“POO!” Tommy exclaimed. That got a laugh out of everyone.
Charles grinned at the little kid. “Alrighty thanks.”
“Where are we sleeping tonight by the way?” Patty asked as she tickled Tommy’s exposed belly. All his tiny ribs were visible under the skin. He was so skinny she thought to herself.
“If you want, just hang out on the second floor in the main area where the cube farm is. We call it the village. Someone will track you down and show you which place to snag. Space is kind of at a premium so you might be a little squished for a few days while we figure it all out.”
Patty and Charles thanked him. Randy had met a few younger boys while they were talking and they seemed to be hitting it off. Randy had been so lonely the past few months. The few friends he had made had disappeared or died and 12 year olds desperately need friendships. Perhaps Randy finding friends would be the best reason to have come here. If they could keep him happy, then maybe, just maybe this was all worth it. They let him talk to the other kids for the better part of a half hour, and then headed upstairs.
Patty and Randy went to “the village” on the second floor while Charles went to find Susanne and the painkillers he would need to get through the night. It didn’t take long to find her. She had made a big sign of the RX symbol on an erasable marker board. She was lying down on a couch reading a paperback novel underneath it.
“Hi are you Susanne?” Charles asked her. She was young, barely 21, and really quite pretty. She could’ve been a model with a little makeup and a nice outfit.
She looked up from her book and immediately saw the air cast on his broken arm. “Yeah, that’s me. You must be the new guy Charles?”
“Yes. My wife Patricia and son Randall are here as well. They’re down in ‘the village’ right now.” Charles was never good at talking to girls. He felt stiff and self conscious. No matter how many years passed he always remembered the days of school when he was the tiny kid that was good at math and couldn’t play sports.
Susanne sat up and put her book down after dog-earing it. “What can I help you with?”
“Well I got this busted arm here, and I’ve been taking some pain pills for it, and before I go to bed I wanted to get the bottle so I had them.” His arm throbbed thinking about having to wait much longer to get the pills.
“Well Charles, we don’t give out whole bottles, we administer them as needed. Kind of like how a hospital does it. If you need a pill, I can get you a pill, and when you need another, we can get you one then.” She said it very matter-of-factly.
Charles thought about it for a second, and realized that wasn’t ideal, but would work fine. He knew he was already starting to get hooked on the pills and maybe this was an easy way of cutting back. “That’d be fine. I usually take two pills at bedtime to get through the night if that’s okay?”
Susanne stood and fished a key out of her jeans pocket, “What’re you taking for the pain?”
“Percs I think.” Charles knew but didn’t want to let on he was just a little obsessed with his little round friends.
“Well Percs are pretty powerful, and we definitely don’t want you to get constipated, so we’re probably going to keep you to one at night. Too many Percs and then you need a laxative. We’re low on that already.” She went into closet she unlocked and looked around on a shelf. Once she found the bottle she was looking for and got a single pill, she grabbed a bottle of water. It wasn’t sealed, but when Charles sniffed it, the water smelled clean. He took the pill and swigged down some water to swallow it.
Susanne smiled at him, and Charles thanked her. He hoped one pill was enough to get through the night.
*****
They had given the family a single large cube to live in. Without doubt a dramatic decline over the entire dormitory they just left at the school. The cubicle was near the corner of the large room most everyone else slept in, which was nice, but it was fairly open, and had no ceiling. The cube walls reached maybe five feet high.
They had plenty of mattresses though, and once they got them piled up three high they had a very comfortable bed. It was a shame none of them were sleeping.
Mercifully Charles blacked out from the Percocet and made it almost four hours before the pill wore off. Part of the trouble of having a broken arm was that he couldn’t sleep on his side. It was either on his back, or not at all. Every night without exception he woke up with a sore arm, and a stiff back. There would never be another night where Charles complained about rolling around too much.
Charles had been having strange dreams for months. Tonight was no different. He always dreamed of people from his past. Most often he dreamt of his older brother who had died in a car accident when they were both teens, as well as his parents, who had passed away from old age right before Christmas two years prior. Patty was having the same problem. When they discussed their dreams they both realized that every night when they dreamed about people, they always dreamt about the dead. Neither of them had any dreams since June with their children in them. They thought that was beyond strange, and quite freaky.
His wife’s sniffling did more to wake him up than the pain in his arm did. He knew she was crying the moment he shook the sleep out of his drug filled head. Her chest was rising and falling slowly, but hitching along the way. She was trying to be quiet.
Charles said fuck the pain and rolled over to her. He rested his broken arm along his side as comfortably as he could. He nestled his head on her shoulder under the covers and kissed her temple. She jerked away slightly at the touch of his lips. She did that when she was mad. Charles sighed softly in dismay. From across the cube he could hear his son Randy doing the same thing as his mother. Right before they’d lain down to sleep Randy had asked if he could stay up late to play Xbox, or Playstation. Patty had asked around if they had one Randy could use, and she was disappointed by the answers she got. They did indeed have them, but they were for use on Fridays only. Not enough electricity to run them on the other days.
