Night of the Living Dead (20 page)

In a lower voice, she said, "We may not enjoy living together ... but
dying
together isn’t going to solve anything." When he didn’t reply, she continued, "Those people aren’t our enemies."

Before Harry could reply one way or the other, Tom’s voice echoed down the stairs, "Mister Cooper?!"

Both Coopers stopped short and perked up.

"Mister Cooper," Tom called again, "Ben found a television set upstairs!"

Harry glanced over at Helen.

She rose, more excited by this news than by the radio. She rushed over to her husband and said, "Let’s go up." When Harry did not reply, just stood there looking tense and hesitant, she called back up the stairs, "Tom?!"

"Yeah?!" Tom replied.

Harry stared at Helen, but he still didn’t say anything, and she was more than happy to take advantage of his indecision.

"If Judy would come downstairs for a few minutes," she hollered, looking at her husband and daring him to overrule her, "Harry and I could come upstairs."

"Okay, yeah!" Tom answered, sounding pleased. "Right away!"

Harry looked down, his lips pressed so tight that his mouth disappeared into a thin line — he looked like a sulking child.

Helen elected not to voice that particular observation...

On the ground floor, Tom walked over to Judy where she sat on the arm of the sofa. Bending forward, hands on his thighs, he asked, "Will you do it?"

Anxious, she asked, "Do I have to?" She had been a nervous wreck when they separated before and she wasn’t in a hurry to leave his side again — with those deranged people running around, she didn’t want to let him out of her sight!

"Look, honey," he reasoned, "nothing’s gonna get done with them down there and us up here." He touched her shoulder. "Do this. For me."

Judy sighed. "Okay."

Tom returned to the basement door. "Okay! Open up."

Judy followed him, her stride less than enthusiastic.

Cooper opened the door and Judy stepped inside. He stared at her, but she was relieved that he did not rant this time like he had before. She didn’t like him very much, but she
did
like his wife, and it was as much for her as for Tommy that she descended those dark stairs once again.

She found Missus Cooper holding her sick daughter’s hand, that poor little girl. Seeing those fever-dampened locks gave her another reason to go along with this exchange.

"I’ll take good care of her, Helen," she said, barely remembering to call the older woman by her first name.

Missus Cooper nodded, but did not stand up immediately. She stroked her daughter’s left arm — the good one, the one that hadn’t been bitten by that crazy woman. Finally, she said in a low voice, "She’s all I have."

Judy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She could tell that the Coopers did not share a happy marriage, and felt (strangely enough) almost
guilty
for the strong bond she had with Tommy. Instead, she settled for, "Why don’t you go upstairs now?"

Missus Cooper patted her daughter’s good arm, stood, offered Judy a weak smile, then headed for the stairs.

Judy took her post, adjusting Karen’s blanket and sitting at her side, but the little girl gave no acknowledgment of her presence or her mother’s departure...

Harry exited the cellar first, looking around as though he half-expected the lunatics to have already broken through every nook and cranny. His hands clenched and unclenched, his fingers performing a nervous little dance, feeling for the weapon he was no longer carrying. He looked back at Helen, and tried to put some fire into it.

You see?
he tried to say with his eyes.
You see how dangerous it is up here? You see why I hustled us down into the cellar in the first place? You see that I’m right?!

But all Helen saw was his fear. And she realized that Harry wasn’t all bluster this time, wasn’t
just
wanting to prove himself right over everyone else. That might have been a part of it (he was Harry, after all), but he was sincerely, deeply
afraid
to be up here. He honestly did think the cellar was safer, really was trying, in his harsh way, to protect his family as best he could.

Then he turned away and stalked across the room to inspect the boarded windows. Helen started to follow him, but then she noticed the young woman on the sofa. Not much older than Judy, the blonde woman was slumped so far over she was almost lying on her side. She was running her fingers over the doily on the arm of the sofa, seemed fascinated by it — which, given the situation they were all in, sent up a warning flag to Helen right away.

Then Tom stepped forward and confirmed her suspicions. "Her brother was killed."

Before Helen could reply, a voice called from elsewhere in the house, "Hey! Give me a hand with this thing!"

Tom apologized, "I gotta go help Ben with the television," before leaving the room.

