When the Dead (4 page)

 She
could hear running coming closer to her door and then, on the other side of it,
her neighbor Ben yelling her name.

Isobel opened the door before thinking and she looked upon a
blood-covered and wide-eyed Ben. He’d shot someone and he still held the gun,
dangling in his right hand. He pushed past Isobel, which was a bit relieving to
her, and went straight to her bathroom.

Had dangerous people gotten in the building?
She didn’t have
answers yet so she closed and locked the door and went to the bathroom after him.
Ben was avoiding looking in the mirror as he frantically washed the blood from
his arms and face. Isobel stood in the doorway scrutinizing every inch of his
skin that was visible looking for bites.
Clean.

“Anna kept coming at me. I couldn’t kill her.” He mumbled with his head
in his hands as he sat on the couch in Isobel’s living room. Isobel sat across
from Ben in an armchair with the borrowed handgun set close to her on the
coffee table, between her and him. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Ben
because he had a bit of crazy in his eyes and his dead girlfriend’s blood on
his shirt. She kept her eyes directed somewhere between the floor and the gun.

 “What happened to her Ben? It was a bite, wasn’t it?” Isobel had to
know. Ben took a deep breath and on the exhalation started to explain what
happened to his girlfriend.

“I put her in th- . . . I put Anna in the bath because she said she was
cold. She was crying the whole time. She was so frightened after being attacked
that she hadn’t stopped crying since it happened. She was in a lot of pain so I
thought a soak might help her relax. When she was naked in the water the blood
washed away I saw her leg. There was a big chunk missing from her calf.

“I had heard on the news that bites made people die but it didn’t look
like a bite, not from a person, there was too much skin and muscle missing. An
animal would more likely have taken that much tissue.

“I should have taken her to the hospital but they kept saying to stay
inside and she was uncomfortable when she moved. Then her body started going
numb. I couldn’t reach anyone to send an ambulance anyway! I left her in the
tub and went to the kitchen. I . . . I made coffee.

“When I went in to check on her she had already died and come back. She
must have gotten out of the tub first, because it was drained, and then died on
the bathroom floor. But like I said, she was back up again and she started
coming at me. Her breasts and hair were hanging down and dripping water
everywhere. She looked really pissed off and she grabbed me and tried to go for
my arm.

“I knew it was the infection when she started to try to bite me. I love
her but I didn’t want to catch it. I had to protect myself. My gun was on the
side table by the door so I picked it up, closed my eyes and pulled the
trigger. She released her grip but quickly got hold of me again. When I opened
my eyes I saw that I had hit near her heart but it didn’t make a difference to
her! I just kept shooting and she kept coming.

“I shot until she fell. It was when I shot her in the head that sh . . .”
He stopped there and started crying again.

Ben and
Isobel went to take care of Anna’s body. They put her in the bathtub and
covered her bullet-riddled nakedness with large black garbage bags taped to the
edges of the tub. Isobel felt like a criminal with a weak stomach or without
conviction, as she kept stopping to puke in the toilet while they were
disposing of Anna. They closed and sealed the bathroom door and apartment door
with tape as well. Ben had made a mess of the place in his bout with Anna. It
had become uninhabitable.

Ben moved in with Isobel. He crashed on the couch. As he was recounting
his story earlier, Isobel kept waiting for the cops to show up. Someone must
have called 911. There was a dead body down the hall! But no one ever came and
Isobel remembered that she herself had never picked up the phone to call 911
for others in peril during the last three days. The sirens stopped yesterday anyway
and Ben had told her that it was pointless to call. He either got a busy tone
or a pre-recorded and repetitive message that told him to keep the line clear
for emergencies.
This was a fucking emergency!
Isobel had helped to
dispose of a body!
On the fourth day a single corpse didn’t qualify as
an emergency anymore.

Ben had brought over a lot of food as well as some extra bedding and
several bulk packages of water. Isobel had never had roommates and didn’t want
them either but it was much safer and less lonely with another person around.
Ben also brought more skill with a weapon and he had dealt with one of the
infected. Before today, Isobel had never seen a dead body that close before or
touched one.

One had definitely never touched her and she planned to keep it that way.

When Tom
Vaughn moved into Willow Brook he considered himself lucky to land in 306. A
corner apartment with an extra window in the bedroom, no one living above him
to stomp around, and a next door neighbor that was young, hot, and instantly
added to his “to do” list. He’d benefited from the first two strokes of luck
but not yet the third. The world was ending and Vaughn was determined to add
her to his “done” list. So he drank a little bourbon for support and walked
next door.

            He
tried the doorknob first and found it locked. ”Figures,” he mumbled. “She’s
probably locked up tight herself. I’ll change that.” He grudgingly knocked, a
bit louder and more threatening than he meant to due to the bourbon making his
hands heavy.

            Molly
Mathay opened her door and stood face-to-chest with her huge next door
neighbor. “Hi Tom, um, what’s up?”

            “Hey
. . .” Vaughn couldn’t remember her name, he wasn’t even sure that he knew it
to begin with. “Can I come in?”

