Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel (11 page)

Emma laughs, “You’re silly,
grandpa.”

“It’s not silly, he really is a
fine shot,” he says with a wink. “Who do you think taught me?”

Emma’s eyes go wide. “Really?”
she asks.

He shakes his head with a grin.
“No, not really,” he admits.

She purses her lips. “You
are
too
silly.”

It hurts his heart to think that
he won’t be around when Emma is old enough to be on her own. If he closes his
eyes and imagines, he can see her as a young woman, fending for herself. He
hopes that her dream was prophesy. He prays every night that she will be able
to take care of herself when he’s gone. With everything he has, he prays the
night away until exhaustion finally forces him to sleep.

After breakfast, Jacob quietly toils
away, packing up the cart in the back yard. He fits in the extra clothes and
the first aid kit along with a crate of mason jars filled with vegetables he
canned from the garden. Before they’re ready to leave, he checks his service
pistol and re-secures the clip after he’s made sure it is loaded. He oils the
silencer and returns it to the barrel with a few, quick twists. If he had known
that he would be using it so many years after the war, he would have taken
better care of it, but the
Colt
is still responsive and as accurate as
it had always been and he’s glad he smuggled it back to the States when he was
discharged.

He places the pistol in the
holster under his arm and puts his jacket on to keep the cool ocean breeze off
his back. He stares at the girl as she fidgets with her rifle, securing the
potato on the end like he had taught her. It was one of the few tricks he
remembered from when he was a boy. With a few holes drilled into the side, the
vegetable could be placed at the end of a gun and would quiet the report when
it was shot. He used the trick when he hunted squirrels in his youth as to not
scare away any others that were within ear shot. It worked well enough and kept
the dead from becoming frenzied over the sound of gunshots.

He tucks a few bottles into the
cart. They’re half full of yellowed liquid and have a long strip of cloth
hanging from their openings. Finally, he checks for the lighter in his pocket
and is happy when he feels the protrusion.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

Emma peers up through the scarf
that is secured over her face, making her look more like a Middle Eastern
refugee than a child about to walk amongst the dead. “Yes,” she replies through
the perfume that saturates it, effectively keeping the smell of rot from
outside away.

“Okay, now,” he begins, “do you
remember what I told you?”

“Don’t shoot unless they are
getting too close,” she replies.

“And?” he asks with raised brow.

She thinks for a moment. “And
always watch our back,” she states firmly.

“Good,” he says with a quick nod
and a sly grin. “We’ll move slow and quiet so as not to draw their attention.
It is tempting to run, but you have to stay calm, we don’t want to attract any
more attention than we have to.”

Emma nods and tightens the scarf
around her face and well out of her eyes. “Got it,” she says through the fabric
that muffles her voice.

At the side gate, Jacob peers
through the crack between the fastener and watches the dead shambling along the
beach. The walkway in front of the house is clear and he nods to Emma to take
the lead. The child raises her rifle and places it on her shoulder as she
fidgets with the lock on the gate. She looks back at her grandfather and waits
for his signal.

Jacob nods again and the child
swings the gate wide and lets her grandfather pass through as she steps to the
side. She pulls the cord above the gate as she closes it and fastens it to a
nail for when they need to get back in.

The well oiled wheels of the
cart are soundless as they take to the sidewalk that leads toward the pier.
Like the reduced image of a soldier, Emma keeps watch, leveling her rifle and
peering down the barrel at the sight, keeping the dead within her gaze. 

“2 o’clock,” Jacob says.

The girl imagines a clock and
swings the rifle around in time to see corpse closing in on her right. Through
the side walkway of a nearby home, the ghoul staggers and snarls as it comes
closer. She corrects her sight through the brown peal at the end of the weapon,
exhales and pulls the trigger. A tiny black dot appears on the creature’s
forehead and its knees buckle before it falls face first to the ground. She
releases the shell with a few quick flicks of her wrist, clicking the bolt
action and loads another round in its wake.

She lifts the rifle and points
it toward the sky as she turns around and checks the path behind her
grandfather. He pushes the cart like a wheelbarrow and follows the child
closely as he scans their surroundings.

The dead remain bereft of the
pair as they make their way along the beachfront, too engrossed with their own movements
and shambling steps to take notice.

“Watch the blind approach,”
Jacob says as they near the walkway to the pier.

Emma sidesteps to her right as
she aims the rifle once more and gives the approach a wide berth. She taps the
trigger and releases the shell as a corpse falls dead at her feet. In the quiet
morning, she can almost hear the bullet ricochet inside the creature’s skull as
she loads another round.

“Not much farther now,” Jacob
says. “Make sure you mind the gate.”

Emma scurries to the fence that
sanctions off the dock from the boathouse and pulls the clasp upward once the
pin is removed. She swings the gate wide to allow her grandfather enough room
to move through and clasps it shut behind her.

“We’re getting pretty good at
this,” the old man comments, pushing the cart along as it bounces over the
sections of deck. He sets the cart down and lifts a section of ramp from the
dock and pushes it into place over the gap of water between the boat and the deck.
“Give me a hand with this,” he adds.

The child comes to his side and
helps him push the cart aboard. They quickly unload the supplies into the lower
cabin of the boat beyond the single mast that stands triumphant over the deck.
A battered flag whips in ripped sections high above, glancing off the pole in
the wind that blows cool from the ocean.

