“Because you pussed out is why,” Cassie commented. “I watched you all this time and I can see you wanting to say this or that, but you never did. You just puss out all the time. Like when they did their thing on me. You shoulda done something but you up and pussed out instead.”
He nodded because that was the truth as well.
Julia sat there and her face was empty, yet she heard everything. “Are you still weak?” she asked, staring blankly at the wall with its red splatters. “Because I don't want you around if you're still weak. My mama was the strong one. She held it together as all the men around here died and became zombies…is that what they are?”
“It's a virus,” Ram said, thinking about the terrorists for the first time in…weeks? Had it been only weeks and not months? If felt as though the nightmare had been going on and on, day after day, hour after hour for longer than possible. It had been going on since the Iranian and Shelton and…”Shelton. Whatever happened to Shelton?” he asked suddenly and his face slipped into its hated grimace, and his mind felt like a record player that had hit a bad groove.
“Who is that?” Julia asked, looking around with a little more interest in the world. “Another one of your friends?” The word friends came out in disgust.
“No, a partner. My partner. My best friend, really, so yeah. We were in L.A. and there was a terrorist, he had the virus and we caught him but it was too late, but, but what happened to Shelton?” He looked to Julia, though his eyes were in another time and place. They stared at a world where there were still men fighting; real men and Ram had been one of those men. And so too had been Shelton.
“I don't know who that is,” Julia answered, looking at him sharply; her eyes were simultaneously blue and red. They beguiled Ram so that he couldn't think straight.
“Andra Shelton. He was with me before. He was there before Glendora. Before I got this,” Ram said holding up the M16. Where had the Shelton gone after that? He was there and then he wasn't. Just then Ram’s memory had the consistency of smoke.
“So much for you being strong,” Julia said, standing. Her face had been misery, but now it was stiff with anger as she looked down at her mother. “I have to shut up the house. They come mostly at night.” She left and Cassie went with her, wearing a sneer for Ram.
“I was strong,” Ram said to the corpse. Julia's mom was a ginger, like her daughter and she was thin as well, but the older woman had been weathered by the sun. Her skin had the leathery look of an old smoker. “I was strong when I thought I could stop the virus and I was strong when I thought we could win. When I thought if we could just hold out for another day that people would come for us. That reinforcements would arrive. They kept promising us reinforcements, only they never came.”
But what had happened to Shelton? His face kept popping up. Shelton had only his Smith & Wesson to fight with. “He didn't like it,” he told Julia's mom. “And he wasn't the best shot, you know. So he always hung back, but that was ok, because when the stiffs would get close, he always was there. He'd hang back but he wouldn't run. He would step up and if there was a stiff coming at me that I didn't see, Ol' Shelton would get him. He was tough in his own way and he never ran.”
“You ran,” Julia's mother said, though her lips didn't appear to move. She was still slumped against the wall and now her blood was dry, looking black in the dark.
It was only then that Ram noticed that the sun had long since gone down. “A lot of guys ran,” he hissed. The way her chin hung to her chest and how her hair fell forward made him nervous. Was she watching him? Had she turned? He brought his gun up with the growing certainty that she had.
“I'll shoot. I swear; I don't care whose fucking mother you are.”
“Then shoot,” the corpse whispered.
Ram pulled the trigger. The safety was on. The gun did nothing; it just sat there in his hands cold and useless and now Ram began to back away from the corpse, sliding on the hardwood, kicking with his feet, as his hands fumbled desperately to figure out how to get his gun to shoot before it was too late before…
“Are you alright?” Julia asked from lower down the stairs. She shone a flashlight his way and for some reason he felt embarrassed and hugged his gun to his chest. He squinted around the light at her, making sure that she was still alive, making sure that her milky skin had not gone over to grey. She was fine, but the mother wasn't.
Mama was dead, dead, dead. But would she come back? Had she moved? Had she even spoken?
