When the Dead (32 page)

Hayden was
lying where Vaughn had left her and Ben knelt at her side. The teen was completely
naked, her panties lay nearby. A pile of the rest of her clothes lay deeper in
the apartment. Porn played on the television, as usual. Inside the light of the
apartment it was obvious that Hayden was dead. In her forehead was the bullet
that had torn all of Willow Brook from its sleep.

He looked over the soft skin of Hayden’s body and found no bite wounds. “She
wasn’t infected. What happened?” he cried at Jeff who was back in the hall, in
the light of the doorway.

“I don’t know. Maybe Vaughn shot her when she was trying to leave? I
think he was drunk again,” Jeff explained as if the reason was simple and clear
as day. He didn’t point out the position of the entry wound, which faced him
and not Vaughn. He hoped no one else would notice that bullet-sized hole in his
story.

 “He used her and then he killed her before she could get away from what
he was about to become. Maybe if I hadn’t kicked her out . . .” Molly was
barely able to breathe.

“Yep,” Jeff said.

“Fuck you, you’re no help. What’s wrong with you?” Isobel yelled at him.

“That is a good question,” Jeff responded as he got up off the floor. “As
soon as I figure it out I’ll be sure to check in at a group powwow.” He walked
away out of sight of the doorway and back to the second floor, stopping first
to get the food he had come for. He grabbed a bottle of wine too, to celebrate
getting away with murder.

“Don’t listen to Jeff, Molly. It isn’t your fault. Vaughn was unstable,
drunk. Hayden was . . . pregnant,” Ben said as he placed a gentle hand on her
belly.

“What?” Isobel was genuinely shocked.

“I think she may have finally told him and he lost it,” Ben said, his
tears falling on her body.

 
“But who bit the
amazing
Vaughn?” Isobel asked sarcastically, “and how?”

“Can we turn that shit off?” Ben yelled when he finally realized the porn
was playing. Isobel found the remote and stopped the immortal porn stars in
mid-moan. Rob brought Hayden’s clothes over to her body and he and Ben
redressed her. Isobel found a clean sheet to wrap her in.

“Why did you have to see him tonight? Why didn’t you come to me?” Ben
asked her as he carried Hayden’s swaddled body to the balcony’s edge. He let go
and it dropped into the dark of early morning with a thud on the frosty ground.

Molly rushed to the bathroom as vomit was rising in her throat. Isobel
could hear her heaving into the toilet and then crying; the sound of something
being dumped on the tile, and a small scream.

“Molly, what is it?” Isobel pushed the door open. Molly was crumpled on
the floor in front of the toilet, a box full of prescription drugs had been
emptied all around her. Two pill bottles were clutched in her hands.

“This is the heart medication that Moira ran out of! He has at least six
bottles of it in here. That man is a fucking monster.”

Isobel took the bottles from her hands, set them on the countertop,
pulled her from the floor and held her close. They cried for awhile together,
for Moira and Edward and for Hayden, for the group’s ignorance and Vaughn’s
selfishness. Molly needed the affection and she held the hug longer than Isobel
expected her to. When they came out of the bathroom, Ben and Rob were
struggling with Vaughn’s dead body.

“Tuck it in. I don’t want that shit touching me,” Ben yelled at Rob.

“So
I
have to touch it?” Rob shot back.

“Nobody has to touch his dick. Dump him over how he is!” Isobel yelled at
them both.

“He doesn’t deserve special treatment,” Molly added.

Without a sheet or farewell, they threw Vaughn’s body over the railing to
join Hayden and their unborn child. Ben went back into the apartment and
gathered up all the porn DVDs he could find and, one by one, chucked them at
Vaughn’s body as the sun slowly rose.

“You fucking ASSHOLE! You could have had a FAMILY and
her
, you
could have had her but you don’t value ANYTHING!” Ben screamed. He closed his
eyes in sorrow but continued to throw DVD cases onto the ground below. The dead
were gathering from the sound of his voice. Ben opened his eyes to see them
stepping on the cases, breaking the plastic and it made him smile the smallest
of smiles. He dumped the rest of them onto the heads of the undead and let the
empty cardboard box fall as well.

