Existing Dead

by Lyle Perez-Tinics

  The sound of glass shattering startled him. He reached for his Glock and opened the door. The moans grew by a few decibels as the Existing Dead found a way into the house. Kyle didn’t understand how they knew that he, Morgan and Victor were inside.

  Morgan came down the hallway with two flashlights in her hands. “What was that noise?” She handed one to Kyle who shone it down the stairs. The beam from the light pierced the darkness, illuminating a good portion of the ground.

  “They broke through the front window,” Kyle replied. That’s when he realized that the Existing Dead that he’d thought had seen him earlier really had. It just hadn’t made a move until now.

  “What’s with all the noise?” Victor asked stumbling out of his room.

  “The damn mustard plants aren’t working anymore,” Morgan said under her breath. “They’re inside the house.”

  “What? What the hell are we going to do?”

  “Calm down, Victory. We’ve planned for situations like this.” She shone the flashlight beam to the door that led into Victor’s room. “Did you notice some of the living room furniture is in your room?”

  “Yeah, I just ignored it.”

  “Kyle, you and Victory go grab the couch and bring it back here.”

  Without hesitation, Kyle put the flashlight on the ground and the two left for Victor’s room. Kyle holstered the Glock on his belt and lifted his side of the couch. They slowly brought it out the room and set it down gently.

  “Here it is,” Victor said as a loud pop, followed by a flash, erupted.

  Morgan stood at the top of the staircase looking down with a long barrel rifle in her hands. Smoke gasped out of the barrel as she took aim. Kyle un-holstered his Glock and stood next to Morgan. Victor quickly followed suit with his .357 Magnum revolver.

  “I haven’t shown you how to use that thing yet,” Kyle said. Morgan popped off another round.

  “I showed him how to use it,” Morgan said.

  It was true. Victor no longer needed Kyle to show him things. He had his mother for that. Victor and Kyle shot at the advancing undead crowd.

  “The Existing Dead we shoot are gonna get back up in a little bit. We need to get to the roof and wait there ’til morning. Push the couch off the stairs,” Morgan ordered.

  Kyle stopped firing and started maneuvering the couch so he could use it to block the pathway up the stairs. “Move,” he said as he pushed it over the edge. The couch tumbled down until it lodged mid-way.

  “That should hold them for a bit,” Morgan said. “Come on.”

  She led them into the room Kyle had been sleeping in. She took a few steps inside and stepped on a tin can that had been left outside one of the boxes.

  She managed to roll her ankle and lost her balance, causing her to fall to the ground. “Ahhh!” she yelled. “Help me up,” she said. Kyle lifted her by the shoulder and they both walked to the window.

  Kyle opened the window and poked his head outside, then looked toward the roof. “It’s pretty high up.”

  The Existing Dead below stared up at Kyle’s head. Their moans grew louder at the sight of food.

  Kyle looked at Morgan. “Think you can climb?” She shook her head. “Okay, this is what we are going to do. Victor first,” he said. “If it’s high, I can help Victor climb up. Once he’s on the roof, I’ll climb up. From there I can pull you up.”

  “Fine,” Morgan said between gasps of pain.

  Victor climbed out of the window and stood on the ledge. “Can you make it to the top?” Kyle asked.

  “No, I need a boost.”

  Kyle climbed out of the window and stood on the ledge next to Victor. He glanced down for a second and looked at the dead below. Hundreds of them stared with hunger in their eyes. Kyle could only imagine what the scene would look like if they fell.

  “Hurry,” Morgan said. “I think I hear them climbing over the couch.”

  Kyle cupped his hands so Victor could step on it. “Ready?”

  Victor nodded.

  “On three, jump. One. Two. Three.”

  Victor put one hand on Kyle’s shoulder and jumped. He grabbed onto the roof with his forearm and lifted himself over. The distance was far over exaggerated.

  Kyle looked through the window and said, “Take my hand.” As their hands met, Kyle saw the figures of Mary and Eddie staring at them by the doorway. He did a double take but when he did, they were gone.

