by Dalton Wolf
“What the hell was that thing?” Joel asked.
“You got me, man. I just got here.”
“Speaking of that, what are you doing here? You need to be sleeping.”
“Sarah had a dream, said she felt you were in mortal peril…or something.”
“You know…I kind of think I was.” Joel admitted in a voice still shaking.
“Well, now that that’s over, I guess I’ll get back down there and see if she has anything new to say, see if you’re going to die or not.”
“Night Trip,” Joel said.
“Night Joel,” Trip replied.
“Hey Trip!” Joel called after him.
“Yeah?”
“If she has any other kinds of dreams about me, you’ll let me know, right? You know, the good kind?”
“Jackass,” Tripper muttered and flipped him off.
Joel smiled and waved, thankful for anything that lightened the mood even a little. But as soon as his friend was gone, a faint dread returned and with a shudder to throw off the chill that had set into his bones, his eyes began intensely patrolling the streets once again. Now, however, he had moved back into the deeper shadow of the corner table, and the safety on his rifle remained in the ‘off’ position.
Let’s go to the Mall, Today
“We need to go shopping.”
Eight pair of bloodshot, bleary eyes aimed fiery balls of hatred back at Athena, partly because it was six o’clock in the morning, but mostly because she was sitting before them in fresh clothes and bright eyes and her wavy jet-black hair so clean and well-conditioned that it had a bluish hue under the bright LEDs.
“There are a lot of personal items everyone needs, and we need to start looking to the future for medical supplies and other necessities.
“Fine. Right after the funeral of one of your best friends, we’ll pop off to Kohl’s for an early bird sale,” Trip grumbled, his head nearly resting in his bowl of oat meal.
“It’s not to buy red pumps and a fuck-me dress, Trip,” she snapped, her exotic eyes flashing in annoyance. “There are supplies everyone will need that we don’t currently have enough of and we will need more medicine and we need to get it before the entire surviving population of this city realizes they need it too and feels brave enough to come out to get it, simple as that.”
“You’re right,” Tripper conceded with a nod of apology. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok. Still early yet,” she accepted his apology appropriately. “And we’re all on edge about Lola.”
“We need to dig the grave,” Boomer suggested, eating a bowl of cereal with half-closed eyes.
“No. I already did that,” Calvin informed them, stumping through the door, his blue chain mail sparkling and the black leather long coat cleaned with shoe polish and shining. He seemed full of energy, which only added to the annoyance everyone already felt. The dark circles of yesterday were gone from his green eyes and he would have whistled as he washed his dishes in the sink if not for the heartbreaking task that lay before them this morning.
“When did you do that?” Athena asked in surprise, examining his clean hands and shoes, eyes narrowing in worry at his surprisingly chipper demeanor.
“I just finished about fifteen minutes ago. I already got cleaned up and prepared the cabinet we’re using as a coffin.”
“How?” Tripper asked.
“I only slept a few hours.”
“I never even noticed when you got up,” Athena said quietly.
“I always get up in the middle of the night to write some. I try real hard not to wake you, because I love you and want you to get sleep.”
“That’s sweet,” she walked quickly to his side and hugged him fondly. Most of the others watched them with various sickened looks, though the two new girls gushed at such an unabashed show of romance.
“You know, I was really hoping when I opened my eyes this morning I would be in my Flintstones rock bed back at the hotel and that all of this would have been a nightmare,” Scaggs offered morosely, circles running a dark perimeter around her light brown eyes, crimson hair spiking in several directions from a serious case of bed-head.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Gus agreed in a half-mumble, not bothering to take his chin off the stack of pancakes he was using as a pillow.
Several others nodded and mumbled similar agreements.
“Well, it’s not a dream,” Calvin informed them with a cold intensity. “It happened, and we still have to deal with it. One of our best friends is dead, but there are a lot more people out there that we don’t know who didn’t make it. I have no doubt we’ve all lost people we love and don’t even know about it yet. But those of us in this room are still alive and I intend to keep every one of you in that condition unless you give me reason to make you not so,” he avoided looking at Brick, but several of the others sent significant glares that direction.
