by Steve Wands
Knee deep in stacks of flyers in assorted color paper that he looted from the local print shop Henry scribbled out the same information by hand on each flyer. His hand cramped several times and the legibility of the flyers ranged from readable to some form of untranslatable hieroglyphics. Once he was nearly done he wished he’d chosen to use a copy machine while looting the print shop. His hand cramped something fierce and he grew bored of the repetition. Hairball stepped into one of Henry’s inkwells and ended up leaving little paw-prints. Henry wanted to scream, but after looking at the flyers he shook it off as a happy accident and continued to write. And write. And write.
After refueling his truck, Henry drove around town tacking the flyers to telephone poles, street signs, walls, and anything else he could find. Hairball sat curled up in the passengers seat as Henry zigzagged through the staggering dead whom held no fear for Henry or his truck. One of the dead things even left part of its face on the side of the truck. Henry tried his best to avoid hitting the dead thing, but the street was becoming thick with them. He was starting to draw too much attention and would have to return home or park down a side street till they dispersed.
“Get out of the road, you fucking idiots,” he yelled.
He began to grow angry and instead of avoiding the dead he began to target them, running down several of them before realizing what he was doing. There was a large woman in the middle of the street, naked and covered in bite marks. Dried blood ran down her body and her lower jaw was missing. A tongue dangled out of her mouth and rested atop the torn flesh of her former jaw. She staggered forward like a bull, and Henry couldn’t resist the urge to run down just one more. He jammed down on the pedal. The truck sped up and knocked the large woman to the ground, creating a loud wet smacking noise that sickened Henry and made the hairs on Hairball’s back stiffen. The truck bounced up and down as Henry drove over the woman’s body. He looked in the rearview mirror at the dead woman’s massive body as she began to pull herself up. Some of her intestines had spilled onto the road and shards of bone ripped through her chest and arms. Henry shuddered and took the first turn he could, speeding away from the growing swarm of dead townsfolk.
He finished posting his flyers and returned home. The truck was covered in gore and was starting to drive funny. The steering was off and the breaks felt loose. Henry began to regret running down the fat lady from earlier. It didn’t seem serious yet, but if the truck began to break down he wouldn’t be able to fix it. There were plenty of other vehicles he could steal, but Henry had grown fond of his truck. He considered the vehicle a sort of pet. He extended traits and gender to it. He knew his truck. He didn’t know any of the other vehicles in town and he didn’t want to get to know any of them either.
“I’ll take it easy from now on, I promise,” Henry spoke softly to the truck, gently padding the dashboard. “No more zombie road games, honest. I’ll take care of you.”
Hairball curled up next to Henry as he lay in bed staring at the dark ceiling. Tomorrow was the opening day for Henry’s Gallery of Horrors. He knew the name wasn’t terribly original. But it was fitting, and Henry always thought if something fit you wear it. It didn’t have to be fancy it just had to serve its purpose.
He nervously chattered to Hairball about the show, and eventually after he found the conversation to be a bit one-sided he began to drift off to sleep. He dreamt of nothing and slept like a log.
The big day was here, or rather night. Opening Night! Henry always read that the big gallery shows opened at night. So, the Gallery of Horrors had to open at night too. He paced around the showroom, nervous that no one had shown up yet, aside from a few staggering dead corpses outside. Which he momentarily considered letting in, but ultimately decided against it. Hours passed and still not a living thing came by. Henry was heartbroken. He walked among his exhibits. His favorite consisted of a scene at a dinner table of which he transported a small dining table with four chairs and fixed four zombies to the chairs. They were painted white, resembling grotesque mannequins. Henry glued silverware into their fists and nailed their arms to the table so they sat properly. On the table was a velvety red tablecloth with his mother’s fine china resting atop. Each gleaming white plate had some manner of gore sitting cleanly atop of it; brain, heart, lungs, testicles. He pulled up a folding chair and sat among them, taking part of the conversation that should’ve been going on if they could’ve talked.
