Left Behind: The Suburban Dead

by T. A. Sorsby

‘They might have moved on by now,’ Neville suggested, ‘like the zombies leaving the city. Going to where they can find food.’

  ‘Hope so…’ Anita shivered.

  Damian parked us in the same place as last time, right outside the Masons’ house, at the bottom of their path. I let myself and Morgan out of the boot, bringing the shovels out after me. My ears hadn’t popped or fizzed yet, so that was promising.

  Everyone stayed close as they got out of the car, weapons readied, scanning the gardens for signs of movement. Damian stood with me and Neville at the boot, covering us with his boomstick.

  ‘How we going to do this?’ he asked, eyes fixed at the street entrance.

  ‘You’ve been here before, right?’ I checked with Neville.

  ‘Barbecues, birthday parties, picking Morgan up from sleepovers.’ He confirmed.

  ‘So you’ve seen the garden. Is it closed off?’

  ‘Hedgerows mostly, adjoining the houses either side. Stone wall at the bottom, backs onto a field with a playground.’

  ‘Swing set?’

  ‘And a roundabout, see-saw and those seats on springs that go backwards and forwards.’ He solemnly said.

  ‘Nice neighbourhood.’ I grinned.

  ‘De hell are you talking about?’ Damian said over his shoulder, eyebrow raised.

  ‘Trying to lighten the mood,’ I wearily sighed, ‘I hate grave digging. Once is enough.’

  ‘I don’t mind taking a turn, we’ll share de shovel.’ Damian assured me.

  ‘Appreciate it. Right…garden sounds like it’s pretty well enclosed,’ I spoke, starting up the path and turning around, raising my voice enough for everyone to hear, ‘so I want Laurel up in that window, master bedroom, second door on the left as you go up the stairs. You’re playing our lookout. Morgan, keep her company and run out to us if you see anything.’

  ‘Got it. The sprog’ll look after me.’ Laurel winked at Morgan.

  ‘Anita, let us do the digging. You’re not popping those stitches. So if you’ve got personal stuff you want to gather up…’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing here anymore. I moved out when Becky was still in primary school.’

  ‘Then you…just be wherever you need to be. Okay? Lucile, you good to take a turn with a shovel as well?’

  ‘Ain’t in my nature to be unhelpful.’

  ‘Then let’s do this.’

  I turned to face the house, I saw the bodies of the dogs we’d dealt with by the door. They’d been gnawed on, legs shredded to meat, bellies spilled open onto the lawn, flies buzzing. I put my back to them when I reached the door, and waited for Neville to unlock the place, trying not to think about what might have gotten to them after we left. Maybe just the rest of their pack. Maybe.

  The other dog still lay by the door, where we’d shoved it aside to get in. Having not heard that sub-audible bark or seen another one of the glassy-eyed monsters, it felt hard to wrap my thoughts around them again, to remember that was all real, and not so long ago.

  ‘So these are them, huh? The ghost dogs?’ Laurel asked, moving around it and up onto the first step of the stairs.

  ‘Hope we don’t see any more,’ Lucile spoke, everyone filing into the hallway, ‘snail paced foot-draggers you can get away from, but I wouldn’t like to get chased down by a pack of those things. They buzz the inside of your head, sends your balance out of whack. Trip, fall, and I hate to think what comes next.’

  Laurel rolled a shoulder uncomfortably, ‘We’ll keep the front door closed. Doesn’t look like they’re good with those.’ She added, pointing at the scratches on the door.

  Anita was the last one in, hesitating as she stepped over the threshold. ‘Oh…Sam…’ she gasped, looking down at the dog in the hallyway, biting her bottom lip. ‘You poor thing…’

  I gave her an apologetic look. She met my eyes and sighed, shaking her head. ‘What happened to make them this way?’

  ‘The virus must cross species, mutate, I don’t know. First sign of trouble,’ I told Morgan, ‘you feel your ears pop and you come running to us, got it?’

  ‘If we have to run, I’m so tripping you to get away.’ She stuck her tongue out at me. I ruffled her hair, still grimacing at the expression on Anita’s face as she looked again at Sam the old family pooch. It was probably old enough to have been bought for her.

