Cities of the Dead: Winters of Discontent (6 page)

Frank had four arrows left in his
quiver, and he laced one into his bow and took aim at the lead
zombie, putting an arrow into it
’
s shoulder. It
didn
’
t notice
and kept skip-hopping through the drifts of snow on the street. He
readied another arrow, watched out of the corner of his eye as Will
kept moving to the side, sword at hand, and Frank released it. The
arrow sunk into the undead
’
s head and it fell into the
snow. Frank quickly readied another arrow and let it loose,
watching in disbelief as it sliced by the side of the
zombie
’
s ear
and fell into the snow inert. Then he dropped his bow and pulled
out his own sword.

“
Everyone keep
falling back on me,
” Frank yelled.

A runner was closing on him quickly, and Frank
raised his sword for a strike, watching in detached satisfaction as
Will took the head off of one and then sliced another down from
skull to neck. At the last moment Frank thrust the blade forward
and up through the soft spot behind the chin. As he pulled the
blade out and looked around, he saw Will striding toward Olandis
and he slashed at two zombies backing him up toward a store front.
He chopped through the wrist of one of the undead monsters, but
another step back and he tripped on something beneath the snow and
tumbled to the ground.

The undead fell upon him
instantly. A moment later Olandis
’
machete punched through one of the creatures,
but the snow around the three was already turning red. Frank ran as
best he could through the drifts and arrived just as Will cut the
first zombie head off. Frank took the other head and they pushed
the dead undead bodies off of Olandis. It had only been ten or
fifteen seconds, but the two walkers had removed
Olandis
’
left
ear and portion of his cheek, slashed through his clothing with
their fingernails and cut deeply into his chest, broken his left
arm at the elbow and taken a chunk of his right
shoulder.

Frank looked at Will and both
thought the same thing, though neither said it.
Olandis
’
days
as a member of the living had come to an end, and soon
he
’
d rise as
one of the undead. They looked down at the twenty-seven-year old
black man they had known for a little more than five years: Olandis
lay in the snow, dazed, his eyes slowly turning as if he were
looking for something upon which to fix some meaning to his
reality. Frank took Olandis
’
right hand in his and patted him tenderly on the
chest with the other.

“
You were a good
man, O, and you
’
ll be remembered.
”

And then Will sliced
Olandis
’
head
off.

“
You
could
’
ve let
him maybe say something back.
”

Will sniffed out a mirthless
laugh.
“
They always
say,
‘
please,
don
’
t.
’”

There were no tears when they got back to the
cabin and told the others what happened. It had happened so often
to each of them that they were long inured to the sudden death of a
friend. Frank had known Will for almost twenty years, had been with
him the night Will had met his wife, Cora, at the bar in a
steakhouse on the South Side of Pittsburgh. She was a
twenty-four-year old blonde with thick wavy hair that fell to the
bottom of her shoulder blades, blue eyes the color of Caribbean
beach water and a figure that defied gravity.

“
I gotta go meet
that girl,
”
Will had said,
taking his martini off the bar.

“
She
’
s on a
date.
”

“
He just went to
the bathroom. I figure I
’
ve got two or three
minutes.
”

Less than two years later, Frank
had been Will
’
s
best man at his wedding. As they stood in the church waiting for
the music, Frank had leaned in to Will and whispered in his
ear.

“
You know
she
’
s still out
of your league.
”

Will had smiled.
“
Why you think I
’
m locking this shit down
now?
”

And two years after that, Will had
put a bullet through her skull after she
’
d been turned at the beginning
of the apocalypse.

Frank had no idea what had
happened to his wife. His wife had been a corporate human resources
recruiter, and her job had required long hours, occasional travel,
and dinners with potential recruits, but didn
’
t include sharing domestic
chores. She
’
d
been on a business trip to Dallas when the outbreak suddenly was
everywhere and the government had shut down all air
travel.

Frank stared at the fire, took a sip of his
bourbon and wondered why he was suddenly thinking about the past.
The past was gone, along with its uncertainties. His best friend
was still alive, just a few feet away from him, and Frank had a
woman in the kitchen fixing the evening meal. For the first time in
his life, he had a woman who cooked and cleaned and looked after
him.

There was a quick two-three-two knock on the
door, and after a pause it opened and Mike and Pat stepped in from
the snowy dusk outside. They had been living in the next cabin up
the road when he, Will and Olandis had parked the gyrocopters for
the winter in an overgrown field off Frantz Road. He looked over at
the two men - fully bearded and hair down to their shoulders - and
downed the last of his bourbon.

“
Get
anything?
”
Frank
asked.

“
Two turkeys. The
girls are cleaning them now,
”
Mike said as he pulled off his gloves and
hat.

