Dying to Live

by Kim Paffenroth

  "All you need is a helicopter."

  Jack looked around and gestured toward the ceiling. "I don't think the roof would take a big one, one big enough for everyone, but maybe a small one. Hey—are you making fun of me?"

  I smiled. "Only a little. I actually think a helicopter would be good, as a last resort, and possibly for getting supplies, too."

  "Well, I'll put that on my to-do list." He went back to his tour. "This is where most everybody sleeps, unless they're on duty. We run three shifts, same as people used to on bases or factories or wherever. If someone petitions me and Milton, sometimes we let people bunk on the lower floors. Real estate here isn't at too much of a premium. People still need some privacy, especially if we're going to start having babies."

  I knew how unlikely but inevitable that seemed. "Has that happened yet?"

  He smiled, part lascivious, part humorous, part just happy. "Yes, just a few, and more on the way." But the smile faded. "But not nearly as many as we've planted in the ground out by the sculptures, or burned up out back in the parking lot. We bury our dead, even if they've turned, but we don't bury any zombies we kill attacking the place. I guess it's not fair, but it doesn't seem right, treating them like people, when you didn't know them when they were people."

  "I suppose not." I began to realize how many of the finer points of living and undeath I had missed, surviving on my own.

  There were people milling about near the other end of the hall. They stayed back, though some looked our way. Jack opened the door to a very small office, in which the desk and furnishings had all been pushed to one corner. The window was open and what looked like a very old Native American blanket lay on the floor, with my backpack next to it. "This is kind of our guest room, for new people till they're more used to us and we're used to them. We took the blanket from a display, obviously. We've ended up using a lot of the displays for one thing or another. I guess we should be trying to preserve them better."

  "I'm sure you're doing fine." I picked up my backpack and unzipped it. "I assume you have some rule about sharing food?"

  "Yes, that was one of the first, even before the weapons rule. I guess someday our Bill of Rights will be in one of the displays."

  I held the bag open, showing a couple dozen snack cakes on top. "Well, I don't know how you're going to carry these to wherever you'd put them."

  He laughed. Looking around, he reached over to the desk and grabbed one of those baskets that people use to hold papers and mail. I loaded it up, eventually uncovering the bottle of bourbon underneath.

  "Whoa," Jack whispered when he saw it, looking around, partially closing the door, and setting down his basket of snack cakes. "Now, now, let's not get too carried away with all this stuff about everyone sharing everything. You said food, not booze. Giving everyone a thimbleful, versus giving two or three people a chance to forget their problems for one evening—well, I think that's an easy matter of weighing the greater good for the greatest number, don't you?"

  "I leave that up to your leadership, Jack. I don't want to cause trouble. I'll pour it out on the ground if you want."

  He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Now I know you didn't just say that. I'd write a new law myself telling what happens to people who are crazy enough to waste booze." He pulled the bottle out of the bag. When he saw the brand, he wrinkled his nose. "I hope you didn't risk your life for this."

  I laughed. "No, no, it was lying right out in the open."

  "I can see why." Then he shrugged. "Well, we've made due with a lot worse inconveniences than bad booze." He slipped it into an inside pocket of his camouflage jacket. "Let's just not mention this to anyone and see if we can maybe enjoy it a little later on with some young ladies I know."

  "I wouldn't want to intrude, Jack. You already said how important privacy is in those situations."

  He laughed harder than he had all afternoon. "Oh, God, don't worry about that. I'm going to go talk to Doc, just to make sure she'll even talk to me anymore, and Tanya's made it clear that the only men she likes less than soldiers are cops. If anybody's going to be asking the other guy to make himself scarce so he can get lucky, it'll be you."

  "Then why are you inviting them?" I asked, laughing along with him.

  He turned suddenly serious, and since we were alone, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be bluster or posturing. "Because I mostly talk to the people here my age, the ones who've seen things and lost things and been hurt and who probably aren't ever going to come through to the other side of this and become the new Adam or Eve. Those two gals are like that. And I don't mean to put you down, but I'm thinking that describes you pretty closely, too."

  "I understand, Jack. It's not a put down; it's just the way it is."

  "Good," he said, brightening up again. "So I guess all I'm saying is, I wouldn't mind talking to you and them and sharing your booze, and I'm not going to fight you for any of the gals here, though you'll have to excuse me if I still try to talk a big game—a man's got to have some pride left. If the youngsters want to go off and repopulate the earth, I'm perfectly happy to be guarding the gate from those things while they do it." He leaned a little closer. "All the more reason not to begrudge me a few drops of bad booze."

  He picked up his office basket of snack cakes and started to leave. "Meet me back in the lobby a little after sundown."

  "Thanks, Jack."

  "See you in a bit."

  * * * * *

  After Jack left, I circulated some on the fourth floor. There were many larger offices with several people living in each, and two really big rooms in which they had rearranged the cubicle partitions to make them into living space. Everyone was friendly, though they clearly had some boundaries and some set rituals and restraints about getting to know newcomers. Given Jack's description of the growth of their community, I seemed to be the first new addition for some time, so that probably made it more difficult. On the other hand, it also made me quite the object of curiosity, so everyone was eager, if not to get to know me, then at least to see me and say hello.