Randy was very unhappy about that. He couldn’t sleep, he missed his sister, his new friend Adrian was gone, he couldn’t play video games to pass the time, and he blamed Charles for everything. Patty got a pass on the blame from Randy because he knew she was on the fence about leaving the school in the first place. Her hand was forced when the bastards from Westfield blew up the gas station. It just seemed safer here.
Charles daydreamed a lot. Late at night when he was left alone with his thoughts he wondered about how he could’ve done things differently. He wondered if he should’ve gone to college for electrical engineering like his dad wanted, instead of civil engineering. He wondered if he should’ve bought a house up north where it was cheaper and less populated. He wondered if he should’ve bought a pump shotgun instead of a double barrel years ago. He lamented and second guessed everything nowadays. All it did was make him feel guilt.
He kissed his wife again and this time she didn’t pull away. She had fallen back asleep. He pulled gently away from her and shuffled to his son’s bed, patting his shoulder. Randy jerked away from his touch, though it seemed to Charles out of fear, not anger. Charles bit his lip and walked away hurt, heading to the bathroom.
The lavatory was lit by a small solar power lamp. It cast about as much light as a small candle in the tiled bathroom. He wandered over to the urinal and emptied his bladder. He debated trying to take a shit but he hadn’t eaten a lot of fiber lately, and the pain killers really did have him backed up. He rested his head on the wall in front of him as he shook the piss out of his dick.
On his way back to the office cube his family now called home Charles caught the glint of moonlight off a reflective surface out a window. Intrigued, he shuffled quietly into the office and walked over to the window. A slat in the blinds had been knocked slightly to the side and was letting in a wedge of blue moonlight. From the parking lot below Charles could see the silver disc shining off a windshield. He reached out and pulled the cord to the side, tugging the
blinds away.
Below them on the ground for nearly two hundred feet in every direction he could see was a mass of the living dead. Charles leaned forward once more and pressed his head against the cold glass. He watched the thousand rotting souls below sway back and forth, slowly shuffling their feet, waiting for a sign of life. He’d watched them do the same thing through the windows at his home a month before. He’d just never seen so many all at once. They reminded him of the beds of kelp under the ocean, swaying with the currents, waiting for the nutrients to come to them.
The dead were waiting for the living to come out. And their patience was eternal.
*****
Charles woke up with the commotion of “the village.” Patty had already left the comfort of their ramshackle bed when he sat up, and Charles had a moment of panic when he saw Randy had disappeared too. He couldn’t believe it when he saw his watch and realized that it was already noon. He did however feel the sharp twinge of pain in his arm. It’d been a very long time since he had his last pain pill.
Susanne was nowhere to be found on the third floor. He asked a few random strangers wandering the halls going about their business where she was, and eventually he was pointed to the cafeteria. It was lunchtime after all. He meandered down there with a scowl from the pain all over his face. Several people gave him a wide berth.
Chuck took a wrong turn and wound up doing a loop around the entire first floor. By the time he reached the cafeteria he was in even more pain, and his frustration had reached a boiling point. He stormed into the cafeteria, ready to rip that Susanne bitch’s head off. Who the hell was she to pretend to be the pharmacist, and then disappear when he needed his pills?
He saw her sitting at a table with a few other younger girls, laughing and eating their food. His blood was boiling over and he made a beeline right at her.
“Dad!” He heard Randy call out from the side. Charles looked over and saw Randy coming towards him, dragging a train of kids with him. Charles lost his anger like a feather in the wind. His son was happy.
Randy practically flew across the cafeteria and attacked Charles with a hug. His battered red little league cap was turned around backwards and his freckles seemed extra dark for some reason. He looked like the older brother Charles had dreamt of the other night. It almost made him forget about the legion of the dead pressing against the walls outside.
“Dad I want you to meet Andy, and Jeremy, and Jerry, and Sam, and Chelsea, and Alan, and Joe!” Randy pointed in succession at all the kids arrayed around him. He was so proud of himself. Randy had always struggled to make friends in school. He was… hyper, and weird.
“Wow Randy, that’s awesome! Hi kids!” Charles gave his son a hug with the good arm. The kids all said hi in response.
“Dad we’re going to go play down in the plant. That’s where we can play. I think we’re going to do capture the flag.” Randy was beaming.
All Charles could do was smile. “Well what’re you talking to me for? There’s a flag out there with your name on it.” Charles gave Randy a push and the passel of little people took off running. Charles watched them go with a smile, barely remembering the pain in his arm. He turned and saw Susanne again, and went over to say hi, and ask for his morning pill.
Twenty feet away, Patty watched her husband smile for the first time in a very long time.
The rest of their day was spent trying to fit in. You would think it would be easy to do that, but in reality, it was not. None of the Williams family had spent time around more than two or three other people in recent memory. Patty wound up retracting away, and staying quiet most of the time, trying to figure out again how to interject comments into a discussion. She watched as other people casually talked to each other, and she hurt inside when she found herself stammering, and breaking in at the wrong times. Everyone was polite to her, but she still felt like an outcast. Patty’s former skills as an accountant wasn’t the most applicable profession in a world overrun by the dead. However, her time working with Adrian learning how to use weapons was very useful. After she professed her skill with the Mossberg Tactical .22 Adrian gave her, she was sent to the 3rd floor to train as a guard.