 Through tears, the group went through Vaughn’s apartment and took
anything they wanted: weapons, wine, toothpaste and the last issue of Rolling
Stone to ever be published. Ben was close in size to Vaughn so he took all the
clean shirts he could carry, which wasn’t a lot (of
clean
ones).

Before Isobel
closed the door to 306, Molly paused, looking into the bloody, ransacked
apartment. She thought back to when Hayden said she was using Vaughn too, that
there were mutual benefits to their agreement. Vaughn left this life happy,
drunk, and satisfied, if a little numb from the infection.

“Was it worth it?” Molly asked the empty room. Isobel stood behind her
but didn’t say anything. She knew Molly wasn’t talking to her; that she needed
this moment with her ghosts.

“What do stolen designer clothes even mean when you spend your time naked
and on your back? Whore!” Molly yelled.

This shocked Isobel to hear, but she understood Molly’s anger and how it
stemmed from regret. She was painting Hayden as doubly wicked in life so that
she could be more easily forgotten in death.

“And he would have fucked you no matter what your perfume smelled like!”

            Isobel
knew this to be true. Vaughn was the dirtiest, horniest man she’d known. He could
find beauty in a worn out, elderly barmaid if it meant he’d get laid.

            “You
can’t even read those stupid books he got you now! You can’t sell yourself for
your own happiness, Hayden.”

            “Because
when you do that,” Isobel interrupted, “in the end there isn’t any bit of
you
left.”

Willow Brook was dead quiet for the rest of the day. After
the difficult morning, everyone went back to their own apartments and beds. It
was early evening before anyone rose from slumber but even when they did, they
kept to themselves.

No one
came to the group breakfast the following day at Isobel’s other than Ben and her.
What group were they anymore? She and Ben had canned pears, granola bars and
some re-hydrated eggs that they found in the food stash. They sat quietly,
looking out the window. There were many more dead outside than Isobel had ever
seen before, as though they were flooding into the area. She finished her food
and went to her balcony. From there she began to pick through the crowd,
searching for people she recognized from around Northgate, wondering if she
might see Markus but hoping that she wouldn’t.

            The
first zombie she recognized was a kid that had worked at the McDonald’s counter
up the block. He still had his uniform on. She imagined he smelled like a mix
of fryer grease and decay. Next she saw a woman that she remembered from her
QFC shopping trip on the first day. They had shared a laugh when they’d both
wanted to go down the coffee aisle but beans covered the floor. It was almost
impassable. The woman hadn’t purchased much food that day and by the looks of
it, it hadn’t lasted. She’d been forced outside and the gamble had not paid off.

            “I
think that’s my bank teller,” Isobel said as she pointed to an angry looking
corpse in a ratted negligee. Ben joined her on the balcony to see who she was
referring to.

            “Yeah,
I know her too,” Ben commented but then went back inside.

            “So
many kids,” Isobel said to herself. She said it very quietly, afraid that Ben
might hear and be reminded of the loss of Hayden and her unborn child. There
were so many of them in the street today. “School let out,” she said louder.

            “Huh?”
Ben asked.

            “Nothing,
just talking to myself,” Isobel replied.

            “Don’t
make that a habit. Some might call that crazy.”

            Isobel
sat on a deck chair, away from the railing, and closed her eyes. She tried to
think of life when it had been more normal. Days when she could go on a walk
outside without looking over her shoulder or ride her bike without fear of
being chased. She daydreamed of long hot showers, fresh food and fresh air. It
filled her with regret for all the things she didn’t do. When life had been
normal, she barely took walks outside. She sat at home on her computer in her
stuffy apartment. Her bike knew storage more than it ever knew the streets.
She’d always taken her car everywhere. She’d hated the chore of showers and so
took hers quick and her food came more often from a frozen box than a field.
She opened her eyes again, faced with all the time in the world but she
couldn’t do any of it. She went back inside and sat next to Ben on the couch.

