When the Dead (6 page)

The
second floor residents moved slowly down the stairs, listening as hard as they
could for any of the undead. Once at the bottom, they went silently to work.
Rob and Jeff kept a look out near the front door as Ben and Isobel picked up
the body of the office manager. Ben let Isobel lift the feet end of Susanne’s
body since he’d made a mess of the head end earlier. Isobel kept her eyes
closed as they placed it in the center of the unfolded tarp that they had laid
on the hallway floor.

            They
left the tarp in front of the main office door, to wait for more bodies, as
they started the frightening task of going door-to-door on the first floor. The
windows of Willow Brook were old and, with enough pressure, easy to break
through. Isobel had no idea what they might find.

The
Cabels were hunkered down. They hadn’t left their apartment in days. Edward had
taken some of Moira’s heavier hand-stitched quilts and nailed them over the
windows and sliding glass door to keep the light and the life from drawing the
dead towards the apartment. Moira was the friendlier of the two and had always
tried to be polite with others in the building. Edward was 86 this year and
she, 84. They were the oldest people living at Willow Brook and the younger
generations needed some guidance, she thought. But since the dead were walking
around she had felt it best to withdraw; keeping the door locked and only the
company of her husband. It pained her though and she often looked through the
peephole for signs of life.

            For
the first time, she saw movement. “Something’s going on in the hallway. A few
of the residents are out there. Edward, come over here!” She snapped at her
husband whose nose was in a book.

            “Alright,
alright. Let me finish the chapter.” He grumbled without looking up.

            “Come
right now! They have guns!”

            Edward
jumped up as quickly as his 86-year-old body allowed. He had never been a gun
enthusiast but, the times had changed and a loaded weapon was something he had
been dreaming about.

            “Don’t
open the door yet Moira. Let’s see what happens.” Edward moved to the peephole
but was disappointed. “You can’t see anything! There’s no one there.”

            “They
were there a second ago. They looked like they were planning something.”

            Edward
remembered the gun. “You are sure they were people from the building?”

            “Absolutely.
That girl from the second floor and the man with the little boy were there.”

            “They
brought the boy down?” Edward was astonished. Who in their right mind would
bring a child anywhere that you had to take a gun to visit?

            “No,
I was just telling you who the man was.”

            “Oh.
And they were alive?”

            “Yes.”

            “I’m
opening the door a crack. Just to see what’s going on.” Edward grabbed the
doorknob and Moira’s hand followed to stop him.

            “Be
quiet and don’t let them know we are here.”

            “I
know! Now, let go.”

            Moira
moved her hand from his to her side, where she started to nervously twist the
pale lavender fabric of her cardigan. Edward opened the door and peered down
the hall just long enough to see two men near the front door and the girl and
the father that Moira had seen. He closed the door.

“They are going into that Asian boy’s place.”

The
sliding glass door was halfway open but the glass was still intact.
Why
would anyone open that door?
Rob was hoping they‘d find Ryan so he could
ask him that very question.
The apartment was torn apart and two bodies
lay on the living room floor. They were unmoving and both had the handles of
kitchen knives protruding from their heads, one from the chin, and the other from
an eye socket, both blades completely sunken in.     

“Oh my god. Who are these people?” Isobel gasped.  The wounds were more
disgusting than bullets and bite marks. “Neither one of them is Ryan.”

            “Look
at the bite wounds. These people were infected.” Rob had knelt down and was
wiggling the handle of one of the knives.

            Isobel
hit him on the shoulder. “Stop that! It’s gross! Get up and help me.”

            He
hopped over the bodies to close and lock the sliding glass door. His shoes
pushed up blood from the carpet. The hanging blinds had been torn off their
track in the chaos of the event so the dead outside could see Isobel and Rob.

            They
checked the remaining rooms and didn’t find anything or anyone else until they
reached the bedroom. Ryan stumbled out from behind the door, grabbed Isobel and
went directly for her shoulder.
A corpse is touching me!
Her mind was
screaming. And then she was screaming like the SUV driver days ago, shrill and
without end. She couldn’t believe that it was happening. Ryan’s hands were ice
cold, his teeth were biting air and he smelled of urine and feces. Isobel was
so close to him that she could see the flecks of dried blood surrounding
several wounds on his arms and face. Before he had knifed the strangers in the
living room and stopped them for good, they had succeeded in passing the
infection to him.

            “Don’t
let him bite you!” Rob yelled as he pushed Ryan off of Isobel and raised the
machete high in the air. He swung down and the machete hit Ryan’s arm with a
thwack
.
Rob pulled up again and this time managed to lodge the blade in Ryan’s shoulder
which enabled him to hold Ryan at a distance.

            “Finish
him, Isobel! Shoot him!” Rob ducked his head and she barely regained composure
to put a bullet just below Ryan’s left eye.

            Ryan
had been a decent guy. He’d helped Isobel move in to Willow Brook three years
ago. Now, thanks to her, his body lay on the floor in a dirty heap of ruined
life. She burst into tears and Rob embraced her tightly.