Charles was much the same. He felt doubly useless because of the broken arm. His inability to strike up conversation, or laugh at the jokes the other residents of STIG tried on him made him feel terrible. Add to that his former profession as a designer of roads and drainage ditches had absolutely zero use here and it made for a pretty toxic cocktail for his self esteem. Eventually he was assigned the exceedingly important task of “kid wrangler.” Charles was supposed to hang out in the center of the manufacturing plant and make sure the kids didn’t get into anything they weren’t supposed to.
He was a little insulted. He was an engineer for the state a year ago making nearly eighty grand a year, and now all he could rate for a job was something his daughter had been doing since she was thirteen. However, he did get to see his son frolic and play for a few hours before an elderly lady came and told them dinner was ready.
Dinner was a pretty big deal that night. The spaghetti was a surefire hit with everyone and just about everyone was present. It was standing room only after just a few minutes. Charles and family were granted table space due to his broken arm. He couldn’t stand and hold a plate, nor could he sit on the floor and eat without dropping food on himself. One of the men that Charles recognized as a door guard gave up his seat so they could sit together. Charles and Patty were thinking that maybe, just maybe this could work out. Randy seemed happy, Patty would enjoy protecting everyone, and once his arm was healed up, Charles could do something a little more appropriate.
Randy gobbled down his dinner as fast as he could twirl the spaghetti onto his fork. The boy had fun waiting for him back in the plant. The little old lady that relieved Charles before the meal was sitting nearby and when Randy shot off like a rubber band she patted Charles on the good hand and followed the boy away. Charles and Patty were left alone in the middle of the crowd.
“How’s it going for you?” Charles slurped a few errant strands of spaghetti up.
Patty absently twirled her fork, a slow smile appearing on her face. “Pretty good actually. You remember that blonde guy we met last night? His name is Tony, he’s the guy training me. He’s funny, you’d like him. I get to use binoculars and look for raiders coming into the park, or identify zombies that might break the glass. It’s tedious, but it feels important, you know?”
Charles bristled at her guarded happiness. He knew he should be happy for her, but deep down inside he was jealous. She got to guard the entire facility, and he got to guard a few kids playing tag. “That’s awesome. Glad you two are getting along. I’m watching Randy play with his new friends. Keep them from hurting themselves in the plant.” He shrugged.
Patty lit up. “Oh that sounds like fun! Like when we’d bring Abby and Randy down to Abbot Field and they’d run around and fall down and be all stupid with each other.” Patricia trailed off as she finished. Bringing up their daughter didn’t help anything at all.
They sat in silence as the cafeteria around them buzzed with happiness over the carbohydrate feast. Patty could see Brian sitting at the end of a table feeding his two kids one noodle at a time, whipping their face like he was in Devo. She could almost hear him singing the song too. You could tell he was a good father. It didn’t take long to put that puzzle together.
“Excuse me Mr. and Mrs. Williams?” A teenage girl had approached them. She had a worried look on her face. Patty thought she looked like she’d just crashed her dad’s car.
“Yes dear?” Patty asked her.
“Your son is Randy right?” She bit her lower lip.
“Yeah?” Patty put her fork down.
“You should come, he’s causing a little fuss.” The girl motioned towards the doorway, towards the plant floor.
The two parents stood and let the young girl lead them out. This wasn’t the first time they’d been called away because R
andy had “caused a fuss.” Charles muttered some choice words under his breath as they left.
*****
“But Dad! He called me a nasty name! It’s not my fault!” Randy struggled mightily to get away from his dad’s firm grip.
“Randy, enough. You’re making a scene.” Charles was dragging his 12-year-old out of the plant and into the warehouse where there was some privacy. Patty followed them, apologizing to the young boy Randy had decked a few minutes prior. His nose was bloody and tears streamed down his face.
Once they were in the warehouse Charles let Randy go and he jerked away, storming around in a circle. Patty couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between Charles and Randy. Both boy and man couldn’t stand not getting their way, and it was even worse if they were one-upped in the process.
“What happened? What gave you the right to punch Alan in the face like that?” The tone of Charles’ voice was serious.
“He said I was a fucking retard dad. I’m not a fucking retard.” Randy spun and spit the words out like venom at Charles.
Charles was taken aback by the seriousness in his son’s face, “First off, you are not a retard, in fact you are a very fast learner. And second, if you use the F-word again, you’ll be grounded for a week buddy.”
“Fuck you dad. Where are you gonna ground me? Make me stay on the second floor all day? This place sucks. It’s just like a prison. I wish we were back with Adrian where we could at least go outside if we were safe. This is gonna be just like school too, everyone will get sick of me and I’ll get picked on.” Randy’s anger turned to hurt.
Patty went to her son and scooped him against her. Mother’s hugs always worked better than anything. Patty entered the discussion, “Look mister, if you want to make good friends, then you will. You just have to understand that it takes time and patience to make good friendships. People aren’t going to love anyone right off the bat.”
Midnight (Adrian's Undead Diary) Page 25
