Life Among The Dead

by Daniel Cotton

  “You know what I think it is?” Bill asks the soldier.

  “What?”

  “The end of days. You know, like the bible says: The seas will boil, and the dead will walk the Earth.” Bill waits for Dan to respond to his theory. Dan isn’t very religious, but he’s heard that before. He doesn’t think it’s theological in origin, but won’t discount the man. Like most Americans he believes what he is told by experts. The problem being, the experts don’t know shit, even if they do, Dan has no way of hearing them. Everyone is in the dark.

  “Today, anything is possible I guess.”

  Barbara and Lindsey come up the retractable ladder. The small girl offers Dan a snack from a tray she carries. He inspects the slices of cheese and pepperoni. He makes himself a few sandwiches in between crackers.

  “Thank you.”

  They all quietly munch on the little stacks. Lindsey breaks the silence. “Are more soldiers on the way? From other places?”

  “I’m not sure.” Dan wishes he had more answers.

  “I think more soldiers would just fuel the fire.” Bill adds between bites.

  “If there are more soldiers.” Barbara says almost inaudibly.

  “Of course there are, sweetie. There has to be.” Lindsey tries to reassure her.

  “I think we can consider ourselves alone in this.” Bill says.

  “We have enough food to last us a week and a half since we just went shopping yesterday. It will last longer if we ration.” Lindsey chimes, trying to give the dark cloud that hung over their heads some silver highlights.

  “Rationing.” Bill scoffs and makes an expression to show his distaste of the idea.

  “You could stand to lose a few pounds Mr. Pudgy.” Lindsey teases her husband, poking him in his gut.

  “OK, then what?” Bill questions her. “We eat for a week and a half, then what?”

  “It will all be cleared up by then, Bill. This whole thing will blow over soon enough.”

  Dan stands up. He figures he should get going, one less mouth to feed.

  “I actually plan on getting home.” He tells the group.

  “Where do you live?” Lindsey asks the soldier.

  “Downtown.” Dan answers and Bill almost chokes on a piece of pepperoni when he hears him. He wants to speak, but is too busy coughing. The middle-aged man holds a hand up to Dan to keep his attention for when he can talk again.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Rush hour will be murder, but I have to get home to my wife and make sure she’s all right.” Dan tries to make light of what he has just told them. They aren’t laughing. “So… Thanks again. I was wondering if I could ask you a small favor. Can I borrow one of your guns? Mine is empty.”

  “Shouldn’t we all go?” Lindsey asks, looking to Bill for back up.

  “It’s really dangerous out there.” Dan tells her before Bill can speak. “I’m just going to steal the delivery truck that is parked outside and be on my way.”

  “We go where our guns go, son.” Bill says.

  “I really think you three are better off staying put.” Dan tries to convince them. Barbara looks at Lindsey and Bill, doing the math in her head.

  “Three?” She says puzzled. “I want to stay with you.”

  “No, Barbie-Q, you stay with the Thompson’s, alright?”

  “Will you be back?” She asks.

  “No, he won’t be back.” Bill answers for him, patting the dejected girl’s head. “Because we will be going with him.”

  “Look people,” Dan throws his hands up. “Keep your guns. I am going alone. When I find help, I will send them back for you.” He turns and heads for the ladder. Bill stands up.

  “Son, there is over a million people in this city. Today, most of them have died, and now they are very hungry. You need us.” Bill’s words make Dan pause. “Three guns, four sets of eyes, and our van.”

  “Fine.” Dan concedes, the man made sense. “Let’s figure this out.”

  “First, let me introduce you to your new best friend.” Bill extends a hand out to showcase the box where the three rifles rest side by side.

  The men move to the armory and Bill hands Dan one of the weapons. It is very long and heavy. Most rifles have a round barrel this one is octagonal. The bore is massive; if Dan felt so inclined he could easily fit his little finger into it. He can tell it is of a very high caliber. What he can’t tell is how to load the thing. There’s no chamber, or port for a magazine.

