When the Dead (25 page)

Hayden
hadn’t watched as Charlie was rescued or killed. She had heard the gunshot and
waited to come downstairs, Vaughn in tow, to find out what had happened. It was
an hour, maybe more, after she’d heard the gun when she stepped into the second
floor common area. No one was in the living room and it looked quite different
than it ever had to her.

            “There’s
more furniture on the barricade,” Vaughn noticed as he touched the couches, one
after the other, shaking them to test their stability. “Do you think something
tried to get through?”

            “Something
did.” Hayden pointed at the person-shaped blanket against the common room wall
and the bloodstain above it. She could tell by its small size that it was a
child and it brought her to tears.

            “Why
are you crying, you don’t even know who it was!” Vaughn said. He approached the
blanket and kicked it roughly to make sure whoever it used to be was dead.
Satisfied with its deadness when it didn’t move in response, Vaughn gripped a
corner of the blanket and pulled it off.

“Whoa.”

            There
was little left of the child’s head. Hayden, unable to stomach the sight, ran
back upstairs leaving Vaughn with the body.

            “It
was a little kid zombie,” Vaughn said to himself. “Tough little motherfuckers,
those ones.”

            He
went to Isobel’s and knocked. She answered the door soon after. Her face was
weary.

            “So,
were you going to do something with the half child out there under the
blanket?”

“Yeah, we were getting to it. We needed some time to . . . decompress.”

            “Well
while you are decompressing, that thing is out there
decomposing
. Time
to get rid of it. Put your big girl pants back on and help me.”

Isobel groaned and asked Ben to grab a sheet, some rubber gloves, spray
cleaner and a few hand towels. When they got to the common room, Isobel
remembered there was another body in the stairwell debris.

“We have to pull one out of the furniture there.” She said pointing
through the stacked couches. “Quietly though; the hallway downstairs is still
probably full of them.”

“Can we put them in the same sheet?” Ben asked, hoping he wouldn’t have
to go find another one.

“I don’t think they’ll mind.” Vaughn laughed.

By candlelight they gathered the bits of the boy into the linen. Isobel
scrubbed the wall and carpet as best she could. Ben and Vaughn removed the
couches and a few pieces of small furniture to uncover the other body. It took
five sharp tugs to pull the large male out of the barricade. His body, not so
recently turned, was covered in oozing pustules. As they pulled him onto the
sheet, Isobel set to work cleaning the snail’s trail of pus he’d left behind.
The smell of him was enough to drive Vaughn to vomit. He barfed on the body so
they wouldn’t have to clean up more dirty carpet.

“Let’s wrap this up!” he said as he wiped his chin with the top of his
forearm, laughing at the double meaning. He grabbed a side of the sheet and
folded it over the bodies. Ben took the other side and placed it over the top
of that.

“These windows don’t open,” Isobel said. “I didn’t notice that until now.
I guess we’ll have to toss them from my balcony.”

Ben and Vaughn did just that while Isobel decided on the best way to
sanitize her body. She was paranoid that the pus of the man had gotten on her,
into her. She pulled off her shoes, socks, shirt and pants, leaving only her
bra and panties on and she walked to the balcony. Ben and Vaughn stared at her
as she threw her clothes off the edge and walked back inside.

“She should do dirty work more often,” Vaughn said.

Normally Ben would have been disgusted but he had seen her beautiful body
as well.

“Yep,” he agreed.

Three
hours after the event, Gabe had fallen asleep from emotional exhaustion. He’d
cried in his room for at least two of those hours before passing out. Rob sat
in their living room in the dark, listening to his son the entire time, doing
nothing but cry along with him. He was sick of feeling helpless, sick of
watching his son’s rationality slip further away every day, still reeling from
the thought that his son had nearly become one of
them
. He couldn’t
think about Gabe anymore at that moment. He had to think of his own sanity, his
own happiness. He left his apartment to find Molly.

