When the Dead (29 page)

“I’m not
interested in hearing apologies from any of you,” Molly started. “I wanted to
make that clear. I just want to feel ok at night knowing that we haven’t turned
a blind eye to murder.”

            “He
killed her in the heat of the moment,” Ben said. “He isn’t a dangerous person
to be locked up or let out.”

            “He
strangled her to
death
! Have you even considered how much hatred and
evil it takes to commit to that? It isn’t a quick process!” Molly cried out.
“Unlike a bullet, you have time to reconsider!”

            “Well,
no, I hadn’t thought about the time it took him to do it,” Ben said, slightly
more confused about his own position on the event.

            “So,
no one has any suggestions? Let me start. I say we kick him out of here,” Molly
said.

            “Are
you kidding? You’ve seen the guy. He wouldn’t have any chance out there. He’d
die!” Rob said, shaking his head in disagreement.

            “Exactly
the plan,” Molly said with a smile. “We certainly can’t kill him ourselves but
it is what he deserves for taking a life.”

            It
was then that Jeff emerged from his apartment. His fists were clenched and the
knuckles were scabbed and covered in dried blood. He looked like he might kill
again.

            “Hi
. . . Jeff. Care to join us?” Isobel asked slowly, carefully.

            “A
meeting,” Jeff said brightly, “how nice. I seemed to have misplaced my
invitation.”

            “It’s
been a rough few days. We just forgot to wake you up,” Ben said with a forced
smile.

            “Yeah,”
Hayden played along, “sorry about that.”

            “It’s
kind of unfair not being invited to my own trial, don’t you think? Kind of
unfair not to ask for my suggestions,” Jeff said, still standing at a distance
from the group.

            “It
isn’t like that, Jeff. We were going to talk to you,” Isobel said.

            “
WHEN?!
”
he roared and Isobel flinched from the shock of it.

“Finally, some fucking
drama
!” Vaughn clapped his hands together
with excitement as he walked down the stairs into the charged room wearing only
dirty jeans.

The anger this brought up in Isobel temporarily outweighed the fear she
felt from Jeff’s anger. “Where were
you
Vaughn, when we had to slaughter
The Cabels in the hallway? Or how about when we risked our lives to bring your
felony in from the cold? And where
the
fuck
were you when Ben had
to pull his gun on you at dinner two nights ago?” Isobel screamed at him. “I
had a door frame save my head from a machete for Christ’s sake!”

“That dinner thing was just a big misunderstanding,” Vaughn laughed as he
walked up to Jeff and threw an arm around him jovially.

“No Vaughn
THAT WAS DRAMA!
And the only one who doesn’t understand
a thing
is you,
”
Isobel ended her tirade and took a gulp of her
tea which had thankfully cooled significantly.

Jeff pushed Vaughn’s arm off of him and put about three feet between
them. “You want to punish me for killing my wife and yet you all stay quiet
while Vaughn and Ben fuck Hayden like bunny rabbits? Last time I checked it was
illegal to screw a minor.”

“Whoa there,” Vaughn broke in, “for the record there was
never
a
threesome. I don’t do men.”

It hurt Hayden a little that Vaughn didn’t care that she and Ben had been
together but it felt good to have it out in the open. They wouldn’t have to
sneak around anymore.

Isobel looked at Ben for his reaction to be outed in front of everyone.
Ben couldn’t raise his eyes.

Jeff wasn’t done with the finger pointing and he began again, his eyes
growing wilder as he spoke. “Molly and Ben are thieves. They’ve taken other
people’s belongings for themselves! There are no rules anymore. I did what I
had to do! You can hate me for it but you can’t kick me out!”

“I haven’t done anything wrong, Jeff,” Isobel pointed out.

“Whose shoes are those? Huh? And what about the books? I know you didn’t
swipe your visa for any of it. You’re a looter, a thief just like Molly and
Ben, Vaughn too. You are the worst, Tom,” he said, staring Vaughn down.

“We are
surviving
, Jeff,” Isobel explained. “We need shoes, we need
books to feel human and we kill to
stay
human.”

“I was traumatized by her. I had nothing of myself left. No life or
choice to speak of. I killed to stay human too. It was the only thing I had
left. How is it that no one sees that?” he cried.

