Dead (A Lot)

by Howard Odentz

  I never used to notice things like apple orchards before, but now that everything was different, I was amazed how beautiful the world really was. The multicolored hills gently sloped down toward the road on both sides. The orchards were filled with apples. In another reality, the countryside would have been teeming with leaf peepers, or at least that’s what my parents called them. They were the people who visited up north purely to see the brightly colored foliage and tell their friends back home about tasting real apple cider.

  Of course, my mind flipped to the fact that all the beautiful foliage was really trees in the process of spectacularly dying.

  Morbid much?

  There were poxers in the orchards but not a lot. Maybe they were the people who worked there when Necropoxy hit, or maybe they were just wanderers looking for anything living to eat. In either case, when everything happened late Friday afternoon, the orchards were probably gearing up for a killer weekend.

  They sure got that one right.

  The ride almost seemed a little scary, like something out of a horror movie—a group of teens taking a picturesque ride in the country only to be set upon by a pack of blood thirsty zombies?

  I’ve seen that flick before.

  When the orchards thinned out, we passed an antique store that seemed to specialize in old, dirty things, or that’s at least what was displayed out front. After that were more trees, which gave way to corn fields on our right and a river to our left.

  “Awesome,” yelled Jimmy from the back seat. “Kayaking here I come.”

  “We left the kayak,” mumbled Trina miserably.

  “Yeah,” I grimaced. “Besides, that’s Dead Man’s Creek.” I motioned across the river. There were a couple tents set up on the river bank and a half dozen poxers who didn’t have the sense to know how to cross the water. Whoever they were, they had probably been getting their last bit of camping in for the season before the chill set in.

  “Never mind,” Jimmy said and squeezed my sister’s shoulder.

  Another mile up the road and near where we had to turn, Trina spied a small graveyard on our right. The rocky terrain was dotted with those really old headstones that had words on them like ‘thee’ and ‘thou.’ We had walked through the cemetery once when we were much younger and tried to spook each other with, well, zombie tales of the crypt.

  “Turn here,” she said, and I palmed the wheel right.

  We drove down a steep hill with trees hanging over each side like gargoyles warning us to stay away. Their bark curved and twisted into grotesque shapes. They went perfectly with the whole graveyard vibe.

  Halfway down the hill, the trees opened up to a picture perfect view of a valley. I pulled the minivan over to the side of the road and stopped.

  “There’s my aunt’s place,” I said. “And we only took four days to get here.”

  Nestled in the valley below us was Ella Light and Don Dark’s farm. A huge, red barn towered over a two story white house with a wraparound porch and a stone chimney.

  There were animals in the pastures, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell what they were. Aunt Ella always had something new and interesting living on her property. She went through emus for a while because she said their oil was healthy. Frankly, I wasn’t quite sure how you got oil out of an emu, and I didn’t think I wanted to know. After the emus, she raised rabbits for meat, which put a whole new damper on the cute and fluffy thing. For a while she had sheep for wool, and one year we all got scarves and mittens and hats that she had knitted herself. There were flecks of hay in them, and they really itched. I think my mom ended up putting all my aunt’s gifts in a box and shoving them to the back of a closet.

  One year she was all about bee hives because my aunt was convinced that honey was nature’s cure for everything. My mom said nature’s cure for everything was chocolate and refused to go and visit until my aunt got the bee thing out of her system.

  “What kind of animals are those?” asked Prianka.

  “It’s a crap shoot,” I said. “Aunt Ella goes through phases.”

  Trina leaned forward and narrowed her eyes—so did I. There was a figure moving among the animals. They seemed to give whoever was there a wide berth.

  “I guess someone’s still alive,” I said.

  Trina didn’t look at me. She sucked on her lower lip. “Do you think they’re here?” she asked me.

  She meant my parents. I mean, it would be cool and all if Aunt Ella and Uncle Don had survived the nightmare of last Friday night, but what we both really wanted was to see our parents—plain and simple.

  “I hope so.” I started up the minivan and drove the rest of the way down the hill.

  When we reached the bottom, I turned right. We drove alongside one of the pastures with the animals.

  “No, really,” said Prianka. “What are those?”

  The animals were bizarre, like something out of a Dr. Seuss dog show. They were huge, fluffy things with long necks and multicolored coats.

  “Those would be llamas,” said Jimmy. “I guess your aunt and uncle have a llama farm.”

  “This year,” Trina and I both said in unison.

  We pulled into the top of the long driveway. There was a metal gate left ajar, and I nudged it open with the nose of Stella’s minivan. Once we pulled inside, I stopped and looked over into the field.

  “Poxer,” said Andrew.

  The llamas were grazing but were wary of the person in the field that struggled after them in a futile attempt to grab on to one. Yeah, good luck with that.

  “Poxer,” Andrew quipped again and ruffled his feathers.

  He was right.

  There was a poxer.

  His name was Uncle Don.

  43

  I DIDN’T EXPECT that Uncle Dom would have been spared the wrath of Necropoxy. That would have been a sucker’s bet. He wasn’t genetically related to us. Only Aunt Ella was blood because she was my dad’s sister.

