Life Among the Dead (Book 4): The End

by Daniel Cotton

  Freed from his ankle leash he is pulled roughly to his feet and guided by his neck, at her command to go anywhere she wants him. She walks him straight into the doors to the ward, opening them with a slam. He is pushed through a waiting room, the wall to his right is all windows, blinding daylight shines in both glorious and painful to the man that has not seen the sun in he can’t even say how long.

  His rubbery legs almost fail him as he is made to take several sets of stairs. They head up three flights in silence except for a mechanical hum that grows louder as they approach. Another door is opened with his body, another hall of searing daylight. He thinks to resist but fears becoming lost, with shackled hands and no sense of direction he’d have no way to fend off an attack or find Gar to release him.

  Archie is marched past doors and darkened windows of clinics and units not in use, the signs he walks under that hang from the ceiling are no help to him with his unfocused vision. He can’t read them in order to tell where he is until he is forced to take an abrupt right and is slammed face first into a door that doesn’t give on the first try. His face draws back from a sign the reads: Fertility Clinic

  Forced inside by a second smash against the door, Archie is ushered all the way through a labyrinth of halls and offices to a treatment room. Placed against the wall like an unused mop for a moment while his keeper prepares something in the room. She maintains one hand on the pole, he can feel the tension lessen a bit. Is this my chance? he asks himself. Should I make a move now?

  Before he can act he is yanked away from the wall and backed against a low table. Though his legs are against it and can go no further, his neck is being forced back leaving him no choice but to sit. When the cord around his neck continues back he must slide his body until he is laying on the cushioned surface. A sheet of rough white paper crinkles below him as his body settles. His feet are quickly bound to the table. Lying like this is uncomfortable since his hands are cuffed behind his back, it’s uncomfortable on many levels but none more so than when his pants are taken from him along with his underwear. Both are drawn down to his ankles leaving him feeling even more vulnerable.

  Archie feels foolish for thinking he’d be awarded any upper hand. Of course she wouldn’t want my hands free, he scolds himself. The woman switches on a shop light near the door that bathes the entire room in intense white light. Looking around the room for inspiration he is given little to go on, posters on the walls remind him of something Gar had said. The sober stoner, himself feeling quite down, tried to cheer up his cellmate at one point. The captive rewords Gar’s joke hoping that making this woman laugh might reach what humanity she has locked deep within, make her feel guilty about her actions.

  “So, that’s what a vagina looks like on the inside,” he nods at a side view diagram of the female reproductive system. “It just stretches past the cervix like that? Like a dead end hallway? Maybe there’s a hidden passage back there, leading to a secret womb?”

  Nothing. She gives his effort as much regard as he had given Gar when the depressed stoner had tried it on him. The woman goes on with her procedure, swabbing his genitals with a yellowing stain he recalls from PlasmaCore. The Betadine is cold as it is left to dry. Miss Andry rolls away on her stool to prepare for the next phase. Archie is nervous, more nervous than he had been his first time with a girl. This is different. This is something he does not want.

  The table he lays on rises. The unwilling patient is confused at first, he wonders how she will be able to climb on the higher he is raised. She isn’t doing this that way, he again chastises his folly.

  Despite the exposure and attention given to his genitalia, he has yet to feel even a twinge of arousal. Plastic cup at the ready, Miss Andry begins to coax the desired response. Her latex gloved hand is cold and without any trace of tenderness as she massages his penis into action. Archie fights it, he thinks of anything he can to stave off an erection, it’s the only way he can fight back.

  He hardens against his will, his body betrays him. The woman grips him hard and commences into a robotic rhythm. He timidly looks down at her disinterested face, not even paying attention to the mechanical jerking of her hand, all that concerns her is the result and not the journey required to get there.

  Holding back is his only weapon now, he hopes in vain he can tire her out, outlast her. Seconds later he’s already on the verge, betrayed once again by his physiology. Sensing the shift in the man’s body as he gives in to the forthcoming pleasure of the moment she speeds up her tempo and prepares for collection.

