on the pavement or road. He knew they couldn’t smell, but they certainly could hear well enough.

  And now… well, now they were faster than they’d ever been. From noise to monster tackling him to the ground, there was too little theoretical time to play with. Best be slow, and silent, and then invisible for as long as he had to be so.

  He went down the pavement on the cold November day (or was it December?), following the path he knew to be free of dead bodies and debris. Ten yards in one direction, then a gentle angle across the street where two cars were parked in a semi-defensive arrangement to shun early-apocalypse drivers. He walked between the unused barriers and crossed to the other side of the street. He could see no undead, and couldn’t hear anything moving through the shell atop his head, so he pressed forward.

  One cautious, brown-shoed foot after another he plodded forward, eyes sliding side to side without pause, constantly searching for the monster that would evade his protective measures, and get close enough in a moment of distraction to end his life.

  Not yet. Not now. Harold. Gavin. Abby.

  He stepped over a yellow arrow on the road, then passed the house on the corner with a bright yellow arrow on it he’d painted the week prior. Each arrow pointed toward the street his apartment was on.

  Ernest made his way down the narrow Croydon street, carefully taking his steps, then stopping to twist, his body to look more carefully at the next ten yards before proceeding. HE looked in parked cars, through house windows, and at the edges of fences and low stone walls that framed front gardens. He looked for zombies. Ernest was methodical, and patient. Thirty years of driving bus in the city without a single accident bred that into a man.

  The Devil was in the details, and if his wife was right about the state of the world’s affairs, the literal Devil was in the details. He spared little time on his minutes of threat assessment. He had time. It gave him a respite, and showed him a way to plan for. On his tenth pause, he saw a nice, flat house side with nothing obscuring it. Anyone driving down this road, or the road that created a T intersection just a dozen yards further away would see it if they were looking even poorly. He formed a plan to get through the open gate in front of it, and walked across the street once more, passing an old sedan with the boot open.

  Someone trying to pack, or unpack, and never got the job done.

  Their body would be around here somewhere. Rotted and decomposed, or walking around, looking with color-starved eyes for someone to murder. Not Ernest. Not today.

  The old man walked through the iron gate with its spotted, decaying coat of white paint. He trudged through the waist-high grass, listening to the soft sound of the dry tips scratching at his box. He reached the brick wall of the hundred year old home and rested his paint can and brush on bird bath filled with old rain, and green algae. Methodically he pried the lid off with his thick fingernails and sat it beside the can. Ernest stopped then, still as the house itself, and he waited.

  Facing the wall, the old man counted to sixty, all his mental acuity focused into listening.

  Thirty….

  Forty….

  Fifty….

  Fifty-three….

  Then he heard it. The subtle dragging scuffs of uncaring shoes on the road, or pavement behind him. He battled his first instinct to duck; that’d only be movement the monster might see. He had to be unseen right now. This wasn’t Ernest trying to hide in a box. This was just a pile of boxes. Nothing to see, nothing to watch, nothing to eat, nothing to murder. If he was still, he could survive.

  He stopped counting (might accidentally say a number out loud, after all) and he simply remained as statuesque as his boxes could manage.

  The scuffing continued, singular in its living, sentient attempts to make Ernest either topple over with a heart attack, or lose his cool and try to make a foolish break for it. Both reactions would result in Ernest’s demise, and he had plans for more time between now, and that death in his sleep he hoped for.

  The insistent scratching at the ground surface shrank, and receded. His body’s struggle to ruin itself from the fear and stress abated in unison. The streaks of shooting pain running across his chest and down his arms went away and he allowed himself a deep, controlled breath.

  As slow as wealth trickling down from the aristocracy, Ernest spun to face the street. He shifted his feet fractions of an inch at a time, spinning his whole body without moving more than from the ankle down. It took him a whole minute to do it, but when he finally had turned around, the street sat empty. Whatever had walked at his back, was gone now. No bloody streaks on the ground were laid as evidence of evil passing, and the sudden impression of crushing void appeared in his imagination.

