Life Among the Dead (Book 4): The End

by Daniel Cotton

  “C’mon, what do I say about this?” Rocky asks again and playfully tickles her friend into laughing. “What’s my theory?”

  “Hot chicks get more licks.”

  “Yeah they do!” Rocky releases her friend and plops herself back down on the bed, the mood in the room much lighter now. “Hell, if I was a dude I’d be cleaning your clock on the reg.”

  “I worry about you too,” Killer B reciprocates. “I never know if you’re coming back to me or not.”

  Killer B’s sentiment reminds Rocky of her upcoming mission. She has a bad feeling about this one. Instead of talking, Rocky takes another sip.

  “Just tell me everything will be ok,” Killer B beseeches.

  Rocky has trouble easing her mind with her own so unsettled. Tomorrow she will be leading a small team to the coast in search of a fallback position, possibly a new home for them all. Kenny will not be going on this one, though she made him promise to watch out for Killer B, Rocky fears who may get in his head with her not there to manipulate him. Though it would be over-run with zombies by now, she ponders if they would have been better off staying in Waterloo. Instead of clearing the air about what’s to come she simply recites her motto, “We’re gonna be great.”

  39

  The warm spring sunshine had melted away the snow and ice of winter. The city of Waterloo slowly came to life, figuratively. The dead began to move once more. The sun thawed the muscles of Donny DePonte, the ice encasing his tissues weakened until he was able to move, the remaining crystals crunching in his joints. As soon as he was able to walk he was on the search for food, starved. The hunger hadn’t abated all winter, though frozen solid the zombie’s mind thought only of eating, now fully defrosted he still hasn’t found the flesh he desires.

  He and his dead peers circle the city without aim. The hunger drives them, propels them in their quest. Their eyes scan for signs of life, their ears are ready to detect the sounds of the living, but there’s nothing for them to find. It’s a primitive version of hope, the same hope a shark may have in the ocean of smelling blood, or spotting its prey on the surface above.

  Donny, like many of his ilk, occasionally veers from their familiar hunting grounds without provocation. A glimmer of a memory stirs in their decaying brains, the proteins break down chemically and then are forever gone. One such whisper steers him through Shepard Park and into ‘the Hills’. He takes lefts and rights until he is standing before Memorial Hospital.

  He does not enter the dark cavernous hole in the front door that had been opened by a car long ago and remains abandoned. He stands, staring at the building, not for the fact that he was told by his old boss, Freeman Wilkes, to never set foot in the place again, but simply because there is no food to pursue. The place holds meaning for him that he will never comprehend, memories long forgotten. This is the place where his career ended, and all he knows now had started. Almost as fast as it appeared, the memory dissipates. It decomposes, releasing him from his trance and setting him to wander once more.

  Miles upon miles of city streets have been walked, he has walked more these past few months than he has his living adult life. He’s shuffled down the same streets more than once without notice, now he joins a group in their shared quest. They walk day and night, without rest, patrolling the city of Waterloo.

  The hunger drives them, Donny’s stomach would growl if it had the ability. It would be easy to hear since it remains exposed, his thoracic cavity is still splayed open by a gleaming rack of steel. Even if Donny saw food, he’d be unable to reach for it. Even if his arms had the required muscles, his pectorals and sternum are separated thus negating the range of motion needed to bring his hands to his mouth.

  A sound stops the group. The wandering dead cease to wander almost at once. A rumble in the distance grows louder with each passing second. The ground under their feet begins to shake as the rumble becomes a deafening roar. The corpses take strides on the quaking streets, heading toward the noise that draws near. Donny cannot see what is heading their way, his view is obstructed by his brethren and tall buildings. Had he been able to, and alive, he’d run from the impossible sight as far and as fast as he could, and it still wouldn’t be enough to save him. What comes their way is a force of nature, devastatingly destructive.