  A tear rolls down Archie’s cheek, torn between how good it feels and just how very wrong. It has been a while since his night with Rocky, he pictures her as he erupts.

  Having what she wants, Miss Andry releases him. She stands so quick the stool is sent rolling away. Archie closes his eyes as he grows limp, he doesn’t have the sense of confidence that normally follows receiving an act of gratification, just a deep feeling of shame. The woman strips the gloves off and caps her prize. She just leaves him, turning off the light. She utters one word before closing the door, the first and only thing she’s said to him this entire time, “Filth.”

  10

  “Here we go to save the day,” Kenny Dewitt says to his passenger. Miranda’s son, Lance, had hopped in with him on his way out through the gate. Being well while the others have taken so dreadfully ill has his feeling guilty, he wants to help.

  The twelve year old hasn’t said much to the man that had put the idea in his mother’s head to build the shelter. He thought his mom had gone crazy when she bought land to build a new, state of the art school and decided to live in the old one. Given her new found wealth he told himself she was eccentric not crazy. He still doesn’t fully trust the man, he hasn’t seen him do much of anything since arriving and his mother always seems mad at him.

  “Did you know there was an anthropologic study that proves societies with the smallest average penis size are the most monogamous?” the man asks when other inquiries about Miranda fail to go anywhere. “Koreans are the most loyal.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. I’m just saying, I’m a good guy. A one woman guy. And, if your mom was looking for a new fella perhaps you could talk me up a bit. There comes a point in a man’s life when the sad truth dawns on him, he’s no Spring chicken, and then comes the sadder truth, he’ll probably never land one. Nope, he’ll likely settle down with a woman more his own age. That’s where I am, ready to settle. I think I can settle for your mom.”

  “After my dad,” the disclosure doesn’t come easy for the youth, “my mom said she was done with men. That the only one she needs is me.”

  “That’s nice,” Kenny replies. “But, there are certain things you can’t do for her that I can…certain activities…involving two consenting adults…partial to full nudity…”

  “Dude, just drive,” the kid shakes off the disturbing conversation. “The pharmacy is coming up.”

  Remaining silent with the subject already broached is difficult for Kenny. “It’s a shame that I waited so long in life to be able to appreciate the allure of the MILF,” he laments. “Giving birth really adds something to the female form, you know. A roundness to the hips, plumpness in all the right places. It doesn’t happen to all mothers, some don’t look any different after. Some never recover. But, there are special ones left with a body that looks…warm and cozy, inviting. They just look like home.”

  The youth isn’t listening, or trying very hard not to listen. Kenny, having spoken his peace, lets it go. He can see their target ahead. The dead slowly converge around the truck as it pulls up to the drug store. Seeing so many gruesome faces, their vacant eyes fixated on him through the windows, the driver isn’t sure he will be able to exit. He’s too scared. The drooping skin and gnarled hands make him quake with fear. “Is there anywhere else we can get the stuff?” he asks.

  “Not really,” Lance answers, peeking out over the tops of the zombies’ heads at their target. Over the
front door is an awning that holds the pharmacy’s signage, the requisite mortar and pestle. “If you can get up on the sidewalk, I think I can get on the roof.”

  “I don’t think I should let you go it alone,” Kenny says as he begins the act of moving them back and forth to shimmy the truck into position. “But, if you think you can handle it.”

  The truck isn’t high enough to keep Lance out of range of the reaching hands of the dead. He crouches below the window. “You’ll have to make some noise over there so they get away from my side,” the kid instructs having seen his fair share of zombie films and shows.

  The gentle rapping Kenny does on the window won’t be enough to entice the corpses. The kid has to redirect him, “Roll the fucking window down and start screaming!”

