by Morris, Jacy
She held it in the air and announced, "I've got it!" They key sparkled in the sunshine, and to Joan's eyes it seemed as if it were producing its own light. Katie unceremoniously snatched it from her hand and plopped into the car with it. Joan watched as she jammed it into the ignition, and turned the key. The vehicle's engine made a sick whine, and it didn't sound like it was going to start to Joan.
They all crowded around the car, ready to hop in the moment they heard the smooth idling of the engine. The dead walked towards them, just a handful, but enough to be dangerous. Joan didn't look at them as only a few dangerous beings but as another opportunity for something to go wrong. It didn't matter that there were only five of them. Say you turn the wrong way at the wrong moment and the sun temporarily blinds you. That could be it for you. Say you're turning to flee, and you trip on a shoestring or a loose rock sitting on the ground. That could be it for you. Though there were only five of them, they treated them as if they were more. They would only fight them and kill them as a last resort. It was another unspoken rule among them.
The car whined again, sounded like a chain-smoking cat trying to hack up a hairball, and for a second, Joan heard the pistons in the engine chug to life. Then it died. Katie tried again as Joan tried to make out the tattoos on the forearms of the dead man on the left. Was it a cartoon character? Some sort of comic book hero?
The car sprang to life.
"Thank Jesus," Katie yelled, but they all knew there was no Jesus to thank.
Black smoke erupted from the tailpipe of the vehicle, and they all hopped in, rolling down the windows in the vehicle. The doors slammed shut, and for a few brief seconds, all they did was listen to was the purring of the car's engine and the soft scrape of shoes on concrete as the dead approached.
God, it felt great to be in a car. They could sit. They could move without expending energy, and if those things got too close, they could escape without fear of twisting an ankle or stumbling at the wrong moment.
From the back seat, Joan watched as the tendons in Katie's wrist flexed when she put the car into drive. The engine whined, and they heard the obnoxious screech of a fan belt in need of servicing as the car lurched into action. The dead were honing in on their position, and Katie pushed through them, not fast enough to damage them or the car, but fast enough that the dead were bumped out of the way. One went under the car, and they bounced as the car's tires rolled over it. Joan looked behind her to see the ghoul rise up from the ground its arms hanging limp and broken ribs sticking through its blood-soaked t-shirt.
Then they wound through parking garage, swerving around the occasional shambling monstrosity, their arms held out the way children sometimes reach for their parents. Children. She wondered if there were even any children still left out there. Such fragile things, they would be hard-pressed to survive in this world. She had already seen that first hand, and the ranks of the dead were swelled by their numbers, knee-high things tottering along the streets, unable to keep up with the hordes.
The gray face of a girl in a white dress zoomed by the window, and Joan was overcome by a feeling of hopelessness that she could only think of as a bottomless pit. The car wound around a road, and they came to an intersection.
"Which way?" Katie asked.
Joan, lost in her own morose thoughts didn't hear the question.
"Which way?" Katie repeated.
"Left," she responded. The car lurched forward again, the fan belt squealing. Joan guided them through neighborhoods, using mostly back streets. It seemed as if every major artery was clogged by wrecked cars, the stoplights having run out of power long ago. To Joan, they seemed like dead eyes looking down on them, sad reminders of how the world used to work.
Unkempt yards flashed by them, and they all rode in silence, their breathing heavy, and the ever-present forms of the dead a constant reminder that there wasn't much alive anymore. Wild dogs darted in and out of the dead, rushing through overgrown yards and dodging the clumsy attempts of the dead to grab them. She wondered how long it would be until the only things left alive in the city were former house pets gone wild. How long until those dogs saw everything human as an enemy? How long until packs of wild dogs swept through the city's as dangerous as the dead that now populated them?
They drove on.
Chapter 19: In the Burbs
Somewhere along the way, Joan had given them bad directions. They pulled into a quiet cul-de-sac, a man dressed in a red bathrobe swayed in the middle of the circular court. His bloody footprints criss-crossed the asphalt, as if he had been stuck there forever.