And then Frank told them about Olandis, and all
were silent for a moment.

“
Damn, I liked
that guy,
”
Pat said softly.
All of them had. Olandis had grown up poor the The Hill District of
Pittsburgh, managed to find a way out of the city into the wilds of
Westmoreland County and been found by Will hiding in a bar in
Leechburg, out of bullets, skinny as a rail and sporting an afro of
epic proportions. But through it all, he had never lost his sense
of humor, though it got darker and darker with each passing
month.

“
Two turkeys and
a deer ain
’
t
bad hunting in this weather,
” Frank
said

“
We really came
over to let you know there
’
s a couple hundred dead ones in
Russell probably moving in this general directions, seeing as how
they saw Pat and me ski by them with the
birds,
”
Mike said.
“
They didn
’
t have a chance at us what with
the snow, and if they could track us, it
’
d take
‘
em at least a day to get here, so
just keep on your toes.
”

“
We saw lots of
shufflers on the way back, groups of twenty or fifty on the other
side of the river in the south part of town,
” Frank
said. “
Might be wise to stay indoors for
a few days and let
‘
em get
bored with the lack of food around
here.
”

Mike nodded.
“Let
’
s
just keep the walkie
’
s charged as best we can and stay in contact. Since there
were runners in the town, there
’
s probably a horde of them
nearby, which
’
ll mean watchers on top of shufflers and a bad situation
for us if we get caught out somewhere we can
’
t get out of
easily.
”

“
And
don
’
t forget
we
’
ve got those
two Humvee
’
s
Will and I parked across the river. It
’
s frozen solid so we can get
there pretty quickly, and Will and I have been going over every
other day or so just to start them up and let them run. Just make
sure everyone
’
s
bug-out bag is ready-to-go.
”

After dinner, Frank and Will sat
in the living room, again, the fire going low but neither of them
worried about heating the cabin. They had taken to playing chess in
the evening, after Will had found a set on a shelf with games. Will
had had to teach Frank how to play the game - he had a general idea
of how the game was played, but hadn
’
t played it since
“
learning
”
it in high school (that was always something
Will and Greg did, when Greg was still alive). Frank had beaten
will three times since moving into the cabin in the fall, and the
unofficial
“
official
”
score of
the games was Will 103 to Frank
’
s three. Will had won the game
tonight and, as usual, had just put the pieces away after the game.
As Frank thought on the night, the only words he
’
d heard Will say since walking
home that afternoon were
“
check
”
and
“mate.”

“
You alright,
bud? You
’
ve
been pretty quiet since we got home,
”
Frank asked.

Will looked at him and Frank could
see there were no emotions in Will
’
s eyes. They
weren
’
t dead,
they were sharp and focussed, but devoid of emotion. Frank knew
that Will hadn
’
t given up on life, hadn
’
t become a nihilist and was
generally optimistic and in good spirits. Will trimmed his hair
with scissors and shaved frequently. He worked out nearly every day
they were home, doing push-ups, sit-ups and a variety of other
exercises. He was probably the last man on earth to do any of that,
but Frank had given up making fun of Will
’
s determination to pretend that
if life returned to normal- Will always said
“
when
”
- he wanted to be the same person he had been
when everything had gone wrong.

Frank didn
’
t think the world would ever
return to normal, not in their lifetime. If the undead died
tomorrow, there would be years of devastation to repair, and nobody
with the skills to do the repairs. It would be like life in Italy
after the fall of Rome: a hundred years later everyone would look
at the marvelous infrastructure and incomprehensible architecture
and wonder how it had been achieved. Centuries might go by before
anything like the 21st Century rose again.

“
I
’
m fine,
”
Will said after a moment.
“
We need to get up to the
gyro
’
s and run
the engines a little sometime soon so the fluids
don
’
t gum up.
If we can find some gas, I wouldn
’
t mind taking one up for a
flight.
”

Frank laughed.
“
It hasn
’
t been above twenty degrees in
two months. You
’
d freeze your ass of up there in an open
cockpit.
”

“
True, but I
freeze my ass off every time we tromp through the woods around here
looking for something to eat. Maybe we should try flying south
again?
”

Frank rolled his eyes.
“
We tried that. So did everybody
else in the country. That
’
s why there
’
s so many fucking zombies down
there. We
’
re
better off freezing our asses off a few months of the
year.
”

Will smiled: it was a discussion
they
’
d had many
times, and then Stacey walked into the room, a petite brunette
Frank had saved from death in Knoxville the year earlier when the
group had been trying to get to Central America.

“
I
’
m going up to bed. You coming up
soon?
”
she
asked.