Dead (A Lot)

by Howard Odentz

  “What . . .” began Dr. Marks. That was all he had time to say. The window grew impossibly bright and a loud, blaring horn cut through the night. The wall shattered in an explosive burst, and splinters of wood and glass flew everywhere. Out of the spray of debris came a giant, yellow monster with a grill-like mouth and big square eyes.

  Everyone scrambled for cover except for me, Jimmy, my parents, and Diana. We were locked inside a bubble, and the chaos around us didn’t exist.

  What burst that bubble was the squeal of tires, the smell of diesel, and the twin voices of my Aunt Ella and Trina.

  “Get away from our brothers, you bitch,” they both bellowed at Diana in unison, as they leapt from the school bus they were driving and pointed impossibly large guns, courtesy of Luke and Cal, directly at Diana.

  My dad couldn’t help but smile as he saw his sister, my aunt, and my sister, his daughter, coming to the rescue.

  Proud moment if everything wasn’t so weird.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” sobbed Dr. Marks. “We can fix this. We can really fix this.”

  “Fix what?” barked Aunt Ella at the oh-so-bruised greasy guy. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what the hell you’re trying to fix here.” She pointed at me and my parents. “All I know is he’s my brother, she’s my sister-in-law, and he’s my nephew. They’re coming with me.”

  Trina stepped forward, never questioning for a second that the witch with the pistol was any other than the infamous Diana.

  “You have my parents, my brother, and my boyfriend, Grandma. Drop your squirt gun, or I’ll blow your head off your preppy shoulders.”

  Diana didn’t drop her gun. She didn’t move. Instead her eyes narrowed, and she studied Trina like she was a lab rat.

  “Trina Light—back from the grave, I presume.” She switched her gaze to me. “And I thought it was such a pity she was dead.”

  “Not dead,” snapped Trina. “But if you don’t drop that toy by the count of three, you will be.”

  The banging on the hallway door sounded like gun fire. The smell of fresh pine and fall in New England—mixed with gasoline—filled my nose.

  “One.”

  Diana did nothing. The gun was still pointing at my parents.

  “Two.”

  With a look that I could only describe as snakelike, she lowered her arm but didn’t drop the gun.

  “Three.”

  Diana hesitated for like a nanosecond before carefully bending down and placing the pistol next to her glossy loafers. Somehow the two didn’t seem to go together.

  “Tripp,” hissed Tina. “Take that popgun from her.”

  I didn’t want to get any closer to Diana than I had to, but my legs chose to narrow the gap for me. They automatically carried me forward until I was right in front of her. She stared at me with utter hatred—a lava sea boiling beneath an icy crust. As I bent down to pick up the pistol, she shot out her arm and caressed mine.

  “This isn’t over, boy.”

  “Give it a rest, lady.”

  “We’ll find you,” she whispered. “Both of you.”

  “You and what army?” I spread my arms out. “Your doctors are gone. Your soldiers are gone. The only ones left are you and Dr. Marks. Look at yourselves. He’s seriously close to useless, and you, well, you’re a wrinkled, old bag of bones.”

  A shark-like grin spread across her face.

  “We’re Site 37, my dear.” The words poured from her mouth like sweet, milk chocolate. Her gaze passed over me to the rest of the people there—the gaze of a smug, superior, genocidal maniac. “We might have lost a few minor players here,” she said. “But our numbers? Our numbers are legion.”

  78

  TRINA GAVE JIMMY a ration of crap for all of about thirty seconds before hunkering down and sucking face with him in front of my parents.

  My father grumbled something. My mother was amused.

  “I take it Chuck Peterson’s out of the picture?” she asked me.

  “Kind of,” I said. Well, most everyone is out of the picture. Let’s just get out of here, and we’ll explain everything.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to facing Prianka. I didn’t have high hopes for the same sort of quick scolding and enthusiastic reunion that Trina gave Jimmy. Besides, there was still the issue of what to do with Diana and Dr. Marks.