When the door burst open Henry nearly fell over. Hairball leapt off his lap and ran behind the exhibit that had two men playing cards. Both men were glistening white; their lips were pulled back by fishhooks to expose their yellowed teeth and painted red gums. Their eyes were painted black with black paint dripping down their cheeks resembling tears.
“Hey! You made it,” Henry yelled excitedly once he recognized one of the faces that burst through the door.
“What the fuck is this?” The wild looking girl yelled, holding a rifle in her hands.
“My show! My Gallery of Horrors,” Henry replied.
“This is sick,” the girl continued.
“You haven’t even looked at it.”
“We can see from here it’s sick. These aren’t your playthings! They’re dead people for Christ’s sake!” Yelled a man from the group, as he disbelievingly scanned the room.
“You just don’t understand,” Henry mumbled, stepping down from the exhibit.
“No. It’s you who doesn’t understand. It’s people like you who caused this! Got no respect for the dead, boy,” another man from the group yelled.
“Whatever, man.”
The girl raised the rifle and pointed it at Henry.
“Whoa! What’re you doing?”
“Dad, should I take him down?”
“Shoot out his knees. Let the dead have their way with him.”
“No! Wait—“
The girl fired. Henry dropped clutching his leg. Her shot was off, about two inches above his knee. She stepped closer. Her eyes were like lightning and when she squeezed the trigger a second time thunder cracked and sent sharp shards of pain into his other leg, shattering his kneecap. Her aim was true. She looked at him with vehemence and then turned and stormed out.
“You can’t fucking leave me like this!” Henry yelled.
“No respect,” the older man repeated.
The older man, the girl’s father and the rest of their small group wedged the doors open. They sped away in a pair of trucks as the dead began to shamble into the old factory. They moved as quickly as the employees of yesteryear did on any given morning. Unready to start the day but compelled to do so regardless.
Hairball licked Henry’s shaking hand as he tried to crawl away, but every pull forward was agonizing. His legs throbbed in pain. Tears fell freely and when the screaming began Hairball scurried away, leaving his master to die alone. His furry friend skittered over Henry’s open sketchbook. The sketch eerily resembled Henry’s own fate.
*
A DAY WITH THE DEAD
*
They had the sickness. At least that’s what some people were calling it, as if a bottle of cough syrup would set you right again. Jennifer—unsure of how she had the strength to do it—managed to restrain her family. Her father was heavily duct-taped to his favorite chair. He was neatly wrapped in a reclined position. On the love seat were her mother and younger brother, both of whom were strapped down with tape and bungee cords. Jennifer sat cuddled up with a blanket on the larger couch, her eyes rimmed with tears. They sat in front of the television, which remained off due to the power being out. Otherwise, it was an ordinary movie night at the Benz household, well, that and the fact that (with the exception of Jennifer) they had all been dead days ago. Yet, they continued to move, squirming in their seats and moaning for flesh, her flesh.
Jennifer spoke to her family, sharing fond memories of times gone by. She told her father that he was right about her boyfriend. He only wanted one thing, and she let him have it. She apologized to her little brother for always b
eing mean to him. It’s how she thought big sisters were supposed to be. She peppered her talks with bouts of sobbing, sloppy, uncontrollable sobbing. Her mother gazed at her with yellowed eyes and bloodied lips. Jennifer whispered, “sorry.” They had a fight before her mother got the sickness, but she didn’t get it, she was bitten, repeatedly. Her shoulder and back were torn and marked by teeth. Her father was able to get her back inside the house but the damage was done, and he too, was bitten on his hands.