  He helped Morgan onto the ledge. Victor stared down at them. “Move!” Kyle said as he prepared himself to jump and grab onto the roof. He jumped and with his hand grabbing onto the ledge, he used all his strength to lift himself as if doing a chin-up. He yelled in pain as he felt the muscles he hadn’t used in a long time reactivate. Victor grabbed onto Kyle’s shirt and helped him up. Kyle rolled onto the roof and lay there for a few seconds.

  “We need to get my mom,” Victor said.

  Kyle jumped to his feet and leaned over the ledge. He saw Morgan staring back at him. He rolled onto his belly and threw his hand down. It was six inches too short. Kyle stared back at Victor and then to the ground next to him. There was a metal vent pipe sticking out of the roof next to them. “I can’t reach your mom; this is what we are going to have to do. We need to make a human chain. You need to grab on to this pipe with one arm and hold on to mine with the other. That might give me a few more inches so I can grab her hand.”

  Victor nodded. “Okay.” He held onto the pipe and extended his arm toward Kyle. They locked hands and Kyle began to slowly lean himself over the edge. “Make sure you hold on tight, Victor. If you let go, your mom and I are going down.” Their hands began to sweat. “Morgan, reach for my hand.”

  She reached as best as she could but the pain in her ankle wasn’t letting up. “I can’t reach!”

  “Listen to me, jump.”

  “What?!” Morgan said surprise.

  “Forget about the pain and just jump to my arm. I’ll grab you and hoist you up.”

  An arm flew out of the window with the force of three men and swiped for Morgan’s leg. She panicked but didn’t fall over the edge. Instead she jumped into the air ignoring the pain, ignoring the discomfort, for she knew that if she didn’t jump toward Kyle’s dangling hand, she would be pushed to the pits of hell. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as Kyle looked at her from his position. Her arms slowly reaching for him, closer and closer, but for a tenth of a millisecond, something in the horde below held his attention. Mary and Eddie stood in the middle of the Existing Dead watching him, as if judging him. Kyle glanced back at the approaching arm and as they almost connected, Kyle swayed his arm just out of her reach.

  Morgan swiped the air but caught nothing. They locked eyes for a brief moment, her face full of disbelief and betrayal and Kyle’s full of regret for what he had just done. Her body fell backward, her arms swinging for his arms. The impact from the landing snapped her ankle in half with little effort. She screamed a piercing yell as she fell one storey down to the ocean of the dead. The scream rang within Victor’s ears as he grasped what was happening.

  “No!” Kyle screamed as he scrambled himself back to the roof.

  Victor let go of the pipe and leaned over the edge. “Mom!” he yelled, reaching out for her with one arm.

  “I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t fucking grab her arm,” Kyle breathed as he rolled on his back and stared into the stars.

  Victor watched as the Existing Dead quickly surrounded his mother, who lay there unconscious. Tears ran down his cheeks as the first emaciated hand of the dead reached out for his mother’s body.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Don’t watch,” Kyle said as he sat up. Watching one’s mother being eaten alive was something no one should ever have to watch. Kyle grabbed Victor by his ankle and dragged him away from the ledge. Victor squirmed like a fish out of water to continue looking over the ledge. “Stop!” Kyle pulled the boy by the shoulders and brought him to his feet. “Look at me.”

  Victor
was non-responsive. He was in shock. Earlier that day he found his mother, the woman who gave him life, the woman who nursed him to health when he was ill. He found her alive and well, but now, she was gone and dead, eaten by the very creatures that she had done such a good job of avoiding.

  “Victor, snap out of it,” Kyle continued as he shook the boy.

  Slowly, the noise from the dead devouring his mother found his ears. Rage filled his body as he tugged Kyle by his shirt and pushed him backward. The boy was filled with so much adrenalin that he was able to knock Kyle off his feet. Kyle hit the ground and did nothing to soften his fall. He stared up at Victor, who was towering over him.

  “I couldn’t reach her,” he said.