“Our crimes are smaller than yours and I don’t feel safe with you here,
Jeff,” Molly said, ignoring his words.

“
I
make you feel unsafe?
ME?
Do I have to point out that
you are sitting next to someone with an alcohol problem, a penchant for hitting
women, and a gun collection larger than Sports Authority? How’s that nose of
yours?” Jeff asked, waiting to hear what he suspected to be true.

Molly hung her head. “Broken.”

“That’s right. Broken! Like our sense of right and wrong. I’m sick of
these double standards. I’ll be in
my
apartment, the one on
my
rental agreement. I’m not leaving and I’m not eating dinner with you
hypocritical fucks anymore!” Jeff yelled and then retreated back to his
apartment.

It was as though everyone had been holding their breath for when he was
gone they all exhaled. Ben wiped his sweaty palms on the sides of the chair he
sat in. Isobel tried to hug Molly, who was trembling, but she pushed her away
and went back to her own place.

Unfazed by Jeff’s speech and the overall mood in the room, Vaughn
laughed. “Meeting adjourned then!” he said and went back upstairs. In all
honesty he was underwhelmed by Jeff’s performance. He hadn’t demanded weapons
or keys and his eyes had started to tear up. Maybe he didn’t have it in him.
Such
a pussy,
Vaughn thought,
such a pussy.

Markus
was soaking wet, shivering and second guessing himself. His right hand ached
from gripping the baseball bat for hours. He had managed to get as far as the
burned out mall, though even that short journey had taken him all night and all
of his physical and emotional strength.
What was I thinking, leaving that
fortress to walk the streets with the dead?
He thought as he watched the
crowd of corpses gathering in the south parking lot. They not only disgusted him,
they truly terrified him.

            His
hideout was secure as far as he could tell. He had found a large tunnel running
underneath the mall, used by semi-trucks for delivering consumer goods for the
shops above. It was closed on either end with seven foot high chain link fences
(one of which he’d had to climb over). It wasn’t the best place to stop as it
was pitch dark within ten feet of the opening; anything could be hiding in it,
but he’d made the quick decision to take shelter there. Markus didn’t plan on
staying long and he made a point to stay as near the fence as he dared without
tempting the undead on the other side of it.

            He
sat on the floor of the tunnel. Runoff from the parking lot had seeped in and
wet the ground but it didn’t matter to him; he was already drenched. He pulled
the map from his backpack and carefully unfolded it. The map too was wet with
rainwater and its paper in danger of tearing. It was not the closest house he
was looking for but the easiest to get to from his current location.

            “There’s
no way that I’m heading toward Lake City,” he said as he studied the map.

“Anthony was always a jerk anyway. Or maybe
I
was the jerk? I
can’t recall,” Markus said aloud, his voice echoing into the darkest depths of
the tunnel at a much louder volume than he felt he spoke the words. He listened
a moment for any response from possible inhabitants but heard nothing but
droplets of water breaking on the surface of the puddles surrounding him.

            He
returned to the map to look for better possibilities. He had a friend in
Greenlake, actually
many
friends, but one that he’d met in college and
whose house was perched on a hill above the lake. The entire first floor of the
house was a garage and the only two entrances were up narrow stairs that he
felt certain could easily be blocked to keep the dead away. With a finger he
traced a route. It would require him to double back to the freeway and travel
along it for a few miles, leaving him exposed to the world.

            He
folded the map and stowed it in his backpack, pulled himself from the floor and
turned to climb back over the fence but more than thirty dead people waited for
him on the other side.

Jeff was also underwhelmed with his performance. He had
meant to make demands but when he was faced with so many people at the meeting
he’d lost the nerve to go big. He looked outside to the falling rain and
wondered about Markus. Was he staying dry? Had he made it any distance yet?
Would he survive to find a better place? Jeff made himself stop the painful
train of thought and focus on the next step on his journey. He had to gain the
upper hand to control his own fate again.

Rob had been right about the change in Gabe. His interest in
darker things had passed and he was returning to his smart and silly self. He
witnessed more evidence of this as Gabe pulled his Legos out once again,
creating an impassable, foot-injuring pile in the middle of the hallway of
their apartment.

            “Who’s this guy?” Rob asked as he sat down on
the carpet and chose a miniature figure with a red baseball cap on.