  “How do I…?” He starts to ask sounding a little embarrassed. Bill places an assortment of tiny objects into the palm of the soldier’s hand. One he easily recognizes as the projectile by its conical shape. The others are puzzling to him. He has two black wafers and a slim piece of metal.

  “I don’t get it. Do I make the bullets as I go?” He asks.

  “They go down here.” Bill points to the end of the weapon. “It’s a muzzle loader.”

  “Muzzle…? A musket?”

  “It’s for hunting. Real hunting. One shot, one kill.” Bill explains.

  “It’s a musket?” Dan is bewildered and can’t keep the fact out of his voice. “Why do you have these?”

  “They are very powerful and quite accurate.” Bill defends.

  “We’re about to wage war on a legion of the undead, not defending the Alamo.” Dan can see images of old movies in which weapons like this were used. Loading leaves you vulnerable. It is a slow process. He hates being ungrateful and figures he has made it pretty far on foot without having that many bullets. He tries to relax.

  “I’ll show you how to load it.” Bill takes his rifle from Dan. It’s already loaded, so he must mime the ritual. “These black disks are your powder. They get dropped down the barrel.”

  Bill takes the projectile from Dan’s palm and the twisted piece of metal.

  “Fit your bullet into the shim and place that on the end of the hole.” The seasoned musketeer removes a black rod with a brass nub from underneath the barrel. “Press it down all the way until it won’t go any further.” The brass nub fits into a dimple on the tip of the bullet. Dan had just figured it was a hollow point. Bill replaces the rod.

  “Sometimes the bullet goes in a little rough. You have to push it all the way home though. Cleaning the rifles every couple shots will help the loading go much more smoothly.” The man takes a small yellow disk from his pocket. “This is your primer. You fit it into this slot near the hammer and turn it until it locks into place and you’re ready. Just pull back the hammer, aim, and fire. Repeat as necessary. Nice and easy.”

  “That’s not nice and easy.” Dan was lost after the black disks.

  “Safety is right here.” Bill disregards the soldier’s worried look as he points to the trigger guard. “Just like on your M-16. Red means fire.”

  The rifle is back in Dan’s hands. He just stands there looking at the antiquated artillery. Bill is heading for the ladder.

  “Let’s load up the van.” The man says as he disappears from sight.

  16

  Her keys in her hand, Becka watches the street from a small square window in the middle of the front door. The undead pedestrians are still shambling down the road heading to her right. She wonders why since it’s a dead end.

  The cheerleader waits for an opening. As slow as they are she knows she can make it to her car, she just wants to get the timing perfect. As five of them pass she can see the road behind them is clear.

  Becka cracks the front door enough to extend her hand outside. She aims a black object from her key ring at her baby blue hatchback. She depresses one of its buttons and her doors unlock with a click. She recoils her hand as if it has been scalded. She is a little too hasty in her actions, her hand strikes the door and her keys fall to the front stoop with a jingle.

  She peeks through the window empty handed. She’ll have to leave her keys out there for now. The sound of her car unlocking has drawn some unwanted attention. A passerby, that she wishes had just kept passing by, has stopped and now
stares at her car.

  The corpse is very tall and wears a varsity jacket, he looks familiar to Becka but she can’t remember who he is. If he would just turn she could read his name off of his jacket. His left arm is dislocated and hunched forward, obscuring the patch that displays his name. The jock’s face is slack. All of his facial muscles are relaxed and emotionless. This is the first time since this ordeal started that she can observe them safely.

  The dead teen limps to the driver’s side and continues to stare. His body moves slightly from side to side like a tree waving in a calm breeze as he peers into the window of the car. He looks like a drunk trying to act sober.

  A female zombie in a floral print dress walks past. She sees the jock is looking at something and joins him. The massive purse she has slung over her shoulder weighs her torso down, making her lean to the left as she walks. The garment she had put on that morning, when she was alive, is now tattered and bloody. Her right arm has been nearly striped of all of its meat, a pendulum of bone dangles uselessly at her side.