“So, we have to go out there and have a funeral for our friend, and then we’re going shopping like my girlfriend suggested. Either you can suck it up and come along or you can stay here and mope. No amount of denial is going to change the fact that we’re currently sitting in the middle of the Zombie Capitol of the World.”
“Damn, dude,” Joel muttered. “You could at least wait for us to finish breakfast before you start breaking our balls…or whatever,” he looked at the girls with an apologetic shrug. For their part, the others favored Calvin with a varying range of saddened grimaces to annoyed glares.
Lucy had been having the hardest time of it, crying throughout the night until finally falling asleep sometime just before sunup. The doctor had offered to give her a sedative from the locked medical cabinet, but she had refused, wanting to keep sharp in case they were attacked. Lola had been her best friend and either girl rarely went anywhere without the other. When Lucy’s adopted parents had died in a car crash and then her grandmother had become sick, Lola’s parents had been in the process of adopting her, but Granny Ogleberg had pulled through. Lola was by her side through it all like the sister she never had and the brother who had died protecting her from their foster dad’s drunken violence.
Poor Lola. Lucy cried silent tears into her bowl.
Plagued by bouts of depression due to several chronic illnesses, Lola had never felt loved, never felt as if she belonged anywhere, even with parents as great as hers were. Calvin had been the only steady boyfriend in her life and she had pushed him away. As Lucy eyed him across the table, she noted a controlled tightness around his soft green eyes as he rattled dishes around the sink. He was still blaming himself for her death even though she knew first hand that there was nothing he could have done differently.
“Thank you, Calvin,” Lucy said quietly. “Lola said you would come, and you did. If she hadn’t run out…I know she would still be with us. I just wanted you to know, in case you feel differently, like, if maybe you felt it was your fault or something.”
Calvin turned away from the others to run some water and wipe at some non-existent stain on the counter top, but a blush on his cheeks and subtle tenseness in his shoulders confirmed her suspicion.
“There was nothing you could have done differently,” her puffy dark eyes intensely assured his turned back.
“I should have sent a text telling you to stay put until we got to you.”
“You did.”
“I mean a more specific text. Stay in the room until we escort you out.”
“We had just watched, like, a dozen people get eaten. I was there. I never would have thought she’d just go running out like that. She was overly emotional and wanted to tell you why things fell apart...” she glanced uncertainly at Athena.
“What do you mean?” Calvin asked uncertainly.
“You mean with their relationship?” Athena asked.
Lucy nodded.
“We’re all friends here, Lucy,” Athena said gently. “We all know she and Calvin dated, and she and I talked quite a bit about it. We were very good friends and I kno
w that she still loved him.”
“I know, but what she said…you know, when she was dying…she wanted you to know what happened between you two…why it happened. She knew it wouldn’t get you back, but I guess she just needed you to have closure.”
“Was…was she raped?” he asked quietly.
Lucy nodded.
Sarah rose from the table and stalked out of the room, grabbing her M-16 on the way. “I’ll be on watch. I’ll send the doctor down for some food.”
“Who was it?” Calvin asked.
Lucy glared briefly at Brick, but could say nothing about her suspicions. Brick didn’t seem to notice. He was clearly already two or three pills into his meds this morning. Sitting in blue jeans and a t-shirt and wearing the same yellow headphones he had been wearing in the Hedgehog, his feet were propped up on the table as he watched a movie on his Ipod.
“She wouldn’t tell me. She only told me that it happened and that she’d messed up your relationship because of it.”
“I wish I’d known at the time, but I was just confused and trying to figure out why she had changed. It took me a long time to put it all together.”
“None of it was your fault. Neither was her death.” she continued to glare at Brick.