            “It’s
ok, it’s alright. You had to do it.”

            “I
know. I just wish I didn’t have to.”

“Did you
hear that?” Gabe yelled, looking at the floor. He and Molly had built a castle
and were about to attack it with an army when a scream erupted and a gunshot
popped somewhere below them.

            “It’ll
be fine. Don’t worry, ok?” Molly smiled at him. “Hey, maybe we should take a
break and eat something.”

            “I’m
not hungry,” Gabe said.

            “Oh,
well, do you have anything you can share with me?” Molly asked happily.

            “Do
you like crackers?” Gabe jumped up and ran to the kitchen. “I can give you
three.”

            Molly
laughed. “Only three? I’m hungrier than that! Bring me the box.”

            Gabe
complied and carried the entire box to the living room.

Isobel’s
screaming and the gunshot had gotten the attention of Ben and Jeff, who’d come
running in to help. Several of the undead outside the complex had noticed too.
The corpses turned towards the noise and it became evident, with thirty of them
approaching, that the group would have to reinforce the sliding glass door.
They moved the entertainment center and the couch and managed to block the
visual connection but the damage had already been done. The flesh eaters knew
there was life in the building. Rob, Isobel, Ben, and Jeff stood there for a
moment behind their miniature blockade, quiet and stunned.

            “We
need to move quickly now. If they get in we’ll have to shoot them and that will
only draw more,”
Rob broke the silence and they knew that he was right.
Keep on task or die. So Isobel distributed the gloves with shaking hands and
they moved the three bodies to the tarp. They had only checked one apartment
and already the blue plastic was looking full. Isobel turned back to apartment
101 and locked the door forever.

            When
she turned to face the others she saw faces peeking out of apartments 102 and
104; drawn out by the sound of gunshots and screaming.

            “Markus?
Edward and Moira?” she had remembered their names from the tenant list. She
approached Edward and Moira’s door as Markus came quickly out after hearing his
name. “We live here. It’s ok. Are you alright in there?” Isobel tried to sound
as friendly as possible, though her heart rate was still elevated and her
breathing ragged from the altercation with Ryan Hong. She also still had the
gun in her shaking hands. She handed it off to Rob.

            The
Cabels came out slowly, their eyes darting back and forth from the tarp of
bodies to the weapons still in others’ hands. Long life can give one insight
and, therefore, make the aged more cautious; a good quality for survival. After
a second and third scan of the group, the elderly couple determined them to be
friends and invited everyone into their darkened apartment for a moment of
peace.

            “So
they got Ryan, huh? That’s a shame.” Markus was excited with all the people
around him but saddened at the loss of his neighbor across the hall; he’d had a
bit of a crush on him.

Rob nodded his head solemnly. “But you’ll be happy to know that he didn’t
go without a fight. He took two of them out before he died.” An image of the
feet of the dead on the tarp, one set bare and cut open, the other in scuffed
men’s dress shoes, gum stuck to the bottom of one, crossed Rob’s mind and he
shuttered.

“Good for him!” Markus smiled and threw a fist in the air. “By the way I’m
Markus, nice to meet you.” He extended his hand.

Ben politely shook his hand. “We know who everyone is,” Ben waved the
tenant list, “but I guess we should hang on to our civility and introduce
ourselves anyway.”

As the group exchanged pleasantries Isobel was admiring the handiwork of
the old couple. Even though the sun was shining brightly outside, the apartment’s
only source of light came from lamps and candles due to blankets blocking and
covering the windows and door. The result was effective. There wasn’t one bang
or bump against the glass on their side of the building. They were invisible to
the dead.

“Do you know about anyone else on the first floor?” Jeff, who had been
very quiet until now, asked. “Any information would be helpful.”

            “Well
. . . the Allen family across the hall in 103 went out of town two days before
everything started. They asked us to watch the cat. But the cat didn’t come
back after the first day; probably got spooked.”

            “What
about the two apartments at the end of the hall?” Ben asked.

            Moira
looked worried. Edward explained. “We heard a gunshot from Juan’s place on the
second day. I don’t know what that means for him but, he never came and asked
for any help after that.”

            “And
the girl in the wheelchair, well, we hardly ever see her anyway so I assumed
she was fine on her own. She has a lot of pride over her being so independent
too. I didn’t want to bother her,” Moira added.

            “Let’s
check the Allen’s apartment for supplies then, get it barricaded, and see
what’s up with Juan and Katie,” Isobel said.

            “Here,”
Rob nudged her, “you probably want this.” Seeing that she’d regained composure,
he gave her back the gun she’d relinquished.

            The
Allen’s curtains were all drawn, the apartment closed up tight since they were
out of town. It took only moments for the group to move the non-perishables
from the cupboards and into a laundry basket that Moira had provided.