“Living has become the chore. If we don’t work hard at it, put it on our
checklist to mark it off, we wouldn’t make it through the day. I would give anything
to lay outside on some grass, undisturbed, unthreatened by walking death, with
the sweet smell of nothing in my nose!” Isobel said, almost poetic in her
comment.

“Me too,” was all Ben had in response, partly because he was surprised at
Isobel’s show of such sensitive emotions. The other half of him was gripped by
sadness over Hayden’s death. She had been an unexpected bright point in his
dismal existence. Her news of the child that could be his, if he wanted it to
be, was even greater still. Needing time alone and wanting to properly grieve,
he left Isobel’s and went upstairs to 305.

Ben
broke down as soon as the door closed behind him. He had been unable to keep
both Anna and Hayden safe. On the coffee table he found the pregnancy book that
Hayden had been reading and that had belonged to Jill previously. Many of its
pages had been earmarked in anticipation that the knowledge would be needed. He
took the book to the kitchen and tossed it into the sink. He dug through the
drawers until he found a box of matches. The first three didn’t strike but the
fourth match caught fire easily. Ben touched the tiny torch to a corner of the
book and watched as the pages blackened and curled. The smoke was heavy and it
hurt his lungs but he didn’t care. All he wanted was for the memories and the
guilt to leave. The smoke became so thick that he had to sit on the linoleum
and wait out the fire. He traced the lines of the flooring, remembered that
Molly had said she’d slept on it, and he lay down. As his skin touched the cool
surface an alarm rang out but he didn’t move. It felt so good to him to be far
away from the world above that pained him.

Molly
had been thinking a lot about the day before. Vaughn’s mysterious bite wound
and Hayden’s death. She could come up with multiple theories as to how Vaughn
had found himself with a set of undead teeth on his arm. And Ben had given a
plausible reason – the pregnancy – as to why Vaughn might be angry with Hayden.
But two things nagged at Molly’s head. Why would he kill her over that and what
the hell was Jeff doing in the third floor hallway?

            As
she crawled passed him in the dim hallway she could see the gun tucked into his
pants. After seeing the wound in Hayden’s head, she knew it had been Jeff but
she didn’t want anyone to know. Jeff would kill more if confronted and now that
he had a weapon it would be difficult to ever deal with him again.

            Molly’s confidence had grown as well though. After beating a
man to death for food she felt like she could take on Jeff. The drawstring of
her food bag pulled out easily; she checked it for strength and practiced
looping it around a bag of flour, pulling it tight. She heard a smoke alarm
going off in the building, somewhere above her head. She watched out the
peephole of 204 while Isobel ran upstairs to investigate. Less than a minute
later, Rob exited his apartment across the hall to follow. It was an unplanned
and perfect coincidence. She only hoped that Jeff didn’t struggle and make too
much noise with Gabe in the apartment next door.

Ben
looked up to the ceiling and the stormy, cloud-filled sky that he’d created
there. Isobel was there now, above him. She’d found him and the fire and she
was yelling at him.

“Get out of here, Ben! Get up!” she screamed. In her hand something red
and round was killing the fire he’d made. He sat up and he could see that the
flames had grown to touch the cabinets. She was losing and it made him happy
that the fire would win the battle.

“It’s all got to go,” he said as he
lay back down.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Rob yelled. He’d
heard the smoke alarm and run upstairs. In the kitchen of the Cooper’s old
apartment he found Isobel trying to suppress the flames. He went to the hall to
turn off the blaring alarm. Back in the kitchen he attempted to drag Ben to the
living room. “Isobel, he passed out. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

            “Make
sure he’s still breathing. I don’t know how much smoke he inhaled,” she
answered, still battling the flames but now in control of the fire.

            “What’s
burning?” Rob asked as he pulled Ben a few inches closer to safety.

            “The
cabinets but it started with a book,” Isobel responded, coughing from the
smoke.

            “Which
one?”

“I don’t know! I just want to know if he meant to burn the place down,” she
said as she set down the extinguisher and wiped sweat from her brow.

            “That
would be a problem.”

            “A
problem I wouldn’t even began to know how to handle,” she sighed.