When the Dead (12 page)

Only one
knock and Vaughn stood in his open doorway, smelling like half of a stolen
bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey. Isobel could tell that they’d interrupted a
personal male moment because a porn DVD flickered on the television in the
living room behind him and his pants were unzipped.

“Should we come back later Tom?” Isobel asked as politely as she possibly
could. He was mean when he was sober; she wasn’t about to tick off the drunk
and blue-balled Tom that was
barely
standing in front of her.

“Nah! Now’s perfect, come in!” He made a big, sweeping motion with his
arm to gesture Ben and Isobel inside 306. She walked in, and after a nervous
glance down the hall in the other direction, Ben followed her.

Vaughn stumbled to the living room and began knocking stolen goods onto
the floor to clear the couch off for his visitors. He didn’t apologize for the
mess, turn off the smut or zip up his pants. But, like a good host, he offered them
each a beer. Ben tried to get straight to the topic of the visit but Tom didn’t
want to talk business just yet.

“The skies have been clear lately; been kind of nice to see the blue,”
Vaughn said with a hint of melancholy in his voice as he looked toward his sliding
glass door and beyond. The self-professed loner was lonely so Isobel and Ben
stayed for a while. They talked about random things - Mt. Rainier, the proper
way to clean a rifle, how many women they’d been with, which for Isobel was
none. Ben and Isobel relaxed when they finally saw some humanity in Vaughn.

The slider was open to the porch. It felt strange to Ben sitting around,
surrounded by guns and drinking beer; getting drunk while dead people walked
around on the street below.

“Relaxation and safety like this will be hard to come by, as we get
deeper in this disaster,” Isobel said, feeling the lightness of sobriety leave
her. Three beers later, the sun replaced by the moon, their faces lit only by
the same flickering porn, which must have been set to loop, they finally
started to talk about the next day.

“We need your help again, Tom. Molly has an eating disorder and she ate all
of our food.” Isobel said drunkenly.

“Not all of it,
a lot
of it.” Ben corrected her.

Isobel ignored him and continued. “We were thinking about going out
tomorrow, with your help, to look for more. As a punishment, Molly has to go,”
Isobel continued.

“So just me and her, eh? The fat bitch was a hassle but I wouldn’t mind
spending some alone time with Molly. I’m in.”

“No. No, Ben is going too. We need more than what two people could bring
back.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

Ben spoke up, wanting to assert his usefulness. “I’m pretty good with my
handgun.”

“That’s good I guess,” Vaughn smiled, “We should go around noon. The dead
aren’t very active midday. Not sure why but that’s what I’ve noticed; shouldn’t
have to get too violent.”

“Where’re you going to get the food from?” Isobel asked. She remembered
how messed up the grocery store had been before things had gotten really bad.
It was probably destroyed now.

Tom’s answer was frightening. “I’ve been out there every day since this
has started, traveling as many as twenty blocks in any direction. I haven’t
once seen anyone else alive. We can raid the houses.”

“There has to be someone out there. We can’t be the only survivors.
That’s impossible.” Ben walked unsteadily to the dark windows of the apartment.
He scanned back and forth, his eyes searching for hints of light that could
mean life beyond the walls of Willow Brook. He found none.

“A lot of impossible sure is happening these days. From what I can tell,
no one is home, anywhere.” Vaughn said grimly.

After
Ben ate a small breakfast of oatmeal and a juice box, he went to Molly’s
apartment so they could walk upstairs together.

            “You
look worried, Molly. You ok?” Ben patted her back lightly. She turned and
scowled at him.

            “You
aren’t? We’re about to entrust our lives to a disgusting man who thinks more
with the southern region of his body than the northern, probably drank whiskey
for breakfast and is waiting for any excuse to pull a trigger,” Molly spoke
quickly and took in a deep breath when she was finished.

            “I
can see you’ve really slept on it.”

            “I
didn’t get any sleep,” Molly said wearily.

            “It’s
a figure of speech,” Ben explained.

            “I
know!” Molly said, exasperated. Ben decided it would be best to stop talking to
her for the moment. He could see the dark circles under her eyes and the
exhaustion in them.

            Vaughn’s
door was propped open and he was wide awake, running around his apartment
getting ready. It looked like a war room.

“You should take this machete. It will compliment your handgun well and
save your life in a pinch if one of them gets too close,” Vaughn said to Ben as
he divvied up some weapons between the three of them.

