Stay Dead: A Novel (11 page)

When Shaun came back to life it was in her arms. He
moaned for her warm flesh. She dropped him and stepped away, only
to fall to her knees sobbing. Shaun came at her quickly; the fresh
dead were quicker at first, though they eventually slowed down. It
was then that Eddie and Joseph had returned from trying to get
their grandmother, which had failed miserably—she’d been dead long
before they arrived.

They returned home to see their youngest brother
lurching after their hysterical mother. She screamed
unintelligibly, and one could see why—how could you put what she
was seeing into anything that made? They grabbed her and pulled her
to the car as their father stumbled from the front doorway; his
eyes and throat were missing and replaced with red pulps of flesh.
They drove off then to Frankie’s house, only a few streets away
where a similar scene awaited them.

“
What the fuck is happening?”
Joseph screamed.

No one had an answer. Eddie tried to follow the road
as his eyes swelled with tears, and Janice trembled hysterically in
the back as she stared out the window at the dead pieces of her
heart.

Eddie, Joseph, and Janice sat together for a bit,
not saying much of anything and trying not to break down and cry.
They couldn’t, not now. There was simply no time for it. They had
to survive.

Jon-Jon found Dawn sitting next to Ricker, and if
Ricker wasn’t so damn old and ugly he’d be worried that they had
something going on. Not that Jon-Jon and Dawn had anything going
on, but that didn’t mean they weren’t striving towards something,
however subtle. Something was going on there. They both had lost
someone, everybody lost someone, but they found something in the
other that comforted them, and that was all they needed for the
time being.

That’s all anybody needed, to keep them going.

CHAPTER 9
: One bad apple spoils the
barrel

From the roof of the school Boone peered out over
the edge, looking down at the dead things that reached up. Near him
were Damian, Ben, and Alexis, who also peered over the edge. Alexis
was biting her fingernails nervously and cracking her neck. Ben was
nearly expressionless and Damian was disgusted and angered. The
smell was overpowering and if it hadn’t been for a slight breeze it
would’ve been downright unbearable.

Damian moved over to the far side of the roof and
stood on the edge. He unzipped his pants, pulled out his member and
urinated on the creatures below. He shifted from side to side
making sure to spread his piss to as many of those things below as
he could. Boone looked over and laughed and Ben snickered as
well.

Alexis didn’t even notice; her attention was focused
on the creatures coming in the distance. She shivered and headed
back downstairs. So many in such a short time, she thought. The
three men stayed on the roof taking it all in, and gagging on the
stench.

“
Fuck, man, what’re we supposed to
do?” asked Damian.

“
Nothing much we can do,” Boone
said tiredly. He was weary of being the appointed leader. He didn’t
know what to say anymore. He was tired and

“
Not if they keep coming like
this. I can’t figure out why there’s so many of them, and why do
they seem to be drawn to us?” Ben added.

“
Fucked if I know, man,” Damian
added as he looked out at the night.

“
I say we stick around here as
long as we can, maybe we can wait them out, maybe they’ll move
one?” Boone didn’t sound as if he could convince even
himself.

“
If they moved on, we wouldn’t be
here.” Ben grunted. “I’d say, that’s the damn problem.”

“
Fuck this, I’m gonna go to the
kitchen and get me something to eat. If y’all get sick of staring
at these freaks feel free to join me. Chef D’s gonna whip something
up.” Damian then laughed as he made his way to the other end of the
roof.

“
Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,”
Ben said, “could always go for another cup of coffee. I’ll be down
in a few.”

Boone returned to staring at the creatures, hoping
to find something in their eyes that made sense. But before he
could find any answers, he felt the cold sharp pain of a knife
being violently forced just left of his spine. Ben wrapped his hand
around Boone’s mouth as he twisted the knife and pulled it out only
to repeat the act a few more times before taking his weapon and
shoving him off the roof.

