Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive

by Sean Thomas Fisher

  The fogged up shower door clicked opened, jerking him from his thoughts and catching him off guard. Instinctively, he went for the gun that wasn’t strapped to his leg. “What the fuck!” he said, covering his privates with both hands as Wendy stepped into the two-person shower. Tendrils of steam embraced her naked body, cupping her breasts and tickling her impish grin as she shut the glass door behind her.

  “Miss me?”

  He backed against the tiled wall, hands over his crotch. “This is not cool, Wendy. Get out.”

  Her abrupt laughter echoed in the space. “Oh my God! This water is so cold!” Coming closer, she set her hands on his unprotected chest and gazed up into his eyes, the smell of bourbon floating from her lips. “Looks like we’ll have to share our body heat.”

  “I’m serious, Wendy; I need a minute alone here.”

  “And I need a minute of you.” Her hands read his chest hair like brail, rubbing circles into his flesh. “I’m tired of playing games with you, Paul. I want you to know how I feel.”

  “Jesus Christ, are you drunk? Please get the fuck out of the shower, Wendy.”

  She ran a tongue across her lips, water spraying off her bosom. “I love you.”

  His brow folded. “I don’t care.”

  “You will.” Standing on her toes, she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him to her, kissing him softly on the lips.

  Paul yanked away and smacked the back of his head against the tiles. Pain and anger sparked in his eyes, weakening her shit-eating grin. He grabbed her wrists and held her out, face turning red. “I told you, there is no us and there never will be an us.”

  Her eyes fell between his legs, fueling her playful smile. “Well, it looks like somebody’s happy to see me.” Breaking free of his grasp, her hand slid down between their slick bodies and stroked his shaft with fevered pumps. She took his hand and brought it to her breasts, pressing his palm into her slippery flesh. “See, you do like that.”

  Paul tried to stop her but her grip was tight and warm and the shower was spinning around him. Water ran into his eyes and mouth, turning everything into a steamy blur. “Stop,” he breathed, blood rushing in his ears.

  Her fist pumped faster. She forced his hand down between her legs where it was wet and warm. Tipping her head back, she closed her eyes and chased her breath. “Oh God,” she moaned as the soft invasion of his fingers tuned her body to his wants and needs. Pulling him closer by the cock, her chest rose and fell, voice coming out as a shaky whisper. “Rub it against me.”

  “That’s enough!” He pushed her away, face warping with disgust. “What is wrong with you?”

  Her eyes dropped to the erection twitching in the spray between them, unable to stop the smile pulling on her lips. “Apparently nothing.”

  Paul stepped around her and snatched a towel from a hook, stepping out into the bathroom. “You ever do that again and I swear to God…” He trailed off, wrapping the towel around his waist and honing his gaze into razor tight slits.

  “You’ll do what, Paul? Sit there and do nothing while I jerk you off again?” Turning off the water, she grabbed another towel and got out. “I see the way you look at her.”

  “What? Who?”

  Wendy stopped in front of him, towel hanging in her hand, water pooling around her bare feet. “She can’t give you what I can.”

  He shook his head. “Wow, you really are insane.”

  “Paul, Stephanie is locked at the knees.” The towel slipped from her fingers to the floor. “But I’m not.” She sauntered closer, pressing Paul up against the double sink. “And we both know you can’t control your…impulses. Just ask Rebecca.”

  When her fingers coiled around him through the towel, he knocked her hand away. “You’re wrong.”

  Her face hardened, turning her blue eyes to ice. “Paul,” she said calmly, “you can’t let your feelings get tangled up with another woman. Not now. It’s too soon after Sophia.”

  The way she said Sophia’s name sent a current of grief and repugnance shooting through him like high voltage electricity, curling his hands into fists. He set his jaw, breathing through his teeth. “We’re done here.”

  “I can give you what you need,” she whispered, sending her palms to explore his chest muscles. “Right here. Right now.”

