by Steve Wands
I was beginning to sober up and that was a bad thing, a very bad thing.
It was on my second jar of moonshine that I returned to near oblivion. I was almost drunk enough to enjoy the stories being told within earshot of where I stood on wobbly legs. I heard one part of a story that involved Mick Jagger and it only made me think of my dead friends on the bridge. It almost made me chuckle–the thought of Mick and The Stones being responsible for the death of death. I smiled, briefly, and it felt unnatural and dirty on my face. I wiped it off and took a swig from my jar.
The river moved fast and rough. It looked almost green. I could see a few people from the group down near the river talking amongst themselves–it could’ve been an argument the way they were moving, but I stopped paying attention, and moved closer to the fire. The fire smelled terrible, like hot piss on burnt rubber, but I took it in all the same.
A memory came to me then, one of fire–a fire that didn’t smell of piss and rubber. It was a Thanksgiving years ago, our first Thanksgiving as a new family, just the three of us. I fought and fought for us to be by ourselves. I was sick of sharing the day with her family, and for once I wanted to just be by ourselves. The fire then smelled great and it heated most of the house. Our son was crawling around like a maniac and we kept chasing after him–but I must say I had a hard time crawling after him. I was heavier then, and my knees hated me for it. It was the best Thanksgiving I had as an adult. I wish I could go back to that day, back to a day on the couch with a giant heap of mashed potatoes, a cold beer, a beautiful woman at my side and my curious little creation roaming the floors in search of brightly colored toys to put in his mouth.
It’s funny the things you think of when you’re trying to get some shut-eye. And when I say funny, I mean odd. I was just thinking about the rain forest. I pictured it beginning to flourish once again. I saw vivid colors and giant trees, crazy looking little bugs, and noisy birds. The earth, the real earth, must be rejoicing as we continue to struggle for survival. I thought of the future I use to picture, flying cars and teleportation systems, robots named “Rosie” and all that good stuff. It’s crazy how quickly things can change. How one can go from a bright future to no future at all. I thought of dinosaurs, and then I felt like one. Somehow I slept.
I dreamt of walking through the city, the bridge was cleared and we joined a parade. People were celebrating again, the sun was shining, and people were talking and laughing. A man tried to sell me ice cream but I didn’t have any money. He smiled and handed it to me anyway. Then he gave me a wink. I could hear children laughing but I didn’t see any. Then it began to rain, no it poured. It was muddy and hot, and everyone ran off. I was left in the middle of the street with my ice cream, which turned into eyeballs. The people around me all turned into deaders. They began clapping. My vision blurred and the world began to spin out of control. Then I woke to the touch of someone stroking my leg. It was the feral girl. I jumped up and pushed her away. She hissed at me, I kicked her and snarled back. The others looked at me, then to the girl, and then they went back to whatever the hell it was they were doing–which was really just killing time.
I sat back down, and the last thing I remember was the shifting of gravel underfoot. Then blackness. When I woke up my head pounded, and the world was upside down. The folks I traveled with were standing around me. They looked anxious, and they were looking at me. I hung suspended by my feet, and my hands were tied in back. All I could do was squirm–and not very much at that. They were all pretty quiet. From behind me I could hear the sharpening of metal–I knew what was coming. I smiled when I figured it out; it was my turn, at long fucking last. There was a bucket under my head. The sharpening stopped and then all was quiet. I could hear footsteps approaching from behind, then the swift sound of a cleaver slicing through the cold night air. The pussy swinging the cleaver didn’t have enough strength to cleave off my head in one swing. So, you could imagine the pain when it struck my throat. As much as I looked forward to this moment, I had no idea how much pain it would actually be. Nor did I think it would hurt a hundred times more when the bastard pulled it out to try again. Finally on the third stroke my head landed in the bucket, face down and bleeding stump up. My warm blood flowed from the wound, quickly cooling off–and there was a lot of it. I then watched them slice open my gut and disembowel me. Cleaving out every organ and letting them drop to the ground. The bucket wasn’t near big enough, and according to the reaction of the bastards doing it I didn’t smell too fresh on the inside. Am I thankful? —Yes. I’d certainly have preferred a cleaner death, something more serene, and quick. But, what’s done is done. I was just a bit confused as to why there was no heavenly light shining down upon me, or why I didn’t float off into the air–I was still here, watching them hack at my mortal remains. Their names are fuzzy, and as I’ve told you before, they don’t really matter, but I think the bastard that cleaved my head was named Vic. He’d told me before that he’d eaten human flesh. He sort of eventually became our group’s leader. He was a nice enough guy, and if I could’ve thanked him for choosing me to be the Thanksgiving bird, despite the fact that the bastard couldn’t do the job swiftly, I would have. I guess he somehow convinced the rest of the group that human meat was better than no meat. I guess they agreed.