  Some people wanted to shoot them. Others wanted to open the door and let the poxers have dinner. Finally, the guy with the tattoos told everyone to shut up.

  “Listen. It’s the kids she’s after, so let them decide.”

  I’m a lot of things. I don’t think ‘kid’ is one of them anymore. Actually, in the past week, I’ve been an arsonist, a kidnapper, a semi-boyfriend, and almost a murderer. Still, I wasn’t going to pull the trigger on this one.

  “Leave them,” said Trina. “It’s not easy out there, and as soon as those poxers get through that door, they aren’t going to want to be here, either. Let them figure it out.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” I added. “They aren’t coming with us.”

  There was a general murmur of approval among everyone. In short order, we had an agreement.

  They were on their own.

  Diana sat with her legs crossed and a slightly amused look on her face. Dr. Marks cradled his battered head in his hands. Between my dad and Tattoo Guy, they probably gave him a concussion.

  “That’s very humane of the two of you,” purred Diana. She was solely focused on just me and Trina. It was weird. Like no one else was there. “But I will find you—whatever it takes. Wherever you go, I will find you. What you carry in your genes is far too precious.”

  “Shut up,” Trina muttered and rolled her eyes. “You’re over.”

  “My dear,” said Diana. “You may think you have shut down Site 37, but everything that has happened in this room—every word—has been broadcast to every other site in our network.” She pointed up to one corner of the room. A small video camera was mounted on the wall. “You can kill me. You can leave me. It’s no matter. I’m not the important one. You and your brother are. Surely, there are a scant few others like the two of you out there—the product of two immune individuals. But for right now, you are the two we’ve found.”

  Dr. Marks lifted his bloody face to us.

  “We never meant for the virus to be released just yet. That was an accident. No one constructs the annihilation of a species without an antidote.” There were tears in his eyes. I almost felt sorry for him.

  But . . . nah.

  We heard a small crack. The door that the poxers were banging on began to splinter.

  “Time to fly, duckies,” said Aunt Ella and began ushering everyone on to the bus.

  Diana and Dr. Marks just sat there. They didn’t ask for mercy. They didn’t ask to come with us. I was tired, and I didn’t care. After we were all on board, Aunt Ella pulled the handle, and the door folded closed. She started the engine and backed the bus out of the mess she had made of the McDuffy Estate.

  I turned my head away as we left. I didn’t want to see Diana again. I didn’t want to see Dr. Marks. I had my parents, and they were safe. That’s what I had come to do, and that’s what had been done.

  When we got around the front of the building I realized what the great crash was that we had heard earlier. My aunt had driven the bus right through the iron-gate. The mangled metal hung on its hinges, a mass of twisted iron with chunks of stone lying on the ground.

  At the end of the dirt road, Aunt Ella let me, Trina, and Jimmy out of the bus so we could take the minivan. Jimmy was all too happy to chuck the hospital wheelchair into the woods.

  “I want my baby back,” he said as he caressed his tricked out wheelchair, safely folded in the back seat.

  “I thought I was your baby,” sa
id Trina.

  “Aw, Trina—I’ve got room in my heart for two.”

  Aunt Ella beeped the bus. I started the minivan and did a three point turn with ease. Not that I was ever going to take a driving test, but, well, yippee for me!

  As I pulled out of the dirt road and on to the Trail, Trina turned to me.

  “Just so you know, Prianka is pissed,” she said.

  I didn’t answer her. I figured as much, but I didn’t care.

  I couldn’t wait to see her.

  79

  AFTER AUNT ELLA had put Uncle Don in the front pasture, Newfie in the barn, left her note, and gone out into the world, she encountered horrors that were beyond her comprehension. She never figured out that poxers burned, so she ended up doing an awful lot of running and hiding.

  What was most important to her was to find survivors.

  She found two.