  Laurel and Morgan went to take up their positions upstairs, while Anita showed Lucile and Damian through to the back.

  My footsteps felt heavy, going up the stairs. Last time, I’d flown up them in response to Anita’s gunfire, but this time my feet didn’t want to carry me. Becky Mason’s body would be up there, lying on her bed with a neat little hole in her forehead.

  I tried not to see anything when I entered her room again, just left my eyes open so I could walk to the other side of the bed, then left them unfocused as I threw the duvet over her body. It worked. More or less.

  ‘We can’t carry her like that.’ Neville snapped.

  ‘Don’t mean to,’ I said. ‘That’d look great for the burial, wouldn’t it? No, I just…can’t look. I couldn’t look the first time I came in here, and I’m no stronger now.’

  Neville looked at me, like he was searching for something in my expression. ‘I know. Too much like Morgan.’ He muttered, looking down at the form beneath the duvet.

  ‘Don’t suppose you know where they kept their bedsheets?’ I asked.

  ‘It never came up. I’ll go find them…be back in a minute.’ He said, hesitating at the doorway for a moment.

  I sat down on the edge of the stained chair Anita had bled into, and cupped my head in my hands. I didn’t like this, carrying bodies. Once for Edgar was bad enough, nobody should have to do it twice in the same damn week. Unless they work in a funeral home, I guess.

  A brief tap on the doorframe drew my attention back up. I blinked through a tear to see Damian standing in the doorway with white sheets in his arms.

  ‘He…needed a minute. I help you.’

  I nodded my appreciation, but didn’t say anything.

  We bundled her up into the duvet, she was smaller than Morgan, definitely not a child, but her growth spurt was coming in later. A life cut too short. I didn’t even know her, aside from when Morgan had talked about her. Boy trouble, girl trouble, school trouble. The general troubles of growing up. Troubles she didn’t have anymore.

  Carefully, we carried from the room, one of us at each end of the body. Though the door to the main bedroom was closed, I could hear Morgan sobbing from here.

  ‘I know love, I know…’ I heard Neville saying.

  *

  Thirty Four

  Anita was the last surviving member of her family. Her parents, Marianna and Paul, and Becky, her younger sister by ten years, were all laid out before us, wrapped in clean white bed-linen. I stared at the bodies with an empty gaze, thinking about what I’d like done to me, when it came time.

  ‘Cremation, I think.’ I said to Neville, sat next to me on a bench overlooking the garden, where Damian and Lucile were having their turn at digging. ‘I want to be burned, nothing left of me to rise up again.’

  He nodded agreement, but didn’t say anything.

  I wiped my hands on my jeans for the dozenth time, trying to get rid of something that wasn’t there, scratch off the layers of skin that’d had to touch Becky Mason to wrap her in the makeshift shroud. The walking dead I could handle - the actual dead were worse.

  Under a grey sky, we dug until around noon, by Neville’s watch, hacking three holes into the earth in the middle of the perfect lawn. When it came time to lower the bodies in, I’m not ashamed to say that I avoided it, going instead to tell those in the house that we were ready.

  Anita sat in the middle of the sofa in the living-room, amidst bloodstains and chaos; an overturned coffee table, broken lamps and scattered books. My boot crunched on broken glass, but she was slow to react, turning to face me with her face sickly grey.

  ‘Mr Kelly.’ She manage
d a weak smile, wiping at a trail of tears.

  ‘It’s nearly time, Anita.’ I told her, ‘Unless you want a few more minutes?’

  ‘I’ll just…pull myself together, okay?’ she said uncertainly.

  I crossed the room, and sat beside her. ‘You are not alone.’

  She looked at me, biting her bottom lip.

  ‘You’re going to get through this. We’ll be here for you, all of us, every day.’

  She dragged me into a powerful hug, and sobbed into the crook of my neck. ‘Fucking, shit…’ she choked.

  I guess I wouldn’t have the words either. I sat there with my arms around her, smoothing down the back of her hair and trying to be as comforting as I could. I don’t know how much I helped, because I started crying too. The whole works. My cheeks burned hot with tears, my nose started to run and my chest heaved with the weight of breath.

