Tony Richards, the old man, he doesn’t want to die. He wants to live.
“Stop, Jack. Stop it! This isn’t you,” Darlene says.
I take a deep, shaky breath. She’s right. It’s not. But sometimes we have to wear disguises if we want to get what we need.
I aim the gun at the old man’s head. My index finger wavers as it brushes the trigger.
“Please,” Tony Richards says while his son says nothing. “Please, we can work something out. You all can stay here, if you want.”
“With psychopaths who want to kill us?” I say. Even I don’t like the way I sound. “I think not.”
“You don’t understand. Eden? You’re from Eden and you don’t have feelings. You don’t. Spike — I can’t go back to him. I escaped once, I’m never going back there,” Tony says, babbling. The babbles turn to sobs. He brings a big, callused hand up to his face and wipes away sweat and tears at the same time. “Please, please,” he says.
“We aren’t from Eden,” I say. “We already told you that.”
He looks up at me. “You’re not?”
“No. We’re trying to get there. Geez, man. I’m not your enemy. We’re not your enemy,” I say.
Abby nods.
“Yeah,” Norm croaks.
“How did you know about it?” Tony asks. “It-it’s supposed to be a secret now.”
“Everyone knows!” I shout. “There’s signs and clues all over the highway. People talk about it. We’re just some of the refugees looking for save haven.”
“Eden is not safe,” Tony says. The way he speaks chills me.
I don’t know what to say. So many questions come to mind that none of them can come out.
“Jack,” Darlene says. “Let’s go. Let’s leave.” Her face is pale, that sunburn drained. I feel the dejected spirit of the group. They don’t want to believe Tony’s words. Neither do I.
“Pleaseeee — ” Tony begins again. The rest of his words are choked out by sobs.
I grab the pistol with both hands now, steadying my aim just like Norm taught me. But I do not pull the trigger.
Instead, I hit the magazine release. I let the clip fall to the linoleum and the sound it makes is close to a gunshot. So close, I see Brian shutter to my right and Tony Richards convulse as if I had just shot him. He opens his eyes. Looks around at the drab kitchen then at his son and smiles. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you!”
“I’m not your enemy,” I say again.
Abby hasn’t lowered her weapon. She’s learned that the hard way, too. I know she won’t pull the trigger, but what’s left of the Richards family doesn’t.
Tony’s face, which had been growing rosy since he realized I didn’t shoot him, begins to drain of all color again.
“You don’t want to go to Eden,” he says. “I mean it, son.”
Then Brian starts laughing. I look over to him. His hair shakes with each deep rumble. “We’re so stupid,” he says. “So stupid, Dad.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “How so?”
He looks up at me. That look is in his eyes, the look that wasn’t there before — a man on his last thread of sanity. “We keep our mouths shut about Eden, tell you where to go, how to get there, and then…BOOM! You’re dead.”
I jump at the sound of his voice.
“Spike sees you coming — believe me, Spike sees everything — and next thing you know, your head is on a pike outside the gates. Then me and my Pa here live out the rest of our days as happy as we can be, never having to worry about you idiots coming back and trying to take what’s ours,” Brian continues.
“Why should we believe you?” I ask. Eden has to be safe, it just has to.
Brian ignores my comment.
“Too late, Pa! Too late!”
Abby hits him with the pistol. Clobbers him right in the temple, and Brian is a heap of bones on the linoleum.
My eyes bulge at the sight. I have to do a double take to make sure it really happened.
Behind me, Darlene gasps. “Abby,” she says as if she’s offended.
Abby shrugs. “What? He was creeping me out.”
I look to Tony, putting on my fake tough guy voice, the one Norm does so much better. “You’re next if you don’t tell us more about Eden.” It’s almost laughable. I’m not cut out for this job.
The voice is shabby, but it seems to do the trick. Tony looks at me with a little more respect than he did before. He knows I’m in control, and that’s good enough for me.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” he says. “But what’s the point? You won’t believe me. It was once a place you could go to be safe, but now it’s overrun by a madman and his equally crazy followers. You don’t want to go there. You don’t want to — ”
“You’re right,” I say. “We are going to Eden. You may be lying or you may be telling the truth. One way or the other, I’m finding out for myself. If it’s how you say it is, then my group and I will take it back. When we do, we will send a car out here for you, and you and your son can live in peace.” Abby and Darlene stare at me. I like to think there is respect written on their faces. Norm is hunched over the back of a chair, his eyes barely open. I try to think more like him and what he would say in a situation like this. “We’ll need weapons and a ride if you can spare one,” I finally say.
“Don’t,” Tony says. “Don’t go. I have nothing to give you. I cannot help.”
“Bullshit,” Abby says. “The basement is locked and I’m guessing it’s locked for a reason. You got something in there you don’t want anyone else to see.”
She’s right.
Tony is shaking his head. “No,” he says. “Don’t go down there.”
But I’m already moving out of the kitchen toward the small hallway and the basement beyond. “We won’t take all of your weapons, just enough to get us there so we can see for ourselves,” I shout back, looking over my shoulder.
Tony starts to get up, but Abby is on him with her gun. “Don’t move,” she says.