“Hey, I’ve had just about enough of your accusing stares,” Brick looked up, eyes flashing blue steel. “I didn’t do anything—before or last night. I was trying to get her to move to the van instead of sitting there on the floor and she just freaked out.”
“You should have forced her to go outside!”
“I tried, but she was crazed!” he argued.
“She was your responsibility!” Lucy screamed at him.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Lucy,” he whispered, sounding truly remorseful. “I didn’t want Lola to die. No matter what you think of me, I didn’t want that to happen.”
“Don’t smoke-screen me, Brick. You just stay the hell away from me, you got it?”
“Whatever,” he grumbled, flipping his plate over, spilling eggs and white gravy everywhere, stomping out of the cafeteria and storming down the hallway to the back of the building. The heavy tread of his leather boots echoed for several seconds, eventually cutting-off at the close of the steel fire door.
* * * * *
They buried Lola as the sun’s radiance began to peak over the shadowy buildings to the East. A silvery sheen of frost glittered atop the freshly mown grass in the park, which had been mowed for the parade less than twenty-four hours before. A mound of dirt from the freshly dug hole sat in a pile on a blue tarp next to a small yellow backhoe. The engine compartment of the backhoe was open and various parts lay scattered about on the ground and two dirty shovels were leaned up against it, one broken halfway up. The lights and windows on the backhoe were all broken out and glass littered the area. Sixteen beheaded zombies were stacked in one corner of the park like cordwood.
It didn’t take a genius to deduce that after the backhoe had quit working Calvin had tried to fix it and, when that failed, he’d beaten it to within an inch of scrap metal and then finished the grave with the shovel he hadn’t broken over the machinery. At some point during the early hours of the morning he’d been attacked and defended himself. Since they hadn’t heard any gunshots, either whoever was on watch had run out to help on the ground or he’d fought them off alone. Judging from the still noticeable fatigue of Joel, most guessed correctly that he had run out and helped. Clearly both had gotten a lot of aggression out. But where the experience had left Joel’s usually bright grey eyes drained, Calvin seemed refreshed, thriving with renewed purpose.
The nine friends stood in a half-circle around the grave, shifting uneasily in their armor. Calvin had insisted that they remain fully clad even with Scaggs and Felicia operating the turrets in the Hedgehog while the doctor drove them around the park, quietly keeping it free of any unwanted stalkers. It was an unfortunate consequence of their current situation that they could no longer leave the ‘house’ without the armor, but Calvin pointed out that ‘the world has changed and those who can’t change with it will probably die’ and that had been enough for the rest of the group.
Some time during the night, the doctor had sewn up Lola’s injuries and dressed her in a white dress while Scaggs did a fabulous makeup job and Felicia washed and combed the matted blood from her long golden hair. Lola could have passed for a sleeping princess in any fairy tale. Everyone wore black arm bands over Quinn’s classy chain mail. Lucy, Athena and Sarah each said eulogies and went up for a private moment with their friend. Then Calvin stepped forward to close the ‘casket’ so they could lower the heavy wooden cabinet into the ground but Lucy jumped forward with a shout.
“Stop!”
She ran over to the cabinet and pulled it back open, folding Lola’s arms over her chest. Then with inspiration born from love, she pulled her dead friend’s bedazzled phone from her purse and laid it in her cold palms and turned it on.
“Now she’s ready for the afterlife,” she said through tears with a nod of finality.
They lowered the ‘casket’ into the ground. Calvin had piled all of the dirt on one side of the giant blue tarp he’d found in a storage room of the building, hanging about a foot of the dirt-covered half of the tarp inside the grave and laying the uncovered-half out away from the dirt and the grave. When it was time to cover the ‘casket’, they hooked another set of ropes onto the ambulance and pulled the empty side of the tarp over the side with the pile of dirt on it, slowly sliding the pile into the hole as the ropes pulled the empty half. When all of the loose dirt was in the hole, the group stomped it flat over the grave and rolled over it a few times with the Wagon. The friends then passed a few moments walking across the park, watching the sun rise over the cityscape. It was a long-standing understanding amongst their group that the most cleansing part of a funeral was the walk back to the vehicles after the graveside service. Even without words, there was nearly always some form of a release, though no one understood why.