Oh, Katie thought, the bathrobe's not red. It's just bloody. The thing dangling from the bathrobe was not part of the robe either. It was a string of intestines, black with rotting stool. The man stood in a daze, his hair wild about his head, and it took him an abnormal amount of time to notice the wailing vehicle as its dusty brakes screeched to a halt a few yards from him. Katie immediately killed the engine, silently praying that the vehicle would start up again when they needed it. She knew it wouldn't, just like in those horror movies that her husband used to force her to watch. The moment they needed it, they would all be piled in the car, the dead bearing down upon them, the engine whining and trying, but ultimately failing to start. Then they would be dead.
"Seems pretty quiet here," Lou said as the man in the bathrobe gimped towards them, more bites on his ashen legs becoming apparent. "Maybe we should get out and see if we can find some supplies here."
"Yeah, maybe we can get a car that doesn't sound like a dinner bell for all those things while we're at it."
Without urging, they all threw open their doors, and stepped onto the pavement. The weapons in their hands felt familiar, felt right. The man went down easily with a shove, and then Mort finished them off with his hammer. Katie wondered how many of those things he had killed. Then she wondered why she even wondered. They had all killed their fair share, and it had ceased being anything to even remark upon. There would be more.
The sky had become overcast, casting a pall over their whole group. Five houses lay before them. "Which one should we check out?" Katie asked.
"Not that fucking house," Clara said as she pointed out the multiple bloodstains on the door and the windows.
"Agreed," Lou said. "Let's stay away from the ones with stairs, too. The last thing I want is one of those things falling down on us."
The memory of Joan's incident in the parking garage was fresh in all their heads. It made sense. That left two houses, both plain, nondescript, ranch-style homes, just the type you'd find in the suburbs. Well-built wooden fences surrounded each house. The grass had grown-knee high, but the walkways were still clear enough, despite the occasional overgrown weed here and there.
Katie was drawn to the yellow house. It's simplicity spoke to her. It seemed like an elderly couple's house, and that meant less chance of children. "Let's do that one," Katie said.
The others shrugged. A house was a house to them. They walked up to the front door, and Katie held her gun ready. How many bullets did she have? Two or three? The odds of finding weapons in the house were slim, and the odds of finding the right ammunition for her gun were slimmer, but she would keep her eyes out.
"Alright, this is how we're gonna do it," Lou began. "We're gonna open the door. Give it a few minutes, and then we're going to go in there and check every room out. I don't want one of those things sneaking up on us when we're not looking. Once the house is clear, we block the main door and take a breather."
"Man, I hope there's some damn food in there. I'm starving," Mort said.
"Dibs on smokes," Clara said.
"Why do you get dibs on smokes?" Mort asked.
"Cuz I called dibs. That's how it works."
"Shit," was all he said.
Then Lou kicked the front door open. The wood splintered away from the lock, and they stood in silence. Birds chirped, seemingly unaffected by the death and decay that was all around them. A cricket or some other bug
hummed in the grass to their right, a buzzing sound that made Katie nervous. Maybe they had some wine, she thought absently.
They stood back away from the door, waiting for whatever horrors were inside to come pouring out. But there was nothing. Well, not nothing entirely. The one thing that did come out was the smell of rot and decay. Something was dead in there, but whether that something was still moving around, that was the question.
"Alright, let's do this," Lou said.
Katie let the men take the lead. Her gun was a last resort, as it would only draw more of the dead. They were tired, their nerves were all frayed, and their stomachs were all running on empty.
The interior of the house was dark. All the windows had been closed up, the shades drawn, the curtains pulled closed. The smell inside was awful. It was a dead smell, pungent, revolting. Katie was glad to see that the house had an old person's touch, tacky wallpaper, a coat rack with jackets that the elderly would wear.
