Pray To Stay Dead

by Cole, Mason James

  Not bothering to stand, the dead thing dug its fingers into the dirt and the grass and crawled like a baby toward him.

  “I’m serious,” Richard said, panic unraveling his heart. Soon he would be braying like a madman. “I’ll do anything, okay? Just don’t let this happen. Don’t let this happen.”

  The old man raised his eyebrows. Guy’s fingers found the soles of Richard’s shoes. Samson and his brothers watched with grim anticipation. Max smiled. Richard writhed and kicked and fell onto his side. Guy’s corpse stopped fumbling with Richard’s feet and, reorienting itself, crawled toward his face. Heart hammering, he lashed out with his bound feet, sunk his heels into the ground, and pushed himself away. He opened his mouth to beg Niebolt for mercy. Instead, he screamed. To his own ears, he sounded like an animal.

  “Enough of this,” Niebolt said, pointing at Max. “Pull it away.”

  Scowling, Max stomped over, seized Guy’s corpse by the ankles, and dragged it facedown away from Richard.

  “That’s far enough,” Niebolt said.

  Max let go of the thing’s sock-clad ankles. He rubbed his hands on his jeans, cursing under his breath, stepping forward and pressing his right foot onto the back of the dead thing’s head. It flailed, pawing Max’s shoe.

  “Tie it up,” Niebolt said, walking over to where Richard lay. He stopped, his large hands on his hips, looking down at Richard. “You got a name, boy?”

  Richard opened his mouth, and Niebolt pressed the worn sole of his right boot to Richard’s lips, mashing them against his teeth.

  “Just so you know: if you tell me ‘fuck you,’ I’m gonna kick your face in right here. And that’s not just some figure of speech bullshit, or anything. I’ll goddamn kick it in, you hear?”

  Richard blinked up at the old man.

  “You hear?” Niebolt said, his leathery forehead creasing over his raised eyebrows. He gave Richard’s face a painful nudge.

  “Yes,” Richard said against the bottom of the man’s boot, his words muffled. Dirt crunched between his teeth.

  “Mm?” Niebolt pulled his foot away from Richard’s face.

  “Okay.”

  “So?”

  “What?” Richard asked, his mind not letting go of the image of the old man’s boot kicking his face until it was a ragged and bloody hole.

  Niebolt laughed, looked around at his sons. Settled his gaze once more on Richard. “Your name.”

  “Richard.”

  “Richard?” Niebolt asked, nodding. “Richard. Just like the good man in the White House. You vote for him, Richard?”

  “Nuh,” Richard said, spitting. “No.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Niebolt said, scratching his chin. “A young man like you. Of course you didn’t.”

  Behind Niebolt, Daniel’s corpse lifted his head and looked around. Niebolt followed Richard’s gaze, looked back at him.

  “Happens fast, doesn’t it, Dick?” Niebolt said, shaking his head. “Amazing.”

  Max sat on Guy’s back, straddling him. He placed his left hand in the dead thing’s head and forced its face down into the dirt.

  “You probably get called Dick all the time, huh, Richard?”

  “Sometimes,” Richard said. “When I was younger.”

  “Probably didn’t like it.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t blame you, Rich. Can I call you Rich?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good,” Niebolt said, reaching down and pulling Richard to his feet and slamming him against the tree to his back. Richard’s knees buckled.

  “Stay on your feet, now, Rich. Be a man.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Not that again. You should know better.”

  Niebolt punched him in the stomach. Gasping, Richard sank to the ground, a white-hot knot of pain spreading through his guts.

  “I got better things to do, Rich,” Niebolt said. “Big things happening out there, as you know. Jacob?”

  “Yeah?” Jacob asked, stepping up beside his father.

  “You take care of Rich here, okay?”

  Jacob regarded Richard, his face a heavy-lidded blank. “Okay,” he said.

  “But—” Sam said, appearing at Niebolt’s other shoulder.

  “But nothing,” the old man said. “Don’t make me knock your teeth out, Samson.” The old man looked down at Richard, one last time. He smiled. “Have fun.”

  A few minutes later, Richard was alone with Jacob. Guy’s corpse tried to roll onto its back. Daniel’s scalp slid from its head and lay rumbled upon the ground. Tied to the tree, Daniel’s corpse looked left and right, left and right, as if it were still trying to shake the hair from its eyes.

  “My dad’s old,” Jacob said, dropping to his knees beside Richard. “He does things his way. We don’t always agree, but he’s old, and I think he may be a little crazy, because I really don’t believe most of the things he tells us. Most of it is just nuts, man.” Jacob shrugged. “Sometimes, though, he lets us do things our way.”

  Jacob slid a large serrated knife from the sheath at his hip. He held it up, between them, looking past the blade and into Richard’s eyes.