Moira’s
hands were shaking as she held the weightless pill bottle in them. She had been
taking medication for a heart condition for the last five years and it had kept
her alive. She counted her pharmacist as a close friend and that friend had
refilled her prescription just before the infection hit Northgate. It was only
twenty or so pills and she had to take them twice a day. To make them last,
she’d been taking doses of half a pill. After dinner, as she readied herself
for bed, she opened the bottle and stared down at a lone half of a blue pill;
all that was left and no way to get more, no way to even know if the pharmacist
was still alive herself. Even if the pill monger lived, she would be
unreachable as the pharmacy was across town some thirty blocks through heavily
infected areas.

On the half doses she was able to stay active for the most part. Her
appetite was sometimes weak but her humor was always at its peak. The forced
rationing was slowly doing its damage inside her body; damage that no one could
see. The doctor had warned her that her heart could stop at any time without
the medication. Looking back, she should have asked for more pills or at least
broken them into smaller pieces but, she hadn’t thought the world would be
broken into so many tiny pieces of its own. She took the half dose with a swig
of water.
Edward can’t find out about this
, she thought. He’d march
outside and down the street to get more pills to keep his wife breathing, her
heart beating; risking his own life in the process.

Moira climbed into bed and turned to her husband of over fifty years. “I
love you Edward,” she said one last time before turning off the lamp on her
bedside table but, her husband was already asleep.

Markus lay awake. He was unable to stop thinking about the
barricade. He’d watched as a corpse clawed its way toward him.
It has to be
better somewhere else.
He thought to himself. He didn’t feel safe at Willow
Brook anymore and Jeff was starting to get on his nerves. He had become clingy
and the feeling was tenfold since they couldn’t leave the building. He rolled
over and looked at Jeff in the dark. The moon was large outside so he could
just make out his face and his furrowed brow.
What is he dreaming about?
Markus wondered as he reached out and gently rubbed Jeff’s forehead until it
relaxed.

Molly, contrary to what Rob was expecting, was not happy to
see him.

            “Do you know how many times I’ve needed someone
and you weren’t there for me? And now this one traumatic experience has you
running to my door?”

            “Molly, I just need some sanity. Can we please
forget about everything that is going on right now? We both need to relax.”

            Molly knew she would give in to him eventually.
She felt love for him even if she wasn’t
in
love. “Where’s your son?” she
asked.

            “Asleep. He’ll be out until morning. Can I
please
come in?” Rob begged her.

            “You’re here for sex?” Molly asked directly.

            “Yes,” Rob said so quietly it was barely
audible.

            Molly smiled. She’d been waiting to be with him
for a long time and he looked cute in a messy-haired, broken down kind of way.
She walked into the apartment, allowing him to follow her.

            “I’m assuming Hayden’s not here,” Rob asked as
he started towards Molly’s bedroom.

            “She’s with Vaughn. She’s always with Vaughn,”
Molly said, pulling her shirt off.

Ben and
Isobel too were having trouble finding sleep. It seemed the whole of Willow
Brook, save for Edward and Gabe, was awake with thoughts of sex, death, love
and leaving. Isobel had put on clean clothes and she sat cuddled in a heavy
comforter in a chair in her living room, talking with Ben by candlelight.

            “You
look tired,” Ben said to her.

            “I
am, believe me. But I’m scared about what I’ll see in my dreams so I’m staying
awake. You can go to sleep if you want. I’ll be quiet.” She reached out for the
candle on the coffee table, ready to blow it out.

            “No,
leave it lit. Let’s talk for a while longer. Tell me, were you seeing anyone?” he
asked her. “Before this?”

“I was seeing a guy but we only talked once every couple of weeks. I
don’t think he would have tried to call me when things started happening. He
has a cabin up in the Cascades. He’s probably there now; sitting by a fire,
listening to owls and watching the stars come out. Not a care in his mind.”

            “Is
the cabin hard to get to?” Ben asked with genuine interest.

            “I
don’t know. He’d only ever
told
me about it. I never got a chance to
go.”

            “Damn,”
Ben said and smacked his knee with an open palm.

            “We
aren’t going anywhere if that’s what you were getting at.” She shook her head.
“In the movies, anytime the survivors try to travel, people die. Look at me, I
sprained my ankle and I only went to the mall and back. We’d die before making
it out of the city.”

