Stay Dead 2: The Dead and The Dying (7 page)

“
Looks like we’re in the
clear,” he said as he came back into the room.

Sarah had already fallen
asleep.

8 EXPECT DELAYS

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top)

The convoy moved forward at a slow
pace. Navigating through the vehicles had become trickier and
tighter the farther up they went. The tight spaces made everyone
nervous and on edge. Eddie had become the annoying backseat driver
and Jon-Jon was doing his best to keep his cool, but he wasn’t sure
how much longer he’d be able to do it.

“
How’s the shoulder
looking?” Eddie asked from behind them.

“
If you can’t see it then I
can’t see it. You’re practically in my fucking lap.”

“
Sorry man. I’m just
getting claustrophobic.”

Dawn asked, “Maybe you should close
your eyes?”

“
Then I’ll just get motion
sickness from all the zigzagging.”

“
Shit. I thought you were a
tough guy,” Jon-Jon started to laugh.

“
Give me an Xbox controller
and I’ll kick anybody’s ass.”

Then Frankie chimed in, “Bullshit you
will.”

Dawn screamed. Jon-Jon hit the
brakes.

“
What is it?”

“
Inside the car!
Look!”

“
What? Where?”

“
There!”

Jon-Jon followed Dawn’s finger to a
smaller accident in the abandoned roadway. There were three cars,
two had badly sandwiched the one. The windshield was blown out and
semi-shattered across the hood. From the angle they were at Jon-Jon
could see right into the car and what he saw made him sick to his
stomach. Dawn brought her hand down but they both remained staring.
Eddie peered between the two of them trying to pinpoint what they
were looking at when he found it he too felt sick. There was a
deader pinned inside the car. A seatbelt held her in place, but
even if she figured out how to get out of it, the car was so
tightly smashed together that she would probably still be unable to
get out. He skin looked leathery from the sun and her dried blood
looked black. She must’ve broken her nose and her smile on the
steering wheel because most of her lower face was covered in the
black blood, unless it just wasn’t there at all.

“
Should we put her out of
her misery?”

“
It’s not a wounded animal,
Ed, that’s a fuckin’ deader. And by the looks of it, she ain’t
going anywhere.”

“
Seems fucked up to just
leave her though.”

“
I’d rather be fucked up
than risking my ass for the humane treatment of
deaders.”

“
You’re right, fuck it.
Let’s go.”

Jon-Jon released the break and pushed
down gently on the gas. The other vehicles in the convoy paused to
figure out what they had seen, but quickly followed.

Every time Janice closed her eyes she
traveled back in time to the moment when her world went to hell and
her soul was irrevocably shattered. It just wasn’t fair. She
shouldn’t have to have outlived any of her children, or her
husband, but certainly not her two little babies. Each one was a
miracle.

She was aging and it had been years
since she gave birth to Joseph, over a decade. Her doctor warned
her of all the possible outcomes of a woman her age giving birth,
but she didn’t care. She was a mom, and her two kids were growing
into men and ready to leave home. She couldn’t, and really didn’t
want to go back to work, so after some much needed convincing on
her husbands behalf they decided to have a child, which turned into
two.

The absence in her heart ached
terribly and all she could remember of them were their horrific and
bloody ends. The good times were hard to remember now. Not because
she couldn’t remember them, but because the scarring of her mind
that those last horrid images caused would never heal, the wounds
would just reopen with every blink of her eyes.

She took comfort in knowing her eldest
sons were surviving through it all. That she had a good hand in
raising them right and making sure they could take care of
themselves. They made her proud, but they could not fill the holes
in her heart that were slowly killing her. She felt as numb and as
dead to the world as she had felt that first day. There would be no
getting better, no getting over it. She would feel this way to the
end, and that’s why she knew the next time she had the chance to
she would get too close to the deaders and let them do what they do
best, and take a big bite out of her. It was suicidal, but she
didn’t think the good lord would consider it suicide. In her mind
it was no worse than smoking while dying of terminal
cancer.

Joseph sat with his arm around his
mother and his mind succumbing to its own machinations. He too
couldn’t stop thinking of his much younger siblings, or his father.
Much of his thoughts were of regrets. He regretted how he spent so
much time involved in his own life and not nearly enough time
playing with his young brother and sister. He was too busy growing
up and butting heads with his father to pay them much attention. He
had a full schedule of classes and worked most nights, when he was
doing neither he was usually found studying or seeing how many
beers he could drink in a night without throwing up.

Unlike his mother, however, he wanted
to live. He wanted to make up for what he considered to be his
shortcomings somehow. He wanted redemption. He wanted to keep his
mother safe for his father, to let him know he could be
responsible…that he could be a man. He wanted to be there for his
brother. To be at his side no matter what, just like they always
said they’d be. There was nothing to get in the way this time, and
if he couldn’t be there for him now, at the end of the fucking
world, then what kind of brother was he?

When they were younger, and all they
had to do was go to school, be home in time for dinner, and after
dinner to be home before ten they always had time for each other.
Hell, they were best friends growing up. They shared comics, cards,
toys, everything. They went to the clay pits on their bicycles;
walked the train tracks all the way up to the trestle that
overlooked The Devil’s Tail; played wall ball, and even stayed up
some nights to watch the late night movie, which usually consisted
of a monster or giant bug movie, like The Creature From the Black
Lagoon, or Empire of the Ants.

Those were the days, and they never
seemed further away than they did now.

Jon-Jon was able to steer the van, and
consequently the convoy, out of the mess of vehicles on the road
and onto the shoulder. He drove up the shoulder as far as he could
until having to take to the side of the road, which was much
bumpier, but seemed to be clear as far as his eyes could
see.

