Stay Dead: A Novel (4 page)

CHAPTER 3: The New Haven blues

Days earlier…

The radio was playing loudly on Jeff’s porch.
He and his father, Walter, were carrying planks of wood back and
forth from the shed to the house. Walter and his family decided
that they weren’t going to leave town. They would board up his
son’s home, and hold out until this thing blew over. The radio,
WNJOA 101.9 to be exact, kept telling them to get to a safe zone,
but they were not about to take orders from anyone.

Most of the people in New Haven took off days
ago in a hurry after the initial reports hit the air. A few other
families in town were going to stick it out as well. Gupp’s
Hardware had stayed open days after any other store had dared to.
They made a killing, selling everything except a few garden tools.
The Gupp’s planned to stay in town as well. Their home was like a
fortress to begin with and with Clark Gupp being a hunter as well
as an odd jobber, they had the tools, the weapons and the skills to
survive any situation. Even if they had to flee, they had a choice
between a brand new Hummer and an older Jeep Wrangler, both
well-suited for off-road terrain.

Walter pulled a bandana from his back pocket
and wiped his forehead. He couldn’t believe how much he was
sweating. Walter was always the last to sweat. He wondered if it
was old age setting in or his nerves, he hoped neither. Jeff took
off his hat, wiped his brow and put it back on. Then he looked at
his watch.

“The news should’ve come on by now,” Jeff
said to his father.

“Well, they’re still playing the Beatles, how
bad could it be?” His father said with a halfhearted smile.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Jeff said, picking up
a big sheet of plywood.

They had most of the house boarded up. The
upstairs windows were left alone except the two windows near the
big tree, neither Jeff, or his father wanted to risk having those
things climbing in. Jeff thought it would be a good idea to gather
all the alcohol upstairs in case they needed to make Molotovs, and
throw them from the upstairs windows. Walter agreed. He also
thought it was a good idea to come up with an escape plan should
they need to leave in a hurry. They had the family van stocked up
and ready to go near the side of the house. Inside the van Jeff
placed a map, water, food, clothes, and even a blanket.

Walter’s spouse, Laura had been in the
kitchen making lunch for everyone. She wanted to use up what food
she could without having it go to waste. The town lost power two
days ago and the freezer was as cold as tepid water. The food would
go bad soon without the electricity. There was also a big freezer
in the basement and it hadn’t been opened since the power went out.
They hoped to keep the food cold inside for as long as possible.
Laura hoped the power would be back on before they would have to
deal with that problem, which was tiny when compared to the problem
of the walking dead, but still one that warranted attention. It may
have been her son’s home, but that didn’t matter: his messes might
as well have been her messes. She hated messes and she hated waste;
she was just raised that way. And if she ever had anything negative
to say about the youth of today it was that they were just too darn
wasteful. Laura wouldn’t abide it, no matter whose home it was.

Jeff’s wife, Maria, had done major shopping
before the state of emergency was declared. Their family was a
large one. Jeff and Maria Caulfield had three children; Little
Wally, Sandra, and Tommy. Jeff also had a sister, Barbara, who was
staying with them as was his parents. She planned for the extra
company and got as much food as she could afford. The house was
large enough to accommodate them all, and larger than Walter’s. It
was also a bit more isolated. They had a radio with plenty of
batteries, and two old lanterns from when Walter would take them
camping. They had plenty of candles, and a fireplace, which they
planned to light soon. It was starting to get chilly, which was odd
for this time of year, and dark.

“Lunch is ready!” Laura yelled out the door,
not knowing they were only a few feet away.

“What took you so long ma? I’m starving,”
Jeff said sarcastically but meant every word.

“Has the news come on yet?” She asked,
looking downright depressed.

“Not yet. They’re still playing music though,
so I’m sure it’ll be on soon enough,” Walter tried to reassure her,
but wasn’t all too sure of it himself.

They gathered in the family room. It was a
large room with two couches, a coffee table, and a framed painting
of a shed in the woods that would’ve impressed Bob Ross himself.
There were plants on end tables, an entertainment center that
wasn’t entertaining anyone, and a boarded up window that allowed
almost no light inside.

