Dawn and the Dead (2 page)

Taking a bottle of beer from the
fridge, she wrapped it in a dishcloth to silence any noise, and
then smashed it on the kitchen table. Back at the car, she popped
open the boot and used a pair of gloves to protect her hands, she
wedged several pieces into the spare tyre. Now if anybody quizzed
her on why she had been so long, and why she was so sweaty and
covered in sand, she could simply explain that she’d had to change
a flat tyre.

“Vickie!” called Dawn, there was
no answer, but she could hear her little girl laughing in the
garden. Playing with her imaginary friend Pedro, no doubt.

Opening the front and screen
door, she stepped out onto the porch, took the newspaper that had
been left on the step. It was only the local rag, but interesting
when it came to all the local gossip. She took in a deep breath of
fresh air and glanced along the street; it was dead. Like a ghost
town. It was almost as silent as her nightmare, but she brushed
that thought aside quickly.

It feels like a Sunday
she thought to herself, and was almost convinced of the fact when
she noticed old Mrs Lopez dressed in her, ‘Sunday best’,
church-going clothes, down on all fours, staring beneath a car.
Coaxing her cat Hector out from under there again. That cat was
always hiding there, they liked the heat of a recently run
engine.

“Morning misses Lopez!” she
called.

The old woman looked at her and
Dawn felt sad. Her eyes were blank, she looked like she didn’t even
know her neighbour.
Poor Mrs Lopez,
thought Dawn. She was
getting on in years now, had in fact been getting confused for
sometime. What struck Dawn as very sad, was that Mrs Lopez was
wearing make-up; very over the top too.

Mrs. Lopez returned her
attention to Hector under the car, so Dawn slipped back inside.

She checked on her bath, it
still had a while to fill, so she poured herself a glass of orange
juice and sat at the kitchen table, pouring over the stories in the
local rag.

It was five minutes later, when
she read the obituaries that the glass of juice fell from her hand
and smashed to pieces on the tiled kitchen floor.

Dawn read the words again:

‘
The funeral of Shelley
Lopez, 90, took place on Friday…’

Dawn re-read it a second time,
then stood and walked slowly to the front door again. Delicately
edging the door open ajar, she stared out through the gap and threw
a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream. Ninety-year-old Shelley
Lopez finally had her hands on her cat Hector.

Dawn stared on in disbelief,
bile rising into her throat from her stomach as she watched the
thing that had been Mrs Lopez tearing the fur from the cat and
chewing-down hungrily and greedily like a starving animal on the
bright, fresh pink flesh of its torso. The cat wasn’t dead; it
hissed, clawed, struck and wailed horribly as the blood gushed from
it and down the front and throat of its owner.

Dawn closed the door, wedged the
back of a chair against the handle then ran to the kitchen. Her
heart was pounding, it couldn’t happen. But sweet Jesus what if it
had? Mrs Lopez was in her, ‘Sunday best’, because she’d been buried
in it. The make-up was nothing to do with cosmetics; it was the
undertaker’s doing. If Mrs Lopez could be back from the dead, then
so could…-
no, NO!
she screamed at her own reasoning, it
couldn’t happen.

Her blood was running cold, her
stomach painfully empty and hollow and somehow cold. Fingernails
seemed to be tearing along her flesh, trying the pop the goosebumps
there like bubble-wrap.

At the window, she tore the
curtain across and gasped. Her greatest fear was realised. He had
told her the truth in her nightmares.

Eddie was back for them.

Despite being a few days dead,
it must have been quite cool beneath the sand, because Eddie looked
nothing like the horror movie zombie of her nightmares. He looked
almost normal; except pale, his lips were blue, huge black bags
circled the pale blue eyes in the greying face. He paid no
attention to Dawn at the window. He was too busy stumbling around
drunkenly, trying to catch Vickie (the image of that cat being
eaten came into her head in a flash) and Dawn was racing to the
kitchen draw, pulling it open and dragging out
that
knife
again. The very knife she had killed him with… the first time.

Vickie was totally unaware of
her predicament. Her Mamma had told her that Papi had gone away and
would be back after a long time, but here he was, in the garden,
playing their usual game with her.

