by Ray Wallace
Then we’d only have witches and flying monkeys to worry about.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” said Eddie from the back seat.
“How bad?” asked Susanna, giving him a look in the rear-view mirror.
“Pretty bad.”
Over the past half hour or so, Susanna had not seen a single zombie. And she doubted any of them were lurking among the rows of wheat—dead or nearly so, by the looks of it—pushing up close to the road.
“Let me find a good place to pull over.”
Just ahead, a turnoff came into view, one of the hard-packed dirt roads she had seen cutting their way back through the seemingly endless fields of wheat. She slowed the car then stopped at the turnoff, instructed the siblings to wait inside while she and Dominick armed themselves then got out and looked around. After a brief inspection of the area, she allowed the younger children to exit the vehicle, telling them to stay close.
“I will,” Eddie promised as he disappeared among the wheat stalks, searching for a little privacy.
“Far enough,” she said, listening to him crunch his way among the brittle plants.
“Okay.” He sounded no more than ten or fifteen feet away.
The fact that she could not see him made her nervous, had her silently urging him to hurry up and finish his business. He was her responsibility, after all, one she had taken on willingly with all it entailed. If anything were to happen to him…
The road is no place for children.
She needed to find somewhere to keep them all out of harm’s way. There was only one place she could think of…
Lawrence’s little hideaway.
As usual, the very thought of returning there filled her with a palpable sense of dread. The events that had led to her fleeing the estate continued to haunt her dreams.
But it has so much going for it.
Food. Water. Electricity. The fact that it was located in the middle of nowhere.
A wall surrounding it. A goddamned moat.
Going there would solve all their problems. Whether she had consciously made the decision or not, she knew they had been slowly but surely moving in its direction over the past couple weeks. For the sake of the children, she would have to find a way to get over her fear.
It's the only plan that makes any sense. At least until I can come up with a better alternative.
Just then, a small vehicle appeared along the dirt road heading off into the field. It was a golf cart, quiet, allowing its occupants to sneak up on them. When it pulled up next to the jeep, two men got out, each carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic rifles.
Susanna felt a sinking sensation in her stomach.
“Eddie,” she yelled. “Get out here now!”
Squeezing the grip of the gun in her hand, she tried to decide on a course of action, one that would result in the children not being harmed. But when Eddie, accompanied by a third man, stepped out of the field of dried wheat, she relaxed her grip and resigned herself to whatever might happen next, aware that she had lost all control of the situation. Because the third man also had a gun. And he had it pointed at the side of Eddie’s head.
Tuesday, October 20th
Dear Diary,
Today we had a trial. Actually, it was more of a sentencing, as there was no real question as to whether the accused was guilty or not. His name is Terrence and he has been banished. Next to the death penalty, maybe the harshest punishment this little community of ours can inflict on someone. Forced to leave this place, to go out into the world again, all alone…
“We’ll give you one hour,” Vicky told him after the jury returned with its decision. “Time to pack your things and get out of here.”
The trial was held in the common house, the same house where my birthday celebration had taken place. It was crowded in there, people standing against the walls. Terrence sat on a chair in the middle of the room, looking sad and more than a little afraid. His expression turned to one of pure terror when he was told what his punishment would be. He didn’t move until most of the room had cleared out. Then he got up and left, shoulders slumped, staring at the floor.
His crime? He had been caught stealing. Apparently, it had been going on for a long time now. Nothing big. Nothing that the community couldn’t survive without. Because of their sentimental value, though, most of the items he had taken were important, held meaning. Items that reminded the people they belonged to of better, happier days. Pictures and letters and pieces of jewelry, those sorts of things. When Terrence’s room was searched, a box filled with the stuff he had been found under his bed.
“We have to be able to trust one another,” Vicky had said during the trial. “Now more than ever before. Without trust, we are nothing.”
Most everyone there nodded in agreement.
When asked, Terrence said he didn’t know why he had done it. He said he was sorry and not much else.
I have a feeling I’ll be seeing that scared look of his for a while. He’s right to be afraid. Having to go out there all by himself… If it were me, I don’t think I would last very long. Thankfully, it’s not something I have to worry about. No matter what, Luke would come with me. And if it was the other way around, I would go with him. Together, we might stand a chance.
When I’m around him, I can convince myself that we’re going to be all right, that we’re going to make it through all of this. Because it can’t go on like this forever, Diary. Can it? I mean, at some point, things have to get better. The world has to become a place where we can live without fear once again. Until then, we just have to hold on, hour by hour, day by day, do whatever we have to in order to survive. And as long as Luke and I remain together, that is exactly what we’re going to do.
Wednesday, October 21st
In the movies, people were always gunning for the man in charge. They wanted his money, his power. They wanted to be the ones giving orders. From experience, Marco knew this was not necessarily the case. Sure, people may want those things but, for the most part, they lacked the courage to take them. Of course, exceptions to the rule existed. Exceptions that, more often than not, needed to be turned into examples.