            “Molly,
you can have this wooden bat.” She accepted the sports implement from him but
begrudgingly.
Why can’t I have a gun?
She wondered but didn’t ask.

            “I
will take this assault rifle.” Vaughn held it up for them to admire, a grin
spread across his bristly face.

“Come here.” He waved them over to his low coffee table; on it were worn
satellite image printouts lay side by side creating a birds-eye-view of twenty
of the blocks that were south of Willow Brook. Ben and Molly examined the map.
It had marks all over it but no key with which they could decipher them.

“We’ll go this way.” Vaughn said as he took a black marker and drew a
line to mark their path. Molly counted the cross streets, the neighborhoods,
the houses that he passed and speculated in her head how many potential zombies
that represented. She guessed hundreds but feared thousands, remembering to
account for “visitors” from out of the area. Molly shook herself out of the
obsessive mathematical daydream she’d fallen into to see that Vaughn’s marker
line had ended at a cul-de-sac of fifteen tightly-packed houses some ten blocks
south of their current location.

“That far huh?” Ben was surveying the map with more general interest and
less terror-fueled math than Molly. He nodded his head as if to say that he
agreed with the route and accepted the challenge of it.

“Don’t want to attract a crowd of zombies next door now do we? If they
gather around us here, we have several blocks to lose them.”

Vaughn circled seven houses.

“These are empty and haven’t been overly looted yet.” He drew a large “X”
on four of the remaining houses.

“We won’t be going into these ones unless absolutely necessary.”

“Why not?” Molly asked, not sure if she actually wanted the answer.

“The air is bad. Decomposing bodies can be a real health hazard.”

Molly felt chills crawl her body. “Yuck,” was all she could muster in
response.

He left the remaining four houses unmarked. “I haven’t scouted these ones
yet. Who knows what’s in them. We can find out today if you want, assuming we
don’t draw too much attention from the zombies in the area.”

“How are we going to carry the food?” Molly asked.

            “We’ll
all be wearing backpacks and they are going to be heavy so get ready for that.”
Vaughn pointed to three large bags that looked more like oversized duffle bags
with straps than backpacks.

            “Like
hiking!” Ben said cheerfully. He’d once been a prolific hiker of the Cascade
Mountains, something he missed about the dying world, the ability to escape for
a weekend.

            “Only,
minus mountain streams and plus zombies,” Molly said dryly, quickly killing any
happiness and enthusiasm Ben had for the comparison. “Besides, that won’t be
enough food.”

            “I’ve
got some collapsible, stacking storage bins and a handcart to roll them back
on. It will slow us down but it’s our only choice. Vehicles make too much noise.”

            They
kneeled around the map a few minutes longer, each preparing in their own way
for the journey that lay ahead.

            “Well
I’m ready,” Ben said standing up.

            Molly
followed his ascent from the floor and then bent down to check that her running
shoes were tightly tied. “I’m ready too.”

            “Quick!
To the fire escape!” Vaughn exclaimed as though the building was on fire. He
laughed but neither Ben nor Molly thought that there was anything funny about
it.

Ben was actually
quite nervous about going outside but he tried his best to hide it because he knew
that Molly was much worse off. She was shaking as they climbed down the fire
escape. The ground at the bottom was clear of any undead because everyone who
stayed behind was making as much noise as humanly possible on the opposite site
of the building to draw them away from the scavenging team.

Vaughn led with determination and confidence. Molly, who was in between
Vaughn and Ben, could see zombies in the distance; little moving shapes littering
the landscape but much too far away to notice her. That didn’t keep her from clutching
the baseball bat so tightly in her hands that Ben could see the white of her
knuckles. He followed behind her, his handgun loosely in his right hand. The
machete, wrapped in its army green sheath, hung from his belt and gently hit
his leg as he walked.

            “Just
keep low, be quick, and stay quiet!” Vaughn said in what Molly considered a
loud voice. He had the handcart and the plastic bins folded and strapped to his
back, under his backpack, but he still managed to stay low and move quickly.
Two
out of three,
Molly thought.

            They
used abandoned cars and the thick trunks of trees to conceal themselves. Molly
knew it was the best strategy but she couldn’t help but feel it also helped the
zombies to sneak up on them and trap them.