  I just didn’t expect to be mad about what happened to him.

  “Tatti,” I hissed.

  Prianka flinched. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. Tatti, tatti, tatti, tatti, tatti on a shingle.”

  “What’s wrong? It’s just another poxer.”

  “He’s not just another poxer. He’s my Uncle Don.”

  Jimmy’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously?”

  Prianka shifted in her seat. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered, but her words didn’t matter. Just like when Trina had a meltdown when we were up on top of Mount Sugarloaf, it was my turn. I pushed open the door and got out. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew that I had to do something because the thought of my Uncle Don as one of those monsters infuriated me beyond belief.

  How stupid. How pointless. Some lab geek, somewhere, sat on his fat butt and grew this stupid disease in a petri dish for who knows what reason.

  Then he decimated the world.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a lighter along with the directions we had gotten from Sanjay before we left Stella’s house.

  “Don’t you dare,” sobbed Trina as she got out of the car.

  “It’s not him anymore, Trina. Don’t you see? It’s not him anymore. He’s a bag of flesh filled with death, and that’s all.”

  “But that’s Uncle Don.”

  “He . . . it’s not Uncle Don. Uncle Don is dead. He’s not coming back.” I ran over to the side of the fence, grabbing a small rock along the way. With my pitching arm, I wound up and threw the rock as hard as I could at the poxer that used to be Don Dark.

  The rock hit him in the arm, and he whipped around and saw me. His face was bloody. His eyes were dead—but there was something more. There were bite marks all over his face.

  Either llamas have teeth, even
though I always thought they were like big cows, or he had been in one colossal zombie fight. Either way, the poxer that used to be Uncle Don lost interest in the llamas around him and started toward us.

  Trina’s eyes welled up with fresh tears. Jimmy opened the door, dropped his wheelchair to the ground, and flipped himself into the seat

  Prianka opened her door and stepped out, too.

  “Do it,” Trina said in a hushed voice that sounded as though the wind had been knocked out of her. “That’s not Uncle Don anymore. That thing won’t ever be Uncle Don again.”

  Salty droplets started streaming down my face. I couldn’t be crying. I hadn’t cried in years. I didn’t know what they were. Soon, I felt someone next to me. It was Prianka. She put her hand over mine and quietly slipped the lighter out of my hand. I let her—I don’t know why. She looked into my eyes, unspeaking, and gently took the wadded up piece of paper that represented her brother’s last words, besides his desperate pleas to be reunited with Poopy Puppy. Without hesitating, she lit a corner and turned the paper upside down to make sure the fire swelled.

  By that time, Uncle Don had reached the fence. Tears poured down Trina’s face. He looked horrible—maybe because we knew him or maybe because he really did look worse than most of the other poxers we had run into.

  Prianka flicked the burning paper at him, and he went up in flames just like every other poxer we had torched. The llamas in the field all moved off into the distance with their heads held high and their eyes alert.

  Trina took my hand and squeezed tightly as she pulled me back toward the minivan. Prianka stepped back, too, and we all watched as Uncle Don began to shriek the shriek we had heard dozens of times over the past four days.

  Finally he popped, and flaming bits of blackened flesh littered the pasture in a ten foot circle.

  I don’t know why, but I couldn’t do anything with all the water that was leaking out of my eyes. I refused to wipe my face with my sleeve.

  Somehow doing that just seemed wrong.

  44

  WE CHECKED the house. We checked the fields. No one was home. Trina and I really had hoped to find my parents or at least a sign they had passed through – maybe even on their way back to Littleham.

  Aunt Ella, dead or alive, was missing, too.

  The dinner table had been set for two, and there was a batch of chocolate and peanut butter brownies sitting on the counter. They looked like they were freshly made, which made them only four days old. They were a little crunchy, but we all indulged, except for Sanjay. He was completely nonresponsive.

  Prianka sat him down on an old, tan couch in the living room directly across from the unlit fireplaces. Andrew settled on the couch next to him. I always loved my aunt’s living room. There were huge picture windows on two sides. In past years, fluffy sheep grazed right outside. This year her pasture was filled with llamas. They were so odd looking with their hairy ears and huge, doe-eyes, I felt like we were in a fantasy.

  Well that and the zombies.

  “There’s a lot of space here,” said Jimmy as he scuttled down the center stairs on his butt and pulled himself back into his chair.

  “Good,” I said. “Because I’m not leaving until my parents show up.”

  Prianka walked passed me and flicked my ear so hard that the lobe throbbed.

  “Ow!”

  “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘we,’ Nimrod.”

  “She’s right,” said Jimmy. “We’ve made it this far without killing each other. If it’s all the same to you, I think we’ll hang tight.”

  I was thankful. Of course I was thankful. I just didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Trina helped herself to another brownie, and I did, too. We sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window.

  From where we were sitting we could see almost the entire property. The grounds were fenced, which was good, and gated, which was even better. I doubted any of the fencing or the gate would keep out a hungry poxer for long, but I couldn’t think about that at the moment. All I could think about was Uncle Don going up in flames.

