Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel

by Jay Wilburn

  The keys rattled in the lock outside. The door to the pantry whipped open and Doc was staring down at me with his metal pole over his head. He paused.

  “Say something, if you’re alive, Mutt,” he ordered.

  I just stared up at him from the floor.

  Short Order looked around the door and then over at Doc. “Damn, Doc, is that supposed to be funny? Snap your fingers, if you’re lively, Mutt.”

  At first my fingers were too slick with sweat to snap and I was afraid I was going to die because of it. Then, I got out one weak snap. Doc set down his pole and reached out his hand to pull me to my feet.

  He said, “I was just kidding, Mutt. We’re real short on kitchen help. Even if you were a zombie, I might let you chew on my leg and be my apprentice still.”

  I stepped out into the kitchen rubbing my eyes.

  “We’re more short on customers,” Chef turned away and walked back to the stoves checking the burn boxes to see they were still stocked with wood.

  “I’m glad to see you, Mutt,” he added, “Doc, set that pole outside the kitchen. It’s covered in brain.”

  “Yes, Chef,” Doc said.

  “What did you do in here?” Short Order asked leaning in the pantry door.

  I looked back into the pantry and pointed at the drain.

  Short Order whispered, “This is where we keep the food, Mutt. Chef is going to be pissed.”

  “Pissed. That’s funny,” Doc laughed clapping me on the shoulder.

  I pointed at the zombie out in the hall and then back at the pantry. I shrugged.

  Chef said, “It’s fine. You’re going to scrub it up as part of your prep work, kid, but it’s fine.”

  “What are we prepping for, Chef?” Short Order asked.

  Everyone looked at him after he said it. They all looked so tired to me.

  Short Order added, “What’s the challenge, I mean, tell us what we’re going for tonight.”

  Chef took a deep breath.

  He answered, “The last meal challenge.”

  Doc said, “A little dark, David. Appropriate, yes, but dark.”

  Chef explained, “If you had one meal left, what would you make? As a side note, keep in mind the refrigeration is down until we get around to resetting the generators, so use up the perishables as much as possible.”

  ***

  Short Order slid over a note pad on the counter and began writing out a list. Doc picked up a piece of chalk from a board mounted near the corner by the pantry door. Instead of writing on the board, he started scratching out ingredients and measurements on the tiles on the wall itself.

  I looked over Doc’s shoulder. He laughed and elbowed me lightly in the stomach.

  He said, “No, no, Mutt, first things first. Your first utensil will be a mop. Hit the mess in the mess.”

  The pee was in the pantry and not the mess area, but I understood what he meant.

  Chef called out with his head down where he was lighting the fires in the wood burners, “Yes, please, I feel like I’m cooking in a urinal.”

  I didn’t know what a urinal was. I did know where the mop was so I went and got it to clean up the mess and smell. I had to step over the body in the hall. When I came back by, the blood was spreading across the floor toward the opposite wall. I walked around and came up to Doc again.

  He was looking at his chalky notes on the wall.

  Doc was mumbling, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord. He is a tramplin’ out the vintage where the grapes of wrath were stored. He has … what you need, Mutt, mopping instructions?”

  I pointed out at the blood in the back where only the zombie’s feet and broken toenails were visible from the kitchen. Doc looked over at the others and then back at the toenails and blood.

  He whispered to me, “Yeah, buddy, just start with the piss smell in the pantry. It’s going to take more than a mop and a dinner prep to deal with that.”

  I moved from mopping to actual dinner prep in a few minutes. The chefs were already moving on to cooking. The challenges were different from our usual mass meals. The cooks were all in their element. The smells of cooking pushed out all the evil smells and even some of the evil thoughts of what had happened and why it had happened. I moved to assist each of them as they went through their steps with their usual style.

  It was unusual to have it so quiet though. There was no clatter out in the mess area where people usually set tables and talked. There was no banter in the kitchen as the chefs communicated with each other and whoever else was assigned to assist in the kitchen for that meal. They were working on their own pieces for the challenge.