            “People
are dying anyway!” Ben exclaimed as he gestured toward a wall of Isobel’s
apartment, toward the common area where Charlie had been put down by Ben’s own
gun, his own hands.

            “No
one else is going to die,” Isobel said in a much calmer voice than him, trying
to convince herself as the words came out.

            “That
promise sounds suspiciously like a prayer,” Ben said.

Moira lay
there, thinking how happy she was to have lived a full life with the man next
to her. They had raised three children and been through both tough and
wonderful times alike. She prayed in the dark for one more day of life with
him. But, at three in the morning, her body could no longer support itself. Her
heart stopped as her doctor had promised and she died in her sleep. Most people
would say that it’s the best way to go. But, as the dead were doing these days
she didn’t stay gone.

“Wha- What are you doing?” Edward awoke startled by the cold touch of his
wife. It wasn’t like her to be so physical, especially late in the night.
Something felt wrong to him; different in an unsettling way. Moira was being
very rough and she was scrambling closer to him underneath the blankets. He
reached for the chain of his bedside lamp and gave it a quick tug. The sudden brightness
stole his vision for a moment and when it returned he was staring into the
undead eyes and biting mouth of Moira. She had somehow died and come back
without humor but with an appetite more voracious than ever.

“Oh, Moira. Not you, not us,” he sobbed. She had climbed on top of him,
something she wouldn’t have asked her body to do in life at her age. He tried
to hold her at a distance but his elderly arms lacked the strength to continue,
especially when they didn’t have the support of his own heart. He had said he’d
fight for his life. He just didn’t imagine he’d have to fight Moira for it. He
wasn’t afraid to die. He was almost happy that it would be her that would end
his life. She was moving in closer toward his neck, toward anything that she
could consume.

He closed his eyes, prayed for the safety of their friends beyond the
apartment walls, released his grip on her body and focused on the light scent
of her perfume. It was the same perfume she was wearing on the day they first
met.

Hayden left Tom’s apartment after another sleepless,
sex-filled night. It was still too early in the pregnancy for any of the
noticeable body changes that would eventually expose her secret but she knew
she’d have to tell him soon. She almost had, as they lay in bed the night
before. Tom was always kind and gentle after he’d been satisfied but still she
couldn’t find the courage.

            She tried the doorknob of the Cooper’s old
apartment and found it still unlocked from her time with Ben. Closing the door
quietly and locking it behind her she exhaled and started looking for the boxes
of baby stuff.

            “I hope it’s a girl,” she said as she felt the
softness of the pink bedding of the crib in the nursery. Feeling suddenly
energized she began to organize the room, readying it for her and her child.
She found a box of baby clothes and took each item out individually, folding
onesies and infant shirts and placing them neatly into the shallow drawers in
the dresser next to the changing table.

            “I
think everything is going to be ok, little baby,” she said to her belly. “Tom
will take care of us.”

Rob had
made it back to his own apartment just as Gabe was waking up. His son looked
terrible and just as sad as when he’d put him to bed.

“Hey champ. Are you ready for breakfast? I heard Moira say the other day
that she’d have hot chocolate for you,” he said, trying to start the morning
off pleasantly.

            “Will
she have enough for Charlie?” Gabe asked with a small bit of hope in his eyes.

            Rob
sighed. Had his son been so traumatized that he’d become delusional overnight?
“Charlie’s gone, remember?” he reminded him.

            “He
can’t be gone!” Gabe yelled. “He was the only friend I had! You stupid grownups
killed him.” Gabe picked up a wooden train he’d left on the floor and threw it
at his father.

            The
train hit Rob in the face. Rage grew in him and he ran at the boy, grabbing his
shoulders and shaking him.

            “I’m
doing the best I can! The best I can!” he yelled.

            “Do
better!” Gabe yelled back with defiance.

            Rob
raised his hand open-palmed and slapped Gabe hard on his cheek.

            “Don’t
ever talk to me like that again,” Rob said through gritted teeth as anger
rippled through his body. “Now get dressed and ready to eat.”

Gabe broke into tears as his skin grew red from the impact.