  A wall of water floods the city, picking up everything in its path like mere bath toys. Donny and the rest of the zombie population are no exception. They find themselves flushed down the streets of Waterloo like waste down the drain. The churning river juggles them within it. They find themselves on the surface then on the bottom, being smashed into anything in their way. Being battered and bashed with no up nor down, and no way to stop it from happening even if they had the capacity.

  Their abuse comes to a peaceful end many miles away. Donny and the others that rode the flood south and hadn’t been casted along the new river bank as it was carved are rewarded. They drift lazily in the Gulf of Mexico, where they slowly sink to the bottom.

  40

  “I heard Brass fitted you for your armor,” a smooth sounding male voice poses the open question to Lady Luck as she heads to her first day of boot camp. She’s already uncomfortable being so concealed and restricted by the metal and padding, it’s so unlike what she usually wears, too confining. She’s also anxious over what to expect, the last thing she needs is a chauvinist making cracks. “Yeah,” she answers.

  “Bitch, you so lucky,” the voice tells her. The derogatory word used lacks bite as only a gay man is capable of.

  She slows to allow the owner of the voice to casually catch up to her, a black man in armor similar to hers is heading in the same direction.

  “That little man has something, don’t he?” the man continues.

  “He certainly does,” Lady Luck instantly feels more relaxed. “Are you classing up too?”

  “Oh, no,” he responds. “I’ve already been through. I’m just tagging along to help out. The name’s Soul Train. At least now it is. In the world before I was Abraham Bishop.”

  “Lady Luck.”

  “Usually, people choose their new names during boot…”

  “I’ve been Lady Luck longer than… who I was before. I’m not about to change now.”

  “Heard you was a showgirl,” Soul Train jumps the topic. “Makes two of us. Actually, I was more of an agitator, now I’m part of something bigger.”

  “Where’d they find you?”

  “I found them,” he says. “I made a promise to a dying friend that I’d come here and look for his wife, this is a man I was born to hate and clash with. Funny thing is, the time I spent with that straight, republican, white devil was the best relationship I’ve ever been in.”

  “Did you find her?” Lady Luck asks hopeful for there to be a happy ending to the story.

  “In a manner,” he sadly breaks it to her. “I like to think they’re together again up in heaven, if he’s keeping his dick in his pants.”

  The new friends head through the store. The mellow mood Soul Train evoked in the recruit eludes her. Anxiety begins to set in once more, her confining outfit suddenly feels very hot. She tugs at the collar but finds it hasn’t much give to get air down to where she needs it.

  Soul Train sees she is tensing up and whispers, “Just relax. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

  The early morning sun is blinding when the pair exit the back door and enter the motor pool. Lady Luck’s future playground comes into focus like a developing picture, she sees her father’s old double decker bus right where she left it, suspended on lifts, waiting for her.

  She was expecting a larger group, thinking of boot camps she’s seen on TV and in movies, but there are only two other recruits that look as nervous as she feels. Two guys in armor that simply nod to her quickly as a greeting then look toward their leader. Brass is standing in the middle of the lot with Abby, the smaller man is getting his armor cinched and secured by the girl from the pudding house with the electric blue hair.

 
“Come on, Abby!” Brass says. “Clint Howard?”

  “I don’t even know who that is,” the younger and taller of the two responds with much annoyance.

  “He’s Ron Howard’s brother.”

  “How does that help me?”

  “I’ll give you an easy one…” Brass offers after an idea is whispered into his ear by Abacab.

  “I really don’t want to play with you right now,” Abby explains as if speaking to a child that just won’t stop asking questions.

  “George Clooney?”

  Abby does attempt Brass’s game but is unable to focus. The class is all accounted for and they should begin their first day. “I don’t know,” he surrenders.

  “George Clooney was in Ocean’s Eleven with Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt was in Interview with a Vampire with Tom Cruise, and Tom Cruise was in A few Good Men with…” he lets the last link in the chain linger open in the air for his friend to get.

  “Kevin Bacon,” Abby says without Brass’s passion. All morning the leader of the town has been in an oddly chipper mood, even for him. All morning he’s talked about nothing but movies.