They had turned pipes and branches into skewers which they covered in my meat. I wondered if anyone would eat my dick, and if they did I sure as shit didn’t want to watch, but I wanted to know. I was almost all bone as they continued to skewer large chunks from my body. The man with the cleaver started making a stack for himself, cutting from my thighs, probably the choicest of cuts, my legs were in great shape from all the walking I’ve done over the years–probably the best they’d ever been in. I used to be a couch potato with a desk job and a bad appetite, now I was a slender stack of meat on Thanksgiving Day. Once someone had a full skewer they walked it over to the fire. I could hear the sizzle of my skin, but I couldn’t smell it–why I don’t know. I watched them eating my body. I wish I could tell you it disgusted me, but it didn’t. I didn’t care. The feral girl grabbed a skewer of me and headed to the fire in her hunched over stagger of a walk.
A woman, I think her name was Emma, grabbed the bucket that held my head. She pulled my head from the bucket by my blood-soaked tendrils of hair and raised it to her eye level. She looked at my face–which, to my surprise was moving its jaw and flitting its eyes. Those were my eyes, and they were moving without me behind them. I always thought if you removed the head from the body there would be no coming back. I couldn’t tell if my body still writhed, but my head sure did. It was strange, I must’ve cut the heads off hundreds of deaders and never once did I stop to pick up the head and say hello to it. Nor did I ever see a headless corpse walking around. You’d figure that after so many years these things would start to make sense, but no, they didn’t. None of it made any damn sense. Not ever. My current situation didn’t make a lick of sense either, but it was happening anyway, or not happening in my case. The woman started talking to my head, but I didn’t quite catch what she was saying. Then she walked my head over to the fire and tossed it in. My face, my identity to the world, was tossed like rubbish into the fire. It was one of the few things that reminded me of who I was, the other…the other was the photograph, which lay in a puddle of my innards and blood and torn clothes. I walked over to it and knelt down. I tried to pick it up, but I couldn’t. I wanted to wipe away my blood to see the faded image of my wife, Lynne, and my son, Marley, and I couldn’t even do that. All of this was to see them again, and what I got to see was the butchering of my body and the feasting of my flesh. God, if there is such a thing, had forsaken me.
I left. I walked away and I didn’t turn back in the slightest. I returned to the bridge and what I saw made me laugh; the deaders were coming. They must’ve smelled my blood and innards, and like flies to shit they came for it. There were more than I had seen in a long time. I guess the city wasn’t as empty as we thought. There had t
o be hundreds, all of them shriveled like raisins. Still they were able to stagger, still able to feast. I wished them a Happy Thanksgiving as they passed through me. As they stumbled off the bridge and down toward camp, I could hear shouts, then a few shots but I knew firearms were few and ammunition was sparse. The shots stopped and the shouts turned into panicked screams. I walked over to the edge of the bridge and watched. They were completely surrounded by the swarm of deaders. The fools were so busy with feasting and clamoring about nonsense that they didn’t hear their slow approach, and the smell of the fire must’ve covered up their putrid scent, which I couldn’t smell. I was thankful for that too, I guess.
