by L. ROY AIKEN
I look around for the lantern. She holds it out in front of her. “Here.”
I take the lantern from her and walk out the door. I wait until I’m in the middle of the hall before I fire it up. Then I go downstairs. I pass quickly through to the kitchen. I’d rather no one catch so much as a flash behind these blinds.
I find the hutch with the specialty glasses. Two long-stemmed tulip glasses are clinking in my hand as I climb the stairs. Before I make the first landing my text alert goes off. I continue on up. I come to the door to my room and set the lantern down on the floor as I dig for my keys. Rebecca appears at the edge of the light.
“We’re drinking in here?”
“I don’t want the light in the front room. I was hoping you’d pour me a hit. We don’t have to keep each other company.”
“It’s creepy in this old house. You mind if I hang for just a little while?”
“Fine.”
“I liked this room better in the first place.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t.”
I push the door open. Rebecca picks up the lantern and follows me inside. I nod at the dresser and she puts the lantern there. She picks up the glasses from the bed and begins to pour as I check my phone.
ALL CLEAR. Pls remain indoors as crew clears bodies. Leave gens off per norm.
“I didn’t know we left our generators off at night,” I say.
Rebecca hands me my glass. “Only for the summer when it’s tolerable. The winter is going to be something else, though. We either get tankers of fuel or get the electricity going again. Either way, we’ve got to get these dead people cleared out of town.”
“I have no doubt our esteemed patron Mr. Kerch can make that happen.” I raise my glass. “To our esteemed patron!”
“So you’re really thinking of sticking around?”
“Why not? Emory laid out a nice spread at that death trap he set up this afternoon. I’ll be honored to kill a few thousand zombies for him.”
Rebecca looks at me suspiciously. “You lost everyone. That’s what I’ve been hearing. You have family in Colorado and now they’re gone.”
“My wife is gone. I don’t know what happened to my children.”
“How old were they?”
“Seventeen and nineteen.”
“You’re not going to try and look for them?”
“Survival would mean them going where the former citizens aren’t, and that means well away from our neighborhood. They could be any number of places along I-25 from Monument to Pueblo. That’s a lot of area. All I can do from here is wish them well. They’re smart kids. If anyone can find a way to get by it’s Sybil and Jack.”
“It doesn’t bother you that Mr. Kerch put those dead people on those poor kids?”
“What poor kids? If they’re not going to contribute, no shrimp and lobster for them! By the way, you say you can’t have shrimp and lobster?”
“God, no, and I love it!”
“You can have mine from the box downstairs.”
“What’s this for?”
“A peace offering. Not an apology, mind you. Just peace.”
Rebecca smiles icily as she lifts her glass towards me: “Let there be peace between our houses, Mr. Grace.”
I hold my glass up. “Peace.”
Rebecca sits on my bed. I take the chair at the foot of the bed. It’s very good cognac.
After a while Rebecca says, “I lost everyone, too.”
“Yeah?”
“No. I lost everyone before this all happened.”
“Any advice for the newly bereaved, then?”
“No. Not really.”
I laugh, hold up my glass. “To alcohol!”
Rebecca does a terrible job of suppressing a smile. “You’ve adapted to all this rather quickly.”
“There’s not a lot going on in the way of alternatives.”
“No,” says Rebecca, looking into the distance. “No, there isn’t.”
We sit in silence for a minute. Then: “You mind if I bring back some candles for the room. This lantern’s a little bright.”
“Do what you have to do.”
Rebecca takes the lantern out of the room. I reach over and finger the blinds on the window. It’s completely dark out now. The stars twinkle brightly through the humid Kansas air. The temperature would be going down in Colorado Springs, where the air is drier…speaking of dry, I should wring out my underwear and hang it up….
Rebecca returns with the candles. She lights both and turns off the lantern. The light is warmer, more intimate. “Better,” she says, settling back on the bed. “Oh, how are you over there?”
I raise my glass. “Never better.”