“I'm ok. I guess. We should move this thing. It's got to be burned. We can't trust it.”
The light seared into his face again and he held up a hand. Julia kept it there regardless, studying him. “That's my mother you're talking about, so show some damned respect. We'll bury her in the morning. She deserves a proper burial. However, those friends of yours? They'll go into the pit with the others just as soon as the as the sun rises.”
“Is it nearly morning?” Ram asked. Time seemed a concept beyond him just then. Time was only the interval between killings. He would kill and eat and sleep and kill some more…except everything he killed was already dead. Just then Ram felt his soul as a jittery illusion, and his mind wanted to break into little pieces. His hands shook and the tears were back so he made an excuse to rub his face so Julia wouldn't see, but she kept the light on him.
“You're not ok, are you?” she asked.
“No he ain't,” Cassie said from further down the stairs. “He be talking to himself, sometimes. He never thinks none of us sees him do it, but I see. And his eyes are all crazy.”
“I'll be alright,” Ram said, trying to convince them. “Just it's…it's worse than it had been, before. You know? It's worse than when I…” He stopped talking. He had almost admitted that he had ran away, but that was his secret. His and Mama's. She knew. Somehow she knew that he had run and left men to die.
Julia held out her hand to him. “Come here. Let's go get something for you to eat. Mama made a pie yesterday. There's plenty left. And then maybe you should get some sleep.”
“He talks in his sleep too…” Cassie began.
“Why don't you hush!” Julia snapped. Softer, she said, “It's a wonder we all aren't bat-shit crazy. I know I'm close day to day, so I won't hold it against you Mister…”
“He calls hisself Ram though I think sheep be more like it,” Cassie answered.
This earned her another hard look from Julia, who then turned softer again. “Some food and some fluids, that will do you well. Mama can rest here until morning.”
Despite that her mother had just been killed, Julia pulled herself together remarkably. She fed two of the people who had been associated with her mother's murder and made up guest beds for them. She then went around and secured her home, drawing shades of black velvet and locking the heavy doors that had kept her safe.
Ram didn't think he would be able to sleep with the corpses in the house for fear that they might turn, but he dozed lightly until midnight when dreams came to him of them walking about the house like shadows…and then a dark figure crept into his room. He went from sleeping to wide awake in a blink and he had his gun pointed into the bare breast of Cassie before her mouth could even fall open.
“Can I sleep with you?” she asked in a whisper.
The words didn't jibe with his state of mind; in the dark he had been sure she was one of the undead and then a second later she was alive. Had that been a dream?
She didn't wait for an answer and climbed into the bed, naked. Her hands went to his body and he pulled back, confused. “What…what are you doing?” he asked, grabbing her hands.
“It's ok,” she said. “You don't need to share me no more. I know how some boys don't like that. Come on, I'll take care of you.” Her hands became insistent on him and he had to grab her roughly for her to stop. “What? Is you a racist?” she demanded. “Is that your problem? You'll stare all over that skinny, cracker bitch, but you won't give me the time of day? Well, fuck you.”
&nb
sp; “Cassie, that's not it,” he said.
The truth was that he hadn't had an erection since he could remember. It used to be that he always had one part of his mind on a passing hottie or on some chick's ass or on his girlfriend's rack. Now he could barely remember what she looked like. And worse, his dick just sat there all day long, useless and numb, except for when he had to take a leak.
Though with everything going on he hadn't really thought about it much. He had shoved his sexuality into a back corner of his mind and there it had sat, gathering dust. He had shoved a lot of himself back there.
“What is it then?” she asked. Despite making all the motions of leaving she hadn't left and was still in the bed with him.
“Things aren't working right,” he admitted, lowering his gaze to her body—and not feeling a thing. “It's all up in my head. Everything I've done. All the…look it's not you.”
“I could help. You be surprised how many boys get a little thing worked up in they mind. I can straighten you out.” Her hands went to him again and he began to tighten up and his face went into its hated grimace.
