The Death Doll

by Brian P. White

  She needed a break and a few Good Words. After all, it was the Sabbath.

  *****

  Isaac wiped his head with his forearm, which was like cleaning up puke with a baby wipe. He knew Craig was lying his ass off about getting used to the Power; no one down there ever got used to that unbearable smell and the heat. He wandered the halls to cool off, but the warm air blasted all the time with the temperatures outside dropping, and he wasn’t about to go out there unless he absolutely had to. The face-munchers out there never stopped coming around, and he wasn’t stupid enough to go out there alone again—even if one of them was running this place. At least this one wasn’t trying to bite his ass, but if she malfunctioned or whatever he would definitely have something for her—it—whatever.

  Still, he didn’t like being the labor force here. Sure, most of the others on his crew were whiter than the snow that would soon fall, but he wanted more than to be someone’s strong back. That was the leaf he turned when he got out of prison. He would matter, and it was hard to see how he mattered sweating his ass off in a cave full of zombies. Nobody needed him here if their face-munching boss wasn’t going to eat any of them. Despite the tension in the air, everyone went back to business as usual after that dude Xing’s funeral. He saw no purpose being here.

  He also saw no use for the little room he had just wandered into. He recognized its stale white pallor and the three rows of couches from the day he came out of Isolation. A couple of potted trees against the walls surrounded a simple wooden podium up front. A counter on the opposite side of the room had a little computer station, which was wired to a projector mounted on the ceiling, which seemed redundant with two working theaters on this block. “What’s this fucking room for?” he mused aloud.

  “It used to be a pharmacy,” Didi’s voice answered, startling him. He looked around until he noticed sneakers poking out from behind one of the trees. “I turned it into a chapel.”

  He slowly approached to get a better look at her, ready for anything despite being empty-handed. “Y’all have church services or something?”

  “I used to, but people stopped coming.” He found her reading a small black booklet through some thick, horn-rimmed glasses, the rest of her dressed in blue jeans and a loose white blouse.

  He wanted to laugh at her attempt to be all non-threatening. Instead, he stopped near the podium. “After seeing how you run things, I’m surprised you gave them a choice.”

  “You don’t force people to believe something. They have to do it on their own.”

  Now, he had to laugh. “That’s a first. Why read that shit, anyway? Don’t all the shit we’ve seen out there make that book wrong?”

  “That’s just where faith comes in,” she said nonchalantly, then grinned up at him. “I’ve read this book from cover to cover, and I haven’t seen anything about the dead rising to eat the living, so I’m inclined to believe you’ve all still got a chance. Besides, God repeatedly says in it that there’ll always be a remnant of His people.”

  “What kind of God lets this shit happen?” he asked as he leaned against the podium.

  “What kind of parent lets their kids get bitten by their puppy after telling them over and over not to pester it?” she replied with a slick grin. “This book would save them from all that pain if they would follow it, but some people can only learn the hard way.”

  Isaac snickered. “It’s a trip to hear a face-muncher thumping a Bible. You going to convert me or something?”

  She shrugged and dove back into her book. “Believe what you want, man. You will anyway.”

  He was surprised to hear such a relaxed attitude from a Jesus freak, dead or alive. He usually found religious types to be pushy, but this chick? Very chill. It was too weird. He wondered what else she believed. “So, do you think your soul went to Heaven or something?”

  “Probably Hell after the way I lived, but I like to think it’s still here in this stuffed shell.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She let her book hang between her legs. “There’s a passage in Revelation Six that talks about the souls of those slain in Christ’s name. They were given white robes and asked to wait under an altar until God finished wiping out the rest of the world. I like to think those souls go straight to Heaven.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said to be agreeable.

  “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “Not a word,” he admitted, and they both laughed.

  “Anyway, if those souls were still on Earth, why shouldn’t mine be?” she asked with a shrug.

  Isaac nodded, even though the whole thing sounded too hokey to make any sense.

  “Maybe I’m already damned, but I’m still here,” she rattled her little Bible up by her face, “and this has been the only thing since I died that’s made any sense to me.”

  “Maybe I oughta crack that thing open some time,” he said, even if he didn’t really mean it.

  Didi smiled wider and tossed him her Bible. “Have at it.”

  He fumbled to catch it as she stood and walked out of the room, leaving him to stare at the little book of many mysteries.

  “Hey,” Didi said from the door. “Why didn’t you leave when I gave you the truck?”

  He did not want to answer that question, but that freaky gaze of hers insisted. He had to give her something to make it go away. “You left the door open and took the remote. I ain’t going to be responsible for getting all these people killed. Not after losing my brother.”

  “What happened to him?” she asked, looking all concerned.

  “What you think happened?” he about snapped, but that piercing gaze of hers wasn’t letting him off that easy. “They got stupid and tried to move in on Jackson Park.”

  Didi frowned. “Didn’t the Coastline Killers take it over?”

  “Uh huh,” he said.

  She looked like she understood what he implied—what he tried telling his dumbass little brother: the Coastline Killers were dug in and too well-armed to take on. “You went with him?”

  He nodded. “He was my little brother. I had to look after him.”