To her right, a galley-style kitchen led to a small dining room with a plain wooden table. A couple bowls sat on the table, and a nauseous smell came from that direction. She knew the smell of spoiled milk well, as the only person in her house who could actually drink milk, it often went to waste. She walked through the kitchen, eyeing all the familiar implements, a wooden block full of knives, a coffee pot, stained from years of use, and a microwave that seemed as old as the house itself.
In the dining room, she stared down at the bowls. The remains of corn flakes, long gone to rot sat swimming in curdled milk. She turned left and saw the living room. It was spacious, an old-style TV, gargantuan and completely pointless, sat in the corner on a oak stand. A sliding glass door led to the backyard, but there would be plenty of time for that later.
She moved to sit on the couch in the living room. It was nothing fancy, but it had that homey, lived-in feel that called to her. She plopped down in the couch and sank into it. She suddenly felt sleepy, when a cry from the other room caused her to get to her feet.
She heard the sounds of struggling as she walked through the living room to a hallway that led to the west side of the house. Katie ignored the pictures on the walls, their smiling faces a mockery of the current state of the world. She didn't want to see them. She didn't want to think about what had become of those faces. She passed a couple of bedrooms, and then turned right, moving through a side room. She saw the others standing in the doorway to the back room of the house, perhaps the master bedroom. Their backs crowded out the sight of what was in there, and though she didn't really want to see, she felt compelled to look. She shouldered her way past Joan and Clara, who both had their hands to their faces.
On the floor, an elderly couple lay, their putrefied bodies spilling blood from their heads. Mort stood over them, breathing heavy. A bottle of pills sat upon the nightstand, and that was all that Katie needed to see. Without speaking, they all backed out of the room and closed the door behind them like parents who had just checked on their sleeping children and didn't want to wake them in the process of exiting.
Their mood was somber, but the place was safe.
"Alright, let's see what we got here," Lou said. They didn't need to be told twice.
"There's still the garage," Mort said.
"We better check it out," Lou said. They walked swiftly through the house and paused at a door in the dining room. Katie held her gun at the ready, as Lou threw open the door only to be greeted by a rectangle of pitch-black darkness. Katie reached into her pocket and pulled out her small flashlight. The others did the same, and they shined their lights into the blackness.
There was no sound from in there, and they could see the gleam of metal as their flashlights lit up a silver SUV. Lou stepped inside, and the others stayed back by the door, giving him room to work if he needed it.
"Hell, yeah," Lou said as he bent down in the darkness. When he came back up, he turned towards them, holding a green, rectangular box. "We got beer, baby."
Katie began to laugh hysterically. Lou's face showed dismay and then anger.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"That's O'Douls," she said. "It's non-alcoholic."
It took a moment for it to sink in, and then Lou tossed the twelve-pack aside and muttered, "Shit."
There was nothing else in the garage besides some tools and a freezer that they dared not open, so they raided the kitchen of all its dry goods. They sat in the living room, their haul spread out before them, cans with labels that seemed almost otherworldly. They picked from the pile at will, a can opener doing the rounds as they stuffed their faces with things that Katie would have turned her nose up at just a month ago.
She popped the lid off a can and stared down at the contents inside. Noodles floated in red sauce, and she plunged her spoon into the can. Some of the red sauce spilled on her shirt, but she didn't care. The flavors exploded in her mouth, and she felt as if it were the best thing she had ever tasted in her life. Who knew Spaghettios could taste this good?
With her spoon, she smacked Mort on the hand as he reached for a can of chili. "Uh-uh. Not if we're going to be riding in the same car together."
Mort looked hurt and then grabbed a can of soup. "That's probably a good idea. No one eat the chili."
They all laughed, as Mort pulled the top off of the can of soup. It was condensed chicken noodle, budget-style, in a plain can that was obviously a generic store brand. He brought the can to his face and scooped out a heaping spoonful of noodles. He chewed it sloppily, as they all did, too hungry and tired to give a shit about etiquette. There was no etiquette in this world, and it was freeing. They didn't have to sit at the table. They didn't have to worry about their manners; they just ate, smiling, making smalltalk, until there was a bang on the sliding glass door.