 “All right,” he says, “now all
we have to do is make it back home.”

·9

Each day fades into the next as
April stares through the window, out into oblivion. It has been weeks since
they have seen another living soul.

In a rush, a car plows into the
horde of bodies out in front of the apartment building in the early morning
hours. The blurry outline of a man graces the driver’s seat. His eyes focus through
as he stares, unabashed at the straggling bodies. It is as if he were unaware
of the tires beginning to slip on blood slick streets. Within seconds, he is
pulled from the car through broken windows.  He yelps through frenzied laughter
as the dead begin to devour him, rip him into pieces and fight over the scraps.

Johnny lowers his head at the
scene. It is as if he were in silent prayer as he walks away from the window
when the last screams of the victims are heard.

“We have to do a running count
of our supplies,” he says offhandedly.

“But, Johnny…” April begins to
protest.

“But what?!” he shouts.

“What about the…” she stutters
as she points through the window.

“What about them?” he snaps at
her. “They’re fucking dead. Just like every other goddamn thing out there,
they’re fucking dead,” he says as he turns away to the kitchen.

“But, Johnny, the car,” she
tries to reason with him.

“Are you fucking stupid?” he
asks. “And how are we going to get to it? I know, maybe we can wade through a
couple thousand corpses. I’m sure they’re polite, being as they’ve just ate.”

“Johnny,” she whispers.

He holds up his hands, “Fuck it!
Let’s just get a count of the food we have left.”

The tension in the air is thick
as Johnny slams the cans of food on the counter. He’s tired of wishing, tired
of hoping that the next helicopter that flies over will see the sign on the
side of the building, tired of praying to a God that refuses to answer. In the
pit of his stomach, he knows what’s going to happen. He’s all too aware of the
facts. When the food runs out, he’s going to starve to death with the woman he
loves. Maybe then the chopper will land on the roof and discover them
reanimated and finally put them out of their misery.

“Chopper,” he laughs under his
breath. “We haven’t seen one of those in over a week.”

April remains silent on one of
the recliners in the living room, staring at a blank television screen. She
imagines the power coming back on and the reporters updating that the dead are
beginning to fall like dead things are supposed to do. She imagines looking out
through the window and seeing the thousands of corpses heaped up into neat
piles as soldiers with flamethrowers go about incinerating the aftermath. She
smiles to herself when she thinks of this, letting the feeling surge over her,
allowing hope to grow, allowing herself a reprieve from the sorrow that has
taken her to the edge.

She thinks of all the things
that will happen now that the population has declined. They’ll need nurses and
firemen. They’ll need people to farm, and people to make fabrics to clothe the
survivors.

In a moment of dreamlike
clarity, she can see Johnny tilling the fields while she tends to the
livestock. Their home is neat and tidy, not a single empty food can is left out
to spoil. In fact, they no longer eat anything from cans. All of their food
comes from the farm. Every morsel is fresh and made by loving and attentive hands.

Their children are plump and
happy, out on the dirt road, waiting for the school bus. They have cheery faces
as they play, ripe red cheeks glow from smiling so much. Their little backpacks
hang from their shoulders and they laugh as they tease one another.

She sees them after they come
home from school, fussing because they have to do chores. They have to help
their father fertilize the fields and pick the crops and turn down the hay.
They have to work until the sun begins to fade away into night and then they
can sit by the fire and tell stories of how the world went crazy one day and
the dead began to rise and feast upon the living.

“But what happened to all the
bodies, Mommy?” Johnny Jr. asks.

“That’s what we use to fertilize
the fields,” she replies.

As winter descends, Johnny
scavenges the last of the food from the other apartments in the building. Water
is getting harder to come by and he has set up a few containers on the fire
escape to gather rain from the gutters. In the fire pit on the roof, he boils
and filters it through charcoal strainers until it is drinkable.

He can’t bring himself to tell
April that they only have a few weeks worth of food left if they ration
themselves down to one meal a day. She has already shown signs of
malnourishment and he doesn’t think she’ll be able to handle cutting down her
food any more than she already has.

Slowly, he lifts his t-shirt up
and pulls it over his ribs. The muscle is all but gone now and he can see
nothing more than a concave where his stomach used to be.

He scratches the thick growth of
beard on his face. “It won’t be much longer now,” he says as he peers out at
the bodies that stretch out as far as he can see through the streets and the
train yard in the back.

Closer to the edge of the roof,
he stares down at the yellow grass, untended and withered like the dead at the
other side of the fence. He smiles to himself when he thinks about jumping and
wonders if a three story fall would be enough to kill him. He often ponders
this as the reality of starving to death slowly eats away at him. Sadly, he
knows it will be April who dies first and he can’t imagine having to kill her
when she comes back. The thought is torture. It eats away at his mind with
sickening efficiency.

He turns and walks to the other
side of the roof. He places the tips of his toes on the edge and looks down at
the sidewalk that connects the front of the building to the small, untended
yard in back. He inches a little closer, letting his heels rest as he sways
with his eyes closed.

“What are you doing?” April
asks.

He turns slowly, “Just looking
at the edge of the world.”

“Well get away from there before
you fall.” She frowns.

He steps off the edge and back
down onto the gravel roof. “You’re probably right,” he replies.

“Hey, what’s that over there?”
April asks, pointing past the next building over at a fence line, barely
visible from the rooftop.

“I think it’s the storm drain
that feeds into the ocean,” he answers.