The game was fun. Papi would
chase her around the garden, pretending he couldn’t catch her. She
would get all excited, thinking he couldn’t get her, while knowing
deep down (and looking forward to him doing it) that he could and
would speed-up and catch her. As soon as he had her in his arms, he
would cuddle and tickle her, smother her with kisses, blow
raspberries on her belly, then hold her up in the air and spin her
around.

Vickie couldn’t wait to get
caught.

She didn’t realise it, but she
was so excited about the game, because it had been so long since
Papi had played it with her. Had in fact; played with her at
all.

Around and around she jogged, in
a giggling, giddy circle. Papi was doing a funny walk, shuffling
and awkward. As she jogged away from him, she never took her eyes
off him.

That was why she fell.

Vickie tripped. Fell flat onto
all fours, then still in a giggling fit, she rolled onto her back
and looked up at her approaching Papi, waiting for her hugs and
kisses.

Little Vickie Garcia realised
something was wrong as she lay in the long, mid morning shadow of
her Papi, who loomed over her, swaying slightly.

His eyes were wrong. They seemed
to focus on her, yet bore through her dimly too. To Vickie, it
looked like Papi was sleepwalking. Papi seemed distracted, almost
confused and uninterested in her too, yet his cold, empty eyes
never left her.

The thing that had been Eddie
Garcia fell to its knees, grabbed her by the arms and pinned her to
the floor,

“Papi! You’re hurting me!” she
cried, as he opened his mouth and bared his teeth.

It wasn’t just the firm grip
that hurt, or the sharp fingernails digging into her flesh - it was
the cold; Papi’s hands were
so
cold.

It was then, as his dank, rotten
breath blew into her face, as drool ran from his mouth and trickled
down her arm; that Vickie realised Papi wasn’t very well,
wasn’t
very well, at all.
Vickie wasn’t sure it was her Papi anymore;
maybe just a nasty, cold, man, with pale, blue eyes, who happened
to look like him.

The movement of light and shadow
that Vickie caught in her peripheral vision was as fast as an eagle
sailing past the sun.

The loud, metallic, ‘THUD!’ made
her jump, as her Papi’s head snapped to an unnatural angle. His
grip released and he fell to one side.

“Mommy! MOMMY!” shouted Vickie
reaching out with both hands.

Dawn stood over the dead man.
She shook violently, barely able to keep a hold of the shovel she’d
used to smash
it
across the head. Throwing away the shovel,
she grabbed her crying daughter in both hands and hugged her
close,

“It’s okay Baby, everything is
going to be okay.”

“But,”
sniff,
“Papi was
mean. He hurt me and scared me.”

The bastard!
Thought
Dawn, remembering how he had hurt her when he was alive.

The night I killed you, I
promised myself you’d never hurt me or Vickie again. Whatever’s
happened, whatever you are - that pledge still stands and I will
kill you a thousand times over if I have to.

“That’s not Papi. Papi got sick,
remember when you got sick with chickenpox? Well now Papi’s caught
something – and remember too how you took medicine to make you all
better? Well there’s no medicine that can make Papi better. I’m
sorry, Honey.”

Vickie cried harder, mourning a
father that would never return.

“Now I need you to be very brave
for me Sweetie, can you do that?”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“Good girl,” soothed Dawn,
“let’s get back inside.”

As Vickie sat at the kitchen
table enjoying cookies and milk and drawing with crayons, Dawn
fortified the house.

Locking every door and window,
she reinforced them all with barriers of furniture.