  One was an ancient lady named Dorcas Duke, who drove the school bus for the county regional district. Dorcas was like a hundred years old but tough as leather. The first thing she did was show my aunt exactly how to drive the bus and how to work the shift—just in case something happened to her. Luckily, my aunt had driven big rigs for a while . . . seriously . . . so she took to driving the bus pretty easily.

  The second was a little girl named Krystal. As near as Aunt Ella could tell, Krystal’s entire family had been taken out by poxers while she hid under her bed. When Aunt Ella was finally able to make Krystal realize that she wasn’t going to hurt her, she coaxed the details out of her along with her age.

  She had said she was ‘this many,’ holding up her pudgy little hand.

  ‘This many’ turned out to be four.

  Aunt Ella brought Dorcas and Krystal back to the farm, not long after Jimmy and I had left. There, she found the satanic verses written all over her walls, along with Trina, Newfie, two soldiers being held prisoner with duct tape, an autistic Indian kid with a crow on his shoulder, his hot sister . . . ahem . . . and a prepubescent boy with a taste for firearms.

  Trina and Prianka frantically ratted me and Jimmy out in under a minute. After a quick powwow, they decided that my Aunt Ella and Trina were going to come after us.

  Later, I found out while Aunt Ella and Trina were saving our asses, Newfie adopted Krystal, just like he had adopted Sanjay. She ended up falling asleep with her arms dug deep into his thick fur.

  Dorcas, who longed for a shower, went out into the brisk fall night and dunked herself in the pond. When she came back in, she helped herself to some clean clothes out of my aunt’s closet before falling asleep in her bedroom upstairs.

  Sanjay performed another weird ritual in front of our prisoners with Andrew by his side. After, he crawled underneath the wheelbarrow and fell asleep with his feathered protector sitting on top of the boat and eyeballing our duct taped duo.

  Bullseye and Prianka were persuaded by a frightened but desperate Cal and Luke, to be freed so they could use the bathroom. Either that, or everyone was going to have to deal with the stench of poopy pants, which neither Prianka or Bullseye felt like stomaching.

  Amazingly, the soldiers dutifully waited for each other outside of the bathroom door at full attention. When they were through, they marched back into the living room and let themselves be taped into their chairs again. I suppose the fact that Bullseye had a gun trained on them the whole time helped.

  Around midnight, Prianka went out on the front porch. She was worried out of her mind. About a half hour later, Bullseye joined her. He couldn’t sleep and was more than a little worried about us. In the late September darkness, Prianka Patel and Ryan “Bullseye” McCormick, the sixth grader from Deer Meadow Elementary School, actually talked real talk, not adolescent, snarky, one-liners. For Prianka, an early maternal instinct kicked in, not unlike the responsibility she felt for Sanjay.

  The motherly feeling for Ryan that bloomed that night never went away.

  Uncle Don’s watch read two when Aunt Ella and I finally pulled into the driveway with a school bus full of weary refugees from Site 37. As headlights swept across the house, I saw Prianka standing on the porch with Bullseye. They were both holding rifles tightly in their fists, because we could have been any vehicle, friendly or otherwise.

  Aunt Ella pulled the bus up in front of the barn. I eased Stella’s minivan up alongside it.

  Even before I turned the keys and the engine rumbled to a halt, I could feel Prianka’s eyes boring into my skull.

  “Now or never, man,” said Jimmy.

  “I’ll take door number two.”

  “Wimp,” said Trina.

  “I like my life,” I said back.

  They both got out of the car. Aunt Ella opened the bus door and let out sixteen weary people, including my mom and dad. I smiled when I saw my parents, arm in arm, walking slowly up to the porch. Prianka and Bullseye put down their guns and hugged my aunt when they saw her. Jimmy high-fived Bullseye, but got the cold shoulder from Prianka. He shrugged and wheeled his way into the candlelit house followed by Trina and Bullseye.