  “Jeez, kid,” Kenny mumbles, “kiss my future wife with that mouth?” Cranking down the old trucks window just a sliver, he has a rare moment where he finds himself at a loss for words. “Uh…Hey, dead guys! Over here!” he begins. His efforts aren’t going unnoticed, a few from the passenger side leave the crowd to shamble around the truck. If he wants to get this little mission over with, he knows he’ll have to keep talking. “Zombie, party of a hundred, your table is ready! Come and get it, you undead shit heads!”

  Seeing his side clear, Lance lowers his window while Kenny continues to holler. He slips out the window with his tool belt and makes it onto the roof of the truck. The gap between himself and the building’s awning doesn’t worry him, the fact that one wrong move can kill him does. Should he fall there will be hardly any time to get back in the truck before the dead are upon him. He steps out onto the overhanging sign, from the top he can see how to get onto the roof of the pharmacy. From his vantage he can see a door protruding from the flat roofed structure, with the tools on his belt he hopes to be able to gain access, and handle anything he may meet within.

  Kenny has stopped calling the dead to his side, he leans across the seat but can’t see the kid anymore after the brief glimpse he had of him crossing the gap. He is proud of him for being so brave and wonders if he might be trying to impress him, as if this gallant act is for his benefit, or better yet being performed due to his influence, a chip off the old block. A metallic snap followed swiftly by a second ends his ego driven ponderings. The awning falls to the sidewalk with a clang.

  On top of the fallen sign, Lance bellows in agony as the dead converge. He screams for Kenny to come to his aid before it’s too late. The driver takes in a horrified, ragged breath and holds it. He’s not sure what to do, he’s certainly not going out there. The boy uses all the strength he can muster to stand on his shattered bones as the dead close in. The lock engages before he can use the handle, Kenny follows his first impulse, and just pulls the truck away.

  He leaves the boy screaming, losing sight of the lad as the dead crowd around him. The throng of corpses gets smaller in his rearview, as does any hope of winning Miranda’s favor now. I can’t return empty handed, especially if the kid isn’t in one of them, he realizes. The thought of looking into the mother’s eyes and telling her that her son is gone turns his stomach. He decides he just won’t return.

  All that hard work, he mourns. He has his map of locations of the other caches that his people had set up before the world died. I’ll find a new place where I won’t be told what to do or judged. A place where I can be king.

  11

  It is the male’s role in reproduction to not only share half of his genetic make-up but also determine the offspring’s gender. Eugenia Andry is not a nurse, she has never worked in the health care industry, but still she looks through a microscope at the sample she has just acquired.

  Going off of what she has been able to learn in the clinic’s books, and by what she has heard throughout her life about reproduction, she feels confident that she can succeed in her plan. She had been scheduled to be inseminated but before her appointment the world fell apart, the dead rose up and robbed her of what she felt was her last chance to have a baby. Age affects a woman’s ability to carry a fetus to term and also increases the risk of genetic defects.

  Going off a common belief that ‘male sperm’ is faster and ‘female sperm’ lives longer, she feels that with the right timing she can do what the clinic couldn’t guarantee, make a baby girl. Fortunately for her she found a way to increase her odds, the same day she found her donor she found a surrogate. They will both be impregnated. For nine months Miss Andry will take care of herself and the woman she feels failed as a mother by issuing a male, her fingers will be crossed that at the end she will have two bundles of joy to hold. Worst case scenario, she’ll have to try again.

  The sample looks good, as good as she can tell, they swim around aimlessly without a target in sight, their flagella propelling them through the fluid. She had read that fructose is what gives them energy to move and makes a note to herself that she needs to give her captive more juice since she hasn’t the means to fertilize the eggs in petri dishes and has to simulate the act a more natural way, as natural as this can be considered.

  Being at the very clinic she was supposed to become an expectant mother at, she thought she would have access to all the sperm she could ever want. Only, the freezer is electronically locked, and the electricity is out. Even if she could get her hands on the semen she wouldn’t be able to access the donor files to screen out those with an overabundance of males in their families. Her prisoners both reported having only sisters, and more aunts than uncles. Her hope is that with females being more prevalent in their families they are more apt to give her daughters, and nature only put them on the planet to make more women.