  “When did they get so many animals?” Trina asked as she bit into her brownie. At a quick count, there was something like twenty-five llamas. The pasture surrounding the house and barn climbed up a gentle slope to the back of the property. In the front pasture, where Uncle Don had been, there was a small pond with six or seven ducks paddling about. Next to the barn was a pen with about a dozen turkeys.

  “Who knows? But I do know one thing. I think we have to feed them all. It’s been days.”

  My sister’s lip curled in disgust. “Ugh,” she huffed. “I have to shovel tatti, too?” Trina stared out at the bizarre menagerie. “Don’t they just eat the lawn?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Suck it up, Princess.”

  Jimmy glided up to us. “I’m usually sort of the veggie type myself, but I gotta tell you, that’s a lot of meat on the hoof out there.”

  My stomach churned.

  “There’s a supermarket back at the bottom of the Trail. I’m sure there’s enough processed crap in there that would last us a lifetime, because if you think I’m eating a llama, you’d be thinking wrong.”

  Next to the kitchen was a long hallway lined with bookcases. Prianka gently browsed the titles, occasionally looking a little bewildered. She crouched down and slid her hand along the bottom shelf before quickly pulling a book out, like the volume was exactly what she had been looking for. She turned the hardcover over in her hands and glanced at the back jacket.

  “Jackpot,” she said as she got up and walked into the kitchen, plopping the book down on the table in front of us. I craned my neck to look at the title.

  “You’re kidding, right?” The book was called ‘Raising Llamas for Fun and Profit.’

  “Here’s everything we need to know about llamas. So let’s find the section on feeding and watering and see what we need to do.”

  “I’m game if you guys are,” said Jimmy.

  Trina and I were less than motivated.

  THE NEXT THING we knew, all of us were standing out in the midday sun looking at Aunt Ella’s barn. The two story building had big double doors that slid open. I knew that because Trina and I occasionally went up into the hay loft and hung out there when we were bored to death with listening to the adults visit. The barn also had a lower level that you could get to through an inside staircase. The stairs led to the bottom floor which opened to the pastures, so that the animals could meander in and out.

  “They can use the pond for a water source,” said Prianka, who had guided Sanjay out to the front porch and sat him down. I could tell she was worried about her brother, and I wished there was something that I could say or do to make everything better, or at least as good as things were before Poopy Puppy got destroyed.

  There wasn’t, so I figured the least I could do was try and cooperate.

  She went on. “So now we have to find hay. The book says that llamas eat grain, too. Where do you suppose that would be?”

  Trina leaned up against one of my uncle’s old pickup trucks parked in front of the barn. Jimmy sat next to her. Finally, she sighed. “I think she keeps bags of grain inside.”

  Prianka marched up to the barn door and put both hands on the handle. “So let’s do this thing.” She pulled back hard and slid the barn door open.

  What was inside was on her before she even had a chance to scream.

  45

  “NEWFIE!” I SHOUTED. “We forgot about Newfie!” The mammoth dog had bowled Prianka over and was now bathing her in huge, slobbering kisses.

  “Get it off me. Get it off me,” she screamed as she tried to cover her face with her arms, but Newfie’s huge tongue lapped at her like she was a rawhide treat. He whined and yipped and wagged his tail as his hairy, one hundred and fifty pound body pinned her to th
e ground.

  “Oh. Yeah. Right,” said Trina like she was bored out of her mind. “We forgot.”

  “That’s one big pooch,” admired Jimmy as he appraised the gigantic, black Newfoundland. “Newfie, huh? Original.”

  I trotted over to Newfie and wrapped my arms around his barrel chest. The next thing I knew, he had me knocked over on the ground, too, and my face was washed clean of every bit of dirt from the last four days.

  “You must be starving, boy,” I said as I scratched his huge head.

  “Or maybe not,” said Jimmy and gestured inside the barn.

  I pulled myself out from under Newfie and patted his head. Then, without really thinking about it, I stuck my hand out and pulled Prianka to her feet. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Slobber came away and dribbled to the ground. I was tempted to ask if my kiss had been better, but I stopped myself. I had to put a padlock on my rapier wit.

  That was a tall order, especially for me.

  We stood in the entrance to the barn and peered inside. To the left was a wall of hay, neatly stacked in squares. There was also a ladder that went up to the loft. I could see from where we were, the loft was filled with hay, too. I guess Aunt Ella and Uncle Don had stocked up for the winter.

  To the right was an equally high wall built with sacks of grain.

  On the floor was an old bathtub filled with dog chow. I only knew it was dog chow because there was a big sign in front, hastily painted, that said ‘Newfie’s Dog Food.’ There were also signs on the stacks of grain. Most of them said ‘Llama Food,’ and the rest said ‘For the Birds.’

  Newfie, his tail wagging a mile a minute, trotted into the barn and stuck his massive head in the windfall of kibble.

  There was a big, manila envelope taped to the front of the tub. The words ‘Please read’ were written across it in bold, black magic market. I felt like I was in Alice in Wonderland, except that I was a dude. Maybe somewhere around was a little bottle that said ‘Drink Me’ and a piece of cake that said ‘Eat Me,’ or better yet, maybe there was a plate of leftovers from last Friday night with a note on them that said ‘Wake Up.’