by Lara Frater
I wished Elaine had been nice enough to write where her roommates had gone.
We opened the door at the end of the hall to find a tiny messy bedroom with a dusty old laptop smashed on the floor, and the horrible smell, but not in this room. There was no note in this room.
“Next one,” Tanya said.
I knew what awaited us. Tanya appeared calmer than me.
We went to the next room. The smell was overwhelming.
“You sure you want to do this?” Tanya asked. “I’ve seen dead bodies even before the zombs showed up.”
I pushed opened the door before I could think about it.
The mostly decomposed body laid on the bed. Long since dead, so much that there were no maggots and hardly any flies. This person died long ago. The room was the biggest in the house: the master bedroom. It must have been the flu. I pulled out of the room quickly, ran to the bathroom, and vomited beans into a dry toilet.
Tanya stood behind me. She touched the back of my neck. Despite her thinking she was a bad momma, she had a gentle touch.
“What’s going on?” said Dave’s voice.
We could tell Ashley about the body or lie that the place was empty.
“We have to tell her.” Tanya said.
So much for my plan.
“Hey,” Dave said. “I can smell it. I asked a question, please respond.”
Instead of replying, we both went down the stairs.
“You need to respond,” Dave said.
I ignored Dave and focused on Ashley. “Ashley—I’m afraid we found a body upstairs of the flu.”
“Which bedroom?”
“The master bedroom.”
“Oh, thank god,” she said. I must have had a terrible look on my face, so she added. “Katie rents the smallest room. She’s a waitress at a diner, not a lot of money. The body has to be Miriam. She paid more rent to get the bigger bedroom.”
“Can the body be identified?” Jake asked.
“It’s pretty decomposed.”
“I don’t mind looking,” Ashley said. “Just to make sure.”
“There was also a note from someone named Elaine. She doesn’t mention Katie.”
“The other girl-- stuck up thing.”
That could explain why the note didn’t mention the roommates.
“Come on.” We walked back up the stairs. That smell was now wafting through the rest of the house. I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, but I didn’t want to rush Ashley.
“You don’t have to do it,” Dave said.
“But I will never know for sure if I don’t.”
She slowly made her way up the stairs and walked towards the master bedroom. I handed her gloves, but she didn’t take them. She got to the door.
And began screaming. My breath stopped completely.
“Katie!” she ran into the room and grabbed the corpse, no gloved hands, nothing. I would throw up again if I had anything left.
“No,” she said, weeping, “No!”
When she moved the body, a slip of paper fell to the dusty wooden floor. Tanya, the only one brave enough to enter the room to retrieved it.
Tanya looked over the note. “Hey Ashley, your girl loved you. She wrote this in the note. You want me to read it?”
Ashley didn’t respond except for sobs.
“Okay, here goes. Dear Mom, I got the flu that’s killing everyone. Miriam died in the hospital and Elaine left. I don’t know if I will survive or where you are. The phones aren’t working and I’m too sick to move. I hope you never find this note. I hope you and I are both at peace. Life has always been hard for us. When dad ran off, when Joey broke off the engagement and my problems. If you survived mom and you are reading this note, I love you. Please don’t let my death ruin your independent spirit. I spoke to Martin a few days ago. He and the kids are okay. We made some kind of peace. I love you so much. Katie.”
Ashley almost seemed like she didn’t hear. Tanya touched her shoulders. “You want us to bury her?”
No response.
“Ashley,” Dave said from the door. He didn’t look into the room. “Please talk to us.”
Ashley did finally respond. The sobbing got more intense. Tanya attempted to disconnect her from the corpse. Then she started shrieking again.
“Don’t take me away from my baby!”
“She isn’t here,” Dave said. “She’s in a better place.” Ashley finally dropped the corpse but anger made her do it. She turned and faced us.
“Better place? She should have been with her momma.”
“Come on, Ashley,” I said. “Let’s go downstairs. We’ll bury the body and then leave.”