  Seeing Anita’s loss, a woman who had nobody left, it broke me, if only for a moment. It was a glimpse of what might soon happen to myself. Without Katy, that’d be me.

  We sat there on the sofa until Morgan found us, her eyes raw as well. She sat down on the other side of Anita and the grieving woman put her other arm around her.

  With Morgan here, I felt I had to be strong again, I couldn’t just fall to pieces like this. It helped me pull myself together, no more heaving, shaking sobs, just steady, calm breaths. I wiped my eyes and gave Anita’s shoulder one last squeeze.

  ‘Come on, it’s time.’ I said, my voice hoarse.

  We supported Anita through the back door in the kitchen, just holding a hand while Morgan held the other. When we reached the rough graves dug out of the garden, Neville moved up to stand behind us, between his daughter and Anita, putting hands on their shoulders. Damian and Lucile waited by the graves. Laurel, presumably, was still on watch.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to say, Anita?’ Neville quietly asked.

  ‘No, I - I can’t…’ Anita choked, eyes squeezed tightly closed, her face twisted into a mask of pain as tears rolled off her chin. Her knees buckled, the three of us helping her to kneel, Morgan going down with her to wrap her into another full-body embrace. ‘They can’t be…and…too young…’ she coughed between ragged breaths.

  I gave the nod to Lucile, who took the first shovel of earth and cast it over Becky Mason’s grave. Damian began to fill in Marianna’s. I took a couple steps back, composing myself again, sniffing back tears. Neville took my place and knelt beside Anita and Morgan, the pair of them surrounding her with support, comfort. Her family might have been gone, but as long as this group stuck together, she’d never be far from friends. Never be alone.

  It was quieter indoors, away from the grief; but leaving the graveside would have been cowardly, and not at all like the “we’ll be here for you” message I was trying to send.

  So I only went inside for one moment, to grab a box of tissues from the wreckage of the living room. I passed it to Neville, who drew some out for the girls, letting them stem the flow of tears. I stayed a polite distance back, and waited, my face set into a grim expression, a tissue kept aside for myself.

  Damian and Lucile filled the graves. It seemed to take a lot longer than when me and Neville filled in the ones in our little park. Takes longer to watch. At least with the shovel in hand you can focus on the labour.

  I was glad she hadn’t wanted to bury the dog. The sky was looking greyer as time wore on, the rain an ever looming threat, bringing the cold front with it.

  Neville helped Anita to her feet, Morgan offering support with her shoulders under an arm. Anita’s eyes were still shut tight, I wasn’t sure if she’d opened them since we came outside. They helped her into the house while Lucile and Damian patted down the graves.

  ‘She going to be okay?’ Damian asked, uncertainly.

  ‘She’s hard as nails.’ Lucile sniffed, wiping her eyes. ‘This was a big fucking hammer, but she’ll come through.’

  ‘All we can do is just be around for her,’ I said, ‘be a shoulder when she needs us, have her back. But don’t treat her like she’s fragile, she won’t like that.’

  ‘Got it.’ Lucile nodded, looking at the house uncomfortably. Grief is hard to face.

  I led the way back inside. Neville and Morgan were on the sofa with Anita again, just holding her hands. Lucile and Damian went to the living room too, but I went upstairs, and down the hall to the master bedroom.

  Laurel was just wiping her eyes.

  ‘Oh, uh, hey.’ She sniffed.

  ‘You too?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  I sat down next to her on the bed, and put my arm around her. That’s why everyone hugs at funerals, they can’t think of anything else to say. I was tempted to remind her we need to keep an eye on the street, but some things were more important right now. So I just brought her in tighter, and she tilted her head onto my shoulder.

  ‘I’m not losing anyone else.’ She sighed, chest rising and falling in deliberate, careful breaths. ‘Nobody dies. Starting now.’

  She rose from the bed and picked up the rifle she’d left by the window, holding it across her chest like a child might a teddy bear. I stood next to her, one hand on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s a deal. We’re all going to make it through this.’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye up here,’ She said, voice still rough, another tear rolling down to her chin, ‘we should be leaving soon though.’

  Downstairs, I stuck my head in the living room, but nobody was there. The front door opened behind me, and I spun around, Cobra raised to hip-height - Anita wouldn’t have been happy, but I didn’t have time for a proper stance.