  Victor didn’t say a word. He glared at Kyle like a crazed animal about to pounce on its prey. And as quickly as the rage came, it left him. Victor’s face crumpled as water filled his eyes. He began to weep, putting his hands over his face and sat on the roof. Kyle stood slowly, the gravel from the roof sticking to the palm of his hand.

  Kyle knew what Victor was going through. He himself had had to witness the murder of his son, but he hadn’t broken down like Victor. Kyle sat next to Victor and began to cry. He cried for Eddie and for Mary. It was his fault that they were both dead and now he was guilty for taking another life. This life didn’t mean anything to him, but it did mean a lot to the person who meant a lot to him.

  *

  Four hours passed and the sun had just begun to make its slow journey over the horizon. Kyle’s eyes opened. He was sitting upright against the insolated air conditioning unit, Victor sitting next to him, asleep. The events that had taken place a few hours earlier caused disorientation in his mind. He couldn’t remember how he and Victor had made the journey to where they were now.

  He stood, trying desperately not to wake Victor. The boy’s eyes were closed, but every few seconds Victor would sniffle in his sleep as if he were still crying. Kyle peered over the edge to see the remaining few Existing Dead still lingering around Morgan’s corpse. A few of them were crouched over her body, their tongues extended and licking the blood off the concrete. What the fuck … he thought. There were still plenty of meat left on Morgan’s corpse, but the dead around her seemed more interested in licking blood.

  The pistol he’d use last night remained on the same spot were he’d left it. There were three spare rounds roaming around in his pocket. He quickly loaded them into the pistol’s magazine and holstered it on his belt.

  Most of the Existing Dead that were invading the streets below had moved on now that the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. The creatures were getting more and more fascinating to Kyle. He wished he could study them. They seemed to continue to change every time he had some form of contact with them.

  His truck remained parked in the middle of the street, with a few of the dead remaining around it. They were two storey-high, and finding a way down was going to be hell without being able to go back into the house or having a ladder. He remembered that Morgan had talked with a man the day before and that he’d said he was coming to pick them up that morning. All they needed to do was to wait for him.

  Victor coughed three times before his bloodshot eyes opened.

  Kyle stared at Victor while the boy blinked several times. “It’s morning.”

  “Is my mom really dead?”

  Kyle nodded.

  Sorrow fell upon the boy’s face, but no tears built up in his eyes. “Okay,” he said, then took in one deep breath. “What do we do now? California?”

  “Yeah, but first we need to check out this Embassy.”

  “How are we going to get there? Do you have a plan?”

  “For right now we sit here and wait. Your mom talked to someone last night and they should be getting here soon. They’re going to take us to The Embassy.”

  “Okay,” was all Victor could muster.

  “After we figure out more about what’s going on and if there’s any hope for us to stay alive, we go to California.”

  “Okay.”

  Kyle gazed back out onto the streets. His eyes followed one of the Existing Dead as it slowly began to walk toward his truck. She stared at the truck, confused, as if she were trying to study it, almost as if she’d noticed that the truck hadn’t been there before. She continued shambling up the road, glancing back at the truck. Kyle couldn’t form words to go with what he was witnessing. It was as though the Existing Dead were showing some form of intelligence.

  More of them began to separate from the front lawn and driveway. They scattered like cockroaches as soon as the light from the sun began to shine down on them. Twilight was over and for whatever reason, the Existing Dead didn’t like sunlight, even though Kyle had seen some of them roam around during the day.

  There were a few Existing Dead that remained in one spot, even though sunlight was hitting them. They didn’t seem to care.

  Kyle gave out a quick whistle. The dead followed the noise and noticed Kyle on the roof, but made no noise. They didn’t moan or get excited by his presence; they just stared and looked away.

  *

  A few hours passed, and there was still no sign of anyone. The temperature in the area had grown by thirty degrees since dawn had broken. There was relatively no shade on the roof, and with no shade or drinking water, dehydration would fast approach.

  The dead that remained in the area didn’t move at all. They just stood in one spot, until three silhouettes began to approach them.