Laura lit the fireplace.

***

What remained of the New Haven Police
department had gathered at Mourningside Cemetery. News reports
never stated anything about the buried dead coming back to life and
digging their way out, but they weren’t taking any chances. The
police gathered friends and pretty much anyone else with a gun to
survey the area. It wasn’t a large cemetery, but it was big enough.
It was the town’s only cemetery and if you weren’t catholic you
were buried somewhere else outside of town. They walked in rows,
following the rigid grid set forth by the headstones like a search
party. They checked for unearthed caskets, or any sign of something
trying to come up from the ground. They moved slowly, working their
way towards the mausoleums at the rear of the cemetery. There were
no recent deaths in town, the last one occurred a month ago;
underage kids in a drunk driving accident. They were leaving a
school football game and hit a pole doing 75 miles an hour. The car
was ripped in half and so were the four kids in the car. Three had
been buried toward the back, the fourth was a Jewish girl buried in
the town over. She and her boyfriend weren’t even drinking.
According to everyone who knew them they were a couple of
upstanding kids. A truer tragedy had never occurred, so whispered
the lips of those who knew of them. Those who really knew them,
though, knew they loved to walk around in a heroin haze and that
they sucked dick for China White–the good shit. After just over an
hour they had checked every inch of ground but the six mausoleums.
The large group gathered near the first one.

“Keith, Alan, and Henry, get up here, now,”
shouted Sheriff Bruce Davis.

Alan replied, “sure thing, boss man. But
you’re going in first.”

“That’s fine with me, you big pussy.
Everybody, listen up. If nothing’s moving we lock it up and get the
fuck out of here” Davis shouted.

At the edge of town near the North roadblock,
the sky grows dim. Fires burn in the distant city and smoke chokes
the light out of the day. There are only three police cruisers and
six officers at the North Roadblock. No one is permitted into town
without clearance from the Sheriff. There hasn’t been any noise on
the ham, and nothing worthwhile on the radio. A car drives up from
behind the roadblock: it’s Susan Kemp. Susan owns the corner deli
on Main Street, appropriately named Main Street Deli. She parked
off to the side of the road and got out, holding three thermoses
full of coffee.

Officer Dane Kelly walked over to her. They
had been together for the last few years. Both were divorced,
Dane’s was a messy one while Susan’s was mutual. Her husband became
very distant and as a result she looked at their relationship and
came to the conclusion that they should have never been married to
begin with. Susan met Dane, they made each other laugh and that was
that. They weren’t up each other’s asses, and both having gone
through one marriage had no intentions of suffering another. One
thing led to another and now she was bringing him coffee, it was a
love like so many others.

“Brought you and the boys some coffee. This
one’s French vanilla, the other two are regular. I brought some
powdered creamer and sugar. No milk though,” she said, her brownish
red hair blowing in the wind.

“You are awesome. The boys will love anything
at this point, but I’m taking the French vanilla for myself,” Dane
said as he put his hand on her hip.

“When are you getting off?” she asked. They
were staying at her place, and still trying to figure out what to
do. They talked about it every day and made no moves other than
standing still.

“As soon as I get relieved, Davis took almost
everybody up to the cemetery to inspect it. So once they get back
we’ll be breaking up into shifts.”

Susan and Dane walked over to the rest of the
guys who looked tired as hell. The scent of coffee gave their eyes
a tiny bright spot, as if a cup of coffee somehow meant that all
was not lost. They opened the thermoses and sipped slowly: this was
the highlight of the last few hours and they were not about to gulp
it down and be left with nothing.

As if they needed to be reminded that all was
not well, a stench rode in on the wind. It smelled like sulfur, or
sewer steam, it was faint, but in the air all the same. The scent
didn’t go away either: it hung over them, it clung to them. They
wondered where the stench came from.

