The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer

  “There’s no time. You saw what I saw. What happens when those guys start breaking the windows?”

  “We only saw one.”

  “Where there’s one, there’s more. Who knows how many more?” The building was full of doors and locks, but anyone could get out through a fire exit. He kept an eye out as they walked, watching other people on the street. He kept Audrey close. He wished they’d brought a whip.

  chapter eleven

  Kate smelled smoke. A lot of the houses in the hills had chimneys, though usually people waited until after sunset, especially in the summer. But it didn’t smell like woodsmoke. She walked as quickly as Walter would go. Her house was tucked away on a narrow lane. Maybe six houses, lousy parking, but it was quiet, and the neighbors didn’t complain if they made a bit of noise on the weekend, which was the main advantage of a house over an apartment.

  “Honey, once I’m decent, I might call a cab to get me back to my car,” Walter said.

  “All right,” she said. “If you want.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Walter had an entire life that she didn’t know about. She wasn’t part of that life; was never meant to be. She was a tissue to him. What hurt was that she’d been honest about her friends, her family, her thoughts, about nearly everything that mattered. “Yeah, you should totally do that,” she said.

  He didn’t offer to take her along. She tried to understand why she felt so rejected. Now was hardly the time to stand on ceremony, but she wanted him to ask her to come with him. She’d probably turn him down, on principle. They’d always had clear boundaries; that was part of their arrangement. And maybe he thought she’d rather be with her friends, and that it would be awkward for him to tag along, but still.

  They turned the corner. A fire truck blocked the lane. Kate screamed. Her house, where her friends were, was on fire. Flames rose from the flat roof. The house was built down into the hill, so it was impossible to see from the street how bad the fire was. From the front only the carport and the fenced deck off of Michael’s bedroom were visible.

  She pulled away from Walter and dodged around the fire engine. “Michael—” she shouted. “Audrey! Natalie!” Kate ran down the stairs to the front door. A fireman stepped into her path, and she bounced off of him, falling to the deck. She left a smear of blood on his raincoat.

  “Can’t be here, miss,” he said through his faceguard. He held an axe in his hand: he was an image from a nightmare. No wonder kids were afraid of fire.

  Her hands went to her pockets. Her keys were gone.

  “The door’s probably open,” she said. Her hip stung where she’d landed, and she’d skinned her palm.

  The fireman opened the door, and closed it behind him. Kate waited a second before she poked her head in. “Audrey?” she called. “Michael?” Because it was right in front of her, she saw the key rack. She pocketed everything, three sets, not sure what was whose.

  Standing in the hallway, the fireman said something. Kate realized he was talking into his walkie talkie. What a stupid term that was. Trust the military to give technology a clever name. Kate forced herself to focus. She took a step into the house. The air was thick with smoke. She coughed, and dropped to her hands and knees. “Michael?” she said. Probably they were already dead from smoke inhalation. She’d thought they were dead earlier, but now she really felt the loss. Kate put her head down to the floor, where the air was supposed to be cleanest. She tried to breathe the least amount possible. She crawled through the foyer. It was irrational, and though she knew it was irrational, she couldn’t stop herself. She started coughing. She deserved whatever would happen.

  The front door opened, a shot of light and air. She felt hands shoved under her arms. Kate was dragged out into the clear air, over the rough texture of the welcome mat.

  “You’re a mess,” a muffled voice said. She started crying, ready to forgive Walter for wanting to leave her. He’d charged into a burning building after her; how else could he prove he cared? He laid her down on the walkway.

  “Can you walk?” he said. “You need to get away from the house. Do you have any pets, miss?”

  She looked up and stopped crying. It was a fireman. Of course. She shouldn’t have expected anything else. She should have known better from the beginning.

  “Fuck pets. My friends are inside,” she said. “And some of them are zombies. You have to watch out.”

  The fireman gave her a concerned look, and went inside. Either he thought she was high, or he knew what she meant.

  Kate dragged herself to her feet. The neighbors were standing on the street, arms crossed, watching the firefighters. Walter was gone. Probably he’d called a cab already.