“Leave? Leave and go where? There is nothing for me. I’m a 57 year old cashier who lives in a zombie world and my baby is dead.”
“We can be your family,” Dave said. “All of us. We look after each other.”
“Oh please,” Ashley said. “You are all nigger this and fag that,” she looked at me. “Did you know that, Jim? That behind your back, he calls you fag. He calls Maddie aunt Jermina and Tanya a nigger. Is that supposed to be your family, Dave?”
Dave turned red. He looked at me, then at Tanya, then he headed down the stairs.
“Ashley, never mind Dave. He’s set in his ways. We care about you. You have us. Remember we could have kicked you out, but we didn’t.”
“Please, Abe didn’t want to keep me. Ask Annemarie. He’s was really hoping I’d croak.”
“He didn’t,” But I didn’t believe my own words. “Let’s leave, we can go to Oyster Bay or Syosset, find a mansion and stay there for a little while or we can take you back to CostKing.”
Ashley didn’t respond. She pushed her way out of the room and down the stairs. Tanya and I followed. She got to the bottom. Aisha, Annemarie and Jake looked freaked out. Dot was nowhere to be found so I guessed she was somewhere smoking.
“You should wash up first,” I said, noting she was covered with grime from her daughter’s body.
“Fuck you, Jim,” she said and walked out.
She didn’t say a thing about her daughter’s body, so we left it.
Chapter 11
We reached Melville after about an hour. Mindy’s parents owned a white colonial with a large front yard and back. Part of the roof had caved in.
I went in with Tanya and Annemarie. As soon as we walked into the door, a strong smell hit us. We found a man’s corpse on the couch and a woman’s corpse upstairs. I assumed they were her parents. I didn’t throw up this time. Annemarie left a note to anyone indicating that their daughter Mindy had died also, but she had been with caring friends.
Next was my house. I lived surprisingly close to Mindy’s folks. I might have even seen them on the LIRR. Would we have had anything in common?
I lived in a condo development. Cam and I bought it a year after we married. The condos were town houses surrounding a beautiful manicured courtyard and an outdoor pool. Now the manicured lawn grew with weeds and grass. The pool filled with dirty water surrounded by mosquitos. The once shiny gates of the development stood tarnished and lackluster. The place was gated. I didn’t really want that, but several of our friends had condos in the same place and we kind of made it a gay safe haven. All of them died of the flu.
The doors were locked but I had the key. Tanya came with me, while the others stayed in the truck. I didn’t want to stay long. I opened the gate. The guard house stood empty. We looked around. No movement. Since the gates were closed, I hope that meant no zombies got inside. Except my neighbor who might still be wandering the place.
“Might be a good place to fortify,” Tanya said. “In case anything happens to CostKing.”
I hunched my shoulders, my thoughts on Cameron. I wanted him to be here, but I knew he hadn’t been back.
I walked to our house. The air was filled with the smell of the dead, probably coming from other houses—my friends and neighbors. When I got to my door, the odor wasn’t as strong. The door was stil
l locked as I left it.
I went inside. A musty smell hit me. I hadn’t been in this place for almost a year and it seemed like no one else had.
“Cam,” I whispering to the empty house. I went to the kitchen. Tanya followed me but remained quiet. The message I left for Cameron that I went looking for him was still there. I crossed it out and let him know I was at the CostKing in Westbury, but who was I kidding. He would have been home by now.
I looked around the room, wishing, hoping that he would appear, that he was hiding in a closet and wanted to surprise me.
No one was here, though, the place was beyond empty.
I heard footsteps outside. I turned around and opened the door. Maybe Cam was outside, saw us come in.
He wasn’t. Instead it was the zombie neighbor. He looked like a skeleton with his skin hanging like peeling wallpaper. He saw us and began to move. Did he remember me or my scent or just that we were meat? He was so slow moving, he was barely a threat. Tanya went to him and cracked him hard against the head. He went down easily. She came back to me.