  Before it got too awkward talking to people in the living quarters, I made my way back to the sculpture garden and down to the river's edge. The sun was lowering in the sky, just sinking beneath the tops of the buildings across the river. City skylines were perhaps one of the most remarkable and disorienting sights in the world of the dead. During the daylight hours, the line of tall buildings was probably not that different from how it had appeared in the city of the living, but at night, it became one big, black, silent outline of rectangular shapes against the stars, sort of the way mountains looked at night, except mountains were never so angular, and one didn't expect them to twinkle cheerfully with thousands of lights. Such weird, artificial shapes as the outlines of big buildings demanded the softening, gladdening glow of artificial light to make them bearable. Without it, they became oppressive, monstrous, nightmarish. And in the gloom of twilight, as now, the nightmare was taking hold of the city.

  The river, on the other hand, had retained its beauty, or the darkness had even enhanced it. In the city of the living, the river would have been a cold, dark void under the banks and the bridge. But now, it was the city that was dark and threatening, while the river's constant murmuring was a comforting, lulling blanket, taking my mind off of the dead, who were blessedly silent now after our battle, however many of them were still left out there.

  As I gazed at the water, I thought of how it would reflect the stars and the moon later this evening, the only visible sign that perhaps the hellish, cannibal earth would ever again reflect the quiet peace of heaven. Certainly none of the edifices of man on the other side of the river had ever done that: now they were just part of a giant, broken corpse, madly swarming with thousands of little, insane corpses. I shook off that thought and focused back on the river. After a moment I smiled, having forgotten how much water always calmed me.

  It was getting dark. I turned back to the museum, seeing a few lights. I walked back
to the lobby and found Jack, who led me into the main exhibit hall. With its ceiling four stories high, the side of the hall that faced the river was all windows. It was lit with many candles and a few large torches, and there were many round tables laid out with folding chairs.

  In the gloom above, I could just make out a biplane and the skeleton of a mosasaur, hanging from the ceiling. To see an ancient fighter plane and the skeleton of a prehistoric reptile by flickering torchlight made the place feel like a cross between Valhalla and a ride at Epcot—not creepy so much as surreal, almost funny. The reality, doubtless, was less grandiose and less comical.

  "Big fundraiser tonight, Jack?"

  "What? Oh, the tables. Yeah, darndest thing, isn't it? We found all these tables in a big storage area. Now we take our common meals here."

  I laughed a little. "I volunteered at a museum years ago, and they all have their most impressive, breathtaking hall set up to hold fundraising banquets for rich donors."

  "Yeah, the employees here told us, but it's still funny. They'll never have another fundraiser or rich person in here, and they've just got to trust us to be careful when we're sleeping on the ancient Indian blankets and cooking in some antique copper pot."

  "I forgot to ask: is this where I'll meet Milton?"

  "No, I was hoping you might, but he's sick again. I talked to him and he said tomorrow definitely."

  "Sick?"

  "It's another of those things that's really hard to explain around here. He's not going to turn, if that's what you mean, Jonah. I keep telling you—a million little accidents that keep us alive, and Milton's like the biggest one of them all. But you just wait till tomorrow for him."

  Jack led me to a serving line where we got the usual post-apocalyptic fare: Spam, canned vegetables, and canned fruit. The one surprise was some flat, slightly burnt biscuits. I hadn't had anything even pretending to be bread in months, and I would gladly have taken more than the two I was given. It was funny, but before all this, you wouldn't have thought bread could ever be an interesting food, but as with the river, its simple attractiveness had been enhanced.

  After the serving line, Jack led me to a table where I recognized Doc, though she had shed the blue vest and had changed into a sweatshirt from the museum's gift shop. I learned her real name, Sarah, and it fit her perfectly: ordinary, capable, solid. She was a lanky woman, and the shirt looked slightly too small for her because she had rolled up the sleeves. So that they wouldn't come to just below her elbows, I suspected. Her hair wasn't pulled back into a ponytail as before, and you could see she might have been pretty before all this. She was still self-conscious, but Jack clearly had made amends with her, and she was much more at ease in this setting.

  With her was an African-American woman who remained, even in her disheveled state, quite striking. This was the Tanya that Jack had mentioned. She was only slightly shorter than I was, about my age, with her hair closely shorn, and she had the toned but not bulky body of a swimmer or gymnast. She was slightly butch, to be honest, and reminded me of my gym teacher in middle school.

  She seemed somehow to be less haggard than the rest of us, without the clear weight loss, sunken cheeks, and the dulled gaze. Tanya's eyes were deep and brown and infinitely soothing, but full of life. To be honest, she reminded me of the Homeric tag-line "ox-eyed Hera," like she was meant to look down on mere mortals. More than anyone I'd seen for months, more than I had thought possible anymore, she exuded vitality.

  But when Jack introduced me, there was something pained and forced in her smile, and I could tell immediately she never laughed. Here was the pain and loss of which Jack had spoken, the misery that put us all in the same category and allowed us to communicate and sympathize. I could see the truth of Milton's little riddle or motto: about a year ago, we all had died, and now we were just living to die a final time.