  “I hear you,” she said with a knowing grin.

  He snickered at her attempt to reach him, but he couldn’t help wondering if she might’ve understood him a little better than he thought. He may not have told her everything, but she still got the gist.

  Then that grin widened like she was planning a surprise party. “How would you like to get out of here for a while?”

  He wasn’t sure how to take that, but he listened.

  *****

  Dawn looked captivated as she stared into Pepe’s eyes, and of course, Mister Latin Lover was all enamored of her. How could he not be, staring into that angelic face? They shared their tales of survival and how Didi rescued them, though her story of squatting in her Larchwood high school was better than his bitching about college mobs and some stupid road trip. That sweet face sitting in the garden was like Paradise, except for one detail: she was with the wrong man.

  Then that son of a bitch kissed her, and Jake had had enough.

  He wanted to go up and punch that spic’s lights out, but that wasn’t the way to do it. He wasn’t afraid of Pepe, but he knew he wasn’t strong enough to give that asshole the kind of punishment he deserved for stealing his girl. Not alone. He certainly wasn’t going to get away with anything with that big darkie—or that fucking corpse—hanging around. He needed to do something big; something that totaled his rival.

  He would find a way, no matter what. Dawn was his!

  CHAPTER 18

  TEST RUN

  Isaac couldn’t believe he let that hyped-up face-muncher talk him into helping her loot some B.F.E. town. If that wasn’t bad enough, she only gave him a sharpened baseball bat to defend himself. Hell, the Lady of the Flies next to him got a revolver. Talk about a fucked up deal. Besides, the camp had more than enough shit, and they needed to get ready to take on Pat’s guys.

  During
the long ride, he started reading Didi’s Bible. Genesis sounded like a bunch of cave-man shit. Then came that whole Exodus thing, which was both scary and stupid at the same time. From there and into Leviticus, it got into a long, boring list of rules that lost his interest entirely. He tried skipping to the end, but that strange-ass shit started to hurt his head. He put it aside, unsure of whether or not he would ever pick it up again.

  “That’s Didi’s,” Rachelle said with a biting tone.

  Isaac sneered at the little brat. “What? You think I stole it?”

  “I lent it to him,” Didi said over her shoulder.

  Rachelle blushed but scowled at Cody’s seatback. “Sorry,” she muttered sharply.

  Isaac scoffed. “If I were going to steal anything, it wouldn’t be this ye-olde English garble.”

  “Why are you even here, anyway?” the kid snapped. “First, you’re all up in Didi’s face. Then you try to leave. Now you’re on supply runs?”

  “She asked me,” Isaac said with a wave toward Didi.

  “But why do you care?”

  “None of your business,” he replied, giving her what she gave him back in the gym. Besides, he wasn’t ready to share his motives with her. For all he knew, she would give him shit about it.

  She clenched her jaw and faced her window. Up front, Didi lightly shook her head. Cody just drove.

  Isaac looked out his window and watched all the empty farm country go by. “Man, y’all picked this shit clean.”

  “We’ve never been here,” Cody said.

  Isaac did a double-take. “It just stopped growing, then?”

  “I doubt it. If anything, it should be wild and full of weeds.”

  “Maybe someone lives here,” Didi said while looking out the window.

  Cody shrugged, then stopped the truck. Up ahead, a sign pointed down a turn-off road to the nearby Emmetsburg Campus of Iowa Lakes Community College, where a swarm of face-munchers wandered around like cattle.

  “Why are they walking in circles like that?” Rachelle asked.

  “Let’s not find out,” Didi said. “We need to go around.”

  “Why don’t we just drive on?”

  “We don’t want them to follow us,” Isaac answered. “Y’all got a map?”

  Didi stuck one back at him. “Have at it.”

  He opened the laminated map and found their location just outside the west end of town. “That last road back there runs into another one down south and turns into town.”

  “Is there anything major along the way?” Cody asked.

  He looked again. “An airport near a park. Maybe we’ll find some luggage full of good shit.”

  “Even small airports tend to be populated,” Cody said.

  “I’m dead, and I wouldn’t risk it,” Didi added.

  “You guys,” Rachelle said as she pointed at the campus, where a few of the face-munchers started walking toward them. Then a few more.

  Cody stuck his hand back. “Let me see that.”

  Isaac handed off the map and stared at the domino effect of zombies heading for the truck. He urged Cody to hurry the hell up. Then the truck started moving … toward the mob. “What the fuck, man?”

  Cody pointed ahead. “We’ll take that road up there north, lead them away for a while, and ditch them in the woods.”

  “Pretty sound,” Didi said with a big smile. “You must’ve done this before.”

  Cody scoffed.

  Isaac watched the dead mass get bigger and bigger until the truck slowly turned left, barely missing the first bodies. He hoped they had enough gas to make this work.

  *****

  Emmetsburg looked as devastated as Storm Lake, which Rachelle found depressing. She hated to think of all the panic damage and rotted out corpses as normal, but a little morbidity was okay as long as nothing jumped out at her. She was not eager to test herself again. She finally got to partner up with Didi, but the fact that her mentor could malfunction left her as nervous as that two-hour detour. At least she didn’t get stuck with touchy Isaac, but she silently prayed for everyone’s safety.