“Hmm. Let me top you off.”
Before I have a chance to get up she’s leaning over me, the silk from her lingerie top brushing my face. I glance down to see the curves of her breasts as they push against the fabric as she fills my glass.
Rebecca’s eyes meet mine. “Okay?”
“Yeah. I just remembered something, though.”
“Oh?”
“If I don’t wring out my underwear and hang it up I’ll be going commando tomorrow. I should probably set my alarm so I can start up the generator and run the electric dryer.”
Rebecca straightens, still standing very close. “You’re going out into a sea of hungry dead people tomorrow and you’re worried about your junk swinging free in your pants?”
“The last thing anyone needs out there is a distraction.”
She puts a finger on my nose. “Stay right there.”
Rebecca takes a candle from the dresser and walks to the bathroom behind me. I hear the water in the sink as she wrings it from my shorts. There’s a glug as she unstops the drain, a fresh run from the spigot as she rinses the soap from the shorts and sink.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say.
She shuts off the water. “No, I don’t,” she says. I hear the rustle of the shower curtain as she drapes my shorts over the rod. I hear her dry her hands before she comes back out. “I’m leaving the candle in the bathroom on top of the toilet. I think we can get by with one in here.”
“I wish I could have seen that,” I say.
“Seen what?”
“You rinsing out my shorts. There’s nothing sexier than watching a woman take care of basic household business.”
Rebecca reaches down, runs her fingers along my ear. “How long were you married, Mr. Grace?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“You ever step out on her?”
“No.” I look up into her eyes. Even with the light behind her they flash at me. “I’m not looking for an award. We just took it day by day.”
“Until the days ran out.”
“Yeah. Pretty much. No kiss goodbye.” I draw a long, burning swallow from the cognac. “Couldn’t afford it.”
She looks at me curiously. Given the kind of man a woman like Rebecca is used to, an expression like “couldn’t afford it” must sound laughably strange. I smile and turn my glass up.
Rebecca reaches out, wraps her hand around mine. She takes my glass, raises it to her lips. She puts it on the dresser. Before I can protest Rebecca turns and falls into my lap. Her long fingers curl around the back of my head. “You sip cognac,” she says, before demonstrating on my lower lip. My lip burns with the residue. “You don’t gulp.”
Her open mouth, hot and stinging, presses into mine. I feel the heat beneath her silk top as I clutch her to me. I’m drowning myself in this hard young woman, drowning the lost old married guy with near-grown kids in a baptism of strange spit and premium liquor.
With a strength that might have amazed me five minutes ago I rise from the chair, Rebecca cradled in my arms. This is something I have to do. The kiss was one step over the line. It’s time to commit fully to my new life. Full-body immersion, anointed in the oils of her warm, living flesh.
I cradle her in one arm while ripping down the cov
ers with the other. She bounces lightly as I drop her, smiling lips parted, her steel-gray eyes flashing. I meet those eyes with mine, knowing they’ll belong to someone else entirely when the sun finds us in the morning.
17
It’s the sound of the power coming on that wakes me the first time. I feel her side of the bed. Only a hint of warmth where I’d fallen asleep spooning her sticky-wet heat. No, but Rebecca is turning on the lights on her way out, bless her heart….
I awaken again at my customary five-minutes-before-the-alarm. I’m looking around for my phone—it should be under my pillow but I was too preoccupied to do my planned pre-sleep prep. I throw my feet over the side of the bed and cast about the room. I find my phone in the chair I was sitting in before things took a turn for the animal last night. On top of the clothes I was wearing yesterday evening. Laundered, dried, and folded. My underwear, too. Right under the phone.
Rebecca turning on the generator before she left was a nice bonus, but if you’d told me she’d wash and fold my clothes, even pick up the room before leaving, I’d have said you were full of shit.
Her womanly musk lingers thickly in the air. Part of me doesn’t want to shower the memory of her from me. Which is all the more reason to get it over with.