When
things get difficult there are several types of people. To be more specific,
three types:

1.   Those that will do anything to keep surviving

2.   Those who have an equal want to live but don’t
have the guts that the fighters do

3.   Those that would prefer to submit and simply
fade to black

Ben and Tom Vaughn were in the first category. Isobel was in the second
with many of the other residents. The renters of apartments 105 and 106 were squarely
in the third.

The gunshot
that the Cabels heard on the second day was Juan Vaziri saying farewell to the
newly fucked up world. They found his body in the hallway just outside the
second bedroom. Like his security deposit, there was no way that Juan was
coming back because most of his head was further down the hall, ruining several
walls and doors. Moira said a prayer for Juan while the others went to work in
the apartment.

Ben, Jeff and Markus blocked the windows and doors. No one touched his
body because it was too messy to move to the tarp. Isobel and Rob took any food
and first aid but also a few warm blankets, a radio, batteries and three flashlights.
The supplies were piled onto a blanket to lug upstairs. There was time to grab
more but the scene was gruesome and depressing and no one wanted to stay in 106
longer than necessary.

Before leaving, Edward took the gun from Juan’s hand.

“Thank you, young man,” he said quietly. His heart felt heavy and sad for
Juan but he was very grateful that his death had enabled Edward to acquire a
gun.

Katie Finnerty, a college student living alone in 105, went less messily.
She had emptied a bottle of pills and a bottle of alcohol to end her life.
Because her brain was relatively undamaged from her chosen method she came
back, only it wasn’t a problem for her uninvited guests because Katie was
crippled from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair.

            “How’d
she end up in a wheelchair?” Isobel asked as she watched the younger girl drag
her undead self around the dirty kitchen floor.

            “I’m
not quite sure but I think it was a car accident in high school,” Markus
replied, he was looking at pictures of Katie’s childhood that were stuck to the
fridge. “She didn’t have the wheelchair in all these photos.”

             “We
need to get her out of the kitchen so we can search the cupboards,” Ben pointed
out. “Maybe we can move her into the living room?”

            “She’ll
bite us if we try to touch her.” Isobel shivered.

            “There
is no way I am putting a finger on her,” Markus added.

            “She
wants to bite us anyway so why don’t we taunt her in that direction? It will be
slow going but I’m sure it will be worth it. She shops for large amounts of
food at a time to minimize the number of trips so we’ll find some quality stuff
in here.”

            Rob
volunteered to coax Katie out of the kitchen. She really wasn’t a threat,
except to their ankles and the closer Rob stood to her, he found, the faster she
moved. The promise of living flesh kept her going.

Finally clear of the kitchen area, Rob and Ben trapped her in a makeshift
pen made out of the coffee table, a recliner, and the entertainment center. She
spent the rest of the visit holding her body up with one hand while clawing the
air with the other. How desperately she wanted to consume them.

“Shouldn’t we shoot her?” Moira was looking at Katie with concern while
the others unloaded the kitchen cabinets. Edward raised the handgun he had
acquired from Juan.

“No,” Ben placed a hand on the gun to stop him, “that will attract more
and I don’t think we should kill anything unless our lives depend on it. We
need to stay human as long as possible.”

Moira nodded in agreement but Edward wasn’t ready to lower the gun.

“So we’re just going to leave her here to starve? I don’t see how that is
more human.”

“Edward, leave her be. You might need those bullets for someone else.”
Moira had stepped in front of the gun to show her husband how serious she was.
He dropped the gun to point at the floor and hugged his wife.

Ben and Rob dragged the tarp of bodies to the basement while the others
followed. They placed the corpses in an empty storage unit in a far corner. The
tenants had a moment of silence in front of the tidy stack of dead before
closing the door.

“Farewell to all of you. Ryan, Susanne, and you two strangers, whoever
you are, rest in peace,” Moira said softly.

            “Look!”
Markus pointed out a half-window that was placed high on the wall of the
basement. It gave them a view of the front lawn. Their eyes were level with the
directionless feet of the dead. Everyone gathered at the small pane of glass
and watched for a few minutes until it became too much.

Isobel felt it routine to mark #4 off the list of tasks. Collect all
bodies and place in basement. Check.

The group went back up to the first floor hallway but, the work wasn’t
done.

            “Markus,
Edward, Moira, you should grab everything you want and move it upstairs. We can
help carry any larger items. Leave your things in the common area at the top of
the stairs for now. We can sort out living arrangements later,” Ben directed.

            “I
don’t want anything but some clothes, my tea and books, a place to lie down,
and my reading chair,” Edward replied.

            “Jeff
and I can help with the chair and your bed,” Rob offered.

            “How
nice of you both,” Moira smiled and led the way back into their apartment.

            “I
can keep watch while you help Markus, Ben,” Isobel suggested.

            “If
you are ok with that, away we go!” Ben cheered half-heartedly.

While everyone else was gone, Isobel found a few precious moments to
herself. She sat down on the carpet about halfway down the hall and waited for
everyone to return. The handgun was starting to feel heavy in her hand but she
couldn’t trust the world enough to set it down, even for a second. She needed a
sense of security and sleep, both desperately.