  “I don’t need a headache,” he snapped, whipping the bathroom door open and storming out. Paul stopped dead in his tracks, water dripping from his nose to the hardwood flooring around his feet. Stephanie stared blankly at him from the other side of the pool table, slowly chalking a stick in her hand while Billy pulled the triangle from the tightly racked balls and dropped it on its hook. Gaze hooking on Stephanie’s fixed stare, he looked over his shoulder to find Paul standing behind him.

  Cheeks flushing, Paul bolted for the stairs with his head down, ignoring the surprise in Stephanie’s eyes when Wendy came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel and a mischievous grin. Cringing, he took the stairs two at a time, desperate to hole up in a spare bedroom with his backpack for the rest of his tormented life.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the living room, Paul watched the flames jump in the fireplace through vacant eyes while Brian and his family exchanged war stories with the others in the kitchen. His glassy-eyed gaze rose to the framed photograph hanging above the mantel. Brian, Dot and Olive were dressed in their Sunday best and, for the first time since this pandemic began, Paul didn’t wonder what happened to them. Didn’t wonder where they went because maybe they could go there too. No, he knew exactly where they went. Knew there was nowhere they could go. Knew this was as good as it gets because those smelly bastards hiding in the moonlit shadows were getting smarter each and every day. Just over a month into this madness, and the dead were already setting traps and knowing when they were being tricked. A chill ran through him like someone just walked over his grave. He leaned back into the couch and let the orange light flicker over his unshaven face. His eyelids were heavy and he just wanted to crawl into his old bed with his beautiful wife and wake up to find everything had just been some unbelievably realistic nightmare because, in the end, he didn’t have what it takes to protect these people. Precedent spoke volumes. Promises be damned.

  A hand landed on the back of his and squeezed. His bloodshot gaze trailed up the decomposing arm to meet Sophia’s sunken eyes that used to sparkle in the sunshine. Now they were partially hidden by long oily bangs and just as dead as everything else. She smiled at him and, even with the rot peppering her cheeks and the blood dripping from her nose onto the dirty nightgown she never owned, she was still beautiful. If he tried hard enough, he could still see the woman he knew and loved. The woman he married in a church with a wall of stained glass glowing behind them in a kaleidoscope of magical colors. Not this…creature sitting before him.

  “You are right, Paul. You are smarter than they are,” she whispered, rubbing his hand and leaving flakes of dead skin behind. “You will drive them back and let nothing stand in your way. You are not alone anymore.”

  He stared at her for an uncertain moment, swallowing dryly and then licking his lips. “Does it hurt?” he asked in a cold whisper, his breath coming out in a visible stream.

  The smile wilted on her moldering lips. The ones he still wanted to kiss. Billy laughed at something out in the kitchen and Sophia pulled her hand back. “Yes,” she whispered, twisting her skeletal fingers in her lap.

  He studied her black holes with white plumes uncurling from his mouth. “What can I do?”

  Her eyes nearly brightened, indicating something lying beneath. Something encouraged. “Win.”

  Classic black tee rising and falling on his chest, Paul took her hand and squeezed, not caring that her skin was cold and wet. “I miss you so much.”

  Sophia gave him a pitiful smile through the runny locks dangling in her face, as if she felt sorry for him. Embarrassed by his ignorance. “I miss us. Our home.”

  The image of Sophia standing next to the stove be
fore their house exploded tore through his mind. “Did you…”

  “Yes,” she interrupted, watching his eyes glaze over as a stark realization struck a heavy chord within.

  His mouth opened but not even his breath would come out. The room shook around the edges of his vision, blurring everything but her into shaky scratches. “Will we ever…”

  “No,” she brusquely replied, taking her hand from his. “Not if you fail.”

  “Fail?” he finally breathed, noticing she was now standing in front of the crackling fireplace, a ghostly silhouette with her filthy toes barely touching the floor, much like her shadow in Kohl’s.