They both grew sick and quickly became bedridden. Jennifer took care of them as best she could. She apologized for fighting with her, and her mother accepted it. She made her mother and father a promise, one she couldn’t keep. She promised to keep her brother safe. Underestimating how quickly her parents would turn into those things, and not fully understanding how dangerous her situation really was would lead to the death of her little brother. Joseph was in the bedroom with his parents. He was curled up along his mother’s side with his action figures lost in the folds of the blankets, sleeping. He woke up screaming as his mother tore the flesh from his neck. By the time Jennifer ran into the room, her father was eating his son’s eyeballs and his screams turned into a death gurgle. Jennifer became a hysterical, screaming, and crying mess. She closed the door and fell to her knees. Tears and snot ran rivers down her face and spit hung from her lower lip. She broke her promise to her mother, and now her brother paid the ultimate price for it. Jennifer was alone now. She was the last girl on earth as far as she knew.
Now, she told her family everything she never could when they were alive. How much they meant to her and how much she loved them. How she would do anything for them, even if it meant letting them eat her. She cut them loose and opened her arms, waiting for a family hug. She would always be daddy’s little girl, and her mother’s pride and joy. She would never be mean to her brother again, and most importantly they’d always be a family.
*
KINGS OF THE CASTLE
*
The power had gone out a few days ago. Keith and Connor had adjusted quickly to it, but were scared regardless. Their parents had yet to come home from work, it had been days, so many in fact, that the kids forgot how long of an absence it was and assumed they were never coming home. Keith, the older of the two, suggested that they had become monsters like the ones outside. Keith went so far as to say, “maybe space slugs had taken over their brains!” Connor laughed at the idea at first and then cried. They both cried, and eventually their tears ran out and their bellies ached.
The last few days had been a crash course on what not to do. They had feasted on sugary goods, candies, snacks, and had suffered the consequences of such poor choices. They also neglected to brush their teeth and shower, at least at first, then, gradually Keith began to remember the many lessons taught to them by their parents and teachers. Health and hygiene began slowly making appearances the past two days and they were close to becoming responsible kids once again.
The young warriors worked together to push various pieces of furniture around to barricade the doors. They locked the windows and drew the blinds shut. The two kids basically turned the entire house into a fort strong enough to withstand the space-slug driven monsters that sometimes wanted to get in. There were a few instances where the monsters tried to get in, and one almost did. Keith had found flashlights and Connor knew where their mother hid the lighters so they could light candles when they needed to. The power had gone out before and that’s what they always did. Their father would get the flashlights and their mother would light candles. They always thought it was cool when it happened, but they didn’t think it was cool anymore.
They turned their bedroom and bunk bed into a headquarters where a spare sheet and blanket draped overhead to form a makeshift tent from the top of the bunk to the closet door. Connor kept a toy gun in the waistline of his camouflage pajamas and he held one of his walkie-talkie’s from their Spy-Child set that Keith had originally gotten as a present but decided he was too old to have fun with, so he handed it down to his brother. Keith now had the other half of the set clipped onto the waistline of his pants. Connor also left his stuffed animals in various parts of the home to act as guards, Munk-Munk (a bright pink creature that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a spider), for instance stood guard at the top of the stairs.
The two of them sat in the center of their headquarters, with two flashlights positioned on the ground in an attempt to illuminate the comics they tried to read. It was much easier during the day but neither one of them could sleep. Keith gripped the pages of a well-worn issue of Green Lantern and Connor was stumbling his way through an issue of Action Comics. As Keith was hoping his hero would shine his emerald light upon him, a light came through the window. It wasn’t an emerald light, but it was a light all the same, and a blinking one at that. After a few more blinks Keith put down his comic and walked over to the window. Connor paid him no attention as he furiously followed the mayhem on the page, bouncing from word balloon to word balloon.