  “Look,” Kyle said, pointing at the three advancing figures.

  Victor stood and walked to the edge of the roof, near Kyle.

  The Existing Dead on the driveway began to walk toward the figures. One of them was shirtless, which was something that was pretty common. That got Kyle’s brain working. Why were they going after these figures and not getting excited at seeing him on the roof? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they knew that Kyle was unreachable, so they shouldn’t even try. But with these new figures, they have a chance of reaching them. “Holy shit,” Kyle muttered.

  “What?” Victor said.

  “They’re getting smarter.”

  Victor didn’t respond. Something inside of him died alongside his mother. He was not the same boy Kyle picked up at the gas station. That boy had been so full of faith and hope, but now Victor seemed to just be existing, as if he were now one of the living dead below.

  “Hey!” Kyle yelled, waving his arms up in the air. “Up here.”

  He noticed one of the figures poke another one and point up in their direction.

  “Wait der!” one of them yelled back in a heavy Hispanic accent.

  “We can’t go anywhere!” Kyle replied.

  The three figures were quickly closing the gap between the two Existing Dead heading their way. Kyle was curious on how they dealt with the dead now that headshots did nothing more than stop the dead for a matter of minutes.

  One of the three figures, a man from what Kyle could now make out, dropped to one knee and took aim with a long rifle. As soon as the man dropped to one knee, another figure fell to a knee, this one a woman. She was very noticeable as her long red hair was tied back into a ponytail. They were all wearing the same black uniform, one that resembled that of the Navy Seals.

  As the Existing Dead grew closer, the man fired. The loud boom echoed through the space between the homes. The round hit through the head of one of the dead, spewing the ground behind it with bits of meat and bone. It dropped to the pavement with complete disregard to the impact. It had no choice, this was its dormant state, the time between one death and the beginning of a new life.

  The woman fired next. Her round entered the shirtless creature’s chest. Kyle saw a huge spray of matter explode from the exit wound. It was the same kind of damage he’d once noticed when shooting a coyote with a shotgun, but she didn’t seem to be holding a shotgun. Another shot was fired, and this one entered the creature’s head, almost obliterating it on impact.

 
; A moment after the second creature fell, the third figure, the one that had told Kyle and Victor to wait, unsheathed a machete tied around his waist and ran toward the first Existing Dead. He used the razor-sharp blade to cut the clothes off the creature.

  Three more Existing Dead began to be aware at what was happening and walked aimlessly toward the three figures. The man and woman stayed on their knees and took aim at the fresh entrants to the fight. They did not fire right away. Instead, they just focused on the dead slowly walking toward them. The dead mouths snapped with hunger, anger and disgust.

  “Shoot!” Victor yelled as the Existing Dead continued to move closer.

  They didn’t flinch, didn’t even move a muscle.

  The man with the machete continued cutting the clothes off the fallen dead.

  “Twenty seconds,” the man on one knee said.

  When he spoke, Machete Man stopped cutting the creature’s clothes and brought the blade down on its right thigh. Pink sludge began to pour from the wound. Kyle had seen this before with the head that he had been carrying around as a souvenir. When Kyle had cut the boil on the creature’s face, the same pink liquid had extracted from it.

  Machete Man moved on to the next body.

  “Eight seconds.”

  He looked at the Existing Dead that had been shot in the chest and head and said, “Okay, fire.” He walked away from the creature with a large hole in its chest and headed behind the two figures on one knee. They fired, dropping the two advancing dead in the same manner as the previous kills. The woman quickly took aim at the third and fired. Machete Man began removing the clothes from the first. The man and woman stood and took pocket knives out of compartments on their uniforms. They ran to the unattended dead and began tearing into its clothes.

  “What are they doing?” Victor asked.

  “I’m guessing that they’re looking for the boil that finally kills them.”

  Machete Man raised the blade above his head and swiped down at the creature’s neck, separating its head from the rest of the body. He kicked the severed head away. It trolled a few feet closer to the sidewalk.