Rebecca’s not stupid, I think as I turn on the water. She knows I didn’t buy her invitation to white-knight her away from her professed misery here. She also knows I’m making plans of my own that don’t include kowtowing to the likes of Kerch. How that’s coming out in her report back to the Big Man, and what he’ll do about it—well, hell. The only thing I can do is make myself look really good in the field today. Pay for last night’s dinner and then some if I’m to buy myself another day’s time.
The quick soap-and-rinse helps me wake up. I dress in the clothes I had laid out for hunting yesterday. Fuck it, I’ll even blouse the cuffs around these boots.
I thump down the stairs. The smell of coffee flavors the downstairs air. The pot’s already timed off but it’s still warm enough. When was the last time I’ve had coffee? I’m starting to lose track of the days. Now I know my headaches and general difficulty in staying awake wasn’t just dehydration and pain-killers.
I open the blinds in the kitchen, let in the morning light, green and pleasant through the leaves. Plenty of time later for the harsh unsheltered glare even the dead prefer to avoid. For now I hold this mug to my nose, draw in the bouquet of this fresh-ground coffee. If this isn’t the last time, it’s close enough. What beans are left here will mold and rot before we can use them. And that will be it. Hell, we’re probably done with bananas already.
And everything that was made in China will stay in China and so fucking what? I won’t be making red-of-fang-and-claw love to young steel-eyed blondes any time in the foreseeable future, either. Adapt and overcome, chump. ‘Tis better to have indulged and lost than to never have indulged at all.
Besides, I think as I open the heavy wooden blinds one at a time, comfortable in air conditioning, a pretty house in a pretty neighborhood makes damn near anything tolerable. God, what a difference shade trees make!
I flip the blinds near the corner by the patio and a girl’s dirty, mascara-streaked face looks at me from the other side of the window. She waves her hand frantically, looking towards one side, mouthing the word Help, her eyes squinting tears.
I expect her to meet me at the back door, but she crouches where she is, crying. I go outside to meet her. I squat beside her outstretched leg. The wound is scabbed over but blood and serum still leak out of it.
“At least it’s not a bite,” I say. “How’d you get this?”
The girl, barely of legal age to drink by the looks of her, looks up at me. “You don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I knew?”
“You’re not, you don’t—? Oh, God!” The girl begins sobbing. “We were dancing, it was no big deal, we’re out in the country, right? They told us it’d be okay. They said move closer to the golf course because old man Kerch goes to sleep at sunset. It’s really nice, all that food, stuff to drink....”
She catches her breath. “Then those people-things came out of the woods. Everywhere! Like one for every tree around the golf-course, they came out of the trees; they came out of the trees!”
She grabs the front of my shirt. “We’re running back towards the house. Okay? Someone said, Shoulda known, no DJ, the bar’s half-gone, no bartender…but if they wanted to kill us they could have just shot us! Why didn’t they shoot us in our heads?”
“That’s a bullet wound, then?” It’s a long, scabbed-over tear, and by the looks of it, deep. The wider exit wound is where most of her bleeding-weeping is happening. A filthy, brownish-pink sheet of dried matter cracks and flakes around her calf and ankle.
“They aimed their guns at our legs! Jeff was right next to me, he fell down. Katy and Jenny were in front of me; I think I caught the one that went through Jenny’s… Jenny was all bloody in the back, she just fell—!”
The girl catches herself. She wants to scream, scream as hard and as loud as she can. She keeps looking around though, her jaw half-open and quivering.
“Did you used to live out here? Where’s your family?”
“Oh, please! They’re gone, okay! It was me and Jeff staying at his place. We lived in Northampton.” She glances up at the house, resentment brimming in her eyes. “We were nice families, too!” she says. “My dad’s place was bigger than most of these houses; we just didn’t have the yard and all these stupid trees!”
“So what are you doing out here with us poor white trash, then? Why didn’t you run home?”