  Muffled cries remind Miss Andry that she must tend to her surrogate. In an adjoining room, upon a table, Stephanie weeps through a thin towel. She has been crying since her capture and has hardly slept though her captor has told her that she will need her strength and must rest. The bound woman has been refusing nourishment and has to be forced to eat and drink, forced to swallow the large prenatal vitamins she’s offered.

  The gag is loosened and lowered, pleas to be released flood out like water through a dam. Miss Andry ignores the begging, once she has administered a double dose of prenatal care she silences the young woman once more. She swallows two of the pills herself to prepare her body, she will be sharing her nutrients soon. Her surrogate has yet to start ovulation. According to her own schedule, hers will commence tomorrow. While her sample is still viable, she sucks it into a 10 ml syringe and prepares herself. She slides the plastic shaft in smoothly, deep enough to give the ‘little swimmers’ a chance.

  12

  Prenatals. Prenatals, Rocky searches shelves of pills in the dark. A brief court-ordered stint in rehab taught her only one thing, prenatal vitamins contain extra vitamin B1 and is often prescribed to alcoholics, male and female alike, pregnant or not, to prevent conditions commonly brought on due to their deficiency of it. It’s the one healthy thing she does for herself.

  “Aha!” she exclaims with pride when she finds what she’s looking for. Having exhausted her own supply a few days ago she insisted on this run though Killer B said they had enough of everything else.

  Rocky had to get out of the house. Cabin fever is driving her crazy, she has run out of things to look at in Kelly Peel’s glamourous home, run out of things to poke fun at. A fresh snow fall last night has her curious about the footprints in the snow she has been seeing from time to time that she knows are not her own since she sticks to primary paths and steps only in her own footfalls. The prints are being left by one who is not so careful, haphazard trails throughout the city that seem to lead to nowhere. Rocky hasn’t bothered to follow them to see where this person may be hiding, she’s just relieved that the lines in the snow don’t appear to linger near their temporary home.

  Spring will be upon them soon, it won’t be long before the dead thaw and once again walk this city. She doesn’t plan on being here when that happens, another reason for the outing is for her to think about their es
cape. She can’t think very clearly at the mansion, it’s too comfortable, and she is prone to drinking too much.

  Killer B and Rocky had talked about where they should go and decided to head for home, find a remote location near Bedlam, Massachusetts. Killer B has family she’s worried about out there. Rocky on the other hand has no one, she simply wants to make her last surviving team member happy and keep her safe. This city will be teaming with zombies soon, as will Bedlam, but out east there are mountains and vast woods where they can make their stand.

  Her bag full of prenatal vitamins and medicines that may come in handy, Rocky heads out the way she had entered the hospital. She can see her breath in the dark halls as she lights a cigarette, the woman may drink any chance she gets but she only smokes occasionally, usually at times of high stress. The steam she exhales becomes lost in the smoke, mingling into one and dissipating together. She wishes it could be so simple for her and Killer B to disappear, the trek east has her quite concerned.

  As she nears the light at the end of the hallway, a bay of broken windows in the Olive Grove Emergency Room, she must be cautious with her footing. The shattered panes of glass have let in wind and snow, the smooth floor is a veritable ice rink. Frost gleams on the walls and ceiling, as it does the current residents of the hospital. In the ER are frozen figures, corpses that had wandered in and eventually became the creepy statues Rocky slowly slides around.

  An awning once hung over the doors to the Emergency Room, something had crushed it, taken a bite out of the concrete slab. Perpetual snowmen are scattered along the street, bumps in the plain of snow indicate those that are on their hands and knees. Among the hibernating dead, one had struck her as most grisly. She can’t help but take another look at him, like a curious piece in a museum, finding it worth the extra trudging she must do off her path.