            “Just a regular guy. He sells bikes,” Gabe said,
pointing to a crude shop he’d built. Two plastic bicycles sat inside the
display window.

            “What about her?” Rob pointed to a lady figure
on the street.

            “That’s his mom and she’s bringing him lunch.”

            Rob smiled because he hadn’t heard the word
zombie
once. He
did
hear Gabe’s stomach growl and he knew he needed his own
lunch.

            “What do you say we eat something and if the
rain stops we haul your bike up to the roof and ride around?”

            “Yippee!” Gabe jumped to his feet.

            “But you have to pick up your toys first,
remember?”

            “Will you help?” Gabe asked pleadingly.

            “Absolutely, I will.”

“You can do it, Markus! You can either climb the fence or
walk into the dark, scary tunnel armed with nothing but a bat and a mini
flashlight.” Markus was having difficulty deciding which would be worse and any
pep talk he gave himself to bring him over the chain link was unsuccessful. He turned
back toward the darkness, shone the small beam of light into it and forced his
feet to move him forward under the mall.

            He had never spent much time at the mall before
the trouble started so he could not estimate its length with confidence but he
did know it was extremely long and that the tunnel would be equal to its length.
His journey was slow as he took the time to shine the flashlight on every inch
of both of the side walls, the floor and the high ceiling before pressing on to
the next section. He’d never seen rats in Northgate, maybe not even in Seattle,
but he knew they were there and he swore every time he heard the tiny feet
running across his path, somehow avoiding the beam of the flashlight. There
were many doors and shipping platforms, each identical to the next but for a
small label with the names of the individual stores printed on them. He
considered trying a few of the doors to see if they were unlocked but he didn’t
fancy climbing through a burned out landscape. He was wet but he was still
clean and he wanted that to last.

            A half hour passed and he could see the light of
the other end. He felt no elation at making it through the underground passage
because from where he stood he could easily see that a vehicle had driven
through the fence. It had not happened recently, he knew, because he couldn’t
hear an engine or voices and he smelled no exhaust. The crashed vehicle, a Jeep
of some kind, sat still and empty. A door was left open on the passenger side.
Half of its body jutted out into the light. The other half was eaten by the
darkness.

            “Hello?” Markus yelled. He could hear the
trepidation in his voice. “I’m not here to hurt you.” He added just in case
someone was hiding inside of it where he couldn’t see them.

            From the darkness a noise began to grow. It
started first as a whisper and then rose to become noisier than a mob. No words
were spoken, only moans emitted. He could feel a presence there in the dark,
coming closer to him. He knew it was them and that he would never reach the
light at the end.

Hayden felt lighter on her feet – even with the occasional
nausea from her pregnancy – because Vaughn knew that she’d shared a bed with
Ben and he seemed to be alright with the fact. She was back in the Cooper’s
apartment, her apartment now, and reading through a book that Jill Cooper had
purchased in expectation of her child called
What to Expect When You’re
Expecting
. It was a long book and some of the information scared her but
she knew that nine months would fly by. She needed the book, even the scary
parts, to prepare for motherhood.

Maybe he didn’t knock or maybe she
was too absorbed in her reading; suddenly Vaughn was in the living room with
her. He pulled the book from her hands, threw it across the room, grabbed her
and pulled her into the nursery which he mistook for the bedroom. As soon as he
saw the baby stuff, which turned him off, he pulled her back into the living
room and pushed her onto the couch.

“What are you doing here?” Hayden
yelled at him, trying to push him away but he was too strong.

“I was just curious what a guy like
Ben could do for you that I can’t,” Vaughn answered as he opened his pants and
took off hers.

It was immature of Hayden to think
that he would ignore her having cheated on him. “A lot,” was all she could cry
out as Vaughn forced his way into her.

“I’m more of a man than he is and
you know it. I fill you up. He probably has extra room.” Vaughn finished
quickly, due to his excitement over the tension during the meeting and to the
frightened look on Hayden’s face. She didn’t have the energy to yell at him,
defend her or Ben’s actions, or to tell him about the baby. She redressed
herself without looking at Vaughn.

Ben came in as Vaughn was zipping
up his pants. “She’s all yours,” Vaughn said to him as they passed in the entry
of the apartment.