When the sun’s light was fully in the sky, burning away the silvery sheen of mist and already drying out the dampened streets, Calvin rose and motioned the others to follow. “Hephaestus is making her a gravestone,” he informed them as he walked.
“Out of what?” Trip asked.
“Not sure. But I am sure it will be appropriate.”
“He always liked Lola,” Athena remarked.
“He did. In hindsight, I wish I had never dated her. She and Hef would have made a great couple.”
“Wait,” Lucy paused on her way to the wagon. “You guys mean to tell me he never hooked up with Lola because she dated Calvin?”
“He has this code that he won’t date any of his friend’s ex-girlfriends,” Athena explained. “It’s a personal oath. He takes it pretty seriously.”
“That’s why you all laughed when we met him?” Scaggs asked from the Hedgehog. Gus and Joel grinned and nodded back.
“She would have liked to know that, I think,” Lucy said sadly. “That might have helped her get over some things.”
“Maybe some things she could never get over,” Tripper muttered morosely.
“Well, she doesn’t have to worry about those things anymore. She might be the lucky one here, guys,” Calvin noted, clearing his throat. “If this were a week ago, we would have had a wake or a reception, but things are different now. As Athena has pointed out, we need to get some things before the rest of the city realizes they’re going to need them. She’s made a list for each of us—what we’re going to be looking for and where it might be. Let’s take a little trip. We’ll pick up Lola’s tombstone on the way back, if it’s done, and put it up in the park. That way if we’re all killed at some point, at least her memory can live on here.”
“That’s sweet, Calvin,” Lucy said quietly. “Thank you for all you did for her. You were the one person she trusted.”
“She trusted you, Lucy,” Calvin said.
“Not enough to tell me what hap
pened until it was too late,” she murmured under her breath. Calvin gave her a hug and the group separated into two groups for their shopping trip.
“Hey, Lucy, you mind driving the Hedgehog for us?” Calvin asked, thinking it best to turn her mind more quickly towards some form of constructive activity.
“I—are you sure?” she asked looking somehow smaller, uncertain.
“I’m sure. It’s fun, you’ll see.”
“Ok.”
“Felicia,” Calvin said into his mic.
“I heard. All good things must come to an end,” she lamented.
Dr. MacGreggor jogged to the building, pulling the iron gate closed behind him. When his scruffy gray head appeared over the balcony, those in the turrets waved as both vehicles accelerated east along the river. As usual, the doctor would stay back at the base in order to keep in touch with his superiors. No one understood what was taking the military so long to come and get him. The wall was only a few hours away, after all. He was told rescue from the air would not be possible and that they were concluding extensive reconnaissance before entering the zone. There was a rumor that people were firing ground-to-air at any incoming aircraft and those who make such decisions had decided against harming the populace when the doctor was safe for the moment. With his future still uncertain, he returned their waves until they were out of sight, like a lonely grandfather watching the grandkids leave, wondering when the next visit would be.
The convoy headed east into the rising sun, Hedgehog in the lead, with the Wagon a half block behind. Calvin rode shotgun in the Hedgehog, with Trip and Felicia in the back. Joel and Boomer took the turrets. Sarah drove The Wagon with Athena by her side. Brick, Gus and Scaggs rode in the back of the ambulance on the way out, but would probably be in the Hedgehog coming home. Athena had suggested that when they rolled into the parking lot it would look more impressive and organized if two teams erupted from two vehicles, rather than all of them piling slowly out of the back of the Hedgehog. On the return journey, and if things went as planned, all of the goods would be in the ambulance and only Sarah and Athena would be in the cab.