The apartment building where Marco had lived for nearly five years leading up to the outbreak had offered a rather unique environment to improve a particular skill of his: the ability to take advantage of whatever opportunity his surroundings had to offer. And the ten-story, L-shaped apartment building where he had resided had offered more than its share of opportunity. One needed only know where to look—another skill Marco possessed in abundance.
He had moved into the apartment with his mother—his father long gone by then—shortly after his fifteenth birthday. The building was located in the heart of Carnegie, PA, one of the many Pittsburgh suburbs. A dingy, looming eyesore of a structure, it stood at the end of a road lined with fairly affluent-looking homes. Once upon a time, back when it was new, the place may have lured in people of slightly higher status. But by the time Marco and his mother moved in, local police had gotten to know the place and many of its residents all too well.
After a few months, Marco had made his share of friends there, a lot of whom liked to cause trouble: vandalism, harassment, and petty theft for the most part. Some of the older kids, however, had a penchant for weightier crimes: car theft and assault among them. By the end of his first year in Carnegie, Marco had personally known four people who had been sent away to do hard time.
By his seventeenth birthday, Marco had become a pretty hard serious partier, had started dealing drugs to support his own habits. Also, the money he earned let him purchase the latest gadgets, video games, and trendiest tennis shoes.
His mother would always know when he came home even a little bit high, no matter how much he tried to conceal it.
“She’s got a damn sixth sense for it, I swear,” he would tell his friends.
To put it mildly, she had not cared for this behavior of his. Nor did she like the fact that he always seemed to hav
e money on him, despite not having a job.
“I gotta do what I gotta do,” he told her during one of their many arguments. “How did you think it was gonna go, anyway, bringing me to this place?”
She had cried when he said that, told him she was doing her best, doing what she could to get them out of there.
“I just need to save up a little more money.”
He felt bad about upsetting her. But he had meant what he said, the part about doing what he had to do. And as far as he was concerned, he was just getting started…
The memories flitted through Marco’s mind as he stood, naked, at the bedroom window of his Mt. Washington home, immersed in the darkness of the room. So much had changed since the days he and his mother had been living in that apartment. He found it hard to believe so little time had passed since then.
Pittsburgh’s downtown area lay visible below and before him, buildings limned in the pale glow of the moon. Here and there, he saw the gleam of an artificial light, the telltale wavering of a small fire from one of the rooftops.
There are people down there, doing all they can to live another day.
He knew how good he had it up here. How good they all had it. It was why he had come to this place. Why he had wanted to take it, to make it his own.
And why I’ll do anything to keep it.
“Marco, come back to bed.”
Turning, he could discern the form of the woman occupying the king-sized bed that had, until fairly recently, belonged to someone else. But then Marco and his followers had made their move on this coveted stretch of real estate. A lot of zombies had been killed in the process, more than a few people of the still living variety, too. The latter those who had refused to leave when Marco and company had arrived on the scene. Their deaths may not have been completely necessary but Marco was not one to take any chances. He figured that letting them live, giving them the opportunity to cause trouble may have proven to be a bad idea.
“I did what I had to do,” he muttered before moving away from the window and returning to bed.
Thursday, October 22nd
“What are you idiots up to?”
Sheila had been mildly concerned when she had awakened from her nap to find the house where she and the brothers had been staying deserted. Upon hearing raised voices from outside, she had peeked through the blinds covering one of the windows. What she saw had sent her racing across the room, out into the hallway and down the stairs to the main floor below. Once there, she had thrown open the front door and stepped onto the porch. Then she had watched as Charlie and Joey, obviously intoxicated, hurled insults at one another, each holding a pistol in one hand and a half-empty bottle of whiskey in the other.
“You’re not man enough for her,” Joey was saying. “She only sleeps with you out of pity.”
“Oh, yeah?” Charlie offered in reply. “She only sleeps with you because I ask her to. If she didn’t, neither of us would be able to stand all your bitchin’ and whinin’.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Sheila under her breath, hands on her hips as she tried to decide how best to handle the situation.
“We’re going to have a duel,” said Charlie, looking in her direction. “To settle this shit once and for all.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
“Twenty paces. You count,” Joey told her. “Then we turn and fire.”
He raised his bottle of whiskey and took a long pull from it, noticeably swaying as he did so.
“Fine,” said Sheila, figuring that in their current condition neither of them would be able to hit the side of a house with a bullet let alone each other. If anything, this duel of theirs should be good for a laugh. With any luck, it would relieve some of the resentment that had been growing between them.
Charlie echoed her comment: “Fine.”
As did Joey: “Fine.”