“Get down!” Vaughn whispered as he threw an arm behind him to motion the
demand. They’d only made it two blocks from Willow Brook before being spotted
by a group of the undead that were hanging around a bus stop.

There were three of the ghouls. “One for each of us,” Ben said as he
holstered his handgun and withdrew the machete from its guard.

They lumbered forward, toward the gathering party. Molly was staring at one
of the two women in the group who was missing both of her arms. The left arm
stopped near the elbow. The right arm was ripped completely out of the socket
at the shoulder. “How did that happen to you?” Molly asked as though she was
addressing the dead woman directly.

Vaughn had moved away from Ben and Molly, sticking close to the front end
of a parked sedan, waiting for the right moment to attack.

The second woman’s face had been eaten away. Molly could see bite marks
elsewhere on her body but no other major injuries. This woman scared Molly more
than the armless one because she was making chewing motions with her mouth and
opening and closing her hands into fists.

“I think that one likes you, Molly. Molly?” Ben had lost sight of her. He
found her on the ground on the curb side of the same sedan Vaughn was using for
cover. Her legs had given out and she was too terrified to look anymore.

“It’s alright Molly. Vaughn will take care of them.”

And Vaughn did. He went for the third zombie, the man, first. Using the
butt end of his rifle he destroyed the man’s skull. He did the same to the
ladies, never turning the opposite end of his gun toward them. Panting, he
returned to the curb and took a short rest near some bushes. Molly looked beyond
him and into the front of a brick building that had been a dentist’s office
before the fall. The full glass front door was gone, broken into thousands of
pieces. Bloody hand prints, smeared and obscured, were a terrific contrast to
the smooth laminated white of the front desk. She looked away.

            “I
want to go back,” she said through stifled tears.

            “They
won’t let you back in without food.” Ben reasoned.

            “They
don’t know what it’s like out here!” she yelled. “You have blood on you,
Vaughn!” Her eyes travelled all over his body searching for more.

            “Keep
your voice down!” Vaughn yelled back at her as he wiped some blood from his
arm. “It’s a tad bit hard to beat three zombies to re-death and come out clean.
Besides, the blood can’t infect you unless it gets inside through a wound or
down your throat. So don’t get hurt, watch what gets in your eyes, and fight
with your mouth closed.”

Molly’s face grew paler but she had no choice except to stand up and move
on. They made it eight more blocks without event, save for Molly finally
vomiting on the sidewalk. Watching Vaughn beat the trio of zombies to what he had
called “re-death” had caught up with her system. She was disgusted.

“Feels good to vomit for the right reason, huh Molly?” Vaughn said
without looking back at her.

            Ben,
who had stopped to hold back her hair, fumed at his remark. “Vaughn, that was
fucking uncalled for. Give her a break.”

Vaughn shrugged his shoulders. “I was just saying.”

“Don’t say anymore about it. Let’s get this over with and get back home
where it’s safe.”

            “Thanks
Ben,” Molly said once she’d spit the last bits from her mouth and taken a swig
of water.

            “It’s
like he gets paid to be an asshole. I don’t get it,” Ben cracked, trying to
make Molly smile a little. They both laughed and caught up to Vaughn who had
continued on without them.

Arriving at the entrance to the cul-de-sac they stood hidden from view behind
a large sign, on it the name of the abandoned neighborhood, Alpine Fields. They
reviewed the map printout.

“Alright, here is where this gets interesting. I’ve given the houses nicknames
so we can quickly identify them if we need to make decisions on the fly.”
Vaughn paused. He looked as though he was waiting for applause or
congratulations for his great idea. None was offered.

“Well, let’s hear them,” Molly urged him to finish the meeting. She
couldn’t help but feel that her feet, and the feet of her companions, were
visible between the posts of the sign.

            “The
names will make more sense when we get in there. They are Pink Horse, Gnome
City, Dead Lawn, The Boat House, FedEx, The Forest and Cupola.” He pointed to
the rooftops of each house on the satellite map as he called its name.

            “Those
names are very creative, Vaughn. Now can we go? I feel like a sitting duck
here.” Molly knew that starting with flattery and following with reason would
go much further with Vaughn than almost any other conversational formula other
than an offer of sex.

            “Sure
thing. Pink Horse is first.”

He skipped playfully into the cul-de-sac and Ben and Molly followed with
much less zest.