  The two of them just stare at her car, transfixed. No other zombies have passed by since the woman joined her once classmate. If they weren’t there it would be the perfect time to go.

  Becka keeps her eyes on the duo as she cracks the door open again. She opens it just enough to reach her hand through at the bottom so she can feel for her keys. The zombies stand with their backs to her. From the small crack, she must shift back and forth to give each ghoul an equal cautionary glance. She finds her keys on the concrete step and scoops them up into her hand. The metal gently scrapes the stair and jingles slightly as she clutches them. The sound is miniscule, but to her it’s like a bag of silverware being hurled through a glass window. She holds her breath watching the zombies that never waver from their vigil.

  Becka is getting restless. She relocks the front door and peeks at the car aficionados for a while. What the fuck is wrong with them? She asks herself. She knows she has to do something. I can’t just stand around, watching them stand around. The girl heads for the kitchen. She takes the long way around the house, heading through the living room and down the short hallway. She didn’t want to crunch the broken glass that covers the dining room floor.

  Becka opens the refrigerator and removes a beer. Derek’s mom would sometimes let them drink one or two each as long as they promised not to tell anyone, or drive. The girl opens her beer with the bottle opener on her key ring.

  Sipping the lager slow she ponders her situation. How can I get them to move along? The beer is half gone by the time frustration sets in. She carries her drink to the swinging door that leads to the dining room and opens it just enough to poke her head out, and see her car through the nearly transparent curtains.

  They are still there. The two corpses are still looking at her car for some unknown reason. Fuck! She screams in her head allowing the door to close itself. She puts the bottle down onto the marble island a little too hard and it makes a clinking sound. The noise makes her heart skip a beat. Did they hear that? She trembles, listening for them, but hears nothing. Her careless action has given her an idea.

  Becka slowly plods through the dining room staying low. She is careful to avoid the shards of glass in the carpeting as she makes her way to the window. Crouched below the devastated pane she peeks over the sill and sees the two zombies haven’t budged from their spots. The girl takes one last big sip of her beer, draining the bottle. She reels the empty back, and lets it sail with all the might she can muster without making a grunt from effort.

  The bottle is air borne. It turns end over end in space on its way to the street where it shatters in the middle of the asphalt. She doesn’t catch the immediate reaction of the dead, the second the bottle left her hand she had ducked down amid the jagged shards. The girl tries not to touch the ground with too much exposed skin. She maintains her balance on her loosely placed fingertips. The last thing she wants is a cut. She gives the decaying duo a few seconds before she once again peeks over the edge.

  The zombies are heading away, towards the dead end where all their comrades have gone. Their heads lazily look around the empty street in search of the cause of the noise.

  Becka stays down as she crawls to the front door, still wary of the glass below her. She cracks the door and watches the two zombies leave her range of vision. The street is still clear as far as she can see so she exits the house.

  Inch by inch she heads for her car. She looks all around, moving with the caution of a burglar paranoid of getting pinched. The front door is left open in case she needs to make a hasty reentry. She arrives at her blue car, her baby. Down the road more dead are on their way. They still have a ways to go, she convinces herself. You can do this. To her right she sees the backs of the dead walking towards the cul de sac. It looks like they are all conglomerating around the same house.

  “I wouldn’t want to be them.” She whispers, considering the people who are in that dwelling. Becka pulls the handle to open her car door.

  A loud and irritating tone erupts somewhere close to her. The sudden racket almost gives her a heart attack as she scrambles to figure out what the hell it is so she can choke the living shit out of it. It takes her mere seconds, but feels longer, to discover the sound is being made by her. Her purse is spouting the offensive noise that she realizes is her phone. The device continues to blare its nauseating pop song, which on the quiet street seems ear piercingly loud.

  The dead have heard the dinner bell. The zombies heading her way from the East seem to have doubled their pace with lusty eagerness. They aren’t running so much as closing the distance at the speed of a living person’s casual walk, rather than their typical lackadaisical strides. The two who liked her old hatchback are now returning as well. The girl knows it isn’t the car they want this time.