With that, the brothers started to march away from each other as Sheila counted out loud:
“One… Two… Three…”
She scanned the street in both directions, searching for any unwanted spectators.
All clear.
Two days earlier, after arriving in town, the brothers had found a rather sizable stash of liquor in one of the houses, had done what they could since then to make it less sizable. With all too predictable results, as far as Sheila was concerned.
“Ten… Eleven… Twelve…”
Watching Charlie and Joey stagger away from one another, Sheila had to resist the urge to laugh. There was, after all, at least some chance one of them could end up wounded or worse. She liked them both well enough, maybe even loved them on some level, certainly did not want to see either of them get hurt. Sure, they managed to piss her off at times, had her close to saying, “Fuck this” and heading for the door on occasion. But she always thought better of it. There was safety in numbers, after all. And she knew that if she did leave, she would end up missing the two idiots, probably more than she would like to admit. So she stuck around, did what she could to keep the peace.
I really should try and put a stop to this, she told herself as she continued to count:
“Eighteen… Nineteen… Twenty…”
By then, it was too late.
The brothers stopped in their tracks, whirled around with as much grace as they could muster, raised their weapons and started firing. The guns made a terrible racket, their reports echoing along the houses lining the avenue.
Gonna attract every zombie within ten miles of here.
Charlie and Joey moved toward one another, still shooting, still missing.
How is that even possible? Sheila had to wonder.
Then the reverberation of the last shot died away and there was nothing to hear but the click… click… click… of hammers falling on empty chambers. When the brothers stood within arm’s length of one another, they each took long swigs from their respective bottles. Then they started to laugh. Before long, they were doubled over, sputtering with mirth and slapping each other on the back.
Damn fools, thought Sheila as she descended from the porch, walked across the yard and into the street to join them.
Friday, October 23rd
The piano note rang out in the cavernous room, followed by two more, each of them pitched higher than the one preceding it.
The man lowered his gaze to where the dog sat on the floor next to the piano bench, staring up at him with an expression that seemed to ask, Is that all you’ve got?
“Sorry, girl,” said the man, a weary smile pulling at his lips. “My wife was the musician in the family.”
He wondered what she would have made of this place, the size and the sheer opulence of it, the fact that someone used to live here.
A bit much, don’t you think? he imagined her saying, the two of them laughing at the joke’s offhand, dismissive tone.
He had entered the house less than an hour ago, one of several mansions in the neighborhood, surrounded by sprawling yards enclosed within eight-foot-high walls meant to provide privacy and security for the privileged few who could afford to live in such luxury. And the place was luxurious, no doubt about it. Leather furniture. Marble countertops. High-end electronics. Pieces of art that probably cost more than he used to make in a year adorning the walls. The man thought of the house he and his wife used to share, how much they had loved it there, how proud they had been when they had signed the papers making it theirs. He figured that house could fit inside this one easily five or six times.
Yeah, it really is a bit much. But I think we could have gotten used to it.
Searching the sprawling manor, making sure no hidden dangers lay in wait had taken most of half an hour. There were a lot of places to hide that had needed investigating. Once satisfied nothing in the house wanted to kill them, the man had led the dog into the kitchen where he had found a supply of canned goods. A cupboard even had several bags of dog food in it, one of which he had opened and poured into a bowl for Goldie. After the two of them h
ad satiated their hungers—the man with a can of beef stew heated on the gas stove—they had retired to the living room with its sunken floor, its stone hearth, and its baby grand piano.
Framed portraits of the family that had once lived there—husband, wife, two teenage boys—stood atop a pair of end tables at either end of a ridiculously comfortable couch. Looking at those pictures, the man had wondered what had become of the people in them. Had they fallen prey to the disease? The undead? Or had they escaped, fleeing to some tropical island getaway beyond the plague's reach?
They’re gone and I’m here.
It was the only answer he would get and the only one that really mattered. He supposed that he, too, would be gone from this place soon enough. It had become his lot in life to wander, to keep moving, to keep searching…
For what?
He had no idea. A purpose, maybe? A reason for being? For carrying on?
More questions without answers, he knew.
For now, at least. For now…
While he sat there, staring at the black and white keys of the instrument before him, Goldie stood and made her way to the far side of the room, pressed her nose against the glass of the sliding door and started to whine.
“What is it, girl?”
The man got to his feet and went to join the dog, fairly certain of what he would find once he got there.
Outside, beneath the midday sun, the zombie limped across what had undoubtedly been a beautiful yard, now overgrown and unkempt. A painfully skinny and pathetic looking creature, the man wondered where it found the strength to stay upright let alone walk. The hunger that drove it must have been a terrible, relentless master, the man reasoned. He felt a moment’s pity for the creature, an unexpected sadness for the person it had once been.
Shaking his head, he went into the kitchen and grabbed his trusty axe handle from where he had set it on the countertop next to the stove.