Eleven
The basement door is locked, but the lock is no match for a bullet. I shoot it once, my head turned and my eyes shielded. A metallic whine fills the small corridor.
I open the door. The smell that hits me is a smell of death and decay, a smell I have always associated with basements. Mildew. Dust. Cobwebs.
So I am not surprised.
“Don’t go down there!” Tony shouts again.
It’s too late.
My right foot already hits the first step. It creaks beneath my weight, and dust and that basement smell wafts up to meet me. It’s not the smell that surprises me the most, but the look and feel of the basement. The steps seem to stretch on into the darkness forever. Once I’m on the cobblestone floor, it starts to get weird.
Muted sunlight comes in through a sliver of a window. It’s enough for me to see the trail of black blood, and I think that’s what the smell that punches me in the nose is.
I try to keep my back to a wall, but this basement is a vast as the house above it. There’s hallways and corridors, shelves full of useless trinkets — old oil cans, ancient soda bottles, a mallet, nails, a packet of molding muffins — that stretch to the ceiling where cobwebs hang from a series of interwoven pipes and air ducts. I turn around and the steps seem to have moved to the other side of the room, that’s how lost I am already. A pile of old, rotten furniture sits in a corner. Chairs, tables with missing legs, a La-Z-Boy recliner.
I walk on.
The smell grows thicker now. That dead, rotting smell now mingling harshly with the smell of mold and dust and dirt. I almost bring my hand up to cover my nose, but I can’t. I have to remain strong. I have to find the weapons. I know they’re here.
I turn down a corridor and push a door open with the gun. It creaks loudly, though I can hear my breath above the sound.
As the door opens, I freeze.
These are not guns.
These are bodies. Dead bodies. But not human bodies…dead zombie bodies. I al
most start to scream as I look away, trying to get ahold of myself.
Two bodies strapped to wooden tables.
What in the actual fuck?
I raise the weapon at them. They could be alive — well, you know what I mean — and I don’t want to be caught by surprise, attacked because my initial impression is wrong. I try to walk closer to them as quietly as I can, but it’s dark and I kick something.
A tin can goes skittering across the floor and bangs into the wall on the other side of the tables.
I hold my breath, watching for any movement.
There is none.
These zombies’s eyes do not glow yellow. They do not make that death rattle deep from their throat. They do not turn their heads and stick out their arms to try to grab me.
They are dead.
I walk closer. The smell of them is like an invisible barrier I don’t want to break through.
The little bit of light streaming in through the hallway and into this room shows me who they are — or who they used to be. Had I not seen the photograph on the upstairs mantel, these two would just be another couple of zombies. I almost wish they were because I wouldn’t feel so sad…so pitiful.
The woman with her long and now brittle, blonde hair stairs up at the ceiling with wide eyes. Her lower jaw has been completely ripped off. The dress she wears is new, however, something that looks unworn. She did not die in this dress, I can tell you that. Her face has this sunken-in quality that still somehow tells me she was once beautiful.
The man laying next to her wears an unblemished suit and tie. He is missing an eye. There is a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead caked with dry, crusty blood. He has no facial hair, not like his twin brother upstairs.
This is Brian’s twin and his mom, Tony’s wife.
I feel like sobbing.
I know what it’s like to lose a mother, but I couldn’t imagine losing my mother and my brother. Screw the guns, they can wait.
I turn out of the room, saying a silent prayer in my head, and go back upstairs.
Norm looks a little better as I walk back into the kitchen. Brian is awake, but I try not to look at him because seeing his dead twin is like seeing him dead. Abby and Darlene watch me eagerly.
“No guns?” Abby asks.
I ignore her and turn to Tony who is still up against the refrigerator. His face is wet, his eyes are shiny.
“You didn’t touch them, did you? You didn’t touch them?” he says to me.
I shake my head, then squat down to look him in the eyes.
“What the fuck is going on?” Norm says behind me. He almost sounds normal. I ignore him, too.
“I want to help,” I say to Tony.
His face transforms from hurt to angry, the color rising in his cheeks. “You can’t help! They’re already dead! Spike did it to them. It was fucking Spike. You can’t help! You can’t — ”
I put my hand on his arm and squeeze. He looks like he wants to hit me, wants to pounce on me and tear me limb from limb. Rightfully so, I guess. I have invaded his privacy, have stumbled upon something he didn’t want anyone to see.
“I want to help, Tony. I will do anything, okay? Then we will be even.”
Tony blinks once, tears fall from his eyes.
“Just stay out of our business,” Brian says.
I ignore him like I ignore the others.
“Let me help you lay them to rest,” I say to Tony.
“I-I can’t. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I love her. Wendy has been with me forever. And Benny, oh my sweet Benny. I can’t, Jack. I just can’t.”
“I understand, Tony. I do. But you will never move on if you keep them there. And you have to move on. That’s what this world is all about. Things happen — bad things, terrible things — but sometimes good things happen, too. If you’re stuck in the past, you can’t enjoy the future.”
“Nothing good is gonna happen. You don’t get it, son. You’re too young,” Tony says. He points to the gun in my hand. “Just put a bullet in my brain. Let me move on that way.”