When satisfied that the house
was safe, Dawn turned on the television. All that was showing on
every channel was black and white fuzz.
The radio then.
She
turned the dial through several music stations until she got a news
broadcast:

“…
have risen. I repeat, the
dead have risen. This is not a hoax or prank. The first sighting
was reported this morning in New York; we join our New York
correspondent, Merv Gaines:”

“
This is Merv Gaines in New
York City - although, it is not a New York that I, the inhabitants
of the great city or any tourist who might be familiar with the Big
Apple, would recognise. As I speak, legions of the undead, a
stumbling, shambling, sea of rotten humanity-that-is-not-humanity,
rule the streets. These…monsters, have been observed to be
carnivores, devouring anything living to feed their ghastly hunger,
and by that, yes – I mean the living… human beings…”

Dawn shuddered as she remember
Mrs Lopez devouring Hector, and realised how close Eddie had got to
feasting on Vickie,

“…
the creatures seem to be
indestructible. They rise from gunshots to the body and head, from
stabbings to vital organs and even from electrocution. The only
time we have witnessed one re-dying, was when it caught on fire and
eventually burned away to ash. People are advised to stay indoors;
to secure their property and if possible, to get, ‘upstairs’, as it
appears the creatures limited motor skills and motor control -
attributed to problems with their brains, skeletons, joints and
nervous systems - means that they cannot climb stairs…”

Grabbing the radio, Dawn turned
to her daughter,

“Get your crayons and pad Hun,
we’re gonna go up and play in your bedroom, since all your toys are
there.”

“Okay Mamma. Can Pedro
come?”

Dawn smiled at her daughter, “of
course he can. Maybe we can have a tea party?”

Vicky stood and clapped
excitedly, grabbed her drawing pad and crayons and raced
upstairs.

The scream that split the air
from upstairs turned Dawn’s blood cold.

Dawn sprinted to the stairs and
bounded up them two at a time. Her initial reaction was relief;
Vickie was fine, there were none of the undead up here, no group of
monsters tearing and devouring her daughter alive. Then Dawn’s
relief changed to panic. She had been so concerned, so focused on
Vickie, that she hadn’t noticed that it was dark.

Dark? But it’s only-
she
checked her watch and received another shock –
11.20,
is
that all?
she marvelled; waking-up had felt like hours ago.
So how’s it light downstairs, but dark up here -

Then the darkness moved slightly
and an ebb of sunlight cut through into Vickie’s bedroom. Stepping
nearer tentatively, she realised what it was.

A fog of blackbirds.

They hovered in front of the
window, all peering in with beady, jet coloured pearl like eyes.
Now came a tapping, then another; a third.

They were pecking at the
windows, trying to get in.

One bird smashed into the
window. The glass did not smash, but a long, splintering crack
fractured through it. The forking crack bled red from the dead,
kamikaze bird’s blood.

“They’ve been feeding on those
things,
” she thought out loud, “whatever it is that’s made
the dead come back to life, the birds have caught it and now they
want warm flesh and fresh meat. They’re contaminated.”

Grabbing her daughter, Dawn
carried her to the stairs. Another loud
snap
popped behind
them. Then several at the same time. Soon the windows would give
and they’d be at the peril of those spoilt birds.

The mattress!
thought
Dawn suddenly. She remembered the fun she and Eddie had had trying
to get it upstairs. It had wedged neatly in the stairwell; they had
laughed and laughed about that. It had taken them over an hour to
finally get it up the stairs and into the bedroom. They’d made love
on it, to celebrate.

It was now, with that memory,
that Dawn mourned Eddie. Not the Eddie who she had murdered on
Thursday night, not the angry, violent and aggressive Eddie. She
mourned for the man Eddie had been; the Eddie she had in fact lost
many years ago.

The MATTRESS!
her
concentration screamed at her. The smashes were coming in waves
now. The windows wouldn’t last much longer.

“Quick Honey, run downstairs.
I’ll be right there.”

“No, please don’t leave me
Mommy.”

“Go on now, I’ve just got to do
something. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Vickie walked downstairs as Dawn
ran into the master bedroom. She almost burst into a hysterical fit
of laughter as she found the bed was on wheels. Grabbing it at the
headboard, she dragged the bed behind her. At the stairwell, she
lined up the bed, gripped hard on the bottom of the mattress and
dragged with all her might.

The mattress bounced up and
along with an ease, but weight that surprised her and Dawn fell
backwards and landed hard on the floor. Winded but uninjured, she
looked up and again joy filled her heart. The mattress was stuck
neatly in the rectangular stairwell. The plush wedge would allow
none of the monster birds to fly downstairs.