If the creatures could rejoice, they would have.
Instead they pulled the warm flesh from Boone’s body and moments
later he stood as one of the dead.

Ben joined Damian in the cafeteria for a snack and
some coffee. Chef D made a sizable stack of French toast for the
two of them. The smell must have traveled to the gymnasium, because
Frankie and a few others came to see who was cooking what and where
the rest of it was.

“
That other fool still on the
roof, huh?”

“
Yeah, said he was hungry though.
He’ll probably come down once he smell’s these though,” Ben
laughed.

Once Ben had his fill he left the cafeteria and
wandered around the dark and nearly empty school. He ran his
fingers along the lockers, and looked into the empty rooms. He
stopped for a drink at the water fountain, and then headed for the
gymnasium to get some rest.

There he found an empty corner of the room and sat
down. He rubbed his temples, and then his eyes. When he looked at
his hands he could still see some of Boone’s dried blood.

He looked to the farthest object from him and
focused on it, he then repeated this exercise on the people in the
room. He started with the left hand side, moving toward the right.
He wasn’t so much sizing everybody up as he was categorizing them.
Ben loved to look at someone and then label them. It was something
he began doing when he was very young, and had kept repeating
throughout his life. He especially loved doing this at stores,
watching what people bought, how they dressed, how quickly they
walked. The quicker he could label a person, the more disposable
they were; the harder to categorize, the more dangerous they were.
Boone was easy; the leader. Shorty was his mask, a companion by
shared disaster as it were, a way that he could seem less
threatening to a group. People were hesitant of loners. Shorty was
many things to Ben, therefore Shorty ended up in the miscellaneous
section, were he would remain until further scrutiny. Scott and
Judy could be summed up as lovers, but that was too easy. Strange
would be a better fit, but they both had layers beyond that, either
way they were too dangerous. Jon-Jon was simple, but was one of the
reasons Ben was still alive now, so he got a free pass. Ricker was
annoying, but he was constantly with Dawn. Dawn was thrown into the
weak category, but being that it seemed she and Jon-Jon had
something going on, she got a pass by association.

He kept playing his little mind games, and he was so
enthralled with it that when Shorty came to sit by him it took
Shorty snapping his fingers in his face for Ben to notice. Ben put
his mind game aside so he could put his mask on. He made small talk
with his friend, Shorty the mask. But he had an image in the back
of his mind of a face he wanted to erase in the second-in-command
category, a dangerous choice.

Dangerous as it might be, Ben just had a thing
against authority. It was the one category he hated more than
anything.

CHAPTER 10
: Can’t always get what
you want

Two women from the group, Mila and Sarah, left the
gymnasium. They had rested, even managing to sleep a few hours. The
two of them groggily walked the halls of the school, which were
being patrolled by Eddie, Frankie, Joseph, Alexis, Shorty, Ben,
Damian, and a few others. Mila and Sarah began asking around for
Boone. They had become friends with him during their journey.

The three of them had met while escaping their local
hospital during the first few days of this would-be apocalypse.
Days later they joined up with Jon-Jon, which later merged with
Eddie’s group. And now here they were. They walked toward the
cafeteria after Damian had mentioned that he might be in there.
Benoverheard him and began to make his way there via an alternate
path, hurrying his pace once he rounded the corner and was out of
site.

Mila and Sarah looked around the cafeteria, but it
was empty except for the scent of syrup. Ben came in behind
them.

“
Hey,” he said, “guess everybody
left eh?”

“
Oh, heh, yeah I guess so,” said
Sarah.

“
Have you seen Boone around?” Mila
asked.

“
Last time I seen him we were on
the roof,” Ben replied. “I can take you up there. Maybe he’s still
there.”

“
Sure,” Mila replied. Sarah also
nodded in agreement.

Ben climbed the rungs of the ladder to the roof,
with Mila and Sarah behind him. He walked them over to where
Boone’s last breath had been. He hadn’t planned on doing anything
to the girls but once they were up there and all alone, he couldn’t
help but play his mind game.