“No, thanks. Maybe in a few days. Right now it's in my head,” he tried to laugh off the ball of stress that had come to be within his chest. “Why would you want to anyways? I'm a sheep, remember you said that.”
“Cuz you a ram,” she said with a little shrug. “I thought it was the white girl what kilt all those boys, but she says it was you. And then there's this.” She held up something that was both familiar and ancient to his mind. It was his DEA badge. “You're a badass. A girl could do worse.”
He took the badge from her hands and touched its shining surface. How proud he'd been when he first earned it; he was still proud, he just wasn't proud of himself. He had run and left others to die, that wasn't what he'd been taught. That wasn't the way a man behaved.
“You want it?”
She smiled and her teeth were white in the darkness, like a cheshire cat's. “Yeah. But I'm going to need a gun. You and that white bitch…”
“Her name is Julia,” he said with a hint of warning.
“Julia, whatever. You guys don't think I should have a gun. No one thinks I should have a gun and that's just stupid. I gots to be able to defend myself.”
“In the morning I'll show you how to use one,” he left the words up in the air; a hint for her to go, but she just smiled more and snuggled deeper into the covers. “Ok. I guess,” he said to her. Just then he didn't think he had the capacity to fight even her.
She slept on him and snored loudly, and for some reason he found this reassuring. At daybreak he slipped out from her grasp and went down the stairs on tiptoe, wrapping the pink parka around himself warmth. In the kitchen he found Julia sitting at the table with a cigarette burning in front of her. She was pale and disheveled. Tears had dried upon her face and she seemed to be in a daze, but as he stood there she began to blink as if her mind was just coming alive.
“I would've killed you if it wasn't for that stupid coat,” she said with a sudden snort of laughter. “I thought you were a really ugly girl.”
“Nope, just an ugly man.”
This caused her to look at Ram in earnest. “You're not ugly.”
He felt ugly, if not on the outside then he certainly did on the inside. “Are you going to smoke that?” he asked about the cigarette in order to change the subject. “Or just let it burn away?”
“I don't smoke,” she said, turning to the grey wisps. “They were Mama's. From when I was a little kid that smell meant Mama was home. Oh how I used to hate it too. I was always on her about her damned cigarettes—They're going to kill you some day—I'd tell her. I guess I was wrong.”
“I'm sorry,” Ram said. He had apologized a dozen times already, and still he didn't think that he could ever apologize enough. “I didn't even know their names. I only just met them.”
“Cassie told me everything. Maybe too much. She tends to mix wishful thinking in with reality. Like the fact that you two are an item.” Ram's mouth dropped open and Julia smiled at it. “Oh yeah. You two are hot and heavy in one breath and in the next she admits she only just met you and didn't know your name until last night.”
“She's been through a lot.”
Julia turned suddenly bitter, “We all have. It's no excuse.”
Besides his own miserable life, excuses were all that Ram had left to him. Julia saw that she had wounded him with her words and she made a small fist of frustration and said, “I don't blame you. I'm sure you didn't know what would happen.”
Ram felt his face begin to pull back again and he turned away, saying, “That's what I keep telling myself, but it's a lie. I knew what kind of men those were, but I was weak. I'm sorry.” He wanted to say it again and again. And he wanted to say it to Cassie as well. He should've killed them when they were raping her.
“Yeah,” Julia said in a breath. “Can you do me a favor? I need to bury Mama. Can you watch over me while I do it? It can be dangerous out there if you're attention's divided.”
It was the least he could do. Ram wrapped the woman in the sheet Julia gave him and carried her out to the back of the house where three fresh graves sat looking very sad. When he had laid the stiffening body down in the grass, Julia went to give him her shotgun, but he refused it, handing over his own pistol instead.
“I'll dig. You can watch over me.”