“Let’s go, Jim,” she said.
Next stop was Jake’s parent’s house in Woodbury. He planned to make it short because we were all eager to get to Syosset for the night, then to Oyster Bay where we would drop off Dot. I would be happy to get rid of her. She reeked of smoke, kept calling us bitches and was generally unpleasant. No one in the back was in any mood to talk. I certainly didn’t want to. At least Ashley had finally cleaned her hands with wipes.
Dave and Annemarie were back at the wheel.
Silence filled the truck. I don’t know what I would do if I found Cameron dead. I might feel relieved knowing for sure.
I remembered when we met. We were both in an app development course. He began looking and smiling at me. I was sometimes shy when it came to meeting men at non-gay events. I knew I liked men since I was 12, but sometimes still worried I was getting the wrong signal or some gay basher was luring me out.
I had to take a risk and Cameron was fucking gorgeous. I loved his lips the most. Full but not too big and it turned out he was a great kisser among other things. He had silky brown hair with a tiny little bald spot that I loved to touch and he would say I was weird when I did it. If we had to pick the wife of the family, I was it, although Cam never called me that.
After class, he said hi to me and asked if I wanted to go for coffee. I guess his gaydar worked better. We went to a coffee shop nearby, got a coffee for me and an espresso for him and talked for two hours. It was one of the best times in my life. Once I realized Cameron was safe, I was open and honest with what I was looking for. I didn’t mind a relationship. I wasn’t in one at the time. Friends with benefits were okay as long as they understood it was over if I found someone.
Cameron was honest from the beginning and funny too. He wanted a relationship, he only dated one man at a time, no friends with benefits.
He wanted to date me. I swear I turned into a 13 year old fangirl when he said that.
We dated for four weeks before having sex. We spent weekends together and texted all the time. Our only fights were Mac vs. PC. I worked at Apple and he started his own successful business making PC’s and creating networks. We occasionally disagreed on economics as Cam was a conservative and I was the liberal. It didn’t matter. I think I fell in love with him right at the coffee place.
We moved in together six months later. We talked about marriage and when New York made gay marriage legal, we soon took the plunge. My sisters met and liked him. After a year my parents would occasionally ask about Cam. Cam had liberal parents who supported their son and loved me. They were more upset over Cam being a fiscal conservative. I knew that I wouldn’t get bored with him and he seemed to like me. As our relationship moved forward, we still rarely fought but we did have some bad ones. One time he got drunk and insisted on driving was the worst. A few times I came home late without calling.
We even talked about kids, but that would be later on, in our thirties. We decided to have two surrogates from the same mother if possible, one would be mine, the other his, but we also talked about adoption.
The morning of the day he never came home, I begged him not to go to. They had been saying that there was a highly infectious disease outbreak and riots, even though we were told to proceed as normal unless you felt sick. Cam had an important client who needed help because many of his workers hadn’t come in. Cam’s rich business clients got us the money to buy the townhouse and paid a lot of the bills, my money bought the groceries. If they called, he went and he was insistent on going. To keep my mind off him, I went to work at Roosevelt Field, which was a ghost town, and no one came by. It must have been before the plane crash. I got word that LIRR service had been suspended. I called Cam but the phone lines were either busy or never went through. All my texts went unanswered.
I drove home and waited. Cam didn’t come home that night, didn’t call. Not even a text. Nothing. My internet service worked, but some of the major sites were down except for one social media site. The few people on talked about the flu and the riots. I asked about Cam but no one had seen him. I wasn’t the only one to ask about loved ones. Dozens of my friends were missing people. Another dozen were in mourning over love ones who had died. My friend Rick lost his mother and partner in one week.