  I wasn’t talking either, but that was nothing new. Chef never liked that about me in the kitchen, but he tolerated it.

  It took a lot for me to not think about all the people I had known ever since they brought me in all those years ago and all those months after I lost my mother to the dead. This was the only life I knew and it was over.

  I was glad we were cooking because I didn’t want to think about any of the rest of it. Heat applied to food was simple and pure. I had very little practice at pushing all the faces out of my mind. The chefs did, but that was all about to fall apart.

  Doc took a taste and shook his head. He looked at me and handed me a spoon. I tasted. I wasn’t familiar with the dish, so I wasn’t certain what he was second guessing this time. I pointed to the salt. He shook his head and twirled his finger to tell me to stir. He went back to his wall and began scratching out with the chalk.

  Doc mumbled, “There is a name I love to hear. I love to sing its worth. It sounds of music to my ear. The sweetest name … the saltiest name … tangy?”

  He scratched a little more and then wandered back into the pantry.

  I jumped when Short Order broke the silence again with a loud curse.

  “Why do I even bother?” he shouted as he threw the entire pan in the sink. “I’m not ending this damn day with something soupy.”

  “Cool down, Shaw,” Chef said, “It’s just cooking. The loser doesn’t usually have to die. Make it happen, gentlemen.”

  He never looked up from what he was doing. Doc came back out of the pantry with a generous helping of several items.

  Short Order and Doc both called, “Yes, Chef.”

  After a moment, Chef added, “I’m not in the mood for a ton of clean up tonight. Let’s keep the kitchen presentable at least.”

  “Yes, Chef,” Short Order shouted alone this time.

  Doc looked at Chef and then out at the growing gore from my zombie out in the hall. He looked back again with his lips pursed. I knew the look. I was afraid he was going to break whatever fragile thing was going on in the kitchen at that moment. He surprised me by not saying anything.

  He just went back to cooking.

  Doc was the last of the three fulltime cooks to arrive at the Complex. They all came after I was here and replaced a rotation of cooks that treated cooking like every other chore. The others used to cook like they killed zombies or repaired roofs. The food tasted like it too.

  David Sharp changed that when he came. Shaw Porter came to the Complex after David and immediately declared the kitchen was his skill. People were reluctant to let a new person handle their food, but Chef auditioned him and immediately demanded him.

  Doc was a hard sell. He had trouble adjusting to the Complex and ran afoul of the leadership more than once. He sort of landed in the kitchen by accident. Short Order was pushing Chef to pick a third permanent to help manage the rotating help more efficiently. Chef had rejected everyone twice when Shaw suggested John Brown after a couple food preps.

  They started calling him Doc later.

  Chef pushed taking him on to the leadership over their heavy objections. A lot of people were nervous about a guy they reprimanded more than once handling their food. Why having people live down the hall from where they slept bothered them less than handling food is a real mystery to me. I was eating garbage before I was found. Ther
e was not much that could be done to my food that passed that low starting point for me.

  Doc still ruffled feathers around the Complex, but he was a different person in the kitchen. He was still an ass, but he was a different sort of ass. Not that it mattered much at that point. None of them were ever going to be bothered by him again.

  I missed the people I had lived with for all the years I could remember well. We were doing something else at the moment, but I still felt it. We had lost people before and sometimes lost people regularly. This was everyone. They were all gone. The other three had been through that before in other places and I guess I had too, but it wasn’t something I remembered clearly.

  They plated and we moved out to a table in the middle of the mess hall. It echoed as the plates were placed on the wood. Doc placed two wine bottles on the table. Short Order and Chef both set down two glasses each. I set down the extra plates and utensils.

  Chef presented Sautéed duck in lyonnaise vegetable marrow farci. I hadn’t had anything like it exactly.