  He felt no relief the murderous creature that used to be human was gone; he felt only loneliness.

  Ernest moved back to the paint, and the birdbath. He retrieved his brush and pulled the plastic trash bag off it. Stiff in the cardboard camouflage he switched it to his off hand, and dipped the still-yellow brush into the can.

  In measured, precise strokes left to right, Ernest painted the core line of his arrow. His brush was about the width of his hand, and he’d made a habit of making his arrows twice that thickness. The brick, as hungry and thirsty as he was, devoured the paint, soaking in deep. He applied two, then three coats of the bright color before it stood out meaningful enough, and his shoulders were tired for the work. Ernest took a break, listening to his surroundings once more, then returned to finish the job.

  As he drew the final coat onto the horizontal piece of the arrow he heard the unique sound of two pieces of iron groaning as they moved against each other.

  His patience failed him, and he twisted, looking over his shoulder through his plastic windows at whatever had made the noise at his back. Before he could finish the turn, and truly appreciate the amount of idiot he was, a middle aged woman—teeth bared in a rictus, saturated in blood in all levels of coagulation—shoved the half-open gate and came at him.

  Faster than Ernest could’ve imagined she closed the gap, and he fought back with the only weapon he had; the paint brush.

  In truth, he had tried to bash her upside the head with it but high-speed coordination wasn’t his strong suit anymore. Instead, as he swung to hit her, he lost his balance and swiped the brush straight across her face, coating her eyes with the thick yellow pigment. He went down in the tall grass as she stumbled forward, all the steam taken out of her sails. She couldn’t smell him, now she couldn’t see him, but the rage inside her that desperately wanted to kill him searched out. Too blank to clear her eyes of the paint, she stalked the garden, tripped up over and over by the fence, and the long grass that he’d fallen in.

  Soreness from the tumble passed through his body as he tried to get up. Emphasis on tried.

  His armor, his shield, his camouflage, had morphed into a remarkably effective restraint, keeping him on his back. After sever
al minutes of terrified, silent struggling, he realized that in order to survive this, to get away from this temporarily blinded woman trying to rip his throat out, he would have to leave his armor behind. Like a turtle on its back, he worked to undo his plight.

  Ernest, as slow and quiet as he could muster, ignored the pain in his chest and pulled his arm box off. Using the freed arm, he pulled the other off. With both arms ambulatory, he was able to roll over and get up to his knees. He edged to the side on his knees, getting close to the birdbath and the obstacle it presented to the monster stalking about. He used the faux stone decoration to get to his feet, and as soon as he was upright, he shuffled through the grass to the half-open, half-white gate.

  Ernest elected to keep the torso and helmet box on, and turned sideways to slip through the gate. He could make a trot for it in the road to get away from her after clearing that obstacle. He only had to be silent for two seconds as he escaped through the garden’s entry. Ernest steeled himself, took a deep breath, and inched his way through the space as the monster in the garden silently stomped its way around, blinded, but hungry for his flesh, and life.

  His box caught the rough metal, and pulled the door open, setting loose a shriek from the hinge.

  “Fuck,” Ernest said, and took off as fast as he could.

  The monster behind him spun so fast some of the paint left its eyes, and that sliver of clarity gave it enough vision to see the large Amazon box move away. Like an insect drawn to light, the monster’s primitive drive launched into overdrive, and it took off sprinting at the movement that it somehow knew wasn’t an animal, but likely, a human that it was compelled to kill.

  Ernest moved as fast as his stiff knees allowed, managing something between a hopping mosey, and a drunken stumble. He ran, heart pumping as fast as it could manage, breath ragged immediately as the creature crashed into the gate, temporarily shutting it, buying him a second.

  He twisted at the waist to see how close the dead woman was and realized she was climbing over the gate. That was new; for years they would’ve been trapped behind a waist high barrier in perpetuity but now, some of them could turn knobs, and climb. Climb like this one.