The Dead & Dying: A Zombie Novel (8 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CARL

God, I'm cold. I reckon this is what it must feel like if someone drained all the blood out of a body and replaced it with ice water. It's a chill that goes deeper than just the skin: a cold that seems to radiate from somewhere inside the marrow of my bones and I know that even if I had a mound of blankets it would never be enough.

And it doesn't help that I'm sweating like it was uncle's day at the whorehouse either. My hair is plastered to my head and the drops trickle down my forehead, roll into my eyes, and sting like a mother fucker.

Outside, the wind is howling through the trees like a pissed off demon. Must be a storm on the way. I wonder if I'll still be alive by the time the rain actually starts to fall. God, I hope so....

I used to love watching thunderstorms. I'd stand on the back porch and watch the distant clouds flicker with lightning; and there's this smell carried on the breeze right before it rains, a smell that lets you know everything will be fresh and clean soon and all of the ugliness will be washed away; I would stand out there breathing that smell in and count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the boom of thunder.

I hope I can hold out. I know that I don't have much time left, that my body can't just bleed indefinitely... but I'd love to hear the patter of rain on a roof one last time. I'd like to close my eyes, listen to the sound of the storm outside, and drift off to sleep like I did when I was a kid.

That sounds so good right now. I'm tired beyond belief: tired of the pain flaring through my side, tired of the cold, tired of the ghosts that haunt my memories and remind me of everything I've lost. I just want to lay my head down and let it all be dissolve away.

But I have that option, don't I? I've got my pistol and, like a bad stereotype, a single round left. I can't imagine it would hurt for long... probably no more than it would take for my heart to beat once. And could it be any worse than what I'm feeling now? A flash of pain in exchange for an eternity of release... is that really such a bad deal?

But I
really
wanna hear that rain, ya know? Just once more. If I can hold out until the first drops start splattering against the windows, if I can catch a glimpse of the pines as they bend to the power of the wind while thunder rumbles and lightning bathes the world in electric blue... if I can just hang on that long then maybe.

Shit, what was I thinking about before? Something to do with Doc, I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was it. But what? It’s getting hard to concentrate, hard to keep stringing these words together in my head. Wonder if this is how Grandpa Jackson felt when his mind first started to go? Confused, mentally exhausted to the point that thought seems to almost take on a physical weight, more than a tad bit scared because there's these gaping holes where memory ought to be. It’s so dang frustrating, like trying to remember a song lyric that's right on the tip of your tongue. But for the life of me I can't remember what I was thinking about just five minutes ago. Only that it was something to do with me and Doc.

Instead, I find myself thinking back to a time before I met the man. It was right after everything went to pot and most people still had hope that it would all blow over quickly, that the military would step in and stop this insanity before it could spread any further. Thing was, until that time came you still had to run. You still had to find somewhere safe to hide until the helicopters flew over and broadcasted that it was safe to go back to your homes now, safe to go back to your lives.

Me, I knew better. I knew that once something like this started there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. You might've as well tried to hold the wind in your hands as my father used to say. So I tried to step right into the role I always thought I was born to play.

  Very early on, I met up with this woman and her little boy. Somehow, we'd all ended up in the same patch of forest at the same time, not too far from the interstate, and I knew,
I just knew
, that this would be my one big chance. I'd lead them through the ruins of civilization, would protect them from marauders and the throngs of undead that were sure to come; perhaps, in time, the woman would come to love me and we'd steal tender moments whenever we could; I would teach the kid how to stay alive, how to survive in this new world, and there would come a day when he would shyly call me
dad
and Monica would smile over his shoulder as I tussled Jason's hair and laughed.

But first, I had to lead them through the maze of trees we'd found ourselves in. And, in my own defense, I thought I was doing pretty good in the beginning. I channeled every action hero I'd ever admired, every bad ass who'd slaughtered the undead in the name of all that's righteous and pure.

I was Bruce Campbell, Woody Harrelson, and Ving Rhames all rolled into one. When I walked, I adopted this little swagger that (I hoped) let Monica and her son know that as long as I was with them everything would be right as rain; I spoke only in short phrases that could've been lifted right from the script of any low-budget fright flick and sometimes motioned for them to stop as if I heard something out of place in the forest. But, truth be told, more often than not I was just doing it for dramatic effect.

See, back then it all still seemed almost like some kind of game. Despite seeing a man I'd known all my life turned into a human torch, it had the feeling of a dream that you were sure to wake from soon: a dream where you could be anyone you chose and no one would ever call you on it. I could be the devil-may-care Zombie Killer Elite and who was to say that wasn't who I truly was inside?

Funny thing about reality though is the way it has of keeping you in check. In this instance, it happened when I'd left Monica and the boy in a clearing to
scout out
the way ahead. Truth be told, I just had to take a dump so bad my stomach felt like I was about to give birth to a fire-baby. But that's not really the kinda thing a hero tells the damsel in distress, ya know?

So I walked about fifty or sixty yards out into the forest, made good and sure that I was well outta sight, dropped my trousers, and squatted down beneath this big oak tree.

In my past life I'd always kept a book or magazine within arm's reach of the toilet. If, for some reason, I found myself without suitable material, I'd reach for a shampoo bottle and start reading the information on the back of it. Anything to give me something to actually do but sit and listen to the sounds of my own waste. Out there in the woods, though, I didn't have anything to distract me; so I just kinda looked around, taking in the way the sunlight dappled through the canopy of leaves overhead, trying to remember what those little blue flowers that crept up all over the damn place were called, that sorta thing.

I was studying this tree that somehow had an old tire stuck on a limb about halfway up the trunk, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Snapping my head to the side, I saw this little girl in a pink dress come staggering out of the bushes.