  Doc nodded his head as he took another spoon full. He turned his back as he chewed and looked over in the dark corners of the room. I turned and looked too. I was afraid he saw something move, but there was nothing there. I’m not sure at what he was looking.

  “That’s great as always, Chef,” Short Order noted.

  “That’s funny,” Doc said turning back to halfway facing the table.

  I turned and looked back over my shoulder at the corners again. Still nothing.

  “How’s that?” Chef asked.

  “Nothing. Let’s move on,” Doc said after a short pause.

  Doc presented next. He had braised rabbit with mushrooms. He plated it with creamed carrots and chateau potatoes.

  “Why these sides, Doc?” Short Order asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I burned the first crap I tried. I like to think the rabbit’s spirit is tortured by being on the same plate as the carrots.”

  Chef scowled, “I hope you make combination decisions on a slightly better basis than that, John.”

  “I’ll never tell,” Doc made a zipping motion across his lips.

  “Unfortunately, your lip is unzippable,” Chef said.

  Short Order laughed. Doc smiled, but said nothing else.

  Short Order presented last. He had made poached rainbow trout with mousseline sauce and sliced cucumber.

  “Yeah, that is funny. Did you guys do that on purpose?” Doc said with his arms crossed.

  “What the hell are you talking about, John? Just say it,” Chef ordered.

  Doc looked at Short Order and at Chef. He shook his head.

  “No,” Doc declared, “I zipped my lip and I have something to prove to you tonight, Head Chef David Sharp.”

  “The upside of an actual zipped lip would be not having this conversation in the first place,” Chef said.

  Short Order noted, “Could you imagine, David, if Doc was silent and Mutt actually spoke?”

  Doc laughed and squeezed my shoulder.

  “My life is full of things I wish,” Chef noted. “Let’s try this creation of yours already, Shaw.”

  As we took forks from the plate to our mouths, Short Order waited and cracked his knuckles.

  Doc and Chef both spoke over mouths full of fish and cucumber, “Stop.”

  Short Order didn’t bother apologizing again, but just folded his arms.

  “Why trout?” Chef asked, “You know this is normally a salmon dish.”

  Short Order bristled a little, but held it at bay, “I know, Chef. If I were cooking this ten years ago, I would have used salmon, but we didn’t have any.”

  “No deep sea fishing lately,” Doc agreed.

  Short Order said, “It was worse with carp.”

  Chef said, “I would have tried something that was natural with the ingredients we had at hand.”

  Short Order said, “This is what I would eat as my last meal … if I had salmon.”

  Chef said again, “If your last meal is here, you’ll have to cook what’s at hand.”

  “I don’t want my last meal to be here,” Short Order said looking down at the floor with his arms crossed.

  “Where then?” Doc asked.

  Short Order opened his mouth and then closed it again. He just shook his head.

  Doc poured the wine and we took larger portions of what was left on the plates.

  Doc had replaced Shaw as Sous Chef. Shaw handled supervising the rotating staff better and Doc handled the cooking better. All the food got better with the three of them. More went into growing crops, raising animals, and hunting once there was a reason to look forward to it. Even the box lunches we took on work outside the Complex were better.

  That’s when I started working hard to get an apprenticeship. Chef didn’t see how a kid that didn’t talk was going to work. Doc insisted that he be allowed to take me as his apprentice. I think he thought it was funny, but I got what I really wanted.

  The food was good. I moved it around with my fork mixing the dishes without realizing I was doing it. My stomach felt tight. I was afraid I was going to insult the chefs.

  When I looked up, none of them were really eating either. Chef was rolling the cork from one of the bottles under his hand on the table. Doc was taking a few bites, but he was drinking more than eating.

  Doc finally said, “Should we have toasted? To rebuilding or to … something else, maybe?”

  Chef dropped his fork and stood. He walked away from the table.

  He said, “I don’t know if I’m up to this. Up to this again, I guess.”

  No one said anything. Short Order left his plate and walked out of the room.