The feral girl ran for the river and dove–she would most likely die of hypothermia. The others tried to fight, but it was like fighting the tide. For every deader dispatched a new one came to take its spot. They fought as they always had though, and valiantly, but it was pointless. A few more chose the river. I guess I would’ve chosen the river as well. I’d rather of died a death with my lungs full of icy sludge than have my flesh torn off in chunks by the rotted teeth of the deaders. The deaders overpowered the rest of my group, dragging their dying bodies to the ground. The tide came in. The tide always comes in. And there’s not a damned thing in hell you can do about it. I watched the tide go back out as quickly as it came in. The fire illuminated the leftover chunks of cooling gore. The cold stiff dirt was left a darker than rust shade of red. The folks I traveled with joined the ranks of the dead. I walked on.
The bridge was littered with the remains of vehicles. The kinds people would’ve killed for, the public type that people dreaded, and the kind that probably stalled out and caused this mess. They were rusted and weathered, cold and dead, and useless. Just like me. I wondered how long it would take for the bridge to collapse without man there to keep it up. From the looks of it, I didn’t think very long. The longer I walked, the more I felt a part of this world. It was dead, I was dead. The only things I saw were dead, in one way or another, and the people still left were only biding time till they eventually died.
After the bridge I entered the city. It was once called Titan City, but I couldn’t find any sign that stated such. I remember the day of the bombings–Titan City was among the first to fall. It seemed like forever ago. I used to visit every once and a while. Daytrips, a show, an anniversary dinner here and there, and I remember when we took Marley to the museum for the first time. He loved it. We all did. I wondered if it still stood? I doubt it–many of the buildings were leveled, the ones still standing looked as if a good gust of wind would knock them over.
The streets were covered in glass and metal from the windows. I don’t think there was a high rise with a window left intact anywhere throughout this city of the dead. It was a hollowed out husk of a hornet on the windowsill of the world. And, I was walking through it. The devastation was nothing short of breathtaking. I tried to touch things, to run my fingers along the old bones of the city, but I could feel nothing.
I found what was left of the museum. A hole in the ground–a hole filled with fancy things. Fancy things covered by dust and debris. Things that had no place, things like me, relics. I stood there for what seemed like days, though I know it was only a moment. I waited to see my family, but they didn’t show up. I walked on.
The day never changed, night never came, and the sky stayed the dullest shade of grey I had ever seen. The clouds looked painted and hung heavy over me. I tired of the wasteland. There was nothing to keep me here. I headed for a home I had not been to since the dead began to rise. I wasn’t sure how to get there, but I felt drawn, like something was pulling me or pushing me toward it. I didn’t fight it, it’s not like I had something better to do.
I couldn’t tell if time was moving or not. It should have taken me a while to get from the city to my old home, but the sky never seemed to change. I felt no cold, no warmth, no wind, no anything. I thought I saw other ghosts or spirits, but they could have been shadows. I saw no living, or living dead. I couldn’t even find the sun. Yet I was almost to my destination, which was unrecognizable. The street signs were faded, the homes deteriorating; the once well-kept lawns were rebellious fields. My old suburbia lie in a worse ruin than when I left it, which was no real surprise, but it was disturbing to see. It made me feel haunted, though it seemed I was the one doing the haunting.
There it is, right in front of me. A door to a world I left behind years ago. A big heavy door, it used to be red–the shutters too, now they’re rust-colored. I can’t turn the handle. I can barely move. Whatever force had been guiding me is gone. I’m alone. The door opens.
“Welcome home, sweetheart,” she said to me. Her voice, a song I so longed to hear. Her irises shimmered like warm honey. Her skin looked so soft–if only I could touch her, smell her.
“Daddy,” shouted my beautiful little boy, running down the hallway toward the door. His hair bounced with each step, and his smile was bright. The tiny pieces of my shattered heart ached. Each broken chunk burned. My eyes teared. I couldn’t even smile. They did though; they smiled brightly, as brightly and as warmly as I remember them.