In a flash, all the happiness was sucked out of the room. They sat in silence, their spoons frozen, and then the bang came again. Lou set his can of soup down on the table, not caring that some broth dripped down onto the white doily. He rose from his seat, and crept over to the blinds. He grasped the beaded chain and pulled on it. The blinds opened wide, and there was one of the dead, a shirtless fiend with a mangled face. It looked as if he had lost the skin on his entire face. Shredded muscle and white bits of cartilage peeked out through its bloody visage. It pressed its face up against the glass, mouth opening and closing like a fish sucking for air, pawing at them with a bloody hand and thumping the glass with its other arm, which ended in a stump.
They had to kill it, otherwise it would bring more. Lou grabbed a metal baseball bat that he had found in one of the rooms, a silver Easton with a black handle. He unlocked the sliding glass door and threw it wide open. He shoved the thing backwards, and it fell onto the concrete of the patio. He straddled the creature as it lay on its back, and he brought the bat down onto its face. The bat made a metal "ting" and then the creature's arms stopped moving for good. They fell slowly, as if the life were slowly draining out of the poor thing. Lou stood on the patio, breathing heavy.
"We're never going to get peace here. Not until we get out of this place."
They knew it was true. Katie knew it was true. She grabbed another spoonful of Spaghettios, almost gagging on the perfectly round meatball that she chewed in her mouth. Suddenly, she didn't feel like eating, but she did it anyway. The baby inside of her demanded that she did.
When they were done eating, they rose from their seats in the living room, the sliding glass door closed and locked once more, the blinds pulled shut. They walked through the house, tossing the contents like police with a search warrant. The owners were dead, choosing to leave the world on their own terms rather than becoming one of those things out there. Some would call it a cowardly act, but Katie knew differently. She knew how hard it was to pull the trigger on oblivion. The people that killed themselves, they were probably the bravest of humanity, unafraid of wondering what was on the other side of life.
Katie pulled a drawer out of a nightstand in one of the unused bedrooms. It
looked like a child had lived here at some time. The bedroom had the feeling of a museum, an unused shrine to a child that had grown up and moved away. Trophies stood on the nightstand, baseball and soccer, the safe sports. Katie smiled at that. She had never let her own son, what was his name? She had never let him play any of the dangerous sports either. No football. No hockey. Just soccer and baseball. Maybe she should have let him play those other ones, maybe then he'd still be alive. Maybe it would have toughened him up a bit, made him stronger, more prepared for the world after the world. But if he had survived, then she would have been stuck playing nursemaid to the little brat.
She felt bad thinking it, but she thought it anyway. It was natural to her, as natural as being a mother was unnatural to her. Her hand went unconsciously to her stomach, and she stopped to see if she felt anything for the life inside her.
"You alright in here?" a voice asked. It was Clara, checking on her. They all checked on her, way more than any of the others. They thought she was crazy, and maybe she was, but if being free meant you were crazy, if being able to decide who you were without the input of others made her crazy, then maybe that's exactly what she was.
"Yeah, I'm alright. It's just a kid's room." Katie turned to smile at Clara and let her know that nothing was wrong. Her smile didn't produce the desired effect. Clara's face was one of confusion. "What?" Katie asked.
"Nothing, you just seem different."
"We're all different, honey."
Clara just nodded her head and turned around. Katie went back to ransacking the room, finding nothing of interest besides a couple of stashed dirty magazines. She left them where they were, glad that she hadn't had to go through that phase with her own child. He would forever be a child in her mind, free of the warts and ugliness that come with adulthood. She would never have to meet the woman he would fall in love with. She would never have to babysit the grandkids. She would never have to look at their faces as she grew older and faded away. It was good that her kid was dead.