Eddie was still leaning forward
between Jon-Jon and Dawn, but was now starting to feel sick from
the bumpy ride. He couldn’t focus on anything beyond the windshield
and it was giving him a headache. Fuck it, he thought. Jon-Jon was
more than capable of driving the van and getting everyone closer to
the coast. Eddie just wanted to preoccupy himself with something to
do. If he wasn’t doing something his mind would wander through the
days that led up to today and they were all pretty bad. He thought
it was funny how you could have a life full of good times, but only
focus on the bad ones. Maybe if good times left scars, he’d be more
inclined to remember them.

He moved to the back, almost falling
over Chung-Hee’s leg, to sit next to his brother and mother. He
leaned over the back of the seat, looking for his backpack and
rifled out his notebook and pencil. He doubted he’d be able to
write anything down with the van bouncing around as it was, but at
the very least he could read over his journal entries from the days
before. He was never much for writing, but he figured it would be
an okay way to keep track of events, and at the least, days. It was
as much a calendar as it was a journal, and as he opened it up he
saw an entry that was just the date, the time, and a barely legible
scribble that read, ‘fuck this bullshit.’

Those three words pretty much summed
up his thoughts on the whole end-of-the-world-by-zombies thing that
was going on. Then again, that was pretty much his motto in life.
When things got to real, to serious, it was bullshit. When
girlfriends got to serious it was time to walk away. When work
started looking like a career it was time to hand in his two
weeks.

As he flipped through his notebook he
traveled back in time and could see his words on the page transform
into a crystal clear memory of the days that blurred into one long,
unending, motherfucker of a day. He flipped all the way to the
beginning of the notebook—day one. When he wrote it it was
nighttime, and technically it might’ve been the second day, because
he couldn’t recall what time he actually wrote it. He stared at it
for a moment, then he realized he didn’t want to go back there. He
didn’t want to remember any of the shit that had happened. So he
closed the book, closed his eyes, and did his best not to
cry.

He folded his arms and faked trying to
sleep as the tears silently slid down his face.

9 WHEN SARAH MET
JIM

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top)

The man woke her up by putting an ice
pack to her cheek. Startled, she jumped as the beginnings of a
scream died in her throat as she came to realize where she was. The
man backed away, immediately regretting waking her the way he did.
Not so much because it startled her, but because she almost
screamed. And if she had screamed, it was a good possibility this
pain in his ass’s voice would carry all the way outside and rouse
up some of those dead fuckers that he’d been doing his best to stay
clear of.

She took the ice pack and quietly
said, “Thanks.”

He nodded, and then took a seat on the
floor close to her. He looked her over carefully, staring at her
scratches and bruises as best he could in the dark. She looked at
him, knowing what he was about to ask, and beat him to the chase,
“I wasn’t bit. I already told you that.”

“
And I’m supposed to take
your word?”

“
Then just let me catch my
breath and I’ll be on my way.”

“
If that’s what you want to
do I won’t stop you, but just because I’m trying to be safe and
smart about this doesn’t mean I want to see you go out there and
get yourself killed.”

“
How can I prove to you I
wasn’t bit? Those things didn’t lay a hand on me—and I’m not
stripping down for anyone!”

“
Then tell me what
happened. Tell me how you got to be out running around in the
woods.”

She stared at him for what felt like a
long moment, but in all actuality was only the time it took to take
a breath, “I was with a bigger group. There was a whole bunch of
us. Most of us had been surviving on the road and meeting up with
others and joining up and blah blah blah. A bunch of us wanted to
head into Titan City--”

“
Why the fuck would you go
into the city?”

“
A lot of us have,
had—whatever—family there. With nowhere to go it seemed like a good
idea. And it still does. My mom and dad live there. I talked to
them just a few days ago and they said things were getting better.
Anyway, we made it to a school, which is where I ran from. There
was a psycho son of a bitch that ended up traveling with us. Seemed
like a normal guy. Then he killed two of m-my friends, and…and he
t-tried to kill me too. I jumped off the roof—that’s where we
were—and ran for the woods. I heard him shoot at me, but he must’ve
missed. The building was surrounded with those things, those dead
bastards, and I guess some of them followed me. I must’ve sprained
my ankle from the jump or maybe in the woods, and that’s where I
got all these cuts, and well some of the bruises were from that
fucking psycho, but this is all from running in the woods. And
those things are slow, but when you don’t know where you’re going,
and you can barely breathe or see or run they keep up just
fine.”

“
Jesus Christ lady, that’s
a lot to take in. Why don’t we get you bandaged up? I got a fist
aid kit in the bathroom and I know I have a wrap somewhere for your
ankle. Then maybe drink something and get some rest.”

“
Sounds great.”

The man held out his hand after
getting up and helped Sarah to her feet. He showed her to the
bathroom, got the first aid kit for her and backed away.

“
I’ll let you do your
thing. Just try to be quiet. I’ll be back over in my room by the
window if you need me.”

“
Okay, thanks, uh…sorry,
what’s your name?”

“
Jim. And you?”

“
Sarah.”

Jim went back to the window and peered
out. There wasn’t much more action than usual on the street which
allowed him to relax a bit. He still wasn’t sure about this
girl—about Sarah—she seemed sincere enough, but how could he know
for certain that she wasn’t somehow infected with whatever turns
people into these zombies.

Jim was fortunate enough to have been
home when everything started happening. When the first news reports
occurred he thought they were faked. For most of the first day he
thought it was a joke, but by the end of day one it was everywhere.
The coverage was nonstop and far more engaging than Pawn Stars or
Law & Order.