I shake my head.
The tears are streaming down his face. I feel everyone’s eyes staring at us.
“I know, I know, it’s hard to believe good things can happen now. They might not, and that’s true, but we can’t say for sure. The only thing I can say for sure is that good things won’t happen if you’re dead, Tony Richards. You have a son who loves you and respects you. You have to be strong for him.”
Tony wipes his eyes with his grimy fingers, takes a deep breath, and nods. “You’re right, kid. Damn it, you’re right.”
“There’s a beautiful tree out back. A tree with all its leaves, standing tall and vigilant. It’s a perfect place to lay them to rest, Tony. I don’t know why I feel that way, but I know if we bury them there, that tree will watch over them for eternity,” I say.
Tony lets out a sob mixed with a laugh. I stand up and extend a hand down to him. He takes it, and much to my surprise, he pulls me in for a hug. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”
Then we part and his son comes over and hugs him.
I look over to Darlene, Abby, and Norm. They are all looking at me with shocked expressions on their faces. I just shrug and head out to the backyard where that big, beautiful tree sways in the light breeze.
I find a shovel near the shed, and I begin to dig.
I dug until the sun started to go down. Not long after my shovel had hit the dirt, Abby, Darlene, and Norm came out to help me. We dug two graves, side by side, right in the tree’s shade.
At first, they questioned me, but once I told them about the bodies in the basement, they understood and went right to work. Tony and Brian Richards, like the rest of the world, have begun to lose their sanity. Their loved ones rotted away in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse. If it isn’t for us, I believe they would take their own lives. Norm, Darlene, and Abby agree with me.
There is already enough death in this world. If we have any hope of surviving this plague, we must help each other out, we must keep each other alive.
Norm and I helped Tony and Brian wrap Wendy and Ben Richards into sheets. They said their goodbyes. We helped carry them up the steps. They weighed next to nothing and I hardly noticed the smell.
We laid them to rest before the sun went down.
Tony and Ben helped cover them up.
We all cried.
And the remaining members of the Richards family moved on.
As the group gathers up what remaining belongings we left in the farmhouse, Tony and I stand on the front porch. He has two beers in his hand and he gives one to me.
It is cold.
It’s been too long since I’ve had a cold drink. I almost cry.
“Thank you,” I say. I down it in three big gulps.
He smiles at me. I notice how much younger he looks. In just the span of a few hours, it seems as if a huge weight had been lifted from Tony Richards’s shoulders. “No. Thank you,” he says.
He shakes my hand.
Darlene comes out with Norm and Abby behind her. We have all our stuff ready to go. Eden is our next stop. I don’t care what stands in our way. We are getting to safety — true safety, not a farmhouse without borders, but a safe haven.
Tony looks them up and down, the happiness on his face melting away. “Anyway I can talk you guys out of it?”
I shake my head. “We’ve come too far. If it’s like you say it is, then we will fix it.”
“It is, Jack,” he says. “And you might not be able to fix it.” He pauses, sensing my seriousness, then says, “You may be able to scavenge in Sharon. I don’t think Spike and his army have taken much from there yet. Grab all the weapons and medicine you can find. You will need it.”
“We’ll see,” I say.
“Sorry I can’t offer you more help, but you understand.”
I nod.
Tony did not have weapons to spare aside from a sniper’s rifle none of us really knew how to use.
Norm claimed he did, but I think that was the booze talking.
“What about the car? You sure you don’t want to take it?” Tony asks.
I shake my head. “No, you keep that sweet ride. Walking is good, less noise, less attraction.”
“True,” he says.
“Well,” I say, “it was nice to meet you and your son. May your days be long and prosperous.”
Tony smiles. “And yours, too,” he says as he begins to shake our hands and say his goodbyes to Darlene, Norm, and Abby.
“Got anymore of that booze?” Norm asks.
Tony chuckles.
Abby grabs Norm’s arm and drags him away. “You’re never drinking again,” she says.
I walk off the porch, and give Tony one last wave.
I am leading my group to the small town of Sharon. Beyond that is Eden and what Eden holds in store for us, I do not know. But we will find out.
Twelve
We walk in silence down the same dirt road we entered. All we have are two guns between us and a bag of blunt weapons.
All signs of last night’s storm have vanished. That’s Florida for you. Back in Ohio, a summer thunderstorm would leave the ground sopping wet and the sky a depressing gray for a couple of days. Not the case here. Now, the sun shines and the sky is a clear blue. There’s a few clouds which look like puffs of white smoke floating lazily above us. No storm on the horizon.
I think that's a good sign.
The perfect sign to combat the bad ones I saw in the farmhouse. Seeing the two corpses and seeing how it affected Tony — bringing him to a sobbing shell of a man — and Brian hurt me more than I care to admit. In The Deadslayer, Johnny Dunbar is a character I tried to write without emotional attachments because that is the perfect character to go around bashing zombie skulls. Turned out, that I couldn’t do it in fiction so how could I do it in real life?
Everyone cares about somebody — something — and to try to deny that would make us as bad as the zombies themselves.
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