As his little eyes peeked through the blinds he noticed the light blink again and again. Just past the trees and beyond his neighbor’s window was Kayla thumbing the light to her flashlight. Their homes were right next to each other, a distance not more than ten feet with a row of thin trees between them. Keith pulled the blinds up and began waving like a lunatic on a sugar rush. Connor couldn’t help but toss his comic to the side and see what the big fuss was all about. When he saw what his brother had seen, he acted the same way. Kayla waved back and shook her flashlight triumphantly. Keith and Kayla had been classmates since they began schooling and occasionally they would all hang out together. Keith wondered if her parents were taken over as well. Kayla disappeared from the window for a few minutes and the two young boys clung to the windowsill waiting for her to reappear. When she did, she had a large piece of yellow construction paper with the words ‘trapped in my room, sooo hungry’ written in red marker. Keith’s eyebrows furrowed as the gravity of Kayla’s situation hit him. Though he was still too young to fully grasp the situation he knew she needed food and he had to figure out a way of getting it to her or getting her to it. Connor continued waving.
…to be continued in Stay Dead: Kings of the Castle Part 2!
Keith continued to pace back and forth tapping himself in the forehead with his flashlight. After a dozen or so taps to his head he left the room in a hurry and headed to the basement. He quickly returned with a spindle of twine and a roll of duct tape. Connor looked at him quizzically and then returned to staring out the window at Kayla who looked sad, sick, and excited all at the same time. Keith ran back out of the room and returned with a bunch of food and an old plastic shopping bag. He filled the bag with the food and threaded the rope through the handles on the bag. He moved the bag, tape and rope close to the window and reclaimed his spot at the windowsill. Connor looked at all the stuff.
“What are you gonna do with that,” he asked.
“Kayla needs it, you read the sign… and we have to help her,” Keith said as he puffed out his little chest.
“Okay,” Connor replied.
“I have to get on the roof, and you have to help me,” Keith said.
“Okay,” Connor said again.
Keith opened the window just enough to poke his head out. He looked around for the monsters and didn’t see any. He pushed the window all the way up and Connor poked his head out as well. They both looked around for a minute and decided that the coast was clear. Keith now hung out the window reaching for the gutter. His hand grasped the edge of the gutter as he wedged his foot in the corner that the drainage pipe and wall created. He then shoved off the windowsill and was able to pull himself onto the roof. He did so with relative ease though the gutter made a number of squeaks. Connor then tossed the bag up to him, followed by the tape and rest of the rope.
Connor looked up at the edge of the roof and couldn’t see his brother any more. He became nervous but kept himself quiet. Keith quietly made his way to the
edge of the roof. Between the two homes was a tree, a younger tree with thin branches, branches just thick enough to hold Keith’s weight. He slung the rope around his shoulder and stuck the tape in the bag. He took a running start and jumped into the tree. He climbed down a few branches and was now level with Kayla who hung out of her window in amazement. Her mouth watered as Keith tossed her the bag of food. He was too far out to hand it to her, so luckily she was able to catch it. She tore the bag open and began eating like no one he’d ever seen. She slugged two juice boxes in under as many minutes. A smile covered her face and crumbs decorated her chin. Keith tossed roll of tape to Kayla and she caught it.
“Tape the rope down… it’ll be easier to get you more stuff,” Keith instructed her.
“Okay, cool!” Kayla exclaimed.
Keith could hear moaning coming from inside Kayla’s home. Kayla turned to look at the door. She could hear her mother’s dead fingers clawing at it. Her fingernails—broken and ripped—peeled, and chipped paint off the door’s surface. Kayla cringed at the sound and immediately looked saddened.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she whispered.
“The tree is too far for you to jump,” Keith whispered back.
“Please…” she begged.
“How?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said as she began to cry.
The scraping at the door had gotten louder. Her mother was now gnawing at the door with her teeth. She had splinters in her gums but the grip of death was too tight for her to feel any earthly pain. Kayla continued to cry by the window and Keith could do nothing but join her.
Across the street stumbling from behind another home was another dead thing. Keith heard the creature moan and he turned to see were it was coming from. He recognized the thing as his father’s friend, Henry. Most of Henry’s face was missing. He had severe wounds across much of his upper body. His clothes were torn and frayed. He staggered across the street with a foot so badly mangled he was practically moving on his ankle.