  Chef said, “We can clean up in the morning. Should we sleep in the panic room, just in case?”

  “No,” Doc said, “Keep your door closed and locked in case we missed any creepers, but it will probably be better to sleep in our beds again. It could be better, I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Chef snorted. “We’ll try that and …figure out the rest of this in … We’ll talk in the morning after breakfast. Nothing special. We’ll just cook up some eggs and bacon before it goes bad. Then … we’ll talk about it after breakfast.”

  Doc didn’t answer. Chef left down another corridor. Doc forced down one more bite. He drained another glass of wine.

  “You know what was so funny about their dishes?” Doc asked.

  I shook my head, but he wasn’t looking at me.

  Doc continued anyway, “Before the iceberg sunk the Titanic, the rich assholes … do you know about the Titanic, Mutt?”

  I nodded that I did. He looked at me suspiciously like he didn’t believe me. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t get from the times before the zombies, but I had read about the Titanic. It was big; it sank in the ocean. Icebergs were big, frozen water. They hid below the surface. Both the Titanic and icebergs were used as references in a lot of different books. Lots of ships sank. I didn’t get what captivated people about the Titanic over a hundred years before the zombies sank the rest of the Earth.

  Doc went on talking. “There was a ten course dinner the night it sank for the richest people onboard. Chef’s dish was part of course four. Short used course three, if I remember it right. I think my potatoes were part of course five or maybe six … maybe the carrots too? They didn’t have rabbit. That would have been poor people’s food. Anyway, I can’t imagine that Chef didn’t know. His was so specific. He used to be a food critic or a charity chef or something like that. Surely, he had run into the Titanic tribute dinners before. I wasn’t any kind of cook before the zombies and I knew about the ten course meal. It’s possible Shaw picked up the salmon dish from somewhere else, but David had to know. Either they did it on purpose for the ‘last meal’ challenge and didn’t say so or it was a big ass coincidence. I’m not sure which would bother me more. It doesn’t seem like the best precursor to us trying to rebuild here. I’m not much interested in rearranging deck chairs
tomorrow, if that’s all we are doing here.”

  He turned up one bottle to his glass and only got a swig. He left it there without drinking it. He laid the bottle on its side against one of the plates. He picked up the other open bottle by the neck and walked toward the kitchen.

  He stopped with his hand resting on the last lantern.

  Doc asked, “Do you want to stay with me, Mutt?”

  When he turned back, I shook my head. I didn’t want to be alone in this room or any other, but I wasn’t interested in watching him drink. He nodded back at me.

  “I’m going to make my way without the lantern. Be careful and lock your door tonight,” Doc said.

  He walked out through the kitchen. I heard him trip in the back hall somewhere and laugh.

  I took one more, small sip from my nearly full glass. I wasn’t much of a drinker.

  My bedroom was back through the back hall too. I had to step over my last zombie that had waited for me outside the pantry door. I was still dirty from lying in the closed pantry for days. I wasn’t sure if the water worked in the showers without the generators. I thought so. I knew the tanks were sun heated too. I had no interest in showering in the dark after everything today. I had watched copies of old horror movies too.

  I ended up sleeping in one of the panic rooms. The cots were better than the pantry. I had to step over bodies to get there, but not the one that had been hunting for me. I woke up hungry later that night, but I stayed behind the locked door until morning.

  Chapter 2: The Week We Tried to Make Due with Old Ingredients

  The next morning was plain old eggs and bacon. Chef was rolling the cork from one of last night’s wine bottles under his hand again. We sat at a different table from the previous night’s mess.

  Once we were finished, we scrubbed down the tables and completely broke down the kitchen for a deep cleaning. It took a couple hours. It seemed like we were really putting too much into it, but I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with my zombie, so I did what I was told.

  We started clearing bodies out of the halls. We hauled them up to the roof at first and dumped them off the back of the buildings. After a couple trips, they decided it was good enough to pitch the ones we didn’t know out the window.