  “Yup! That’s right!” Brass says with a wide grin. “Fun game, right? You sure suck at it. Now, if you’re done wasting everybody’s time, Abby, we should get started.”

  “Almost done,” Abacab hurries to finish securing their leader’s protective wear.

  “Oww! Banana! Banana!” Brass screams out in pain making his assistant gasp for fear she is hurting him. “Just kidding,” he tells her with a wry smile.

  Rubicon’s tech expert shoves him angrily. “Every time!”

  Around Rubicon, Brass is known for his mood swings that seem to change like the tide. He can be upbeat and hyper one moment, and melancholy the next, pensively keeping to himself. At this moment he shifts into his ‘all business mode’, he’ll still joke around but his voice will carry a tone letting his students know that he is serious.

  “Good morning, class,” he says, pausing at the end. When the three recruits do not say anything he repeats slightly louder, “I said: Good morning, class.”

  “Good morning,” they respond in awkward unison.

  “That’s better.” He paces back and forth in front of the short row of nervous looking hopefuls. They’ve heard that the boot camp can be quite scary and grueling, and they know that graduation means joining the team on missions beyond the town line. They are facing their fears to give something back to the community that has cradled them and kept them safe for so long.

  “Today, we will be testing you against real zombies. We will be teaching you to trust one another, trust in your armor, but most importantly to trust yourself. Let’s go.”

  They follow Brass to a long yellow school bus, he stands by the door letting them board first. As each one approaches he hands them a plastic lunchbox. Two soldiers on horseback that Lady Luck remembers from the house she was found in, Rough Rider and Peace Maker, clop ahead of the bus. Soul Train and Abby board as well. Abby takes the driver’s seat and closes the door. Soul Train slides in next to Lady Luck.

  “Doesn’t that smell take you back?” Brass comments about the stale air and lingering odor in the bus. “Royal pine and butt.”

  The bus grumbles slowly around the supermarket and out through the shanty town in the front parking lot. Children chase them, waving. They travel through the curving walls of debris as Brass hums a tune over and over some recognize as the theme to the Magic School Bus. Everyone lurches as the long vehicle takes a right.

  Lady Luck opens the lunchbox she has been given, an old 1980’s era container, upon its cover is Jem and the Holograms. Inside is a plastic cup of pudding and a plastic spoon, a thermos that sloshes and rolls around, filled with some sort of drink, a package of crackers with a small compartment filed with yellow cheese, a 9mm pistol, and a paper napkin with a smiley face drawn on it. “Everything a kid needs for school,” she quips.

  After saying this she looks up, through the windshield she sees they are arriving at an actual school.

  “This is the neighboring town of Jasper. We found this school about a month or so ago. It’s still full of zombies, we just sealed them in figuring they may be useful for training purposes. By now, I assume you all have peeked inside your lunches…” Brass gazes over his class as they nod. One of the guys is sipping from his He-Man thermos, he stops as if he’s just been caught doing something wrong. Quickly he flips the plastic spout down and shoves the thing back into the box. “Who would like to be my Line Leader?”

  The three look to one another out of the corners of their eyes to see who will take the offer, the man caught sneaking his drink before lunch slowly raises his hand to ear level as if unsure if he should or not.

  “Great! Drake, right?” Brass asks his volunteer who nods. “Collect the lunch boxes, make certain that all the contents have been returned.”

  As the Line Leader does as instructed Brass can see their confusion, to be given a gun and have it taken away so soon seems odd to them. “Don’t worry, class. You’ll get them back at lunchtime.”

  Once the cheerful plastic boxes have been stacked, Brass hands them off to Soul Train who exits the bus with them. He casually walks to the front doors of the school and enters. Rough Rider and Peace Maker are at the doors waiting with rolls of duct tape.

  “Everyone, follow Drake off the bus and line up at the door,” Brass instructs.

  As the class does as they’ve been told the soldiers inspect their armor. Helmets are placed on each pupil’s head and sealed with wide strips of gray tape. Peace Maker smiles at Lady Luck before lowering her helmet over her head.