As far as I could tell there weren't any obvious injuries on her: no cuts or lacerations, no burns or bite marks or shards of bone jutting out through the skin. The front of her dress
had
been splattered with blood... but somehow I knew it wasn't hers.

So I just kinda squatted there for a minute, watching this thing that had once been somebody's daughter while my heart pounded in my chest like a racehorse on steroids. Without taking my eyes from her, I slowly reached to the ground and felt around in the cool moss for the pistol I'd laid by my side.

She'd been pretty in life and probably would have grown up to break plenty of hearts: she had this flowing blond hair that perfectly framed her round face and, though her skin was as pale as the face of the moon now, I could imagine the glow that must have radiated from her smile as she played with her friends in the park.

I felt this cold hand grip my heart and squeeze it so tightly that little flares of pain shot up my arm. I couldn't think about who she had been before. I couldn't even really think of her as a
she
if I was smart. Sure, she might be just kinda lumbering around now like she was in some sort of daze but she hadn't caught sight of me yet.

I'd seen how fast those things could move. I'd witnessed how vicious and relentless they could be, how single minded their pursuit of violence was. The moment those vacant eyes noticed me squatting beneath that old tree, she would be all over me like a wild dog on a chained goat.

“She's not a kid anymore.” I tried to tell myself as I raised my pistol. “She's not even human.”

Still, my hand was trembling so bad that I was hard pressed to keep the side of her head within the sights. My eyes started stinging and I could feel tears welling up. My vision blurred and I felt like throwing up right then and there.

But I had to do it, right? There was no way I'd survive in this new world if I still thought of these things as children.

Maybe I sniffled. Or perhaps she'd caught the scent of my fear or simply knew, somehow, that she wasn't alone. Whatever the reason, she turned slowly to face me.

Without another thought, my finger pulled the trigger of the gun.

At the same instant, her eyes widened as she opened her mouth.

“Mister, I.... ”

And then she was falling to the ground, a small hole in her perfect little forehead as the sound of my shot echoed through the forest.

Mister, I....

I tried to tell myself that I hadn't really heard it, that it had simply been my imagination kicked into overdrive by fear and adrenaline.

Mister, I....

That small voice sounding as if she'd just awoken from a dream and didn't know where she was. That soft, sweet voice that would now never talk again.

It's too easy to pull a trigger. It should be harder. Even in this fucked up reality.

And that's what they never showed you in the movies or told you about in the books. That's the little secret they kept tucked away far from the eyes of common folk: heroes aren't perfect. Heroes make mistakes. And those mistakes can sometimes take the life of an innocent, of someone they should have been safeguarding through the turmoil and strife.

And, somehow, you have to find a way to live with yourself. Even when those mistakes repeat themselves again and again.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JOSIE

We ended up staying in that old farmhouse for nearly a week. During daylight hours, we stayed inside and tried to remain as quiet as possible. Doc had an old deck of cards he carried with him and we'd spend hours sitting around the kitchen table, playing rummy, and whispering stories back and forth.

Slowly I began to piece their histories together: how Doc and Carl had met in a burned out grocery store and almost shot one-another, each initially thinking the other was a freshie; how Sadie and Watchmaker (whose real name turned out to be Tobias) had watched their children grow up and then have children of their own. How they had lived for the past half century in the same house, collecting a lifetime's worth of memories and laughter within those walls. Even when Tobias first began to lose his sight and found it more and more difficult to work on the intricate cogs and gears from which his nickname stemmed, they still had each other and that had been enough. They told me how they'd stood in their front yard while yellow and blue flames licked at the night sky like hungry tongues of hell; how Watchmaker could feel the heat on his face and hear the crackling and popping but see only flickering shades of light and shadow. How they'd held each other and cried softly as all of their pictures and keepsakes had been devoured by the insatiable inferno.

The fire, of course, had attracted the attention of every freshy and rotter within miles. In a world that now only knew the darkness of night, a world where the Milky Way could finally be seen over the crumbling skylines of Los Angeles and New York, this blaze was a beacon.

They came lurching and staggering and running across the twenty-some acres of property; like waves of putrefied flesh, the carcasses rolled across the landscape from all sides. Before the roof had even collapsed, Sadie and Watchmaker had found themselves surrounded: an island of life amid a roiling sea of decay. But the raging fire had also drawn the attention of others....  

They hadn't really known why they'd been drawn to the blaze: they knew that the area would surely be swarming with the undead and any supplies that may have existed would already have been reduced to nothing more than cinder and ash.

“Hell,” Carl had joked during the telling of the story, “I just reckoned someone was having themselves a barbecue, that's all.”

Whatever the reason, by the time they'd arrived Sadie and Watchmaker had holed up in a little storage shed in the backyard. The heat from the burning house had seeped into the corrugated walls and they could hear flesh sizzle like frying bacon as the zombies outside pounded and grabbed at the metal walls.

“It was like being trapped in an oven.” Watchmaker had said. “But I figured it was worlds better than what laid outside those doors.”

At this point, Doc had taken over the story and Carl began to look like a kid who had been called to the front of the class to recite
Jabberwocky.
His face was slightly flushed and he found any excuse to look away from the group as he rearranged the cards in his hand again and again.

“We knew there had to be something alive in that shed.” Doc said. “Otherwise those damn things wouldn't have wanted in so badly. Only question was, how the hell do you get them out?”

Luckily for Sadie and Watchmaker, though, Carl had some kind of plan.

“
No matter what happens
,” Doc had continued, donning a pretty accurate imitation of his friend, “
you get those people outta there. Don't you worry 'bout me
. And I couldn't argue with him. He wasn't having it.”

So Carl started yelling at the top of his lungs, his voice cutting through the banging of fists on metal and the roar of the blaze while Doc crouched in the shadows. No one could remember exactly what he was saying, but his words drew the attention of the zombies away from the shed.