  She saw him seated on a brick half-wall that bermed a neighbor’s front yard. She went and sat by him, coughing into her arm.

  He put a hand on her back, and the simple touch was disarming. It meant that he understood, and that he was sorry.

  “No one was home when it started, I hope?”

  Kate shrugged. She wiped at her face. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re all dead, I don’t know. I don’t know if the fire is under control. I don’t know that the hills won’t burn down entirely.” She felt her pockets until she found his phone. She handed it to him. “You can call a cab, if you want.”

  “Oh, kiddo. I’m so sorry. You were going to call your friend Michael, right?” he asked gently. “He’s the one you talk about the most.”

  She didn’t trust herself to talk. She thought she’d said, clearly, that Michael might be dead. She considered her safe place. Lake Merritt wouldn’t be a smart place to go now. It was too open, and even if she got a boat and went to the middle of it, who knew if zombies could swim? Kate had a mental image of herself out on the lake. In a paddleboat, weighed down on her side and going in circles. She wasn’t afraid of being alone, not while she had friends. Against her will, she leaned towards Walter. He rubbed her back. With his other hand, he dialed his phone. “What’s the address here?”

  She gave it to him, with the cross street.

  “I’ll give you a ride to anywhere you want to go, sweetie,” he said. “Michael’s house, or whatever.” Somehow he’d gotten the idea that Michael lived elsewhere. She didn’t correct him. “Hello?” he said into the phone. He recited the address.

  “Kate?” a voice called. She looked for its owner. It stood in the doorway of the house whose wall they were sitting on. A neighbor kid, maybe five feet tall; he was named Kevin or Devon or something like that. She was a little embarrassed that he knew her name, and she couldn’t remember his. The boy came outside. “That was your house, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “Was being the operative term. We was renting, at least.” She wasn’t ready to talk about her dead friends. Wasn’t ready to see them carried out on stretchers.

  “You guys want a towel or something?” the kid asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  Kate stood. “I would do unspeakable things for the use of a towel. And a shower, if you were so inclined, and some clean clothes?”

  The kid shrugged. “My brother left some clothes here when he moved out. Should have something that’ll fit you guys.”

  Walter finished his call and stood, smiling his meeting-new-people smile.

  The kid opened the front door and gestured for them to come in. He smelled like laundry detergent—the smell of a kid who still lived with his parents. Though she was friendly with the neighbors, Kate had never seen the inside of this place. They’d had some work done recently, building a sunroom on the front. The floors were blond wood; the walls and trim were earth tones, red ochre and orange. The house felt large and comfortable. Much more defensible than her own house, if it came down to that. Fewer windows.

  “You home by yourself?” she asked. “Devon?”

  “Trevin,” he said. “Yeah.”

  “You’ve been watching TV?”

  He shrugged. “I was playing Halo. Bathroom’s down there, and there’s another one through
the bedroom. And, um, maybe you should take off your shoes?”

  Kate did, feeling self-conscious. “Can you do me a favor, Trevin, my savior and my only friend?”

  “What?” The kid looked like he might be wondering whether it had been a good idea to invite them in. He seemed awfully young, but he wasn’t that far off from screwing and college. She had to trust him.

  “Lock your doors and windows. You ever play Left 4 Dead?”

  “Yeah, I like running through and mowing down all of the zombies in the tunnels. I mean, it’s all right.”

  He would probably spell it alright, too.

  “You have to trust me,” she said. “They’re real. That’s why we’re all fucked up. I’ll tell you all about it after I de-muck myself a bit.” She stood on the welcome mat, conscious of her dripping clothes. She decided that modesty was a quaint notion, and shrugged off her shirt and jeans and socks, leaving only the wet bra and panties. She knew how little they left to the imagination.

  There was an intake of breath in the room. Trevin blinked a few times, then ran off and came back with two bath towels. He handed them to Kate, and she gave one to Walter.