“Evans sent out a text message about a herd walking through the neighborhood. I barely got away from the ones on Mr. Dougherty’s back lawn! What used to be his back lawn...why didn’t Mr. Kerch just shoot us all in the head? I mean, seriously, who lets someone fall to get eaten alive? You know him, why didn’t he?”
“No idea. I just met him yesterday.” Which is only half-true, of course.
“You didn’t hear Jeff scream when they caught up to him! I turned around and one of them was chewing his arm off at the shoulder! The arm, that other one was pulling on it, it came—oh God!”
“Are you the only one who got away?”
“I don’t know. They were even killing their own people! Those two big black guys who were watching the front door and the steps? They came down in the yard, waving us back with their pistols. They shot that one guy in the back of the leg. He started shooting back and that was good because I could run….” The girl’s face contorts in pain.
“Honey, I don’t know what to tell you except let’s try and get that cleaned up.”
“Can I stay here?”
“I don’t know about that….”
“It won’t be long! I’ve got relatives in Topeka!”
“I’ll bet they’ll love you for dinner,” says Rebecca. She’s maybe three steps behind me. Clean, pressed and sharp in her black dress and chauffer’s hat. The touchscreen of her phone beeps beneath her thumb.
A shrill squeaking noise strains from the girl’s wide mouth. “She’s…that mean bitch is Kerch’s driver! You—these aren’t good people! They killed those guys! They kill their own! You don’t think they’ll kill you if they decide they don’t like you anymore?”
“Mr. Grace’s eyes are wide open, parasite!” Rebecca says.
The girl looks around as the sound of an approaching vehicle fills the warm, early morning air. She looks at me, frantic. “I can’t run anymore on this! I think it’s infected!”
“If it isn’t, it’s definitely getting there,” I say. I feel sick. There wasn’t a lot I could do for her two minutes ago; there’s nothing I can do for her now. The phone in Rebecca’s hand is now a small .22, and she’s standing in the classic shooter’s stance, legs shoulder length apart, the barrel of her gun trained just over my shoulder at the girl. I step away.
A large white pickup stops in the driveway just behind K
erch’s black SUV. I hadn’t thought to look and see if it was still here; I’d presumed Rebecca was long gone. I realize now she was working this straggler detail.
Two young men come up the drive around the SUV. I recognize one of them from the cleanup job yesterday. They grin as they sight the girl on the side patio, her legs splayed beneath her, no longer able to even stand. “Hey, ‘Becca!” says the one I don’t recognize. “I see you and your new boyfriend are on the job!”
“Shut up and take her away,” Rebecca says.
“All right!” says the one from yesterday’s cleanup crew. “Gonna get us some of that hot rich-girl action!”
“I’ll bet she’s shaved down there!” says the other. Both take an arm and pull her roughly to her feet. A fat tear rolls over the girl’s cheek, smacking audibly on the concrete by her bare, bloodied feet. She looks up, meets my eyes. I look away.
“Goddamn it, bitch, stand up!” says the cleanup crew guy.
“She’s definitely not gonna be able to walk when we’re—”
A sharp firecracker pop! Rebecca lowers her arms. The girl gapes forlornly at Rebecca. The blood pools in her jaw, spills over the corners of her mouth. The young men nearly drop her. “Shit, ‘Becca, what the hell!”
Rebecca’s arms come up in a smooth arc. The complaining one drops, his right eye a red-black hole. He pulls the girl down with him, and the other young man on top of them.
Rebecca looks down at the survivor. “You have anything to add?”
The young man shakes his head slowly.
“You sure?”
He nods.
“Can you take these bodies to processing? No more bullshit, and keep your dick out of the dead girl?”
He nods.
“Mr. Grace!” says Rebecca.
“Yes?”
“Take out your phone. Go to the menu. Go to Tools. Click on the Clock feature. Go to Stopwatch.”
I take out my phone. I get to the feature.
“Let me know when a minute is up. That’s how long Brian here has to get both bodies into his truck and out of here before I call in another crew to come get his.”