Harry was still running his inspection tour, so Helen approached the young woman ... but then stopped short. She had intended to join her on the sofa, but the girl’s obsessive focus on every intricate detail of the embroidery made her a little nervous. How would the girl react if Helen just plunked herself down right next to her?

Instead, Helen sat in a nearby chair. She would try to talk to the girl first, before getting too close to her. Except she wasn’t certain what to
say
.

So she sat in the rickety chair and watched the blonde girl. Watched her run her fingers over the doily, tracing every line, every curve. Helen soon found herself fidgeting with her wedding ring, and decided that she needed a cigarette. God, did she need one!

Pulling a pack from her coat pocket, she struck a match and lit up. Funny enough, while the blonde had ignored Harry’s tramping around and Helen’s creaking chair, she looked over right away when the match sparked to life. At first glance, her expression came across as rather bland, but upon closer inspection, Helen decided that the young woman was actually riding along the edge of a precipice. She was terrified beyond her ability to process it.

Having seen one of those lunatics take a bite — a
bite
! — out of her daughter’s arm, Helen could understand why.

"Don’t be afraid of me," she said in a soft voice. "I’m Helen Cooper. Harry’s wife."

The blonde just stared. Had Harry bothered to introduce himself before? Probably not. But then she realized that the young woman was staring at something specific — her still-burning match.

Helen shook the match out, and as soon as the flame died, the blonde lost her focus. She turned back to the doily.

Then Harry clomped back into the room. "This place is ridiculous! Look at this!" He marched over to one of the windows. "There’s a million weak spots up here." He tugged on one of the boards, which did indeed give some under his grasp.

Then he spotted Helen’s cigarette and hustled over to her side. "Give me one of those." He yanked the pack from his wife’s hand — she gave him a dirty look for his rude behavior, then realized that the only witness to it wasn’t exactly paying attention.

Harry glanced at the blonde as he lit his own cigarette, and she relayed, "Her brother was killed."

Harry thought about that for a moment, then nodded as though to say,
Sure he was, whatever.
All that was missing was a shrug.

Helen looked away from her callous husband.

Then he sighed and was off again, pacing around the room. "And they talk about these windows. I can’t see a damn thing!" He turned back toward Helen, still pleading his case. "There could be fifteen
million
of those things out there. That’s how much good these
windows
 are."

Then Harry was pacing, pacing and smoking. He was behind her, mostly, so she couldn’t see him, but she could
feel
 him. Finally, she snapped, "Why don’t you do something to
help
 somebody?!"

Harry ignored her, but she knew damn well he’d heard her.

Then Tom and the other man — "Ben," she thought Tom had called him — appeared, carrying a large, old television set into the room.

"I have it," Ben told Tom. "Drag a couple of those chairs together."

Tom hurried to do so, excited — Helen noticed that even the blonde sat up and paid attention. Tom grabbed two chairs, then said, "There’s a socket over here," and placed them opposite the sofa.

Grunting from exertion, Ben lowered the television into place and reached behind it to plug it in.

Harry moved around until he was near the sofa. Out of nowhere, he bent over the blonde woman and said, "Now you’d better watch this, and try to understand what’s going on."

Ben straightened up behind the television and gave Harry a dark look.

Harry threw his arms into the air; half-exasperation, half-
I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!
"I don’t want anyone’s life on
my
hands."

Embarrassed, Helen asked, "Is there anything
I
can do to hel—"

But Harry’s attitude had already set Ben off. He stood, fuming, and pointed at Harry. "I don’t want to hear any more from you, mister. If you stay up here, you take orders from
me
! And that includes leaving the girl
alone
!"

Then Tom drew all of their attention to the television. "It’s on. It’s on!"

"There’s no sound," Harry pointed out in typical Harry-fashion.

Tom turned more of the old-style dials.

"Play with the rabbit ears," Harry instructed.

Ben stepped around and touched them, and after a few short bursts, the sound synced up to the image.

Not that there was much to see. The anchorman — no one famous or familiar, just a bespeckled talking-head who had been available at the time everything went to hell — sat reading copy as other employees bustled around in the background and machines rattled away noisier than usual.

"
... incredible as they seem,
" the anchorman was saying, "
are
not
the results of mass hysteria.
"