  * * * * *

  Morbid thoughts notwithstanding, we were all in the mood to have as good a time as we could at our table. I don't think it would be possible to savor such fare as we had, but we did linger on it, not so much to enhance any flavor, but just because the prevailing wisdom held that it made you feel fuller for longer if you took your time, while wolfing it down was supposed to make you hungry again sooner. As with all such folk wisdom, though, there were proponents of both sides.

  Jack was all business at dinner, but in a jovial way. "I was especially glad with how fast we got out to you," he said. "We practice it a lot, but I was afraid, since we hadn't done it in so long, that you'd be running around out there for a lot longer before we got enough people to the gate. And the fire—they did really good this time. We have to practice that with watered-down paint, but we don't do it so much, 'cause it gets the neighbors all riled up, obviously. But they really got the two kill zones nicely spaced—just enough room in between for you to get in."

  Slightly less morose and a little more playful than I'd seen her, Sarah said, "Enough, Jack, it's not a post-game show."

  "I know, I know. But, hey—Jonah here brought us something special, and I was wondering if you ladies would join us over in Frontierland to see it?"

  "It better not be anything disgusting," Tanya said, "or I'll put a hurt on you." She was also a little more playful. "And you too, new guy," she added, glaring at me, "even if G. I. Joe here put you up to it."

  "Nothing of the kind," I reassured them.

  "Meet us there in five," Jack said, and he and I left to take our dishes back.

  On our way to the rendezvous, Jack turned on a flashlight and led me through some much smaller exhibit halls. "We try to conserve batteries as much as possible," he whispered as we walked past cases of Native American artifacts, "but walking with a candle is just too damned hard."

  After two more rooms of artifacts, we entered the recreated interior of a frontier cabin. Jack lit a couple candles and placed the bottle on the roughhewn table, then arranged four mismatched mugs of pewter, glass, and porcelain around it. We sat down, and a couple minutes later, Sarah and Tanya entered from the cabin's other entrance.

  Both women gave the requisite "Oooh," at the sight of booze, like teens at a party about to do something wrong and forbidden and dangerous. As I watched them, I finally figured out what I had been going over in my mind at dinner—how the two of them complemented each other. Sarah was by far the more nervous of the two—even now, she was glancing about, just like a kid worried about being caught at his illicit activity—while Tanya was utterly unflappable. If anybody complained to her about her drinking, she'd break the bottle over his head.

  Sarah, on the other hand, could be saddened more easily, but she could also be more easily cheered, while inside Tanya there was clearly such a well of pain and anger that it was almost uncomfortable to be around her, as bold and vivifying as she was.

  But as nervous or sad as they were, there was something infinitely comforting—in an emotional, if not sexual, way—about having them around, as Jack had tried to describe before. Their attractiveness, too, had been enhanced by our horrible situation.

  Jack played host, pouring the bourbon. "To new friends." We all toasted and took our first drink in ages.

  Somewhat predictably, the women's drinking was opposite as well: Sarah barely sipped, Tanya slammed the booze down. Till it kicked in, we didn't talk much. I knew when Jack suggested the get-together that that was part of the value of the booze—to get people to talk.

  About halfway into the bottle, Sarah spoke up. "So, Jonah, what's your story? How'd you get here? People say you came from a secret underground bunker, or that you fought your way out of an overrun military base, or God knows what else."

  "I was on a ship when it started," I said. The bourbon had done the trick, as I would otherwise have shrugged it off with something vague.

  "You were like in the Navy or something?" Sarah asked. "What's that group? The SEALS? That's what someone was guessing."

  Jack guffawed. "No, he was most definitely not a SEAL. No offense, Jonah."

>   "I know…. No, nothing military. I'm… well, I was a college English professor, just working at a community college, and I'd work on cargo ships during the summer for extra money."

  "Family?" Tanya asked, between gulps.

  "Yes, a wife and two kids. The ships paid better than teaching summer school, so I was doing it until I could get a better position. The disease must've broken out right after we got on board. Just the day after we left L.A., the television and radio were talking about it. We just thought it was local and we'd go ahead to Honolulu and everything would be normal. But then it was obviously not. The captain just stopped the ship, and we watched and listened to the reports. Until they stopped. We'd still get short wave stuff, but we didn't know what was going on, all just garbled cries for help.

  "We sailed back to within sight of the docks. There were fires everywhere, and we got our first look at… them. You'd think they were people at first, of course, but then we'd see them through the binoculars, and we'd understand what the TV had been talking about. We sailed up the coast, still hoping the reports were wrong and it was just in the city, but it was everywhere—fires, and those things staring at us from the shore. You didn't see anything human on the shore, but a few survivors in boats pulled up alongside us. We'd heard about the bites, so we didn't let any infected on board, fortunately.

  "Little by little, we had a little flotilla or colony floating around out there offshore. But after a couple weeks, no more showed up, like Jack said happened with you guys here. We'd share supplies, fish for food, and some of the guys rigged up a distillery to desalinate the water. I guess it was as safe as we could hope for, but some of us with families weren't satisfied. We had to know if they were still alive, if they made it."