  “Good luck, Lady Luck,” she says with a wink and then asks Rough Rider, “Did that sound weird to you?”

  “Nope,” he says as he winds tape around the man in the middle of the row. “Hell else are ya supposed to say it?” To his man he gives a thumbs up once he’s satisfied all joints and creases are secured.

  The three stand in the morning sun growing hotter by the second, listening to their own breathing, waiting to see what comes next.

  “School’s in session,” Brass says as he pulls open the glass door and holds it open with his foot. His voice is muffled by his own helmet. “Let’s do this! 5,6,7,8.”

  The three enter the house of learning with their mentor and Abby close behind. The teachers remain at the door as the pupils slow their pace in the dark empty halls.

  “In less than a minute the bell will ring and this hall will become teeming with bullies,” Brass shouts through his headgear. “You need to get to the lunchroom.”

  The class hesitates before taking their first steps deeper into the school. The sound of the bell startles them, in the seconds it takes to reclaim the breath that was stolen doors are opening all along the corridor. Corpses stumble out, dozens upon dozens of them. Puzzled and aimless at first, the dead spot the living and flood toward them. Rather than the drone of voices and lockers being opened and slammed closed, the halls vibrate with moans.

  It is the collective gut reaction of the three students to turn and run, only one of them follows through with it. One of the men dashes for the glass doors and is caught by Brass. “Are you sure?” Brass asks and is answered simply with an emphatic nod before he is allowed to pass leaving two.

  The unsteady hobbling gait of the dead that advance is quickened from prolonged starvation. Lady Luck stands her ground, reminding herself to trust her armor. The other remaining student cowers, backing from the dead that draw close. Though she hasn’t a clue how she’ll get through the throng before her, she knows the task will be all the more challenging if her classmate abandons her. She grabs his belt. She may be overwhelmingly outnumbered, but at least now she has a weapon.

  Lady Luck spins the man with all her might, twirling her classmate around and releases him directly at the dead. He barrels into the tight mob, toppling them.

  “Well, that’s a new one,” Brass comments on the unorthodox strategy. “We did tell the
m to trust in the armor, I guess.”

  “I don’t like it,” Abby voices his opinion. They watch as Lady Luck dashes over the fallen dead. She grabs her classmate’s hand and helps him up, pulling him over the horde as the dead reach and grab at them.

  “It worked,” Brass has to admit. “No wonder she said you weren’t her type, Abby.”

  “You didn’t…did you?” Abby stares at Brass, It’s not the first time he’s attempted to ignite a spark between him and a girl. “I can’t believe…ok, yes, it would have been awesome, but still!”

  “I had to!” Brass responds. “I found out Abacab was already seeing someone, I figured Miss Luck could show you some charity.”

  Too frustrated and embarrassed for words, Abby watches the students scramble over the dead. They have a clear path once over the flailing, ravenous pile. Now all they have to do is find the lunchroom.

  Shrouded by shadows, Brass and Abby remain quiet. They allow the dead to keep their focus on the two that had made it passed them. The clumsy heap of corpses untangles and rises. It’s lunchtime for them as well as they follow the living. This lesson was intended to teach the students to relax when getting mauled, Lady Luck has skipped ahead a grade into ‘Advanced How-not-to-get-mauled’.

  With her classmate in tow, the one time showgirl rushes down the dim halls. She has no idea where the lunchroom is. She needs a weapon and is only able to turn up a baseball bat she takes from a trophy case. It’s signed by all the members of the school team from the year they won the series against all the other schools in the area. Its sentimental importance doesn’t matter to the woman, only what she can do with it.

  They have come to a dead end and realize that they have to backtrack through the dead on their heels. “Stay with me,” she tells her teammate.

  The dead appear, hobbling shadows that crowd the passage, getting closer. Lady Luck wants to get to an intersecting hall they had passed, their only chance is if they go now since the longer they wait the more zombies will stand in their way.