  Fortunately, it was only Neville, carrying the plastic bag of empty glass bottles. His eyes widened a moment as he saw someone pointing a gun at him, then his expression softened as he realised what’d happened.

  ‘That a gun, or are you just pleased to see me?’

  ‘Both.’ I said, stowing it in the holster. ‘What’ve you got there?’

  ‘Anita’s lesson plan,’ he said, holding up the bag by way of explanation, ‘figured target practice was a good use for the recycling, so she brought it with us.’

  ‘How’s she doing?’ I asked, as he closed the door and busied himself with the locks.

  ‘I thought she needed a distraction. I know how hard it is for the mind not to dwell on loss. I was…devastated,’ he sighed, ‘when my wife died. But if I didn’t have Morgan to take care of, it’d have been a whole lot worse. You push through for other people.’

  We walked through the kitchen, and out into the garden. A lovely wood-panel fence separated the Mason’s from their neighbours on one side, a hedgerow on the other. One section of the fence’s panels had been destroyed.

  A sledgehammer from the Masons’ toolshed stood nearby, Damian removing some of the remaining wood with a smaller hammer. It was far from a neat solution, but the archway left by the missing panels meant we could get from one garden to the next.

  Ducking to avoid any errant splinters, we made our way through to next door’s garden, everyone gathering around an outdoor table. Anita, with red eyes but a strong, calm voice, began talking Morgan through her pistol.

  They had it laid out on the table, magazine detached, and a bullet out. Morgan pressed it into the magazine and slid the clip into the weapon with uncertain motions.

  ‘Like this?’ she asked.

  ‘You got it.’ Anita sniffed, wiping her eyes, ‘Now, you might want to practice that a bit with an empty mag, so you can do it faster.’

  ‘I will.’ She said, voice serious, but with a trace of excitement.

  Neville went to the bottom of the garden with the bag of bottles. Before the wall at the edge of the property was a chest-deep planter, most of the flowers there no longer in bloom, but some green fronds remained. He spaced the bottles out along the edge of the planter.

  Anita began talking Morgan through her stance, correcting her teacup grip and aiming. They were pointing the pistol towa
rds the house however, as Neville was still downrange. Muzzle discipline.

  ‘Any pressure in everyone watching?’ I asked.

  ‘Start moaning and shuffling your feet,’ Morgan replied, ‘give me some motivation.’

  ‘Back in a second, just going to warn Laurel…’ I said, ducking though the fence and back into the Masons’ to shout up the stairs.

  ‘Stuck on guard duty while the fun happens. Wish her luck from me.’ She replied.

  Finished with the bottles, Neville came back to stand with the rest of us, behind the gun and off to the sides.

  ‘You’ve got seven shots in that magazine,’ Anita said, taking a step back from Morgan as well, ‘take your time with each shot, and when the gun’s empty, reload and put the safety back on, just like I showed you, okay?’

  ‘Got it.’ Morgan nodded, gun in both hands, pointed at the ground. ‘Are we going to be running out of here pretty quick afterwards?’

  ‘Double-quick.’ Neville confirmed.

  Morgan refocused her attention back on the targets at the bottom of the garden. They weren’t too far away, twenty, twenty five feet maybe. She drew in a steady breath, raised the gun, and on the exhale she pulled the trigger.

  The flat, low pop of the gun was accompanied by the sound of the bullet striking off a chip of concrete planter, an inch or two away from the bottle.

  ‘Take your time, little slower now.’ Anita encouraged.

  Pop. Smash. Everyone gave a little cheer as the beer bottle shattered into green shards. I could feel Morgan’s grin from here, but she just about managed to stop herself from doing an arm-pump. Instead, she settled on another bottle, and fired again.

  Another swing, another miss, but it didn’t deter her. She tried again, and once more, on the second shot, smashed her target. I looked at Neville, who looked back at me. I saw my own faint smile mirrored in his face. Morgan fired again, snapping our attention back in time to see a third bottle falling to pieces.

  Her confidence building, she took aim and fired again, striking another one of her targets, broken glass tinkling down onto the lawn.

  ‘Go on girl!’ Damian cheered.