  “Lock the doors and windows,” Kate said, and found her way to one of the bathrooms. It took a minute to figure out the faucet, and the water pressure wasn’t great. But it was the best shower Kate had ever had. For a moment, it didn’t matter that the hills were burning down; that her friends were dead and that she would soon join them. She would be clean and warm, for at least a little while. She cried. Pink water dripped over her feet and down the drain. Her palm stung from where she’d skinned it. Her legs itched from the thistles. She coughed as the room filled with steam. She found a sliver of Dove soap and lathered. She shampooed her hair, twice. The water sluicing down the drain was brown, and then soapy, and then it was clear.

  She dried herself, squeezing the water from her hair. She didn’t bother combing it. In the bathroom cabinet she found a bottle of Tylenol. She put three in her mouth, turned on the tap, and drank from her palm. Tylenol was the one that was bad for your liver, and she was sure her liver was still recovering from last night. But it was what was here, and her headache hadn’t gone away. Maybe she’d die with a headache.

  There were some clothes in a pile on the floor just outside the bathroom. She brought them inside. There was a pair of what was clearly Trevin’s mother’s underwear, way too large and pink, but it was sweet that he’d tried. There was a pair of jeans, which she put on. They were close enough, though she’d ask for a belt. Just on principle, she should have a belt. She put on a black T-shirt that read D.A.R.E. to Resist Drugs and Violence in faded red ink. She remembered the DARE program from school; it was dorky to wear the shirt back then, but once she’d graduated it took on an ironic coolness. She picked up her wet underwear and padded out to the living room where Trevin and Walter were watching TV. Walter wore a Bank of the West T-shirt and drawstring sweatpants. His feet were bare, and his wet hair stuck up. He looked smaller and softer without his own clothes.

  “Hey, thanks, Trevin. I feel so much better now.” She tossed her wet underwear onto the pile of her clothes in the foyer, where she’d dropped her shirt and jeans. Walter had put his ruined suit in the same spot. She would be happy never to see her clothes again. She thought about taking them out. Putting them on the house, into the fire. Burn it all down, like Walter had said. She felt dizzy, and went to sit on the couch. There was a box of Ritz crackers and a block of yellow cheddar on a plate. Walter, who she’d imagined wouldn’t be caught dead with such pedestrian fare, was eating.

  “Did you lock up?” Kate asked Trevin.

  “Yeah,” he said. He was flipping through channels. “But there’s nothing on the news about zombies.”

  Kate cut a hunk of cheese and put it in her mouth. Then a few crackers. It tasted wonderful. A last meal of sorts. She got up and went to the kitchen, found a can of Coke in the refrigerator. She drank from the can. Bubbles and sugar were supposed to be good after you puked, to calm the stomach, plus the caffeine couldn’t hurt. She felt a burp rising.

  Walter’s phone rang then. “Hello?” he said. Then, “Be right out.” He disconnected the call, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Son, thank you for your hospitality,” he said to Trevin. He put a soggy twenty-dollar bill on the table, then stood and approached Kate. She turned her cheek when he tried to kiss her. She could feel the prickle of an afternoon shadow where his cheek brushed hers. She held her breath so she wouldn’t burp on him. He put his hands on her shoulders and smiled. It was an apology. “Will you come with me?” he asked. “Won’t you come with me?”

  It occurred to Kate that she hadn’t asked Walter to stay, or to come back. Her reasons for being upset at him seemed obtuse now.

  “Or I can give you a ride to wherever you want,” he added.

  She burped, and took a step back. “No, I’ll be fine,” she said. It would be shitty to just leave Trevin. There were keys in the pockets of her sodden jeans. She could take someone’s car, if she and Trevin wanted to leave. She didn’t need Walter.

  “C’mon, I’ll walk you out.” She put an eye to the peephole, checking the street. No zombies, just a yellow cab. Kate unlocked the deadbolt. She opened the door. The fire engine was still parked in the lane. Kate could smell smoke, wet now. Firemen were standing around talking. They were probably waiting for the ambulance that would come and take away the bodies. If anyone was still there. She wouldn’t let herself think about it.