The thought was answered as Dane, without
realizing, began spilling his coffee onto his shoes. His mouth was
agape, as was Susan’s. The chubby cop, Sal, jumped up and grabbed
his rifle. His eyes peered through the scope seeing what the rest
could only guess was slowly coming up the street. It was a grey,
decaying, mob of things that used to people. It was the walking
dead: the kind of dead that shouldn’t exist but did regardless, the
kind that stood upright, craving living flesh. And there they were,
making their way to New Haven.

Dane grabbed his talkie, “We’ve got more
coming! Requesting immediate backup!” His voice was thick with
panic.

“Sal, how many are there?” Asked Jones,
shotgun in hand.

“Don’t know, must be a hundred easy,” he
handed Jones the rifle. “Take a look for your self and let me know
I’m not loosing my mind.”

Jones reassured him. There were at least a
hundred dead things shambling toward town. They stayed close
together for the most part, with only a few smaller clusters off to
either side, and a few trailing behind. Jones could see that one of
the creatures was dragging its intestines on the ground, foot upon
foot of ropey innards, with not so much as a scowl. He nearly
vomited. The sheer number of them was surreal. They had encountered
the dead things a number of times, but never like this. This was an
army of the dead.

“Shoot at will! We’ll be there when we can!”
Sheriff Davis snapped, “Over.”

“Make it quick! Over and out,” Dane
replied.

Sal started picking them off one by one. They
were too far away for him to be accurate with their shots. The
wind, coupled with the distance the bullet would have to travel
made it tough for even a trained sniper to accurately hit his mark.
Dane rushed Susan to her car. He told her to get home, lock all the
doors and windows. Then he promised he’d be there just as soon as
he could. She reluctantly got into her car but drove off in a
hurry.

Dane and the rest of the men grabbed their
guns. Dane hopped into his cruiser and took off down the road to
get closer and no one objected. Sal thought it was a good idea and
did the same. They got close enough to make their shots count, and
began picking them off at a decent clip. But they still kept
coming. They knew they had fewer bullets than targets and if backup
didn’t show up before they ran out, they’d be fucked.

They held their position and kept firing.
Dane wasn’t nearly as good a shot with a rifle as Sal, so he opted
to grab his shotgun and drive in even closer. Sal was stunned to
see Dane do such a thing: he’d never been the type to pull cowboy
stunts, and Dane was far more cautious than that. He watched in awe
as Dane got dangerously close to the dead things, close enough to
blast three of them in the face with his shotgun.

As he headed off-road to loop around he
nailed one with the front end of his cruiser. The foul-smelling
creature was struck at an angle that dragged it below the
underbelly of the car, popping its head like a bottle under the
wheel. He did this a few more times, eventually thinning the heard
by seven. After Dane was finished with his unusual antics he headed
back to the roadblock and positioned his car where it had been
previously. Jones never left his spot and had only fired a few
shots. He was on the walkie-talkie with Davis. They were only
minutes away.

The creatures weren’t discouraged in the
slightest and continued to creep forward. It looked like they’d be
past the roadblock any minute. Sal was still up ahead and shooting,
but quickly got in his cruiser, as a few of the creatures began
hurrying toward him. Their dead muscles tearing with every step,
they got to the car just as Sal closed the door. He sped off and
managed to knock them to the ground with the tail of his
cruiser.

Jones squeezed off shot after shot with his
shaky hands and somehow, by the grace of God he thought, hit his
marks. But, with every walking corpse they put down, another came
into view. The officers stood their ground in front of the
roadblock, making as many shots count as possible. But the
creatures continued to close the distance. The stench of their
rotting bodies could make a garbage truck scream, or maggot-ridden
chunks of beef smell like perfume on a stripper’s tits. They were
close enough now to see the flesh being punctured by the spray of
bullets. The muzzle flashes highlighted their grayish blue skin,
illuminating the bullet-ridden flesh.

Dane wondered what had brought them to New
Haven. Was it the fall foliage or the spacious fields? Had they
devoured the rest of the county and come looking for more? Tires
screeched behind the roadblock, shaking Dane from his thoughts.