  The neighborhood bore some decent spoils. Rachelle found a few clothes for herself. Cody salvaged some gaming laptops for the components to maintain Didi’s brain. Isaac claimed a replica sword he found from some movie called Blade and damn anyone else who said otherwise, but the big man drooped when Cody reminded him that replicas were too flimsy to use against the rotters. He tossed it in the truck anyway.

  Near the end of the block, she and Didi found a boarded-up house without any signs of a break-in. No one answered, so Didi kicked the door open. The place was in pretty good condition. The living room was nicely stocked with entertainment stuff, but Didi dismissed it as useless. Cody called out to whoever might be around as they moved through other rooms, but no one answered. The kitchen was half-stocked, but most of the food had spoiled. The three bedrooms had plenty of clothes, which they piled on the living room couch. Didi found a dazzling jewelry stash in the master bedroom and started modeling the stuff in front of a big mirror, but she didn’t keep a single piece. In fact, she looked kind of depressed about it afterward. That didn’t stop Rachelle from claiming a diamond ring for herself.

  As they lugged the last couple of loads downstairs, a rotter wandered by the open door. Rachelle dropped the clothes and drew her revolver, but Didi blocked it and motioned for silence. She wanted to argue, but she held her breath and watched the thing walk on by.

  Its friend spotted her and walked in. Didi quickly cut the thing down, kicked it out, and shut the door. She rushed to the boarded window and looked out, then waved Rachelle up, whispering, “I can’t see through this. Can you?”

  Rachelle carefully approached and peeked through one of the small seams between boards. A few random rotters walked away from the house. Her head tingled, so she resumed her breathing as quietly as she could. “They’re going away.”

  “Let’s check the other side.”

  Rachelle snuck through the house until she found a window facing the other direction. When she peeked through, she had to stop herself from screaming.

  Didi tried to look through the seams again. “What is it?”

  “A shitload,” she replied as quietly as she could. “I can’t see an end to them.”

  “Are they on us or is the main bunch some distance away?”

  Rachelle peeked again through the boards. “Most of them are in a field, but there’s a bunch spaced out nearby.”

  “Cody, we got a shitload heading our way,” Didi said to no one. She didn’t even have her cell phone open. “We’re coming to you.”

  Before Rachelle could say a word, Didi grabbed her arm and yanked her through the house.

  They stopped at the door, which Didi cracked open. After the next two things wandered by, she quietly led Rachelle to the truck, then around the back of another house. Something spotted them and picked up speed after them, but she kept moving. They slipped into a kitchen, where Isaac suddenly reared his sharpened bat. He held back as Didi closed the door behind them and gestured for his silence. She led them into the empty living room, where they found Cody staring through the living room blinds.

  Rachelle really wanted to panic at seeing the herd flood into the neighborhood.

  Isaac quietly swore. “They ain’t the ones we led outta town, are they?”

  “Not a chance,” Cody whispered. “They might’ve come from that casino we passed. Probably heard the truck. I should’ve thought of that.”

  “Neither here nor there,” Didi said.

  “Hey, Didi,” Isaac whispered, “why don’t you go out there and slice ‘em up for us?”

  The dead boss lady scowled at him. “Who do you think I look like? Supergirl?”

  Isaac looked confused. “I thought you—”

  “Remember what I said about her brain and feeling threatened?” Cody asked.

  Isaac nodded. “Yeah.”

  Cody jerked his head at the window. “Well, same wit
h them. If she starts pissing off that many and they crowd her, they’ll tear her apart.”

  Rachelle looked Didi over as if trying to find the flaw those things could exploit, but she knew the numbers always did it.

  Didi sheathed her sword and said, “Unless I don’t attack.” Then she went out the front door, closing it behind her.

  Cody tried to stop her but was too slow. He quietly cursed.

  The three helplessly watched Didi walk straight through the mob that stumbled around her like a bunch of ragged drunks. Rachelle nearly lost it when a couple of them reached for Didi, but they stopped and watched her walk on, looking all confused. They slowly lost interest and followed the rest of the crowd. More did the same start-and-stop approach until Didi disappeared between the two houses across the street.

  Minutes passed, during which the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. None of the rotters filling the neighborhood gave their hiding place a second glance, but the silence drove each living person in it a little nuts. Cody kept looking at his watch. Isaac paced, cussing up a storm to himself about why he was still here instead of heading west.

  Shivering, Rachelle stayed by Cody’s side while he kept glancing at his cell phone and the window. She hit his elbow. “Call her.”

  He held up a finger to shush her, which pissed her off, and pointed to an earpiece she hadn’t seen before. “I’ve been on with her since we split up. She’s waiting by the next road for the end of the mob.”

  “Where’d you get them phones, anyway?” Isaac asked when he approached. “How come they work?”

  Cody’s eyes fell for a moment. “Xi Xing wired them up. I stuffed a little headset in Didi’s head so she doesn’t have to pull the phone and give herself away.”