  “There is no rest for us,” she told him, mournfully peering around the room and seeming to see something else besides the oversized furniture and heavy woodwork. “Not here.”

  Despite the fire’s heat, his breath rushed out in frigid waves. “Where are you?”

  For a moment, a speck of green glittered in her eyes, a hint of the old Sophia, a morsel of the amazing woman she used to be. Then it was gone, snuffed out by a creeping gloom that refused to die. “Trapped,” she answered, slowly backing away without moving a muscle.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Trapped where?”

  She shook her head and floated backwards, broken toenails scraping loudly against the hardwood flooring.

  Scooting to the edge of the couch, words stuck to his tongue like tacks, heart breaking all over again. “What about Dan?”

  Sophia smiled like he was a fool for even asking. “Dan is here and he will help. They all…want to help.” Anger flared in her eyes, a red light at the end of a long dark tunnel, and for a moment he thought she would scream so loudly the wall-to-wall windows would explode into the backyard. “They have to,” she said through clenched teeth, balling her bony fingers into knots.

  “Why?”

  Her face relaxed and her hands uncoiled. “This is not where it ends.” Her voice was as light as her feet, both drifting further away. Paul reached out, grasping an amorphous wisp of green smoke that slipped through his fingers and curled up the chimney.

  “Paul?”

  And then the fire was back, crackling and popping, and she was gone all over again. Pulling his hand back, his heart sank. This entire time he thought he was shithouse crazy, talking to ghosts in the throes of the most potent posttraumatic stress disorder known to mankind, and actually taking their advice. After all, disturbing dreams were one of the first signs but this was no dream. No, this was as real as the fire flushing his cheeks with heat. Sophia was actually sitting right here on this leather couch, holding his hand. Just like when everyone saw Dan at Camp Dodge.

  They all…want to help.

  Who wants to help?

  They have to.

  But why?

  “Paul?”

  Sophia’s words rang like church bells inside his head, triggering his imagination to paint a picture of the millions upon millions of people this virus consumed in a rolling wave of death and sorrow. All those angry souls, crying out for retribution, locked in a foul limbo stretching endlessly to a glassy horizon they would never touch.

  Trapped.

  “Hello?”

  He looked down, wrinkling his brow when he saw his hand and the couch free of Sophia’s dead skin cells. The fire popped, spitting orange embers up the chimney and bringing Olive into focus. She stared blankly at him, a bowl of Ramen noodles wrapped in her small hands.

  “Are you okay?”

  He blinked at her, unsure how to respond to such a complex question. She was so young, like Matt and Mike. The same Matt and Mike he let get ambushed at a gas station out in the middle of nowhere because he wasn’t on point. And just like those two, Olive had her whole life ahead of her. He shut his eyes against the pain coiling inside his chest because this little girl, with her pigtails and Doc McStuffins shirt, had a lot more years left in the tank and it was too much responsibility to bear. Too much guilt for one man to shoulder when he failed yet again. And the truth was…he would fail again.

  Here’s the writing.

  Here’s the wall.

  Precedent spoke volumes.

  “Hello?”

  Opening his eyes, Paul tried to smile. “I’m fine.”

  Olive held the bowl out. “Dad says you need to eat,” she said, glancing at the fireplace.

  “Your dad is a smart man,” he replied, taking the bowl and sinking into the cream-colored couch. “Thank you, Olive.”

  She headed for the kitchen, suddenly stopping and turning to face him. “Thank you for saving us today. My mom was really scared.”

  Breathing in the steam rising from the bowl in his hands, Paul wanted to tell her not to thank him yet because this was far from over. Wanted to tell her no one was saved from this evil incarnate thrust upon them for no damn good reason. But nothing came out and she turned for the kitchen. “Olive?”

  Spinning back around, her eyebrows rose into her freckled forehead.

  “Did you…see anyone standing there?”

  She followed his eyes to the fireplace. “When?”

  “Just now, when you brought me these noodles.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Nodding disappointedly, he blew on the soup. “Okay.”