            Molly
was suspicious. Tom had never come over before and he was a creep, a military-obsessed,
angry creep that today smelled like some kind of alcohol. “No, I’m kind of in
the middle of something.” She closed the door a little and it made her feel better.

            “I
think we can both agree that things being how they are, one could get lonely
and want to more actively seek comfort in others.”

            Was
Tom blushing? Had he changed his ways in the face of death? Molly was caught
off guard by his sensitive choice of words.

            “So,
you wanna fuck?”

            “You
bastard! No! I don’t want to fuck! Not you anyway! Leave me alone!” Molly
slammed the door and locked the dead bolt. She was disturbed and pissed off
that she hadn’t looked through the peephole before opening the door to Tom, the
dick on two legs. She could have avoided the whole situation.

On the other side of the door, Tom had already convinced himself that
Molly would show up to his apartment later, begging for him to get inside of
her.

On her side, she was shaking and already heading to the kitchen to deal
with the emotions in a plate or two of food.

Both
Isobel and Ben slept well on the fourth night. They woke up to a gentle
collective moan coming from outside but the walls of the building were thick
enough that it was slightly muted.

“It’s like a twisted sleep noise machine,” Isobel laughed.

“I think they call this setting ‘Undeadscape’,” Ben played along,
smiling.

“You’re getting that one confused with ‘Hospital Ward’ or maybe
‘Complaining’.”

“A bit darker than the usual Ocean Waves, Mountain Stream or Woodland
Birds for sure.”

The smile left his face as he remembered killing Anna.

They decided over a breakfast of cold cereal
and bananas that they needed small projects to keep occupied. Being stuck
inside especially in dreary Seattle will wear on everyone eventually, even
those who hadn’t had the unfortunate opportunity to kill a loved one yet.

The most urgent tasks were to find out if they
were alone in the building and then to fortify the place to ensure their
survival.

The plan for the day:

1.   Gather important documents from the main
office (floor plans, tenant lists, etc . . .)

2.   Go door to door, starting on the third floor,
and count bodies (living, dead, and undead)

3.   Kill any undead

4.   Collect all bodies and place in basement

5.   Fortify all of the first floor windows and doors

6.   Arm tenants

7.   Take stock of supplies

8.   Wait it out until the end

The end
an unknown date and resolution, it still felt important to have it on the list.

            “Something
we can look forward to.” Isobel patted him on the back as she got up to make coffee.

  Ben and Isobel set to their first project. The main office is on
the first floor and Isobel hadn’t been to ground level since Tuesday, four days
ago. She was scared to death. Not knowing what they would find, they both
brought handguns. As if on cue, the moment they reached the bottom of the
stairs they were greeted by a walking corpse. It was badly rotted and barely
recognizable as one of the office staff, except for the nametag labeling it as
“Susanne” the “Building Manager”.

Covering their mouths from the awful smell, they both attempted to take
aim with their free hands. Ben waved Isobel off and he shot the office lady.
With a loud *pop* his bullet took a chunk of the decaying head with it to a
nearby wall, the one with the mailboxes. Seeing a piece of head blown off put
Isobel into a temporary shock. Her legs were weak and she had to rest against
the wall or she would collapse completely. She coped in difficult situations by
thinking practically.
They are going to have to replace those keyholes,
maybe even the entire set of mailboxes. I don’t see any easy way of cleaning
the brains out,
she focused on the mailman’s probable confusion during
repairs.
Where would he leave the mail if the boxes were under maintenance?
This
was all of course under the assumption that the mail would be delivered again
someday. But, unknown to Isobel, the mailman looked quite similar to the way
the office lady looked now, somewhere beyond the walls of Willow Brook; forever
wandering the streets, but no longer delivering mail.

Ben was whispering and somehow yelling at the same time for Isobel to
focus on finding the keys to the office. Given a new, less bloody item to
fixate on, Isobel found the office keys quickly. They were attached to a belt
loop of Susanne’s khaki pants but the door, which was directly across from the
stairwell, was already unlocked and ever so slightly ajar.

Ben stealthily locked the front door of the office that opened to the
street and closed the blinds. The only desk in the room was heavy but they were
able to move it against the door to hopefully deny any further entry. With the
key to the file cabinets, courtesy of Susanne, they could find the information
they needed but, there were rotted bits of flesh on some of the drawer handles,
also courtesy of Susanne. Ben wiped the handles clean with an unused napkin
from a fly-covered, half-eaten teriyaki takeout meal on the desk. The poor
woman was interrupted by death in the middle of her lunch.

They now had floor plans, a current tenant list, and a city map in hand.
Before going door-to-door, they returned to the second floor and Isobel’s
apartment to scan the tenant list and label the floor plans to help guide and
prepare them. They wrote the last names and number of occupants on each apartment
and checked their guns.

“It isn’t going to be fun discovering how inaccurate these numbers have become,”
Ben said somberly.

It took
Ben and Isobel all day and part of the evening to secure Willow Brook. The
third floor was where they started their door-to-door head count.