  She went out as far as the porch. Kate squeezed Walter’s elbow, just as much to touch him again as to forestall any hugs and kisses that would make things difficult. She’d never see him again, she knew. Even if she survived the day, things would be different between them. They worked well together in a crisis; you couldn’t say that about a lot of couples. Not that they had ever been together, exactly. On their first date, he’d said something she was sure he’d cribbed from an old movie: “If we are to have an affair, there will be no ‘I love you.’” She’d agreed to it, a little weirded out by the suggestion that she might really come to care for him, and half-thinking it was a joke. She’d thought she’d been the one in control in their relationship because he wanted her more than she wanted him. Now she knew. He didn’t need her; never had. She didn’t dare tell him that she needed him. She found herself holding onto his sleeve. She let go.

  He raised his eyebrows. She nodded, thinking he was asking whether she was OK. She wanted to reassure him. He nodded, then walked away barefoot.

  Walter waved from the cab. Kate waved back. When it was gone, she went inside, and locked the door. She called Michael. It went to voicemail, and she hung up without leaving a message. She called her absent housemate Lena. She had to warn her about the zombies, and tell her about the fire. It went to voicemail. Kate’s mind went blank. “It’s Kate, from the house, give me a call when you get this. It’s really important.”

  She felt terrible. To distract herself, she gave Trevin an account of the Zeppelin ride, while she ate the rest of the cheese and crackers. The zombies. The whip noise. Their close escape. His expressions cycled through surprise, disbelief, fear, and amusement.

  “I keep waiting for somebody to jump out with a camera, and then you start laughing,” he said. His face grew serious. “You’re not shitting me.” It was not a question.

  She regarded Trevin with respect. “You saw our clothes, man. I mean, maybe I’m crazy. That’s possible. Nothing on the news, but that makes sense in a way. Waiting until after something is endemic before telling us about it. Just like the economic meltdown. Zombies with lipstick, they call the banks. We’re all operating on borrowed capital.”

  She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, looking for beer. There wasn’t any. She found some vanilla ice cream in the freezer, and got a spoon from the drying rack by the sink. On second thought, she decided to use a bowl. Her throat hurt, and her head still ached, and if she was catching something, she didn’
t want to pass it to anyone else. Even the apocalypse was no excuse for bad manners. The ice cream was half-eaten and freezer-burned, which made her feel better about taking it. Not like it was going to be missed.

  “Isn’t it dangerous for that guy to be outside, then?” Trevin asked. “I mean, if there are zombies out there?”

  Kate was pleased that the kid didn’t refer to Walter as “your father.” Neither did he call Walter “your friend.” She sat on the couch with her bowl of ice cream, and considered. It was a valid question. “They don’t move very fast,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about last night, about Jamie and about Cameron. It was too personal, and too painful, and not this kid’s business, anyway. “He was going home. I think he’ll be fine,” she said.

  “Unless the driver turns into a zombie. Or zombies attack the car.” The kid was getting into it. His eyes grew wide, expounding on all of the bad things that would happen.

  Mostly to shut him up, but also in the interest of full disclosure, Kate gave Trevin her theory about how zombieism had several vectors. The bite, obviously, but a kiss would also do it, if the person was infected. She felt guilty. “Do you have any Internets?” she asked.

  Trevin pointed to a desktop computer at a desk in the corner. “Internets like what.”

  “Your parents, where are they?”

  “My mom’s gone for the weekend at a conference in L.A. She goes once a month.”

  “Your dad?”

  He shook his head. “Sperm donor. Same guy for me and my brother both.”

  “Oh.” Kate sucked at her teeth, trying to dislodge the feeling that she had put her foot in her mouth. “And where’s your brother?”

  “Fuck if I know. He moved out. Work, maybe.” Trevin started to look scared, which made him seem younger.

  The computer was on. She opened a browser and went to BoingBoing out of habit. There was a post labeled “Oakland McDonald’s: Baby Zombie (Disturbing)”. She hit play on the video.