  “Why was someone here? Should I get my dad?”

  “Well, you won’t have to go far.” Brian smiled down at his little girl, combing crumbs from his beard with Wendy at his side. “What’s wrong, sugar-plum?”

  “Paul saw somebody in here.”

  Brian frowned and stopped tugging on the beard, the wrinkles in his face making him look more like Olive’s grandfather than her dad. His worried gaze jerked to Paul.

  “No I didn’t.” Forcing a spoonful of curly noodles into his mouth, Paul caught a knowing look from Wendy that fanned his irritation. “I was just thinking out loud.” The spoon clanked against the bowl as he wiped broth from his chin with his shoulder. He wasn’t hungry but needed to eat. It was another battle, one he didn’t have the energy to win so he set the bowl on the coffee table and let the couch suck him back in.

  Brian cleared his throat and squeezed Olive’s shoulder. “Can you give us a minute, sweetie?”

  Smiling up at him, she skipped into the kitchen and it broke Paul’s spirits. She was even younger than Matt and Mike, and so innocent. The way she transitioned from scared to death to playful tugged at his heartstrings. She deserved better than this. She deserved a normal childhood like everyone else got before this plague knocked man back into the stone ages.

  Brian waited for her to get into the kitchen before taking a seat next to Paul. Wendy sat down on the other side and Paul slowly stopped chewing, suddenly feeling like this was an intervention of some kind. Maybe a way to politely get him to stop swearing in front of the child. His eyes hopped between them before settling on the fire.

  “She’s a little spooked as you can imagine,” Brian said, watching Olive prance around the large island where everyone was gathered like it was just another Saturday night dinner with family and friends, the gravity of the moment already lost on her.

  Paul sighed, wishing he could forget that easily. Wishing he could have two minutes of life where this didn’t exist. A slice of yesterday to free his troubled lungs.

  “And before you ask,” Brian said, turning to face Paul, “no we didn’t get flu-shots this season.” His eyebrows went up. “None of us did because that’s what killed all of those people out there.”

  Paul got tunnel-vision, getting closer to Brian without moving and swallowing the noodles down his throat like a rock. An icy hand ripped through his chest and seized his heart, stopping the blood pumping through his veins and arteries. The hairs on his arms prickled as the gray-haired man’s words slowly registered. “Come again?”

  Brian’s gaze fell to the wrinkled hands clasped in his lap and strayed from focus. “I was a member of the Senior Executive Service charged with leading the continuing transformation of the CDC.” The corners of his lip
s pulled back a little as better days flipped through his mind in a revolving slideshow. “Well, before the world ended,” he added, looking up to take in the impressive room. “And this is our vacation home. I thought we’d be safe here so I flew us out from Atlanta just before the FAA shut down the airports.”

  Paul’s head felt heavy, like his neck could no longer support its weight as his mind tried wrapping itself around the words coming out of Brian’s mouth. There was the chance Paul was asleep and this was all a dream because, as it turns out, PTSD is a lot like those things out there hiding in the night. It doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t stop. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. Turning to Wendy, she gave him a faint nod, communicating the fact she’d already been down this road and believed every word of it and, guess fucking what, Paul was right the entire time. It was the flu-shots! Rage brimmed in his eyes and when he spoke, his voice came out in a guttural growl. “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  Brian met his piercing eyes and tried to reply with something that made sense, but only a beaten-down sigh squeezed out. “By the time we figured out what the hell was going on out there, it was too late to stop it.” Sinking into the couch, he crossed his legs and let a Merrell hiker dangle in the air. “One hundred and seventy-five million vaccines were produced for this past influenza season in the U.S. market alone. You could release one person with the lethal virus into the streets of Chicago and by the same time next week, twenty-five percent of the town would be contaminated. And it would only snowball from there.” He watched the flames dance for a while, eyes straying from focus. “The virus spread so fast, we didn’t even get a chance to name it.”