I tried to speak but I couldn’t. She nodded, she knew what I wanted to say, and didn’t want, or need, to hear it. She patted my boy on the head. He looked at me with somber eyes and a grim chin. Their beautiful appearance began to change. They looked as they did the last time I saw them–in agony.
“You know what they say about cowards, dad,” he said, and I did.
I just wanted to apologize. I wanted to take it back. I wished over and over that I died with them, that I held them then, instead of hoping I could now.
“A thousand deaths,” my wife whispered.
A thousand deaths, her soft words hit me like a sledgehammer. All the years of letting the guilt eat me alive from the inside out for one death. How many times did I want to kill myself and end it all? I was a coward then. I was afraid, always afraid.
“Do you know how long it takes for a ghost to die,” she asked me, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t something I ever gave any thought. After thinking about it for a moment I feared I might never die again. I stared into her eyes looking for an answer, but there was none, only the warmth that I’d always known to be there. This was all my fault, not hers, I was the one who ran. She did the right thing.
“We love you,” they said together, and I was forced to watch them die again. It was just as painful the second time around, but this time I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t run away. I had to grin and bear it. I watched every morsel of skin get ripped away. I watched them bleed, and scream, and squirm, and cry out for me, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help, or change what I did. I was a Goddamn coward twice over, and there they lay in a pool of their blood, twitching as the dead thing swallowed their flesh, again. Just like the first time, only now I couldn’t run. All I could do was cry, not even blink, and hurt. Then they were gone, as quickly as they came. My angels, my demons, gone once again, all that remained was a stain on the floorboards and a huge gaping hole in my heart. Could God be so cruel? I guess so. I was able to move again, so I knelt on the stain–the only remains of my family. I wish I had my picture, now more than ever. All I have is nothing, save that of guilt. I eventually got up and wandered aimlessly through my old home. The dust was so thick it was dirt; covering most of the framed pictures I longed to see. What little I could see was distorted, another level to the hell I find myself in, if this is hell. I’m not sure. I tried to wipe the dirt away, but it was useless. I tried to blow it away, but nothing came out of my ghostly form. I pictured us as we were before the deaders bled the world dry. These walls were filled with laughter once, now just dirt and a ghost chasing after death. I walked around the home some more, then went outside and sat on the stoop. I waited for the tall grass to wrap me up and pull me under, but it never did.
I watched a deader stagger around aimlessly. I followed the clay colored sun burnt beast of yesterday. Wherever it roamed I followed. I
t had no idea I was there. It could’ve been months, or years, hell, it could have been minutes, it didn’t matter. The deader eventually found someone alive. I give it credit for trying, but it was pretty useless, the lady clubbed it to death. She bashed his head over and over again. Not one drop of blood came out of the thing–it was probably dried up, or bled out. She took her breaths and moved on, as did I.
I never did find out how a ghost dies. I did, however, watch a world die. I watched mankind disappear forever. I watched its walking shadow decay into nothing. I saw other ghosts, other things, but nothing could ever keep me company. I watched the climate change, and the animals all disappeared. I traveled the world time and time again. The landmarks I knew turned to dust. For a time, it was only the roaches and I, but they died off as well. The earth grew hot for a long time, and the sky turned red. The sun was dying. Then the earth turned to a ball of ice. The sun began to fade. Then there was the day the sun went out. Then it was just me and the darkness.
*
Kaleidoscope Eyes
*
Distinct shapes grew fuzzy and abstract as J-Bone’s vision went black. He’d been spray-painting his latest masterpiece under the bridge when he heard footsteps approaching. He didn’t have time to turn around let alone finish his painting.
When he awoke he found himself strung up upside down and stripped naked. He was in a cement room, and it smelled like a sewer. Once he was able to focus he spotted his clothing in a ball on the floor next to his cans of spray-paint.