The government finally admitted what had been going on. The virus was highly fatal and caused a small percentage of infected people to lose all facilities and to feast on humans. The bite was one hundred percent contagious. At least that’s what the news said but I wondered if there were more like Rachel. As of now, there was no cure. Two weeks later, Cam still never came home, the flu pandemic ended and society had collapsed, leaving us alone to fight the zombies.
The truck stopped. We must be at Jake’s. I had been lost in thought. Ashley was awake but staring at the wall away from us.
“This is Dave, copy.”
I grabbed the radio.
“Dave, what’s going on?”
“We’re near Jake’s place but there’s bunch of them. Do you want to skip it or take them out?”
“Fucking yes,” Tanya said. “About time we did some hunting.”
I looked at Jake. “If you think you can take them out,” he said.
“We’ll do it,” I said. “How many?”
“Four in the road, two by the houses.”
“Okay.” A moment later the door opened to Annemarie. She handed the rifle to Tanya.
“Stay here,” Tanya said to all of us but mostly Aisha. Ashley didn’t look like she cared. Dot ignored her, hopped out, without asking for help and lit a cigarette.
Like an idiot, I followed her.
“Jim—“ Tanya said, looking peeved. Jake hopped down after me.
I put up my hands. “I’m staying by the truck.” I looked at Jake. “We both are.”
Tanya moved to the front. I heard shots.
Then I heard a gasp. I looked at Jake, his face had gone flat. I looked down. A legless zombie had nabbed his ankle and had a hand around the cuff of his jeans. We must have run over it.
“Shit.” He tried to pull his leg but the zombie wouldn’t release. The head was under the truck so I couldn’t hit it. Not to mention I was kind of paralyzed with fear.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I heard more shots which meant Tanya was dealing with the other zombies.
“Get it off me,” Jake said, pulling at it. It didn’t let go and only followed Jake’s movements. Dot stood there, calmly puffing at her cigarette and snorting like this was the funniest things she’d ever seen.
The creature who appeared to be missing most of its lower body tried to pull Jake to him. Jake tried kicking it off then he pulled his leg forward dragging the zombie with it.
That’s when Dot pulled a tire iron from her bag and smashed the thing’s skull in. Gore exploded all over Jake’s shoes.
“That’s how you do it, bitches,” she said and nabbed a tissue out of her bag. She didn’t give it to
Jake to clean his shoes; instead she cleaned off the tire iron and put it back in her bag, then lit another cigarette.
Jake looked under the truck to see if there were more. He shot up immediately, his face even paler and he looked beyond terrified.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. He climbed into the truck as Tanya zoomed around the corner.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” she yelled ignoring the dead zombie on the ground.
Dot stamped out her cigarette and I helped her onto the truck. Tanya climbed up along with me. I didn’t ask what made Jake terrified or what she saw.
Dave must have seen it too, because the truck started and he began flooring it before I even got the door closed. I almost lost my balance as I slammed it down.
I moved away from the door when we began to hear the bouncing of bodies off the side. Zombies got more aggressive when they were in packs.
Dot went to the window.
“Holy mother of god,” she said. “There are hundreds of them fuckers here.”
I pushed her out of the way so I could see for myself. She was right. The streets were littered with zombies, fresh as well as decayed ones. Some of them were charging the truck and bouncing off it.
“Why so many?” Jake asked. He looked terrified as did Aisha who didn’t say anything. They weren’t alone. My heart was racing. I passed a fortified store that probably had people. That’s why the zombies were here, but before I could say anything, Ashley said her first words in hours.
“God sent them,” she said. “God sent them because we are wicked.”
I ignored her. The bumping stopped. I didn’t bother Dave with panicked radio calls. He didn’t need it while driving. I wish he gave me the same courtesy.
About ten minutes later, the truck hit something and stopped. It jolted us but not hard.
“I think we outran them.” said Dave’s voice over the radio. “Everyone okay back there?”
“We’re fine, why have we stopped?”
“We hit a car. I need to back up and take a minute to assess the damage.”
“Don’t be long.”
“No way.”