He dug deep until his hands were blistered and Julia said it was enough. Then he left to stand away from her as she cried some more. Eventually she waved him over and he filled the grave around the body and then she asked in a choked voice, “Can you dig another? Right there?” She pointed to a spot on the far left.
“Who's it for?”
“Me,” she said simply, and then with a smile she put his pistol to her head. “I'm sorry too.”
Chapter 22
Neil
Montclair, New Jersey
From the floor of the suburban kitchen Neil blinked up at a world that couldn't possibly exist. It was a world in which he was still alive. He had fainted when the robber turned-would-be-murderer had shot him with the giant shotgun, only there hadn't been an explosion as there should have been.
Instead there was only a clicking sound.
“What the fuck?” John said, turning the shotgun on its side and seeing that the port was open and empty. “You charge in here with an empty gun? You come to save a girl from zombies and you don't even check to see if the fucking thing is loaded?” John broke down laughing until he cried. “Oh what a fuckin Rambo you are,” he said still chuckling as he tugged out a pistol from his waistband. “I think I'm doing the world a favor by killing you. It's survival of the fittest out here and you're a genetic misfit that needs to be culled.”
With this he lowered the gun to point at Neil, who had done nothing but lay there cringing and feeling stupid. But Neil was saved for a moment longer when outside the heavy revving sound of the monster truck could be heard: louder at first and then fainter. Sadie had driven away.
“What the fuck!” John cried and raced from the room. “She's stealing my fucking truck!”
Neil sat up as John ranted, and when he did the .357 slid out onto the floor. John didn't seem to notice it as he stormed back in and punched the refrigerator, sending gaily-colored magnets flying. Neil picked up the gun, thumbed the safety off and said. “Don't move. This one is loaded.”
John's anger turned to surprise as he saw the gun, but he wasn't afraid of Neil. No one was afraid of Neil, not even when he held a gun in his hands. “You gonna shoot or what?” John asked. He was angled slightly away from Neil and his gun was at the floor.
“I want you to drop your…” Neil began, but then John turned swift and agile and shot. An angry bee zipped past Neil's ear.
In a panic, Neil flinched, pulling his own trigger more by accident than design and John fell over clutching his throat as a gout of red sprayed the refrigerator. “I'm sorry!” Neil cried coming to kneel over the man as he fell.
Even as he said it, John went limp and ceased to breathe. “Oh I killed him. I killed him! I didn't mean it, I swear.”
He hugged himself feeling an urgent need to both vomit and evacuate his bowels and before he knew it, he was crying. It made no sense to him and really he didn't try to make sense of it. Crying seemed the only thing to do just then and so he went with it, until eventually his tears ceased and he was forced back to the reality of his unreality. In this world a man didn't cry after shooting another man.
He went on with his life.
“I'm not a genetic misfit,” Neil said, running a sleeve across his face and trying to be tough. “Who's alive and who's dead? Huh?”
He went through the pockets of the dead man, doing his best not to look him in the face, and came away with two clips for the gun that had fallen from his dead hand.
Figuring he was going to need every bullet and every gun, Neil took them all. The shotgun, though it was empty, he slung over his back and then he stood and stared around him, not knowing what he should do. The outside world was terrifying yet the little suburban home was no castle and offered scant protection.
What he needed was a ride. With light steps he went to the garage and was disappointed to see only a little Toyota Tercel parked there. After the monster truck, the Tercel looked like a toy car. Still it was better than hoofing it and so he scrounged around the house until he found some keys and then he was on the open road…except the street was blocked with cars and zombies.
Neil performed a very delicate K turn and drove toward the hole in the fence where he had parked the monster truck. That thing had been too big to fit in the gap but the Tercel slipped through neatly and then Neil was off with a sudden idea.
Sadie had left John for a reason, and what's more she hadn't narked on Neil concerning the hidden .357. Maybe she wasn't so bad. She was resourceful and very brave, qualities that Neil seemed to be lacking. Maybe she would let him take up with her.
The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse Page 14