  Becka throws open the driver’s door and dives into the seat. For a brief instant she sees herself reflected in the window, her eyes are as wide as saucers. She ignores her phone, which now emits a periodic beep. She slams her door shut and her hand goes to the ignition. It’s empty. There is no key in her hand. She starts patting herself all over in search of them, but finds nothing.

  “Damn it!” She screams realizing she won’t find them in her purse either. She knows exactly where they are. They can be found next to her bottle cap on the island in the kitchen. She had used them to open her beer and must have inadvertently left them behind.

  The dead are getting close as she tumbles out of the compact and onto the hard driveway, sprinting to the house. She refuses to trap herself in that crawlspace again. The girl charges through the dining room. The air vibrates with the song of the dead, the pitiful wailings of the deceased.

  Becka slams into the swinging door and almost runs into the island. She has to skirt around the white surface, scooping up her keys, heading for the back door. Her feet leave the earth as she lunges off the small patio having no time to bother with stairs. Panic sets in, the dead are in the house and the yard is nothing but flowers and grass. There isn’t a weapon in sight, or even so much as a place to hide.

  Her 5 foot 3 frame leaps onto the fence between this yard and the neighbors. Her fingers curl over the top of the rough boards as her body dangles. The moans are getting closer and her phone continues to beep like a homing beacon for the recently deceased.

  She kicks her legs trying to gain altitude. The dead bump off of the frail door behind her, their flesh scrapes against the mesh screen making a sickening sound. They can see their prospective meal trying to throw a leg over the top of the fence. The cheerleader is swinging her body desperate to get away though her body painfully rubs against the wood with every pass.

  A snap behind her chills her blood and forces her to take a quick glance back. The screen door’s aluminum latch has given way under the strain of the bodies being pressed against it. Mobile corpses spill into the yard in a tangled knot of death.

  Becka ignores the splinters buried deep into her skin and gets her ankle
hooked over the top of the unforgiving wall. The dead behind her are already regaining their footing, and heading her way. She straddles the fence and drops to the other side without more than a glance down. Becka has no idea what’s in store for her, but figures it can’t get much worse.

  17

  Dan and Bill lug heavy steel boxes down from the attic. The olive drab crates are carried through the house and out to the garage where they are loaded into a white van. Dan has lost count of how many they have hauled between them, one at a time.

  “Is all of this ammo?” Dan asks Bill while they are in the attic. They have carried so many boxes and still had quite a few to go.

  “Mostly,” Bill responds. “One of them is full of cleaning patches and oil.”

  “How many rounds?”

  “A couple thousand. Give or take.”

  Dan would have been impressed if not for the slow rate of fire he expects to get out of the muzzleloaders. The load time has him worried.

  While the boys are doing the heavy lifting, Lindsey and Barbara are in the bedroom. Lindsey is trying to find clothes for the little girl to wear. The nightgown won’t be warm enough once night falls; Bill heard a cold snap is on its way tonight.

  “I wore these before I had my first child.” Lindsey tells the young girl who slips into the older woman’s clothes. “I will never be that small again.”

  “Where are your kids?” Barbara asks, cinching up the pair of black slacks Lindsey had offered her with a belt. The end of the belt almost makes it around the child’s waist twice once fastened.

  “Both of my boys are in college. One is in Europe studying art, the other in California studying blondes.” The woman has been trying hard not to worry about her boys, so far from home with all of this going on.

  Barbara pulls a gray sweater on over a plain white tee shirt. The sleeves completely cover her hands like Dopey from Snow White. Lindsey forces a smile at the girl. Her question opened up a maternal wound in the middle-aged woman. Lindsey also wonders what happened next door. They had heard a gunshot that morning, then another just a few hours ago. Bill had pulled her aside and told her about Damien’s cradle death. She figures her mom and dad are also gone now, why else would she be out with a stranger during something like this? Lindsey figures the girl will talk to her about it in her own time. It’s probably better not to press.