  Aunt Ella stood on the porch and waved everyone into her home. When the last person was in, I watched her turn and say something to Prianka. Prianka shook her head and plopped down on the steps with the shotgun across her lap.

  My aunt put her hands on her hips and stared out across the field where she had put Uncle Don. She stood there a moment, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared at her feet. About a minute later she uncrossed her arms, took a deep breath, said something to Prianka, and went inside the house.

  All who was left was just me and her, and I was afraid. I was very afraid.

  The moon was out so I could see well enough, although everything looked a little like the picture on an old black and white television. Prianka didn’t move. She knew I was sitting in the van. What was I supposed to do?

  “She has a gun,” I said out loud to no one. Not that I think she would have really shot me, but who knew for sure? It stretched across her lap like a safety bar on a rollercoaster. There we sat—me in the minivan and Prianka on the steps. Gray, moonlit darkness stretched across the gulf between us.

  Hell—it might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

  I shut my eyes, mostly because I just didn’t want to deal. I got my parents. My family was all right and alive. That’s what I wanted, and that need was what lit the fire beneath me this past week and kept me going.

  Suddenly, something went off in my head. It was like an explosion—like this great big ball of light that illuminated everything. In that moment, I understood. I really, truly understood.

  My eyes flew open. I pulled the keys from the ignition and slid them into my pocket. They jangled against the jeep keys I had stolen so no one could follow me and Jimmy to the McDuffy Estate. I opened the door and stepped out into the night. The air was brisk, but it still wasn’t that bone-biting cold that happens sometimes in the fall before the snow comes.

  Without hesitating, I walked over to the porch, mounted the steps, turned, and sat down next to Prianka. She was staring out at the pasture, so I did, too.

  “I found my parents,” I said. “I had to. I knew they were alive. I knew way down deep. I didn’t have a choice, and I didn’t want to make anyone else here choose, either. This was mine to do, so I did it.”

  Prianka didn’t say anything.

  “But I’ve been stupid,” I said. “This whole time I’ve been monumentally stupid. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy. Maybe it’s because I’m just not as smart as you. I don’t know.”

  She still didn’t say anything, but I saw her bite on her lip a little and stare down at her lap.

  “This whole time it’s been about me—my parents—my needs.” I looked down. “What an idiot I’ve been. You lost your parents, too. And you don’t know where they are or if they’re alive or if one is a
nd one isn’t. You just don’t know. You will probably never know. What’s more, you have Sanjay to worry about and that’s a whole lot of worry.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Pri, you’ve been carrying his weight for so long you probably don’t even realize how heavy he is. Well, you don’t have to anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not alone, Prianka,” I said to her in the darkness. “I have parents, so now you have parents. I have a family, so now you have a family.” I reached over and pulled the rifle off her lap and placed it down on the steps below us. “I have you, and you have me. You’ve probably had me since kindergarten.”

  I stopped talking. My words hung in the air between us, and I thought they were going to hang like that for a long time.

  They didn’t.

  Her lips were on mine, and her arms were around me in seconds.

  80

  STORIES LIKE MINE don’t tie up neatly in a bow. Maybe in fiction they do, but this isn’t fiction. Chuck Peterson died. Uncle Don died. Mrs. Bhoola and Bullseye’s family and Mr. Embry and that lady, Mrs. Bijur, who Diana murdered by throwing her in with that poxer—they all died. Most everyone I ever knew died. All the kids in my high school and all the people on my street and in my town and, well, everywhere—they’re dead, too.

  Just dead—a lot.

  That next morning, after chowing down on a huge breakfast everyone pitched in to make, we all gathered in the living room and decided that we couldn’t stay, because sooner or later, Diana would find me and Trina.

  Some of the people who we rescued from Site 37 said they wanted nothing more than to go home and search for their loved ones. Diana wasn’t a threat to them anymore, and now that they knew that people like her existed, they would be on the lookout for them.

  They just wanted to go their own ways. I could understand that.

  Of course, we also had to contend with Luke and Cal.