The only ties the two women had were to Boone, and
they were the only ones who seemed concerned to where he was. With
them out of the way too, Ben thought for sure no one would go
around looking for him.

They were only tied to a man they didn’t yet know
was dead. No one would miss them. They fit into plenty of Ben’s
categories, and certainly weren’t dangerous. If he could put just
one label on them it would be toys. And Ben loved to play with his
toys, especially now with all the time the end of the world
afforded him to do so.

“
Well, he was up here earlier,
maybe he’s in the bathroom,” Ben chuckled.

“
Okay, well, thanks. I guess we’ll
just go back down,” Mila replied. “If you see him let him know
we’re looking for him.”

“
Sure, sure, no problem. Hey,
before you two go back down come take a look at this. There’s so
many of them things, it’s crazy,” Ben said insistently.

The two women walked over to the edge of the
building next to Ben. He watched their faces as they scanned the
crowd of dead people. He hung on their every reaction, and waited
for the one he was hoping to see. Sarah was the first to notice;
her expression was of confusion and then dawning horror. She
grabbed Mila’s arm and pointed to the dead Boone below them. Mila’s
expression mirrored Sarah’s and as they turned to look at Ben he
plunged the knife into Mila’s throat. She grasped at the knife, her
eyes wide and unbelieving. Her feet fumbled backward and Ben kicked
her in the stomach forcing her over the side as he wrapped his hand
around Sarah’s mouth to gag her screams.

Mila fell over the edge. For a moment it looked like
she was crowd surfacing at a metal concert, but the hands that
would ordinarily keep her afloat and grope at her feminine
qualities instead only pulled her down. She writhed in pain,
kicking and screaming as the creatures pulled her to the damp
earth. The last face she saw was Boone’s, right before he took a
bite out of her’s. Luckily for her, the knife wound bled her out
before the dead could tear her apart. Soon enough she would rise as
one of them, and wouldn’t even bother with removing the knife.

Sarah struggled to break free from Ben’s grip. But
so did many other women before her, and none of them were ever
successful… save his earliest work.

So, when Sarah did break free it was a huge shock to
Ben, and also exhilarating. She kicked him and stomped him, bit at
his fingers and squirmed. But it was a combination of the
squirming, the stomping, and the shifting of her weight and a
well-placed elbow to the side of the face that knocked Ben to the
side.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get free of him
and put some distance between them. She screamed for help as loud
as she could, as she continued to back away from the crazy eyed man
that had killed her only two friends she had left on this earth. As
her heart filled with rage she realized her screams were not saving
her. That rage, however, was turning into something. She could feel
it rising up inside her, like boiling water spilling out of
pot.

Sarah charged at her attacker, with eyes as fierce
and unforgiving as his. She tackled him to the ground and wailed
her fists into him. Ben, caught completely off guard by her
assault, could do little to avoid her. She pummeled him repeatedly,
breaking the skin of her knuckles on his face and teeth. Ben did
what he could do to block her, but she was too fast in her fury and
high on adrenaline.

Ben managed to roll off his back and onto his side
as he shoved her off, landing a hateful right hook to the side of
her face. She bled on impact and staggered to the side but quickly
got to her feet. The two of them faced each other again, back in
the same situation but all the worse for the wear.

“
You got some fire, sweetheart,
I’ll give you that. But we’re just having a little fun,” Ben
smiled.

“
Go to hell,” she
screamed.

“
This…IS…hell, bitch, and I’m the
devil!” Then he smiled wider.

“
You ain’t shit! You’re just a
sick fuck!” she snarled back at him. “And when everybody finds out
what you did, you’ll be a DEAD sick fuck!”

“Like I said, this is just for
fun. I was hoping for a little something more, but I can see you’re
really not all that into me. Give your little lady friend a kiss
from me,” he told her as he pulled a gun from his
waistband.