  “Like now,” Jacob said, pushing Richard down and onto his chest. His fingers moved up Richard’s back and into his hair, and he pressed Richard’s face to the ground. Richard screamed.

  Jacob moved down. Richard squeezed his eyes shut, his scream dissolving into an incoherent prayer. He tasted dirt. He begged God and cursed God, and he waited for pain that did not come. There was a tugging at his ankles, his wrists. Steel touched his flesh but did not open it. The ropes fell away. Jacob stood, rolling Richard onto his back with his right foot.

  Richard held his hands before his face, wiggled his fingers, stared at the rope marks on his wrists, felt blood tingling back into his limbs.

  Jacob smiled, took a few steps back.

  “I’m not the kind of guy who likes things handed to me, all nice and wrapped up,” he said, looking Richard up and down. “I like to earn what’s mine. I’m gonna give you five minutes.”

  “What?” Richard asked, sitting up and massaging his calf muscles.

  “Five minutes,” Jacob said, producing a cigarette from a box in his shirt pocket and lighting up. “Then I’m coming after your ass. Or you can sit there and rub your leg for five minutes, and I’ll just kill you right here, but I’d really like you to run.”

  Using the nearest tree, Richard pulled himself to his feet. He flexed his leg muscles, wiggled his toes. Looked at Jacob.

  “Don’t think about it,” Jacob said, sheathing the knife and pulling the pistol from his hip.

  “You’re all insane,” Richard said, taking a step away from the tree. His feet had not stopped tingling.

  Jacob tapped his bare wrist. “Four minutes,” He said. “You should really go.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Richard said.

  “I’m sure you will,” Jacob said, bringing the cigarette to his lips with his left hand and shooing Richard with his right.

  Richard took three uneasy steps away from Jacob and, bumping into a tree and stumbling once, ran into the forest.

  Seventeen

  Tricky Dick was on the tube, urging Americans to be vigilant in this time of trouble, to do what needed to be done and to cooperate with local law enforcement.

  At Misty’s, local law enforcement was unconscious on the couch in the living room behind the store, an infected bite on its arm. Crate was outside. Charlie sat at the middle table, drinking his fourth beer since Tasgal had passed out. Misty sat across from him, looking down at the table and listening to the television while working over her own beer and wondering just what the hell they were going to do with Eric Tasgal.

  Not long after Crate had taken out the four corpses loafing their way across the parking and toward Misty’s place, Stacy Knox had bicycled in on a cloud of self-importance and body odor. She’d given the burning heap of bodies a wide berth, muttered under her breath, and asked
Misty if she could come inside for a bit—she was feeling lonely, her equanimity was crumbling, and she needed to be around other people.

  “Sure,” Misty had said, wanting to kick herself in the ass. Stacy rarely came by, and when she did, it was merely to gossip, to speak in hushed tones about which planet was in retrograde that month, and to speculate on the whereabouts of her husband’s spirit, which was, she assured all who would listen, moving onward and upward through the astral planes. He still managed to send messages back to her, messages that filtered down through higher realms and entered their own in the form of a single leaf resting on a windowsill or the bird calling out in the silence of evening. Or the patterns made by whisky spilled across the kitchen table, or maybe even the shape of her crap, for all Misty knew, all curled and flakey at the bottom of the toilet bowl. If, that was, Stacy Knox didn’t do her business in the woods behind her house, and Misty wouldn’t have placed money on it.

  As for Stacy’s husband, Misty marveled over the fact that he was the first man to sail into the astral plane via a self-imposed mouthful of buckshot. Stacy had been hard enough to swallow before, but now?

  Misty’s nastier side was sorry that Stacy hadn’t come stumbling up to the store dead and hungry. At least Crate could have shot her then…

  On the television, Nixon said that they were doing everything within their power to confront the crisis at hand, as well as the other crises that had arisen in the hours since the dead began to rise. When asked to comment on the rumors that the phenomenon was the result of a Department of Defense-funded biological warfare experiment gone terribly wrong, Nixon denied it without hesitation.

  “That is patently ridiculous,” he said. “Reports from around the globe have confirmed that this event began taking place everywhere at the same time. That’s not how germ warfare works, Ted, and you know it.”

  “Lying snake,” Stacy Knox said, sitting alone at one of the tables and holding the crystal that hung from a length of twine around her neck, gazing into its multifaceted depths. She wasn’t even forty, though she could easily pass for thirty. She had that much going for her, even though she told folks to call her Starshine. Most everyone in town obliged, of course, even if they thought it was bullshit, but Misty had little tolerance for such nonsense. Not then, and especially not now. The time for nonsense was over.

  “Shut it,” Misty said, what little patience she had going up in flames.

  “I’m sorry,” Stacy said, dropping the crystal against her chest, where it found peace in the valley. “You don’t have to be so negative, though.”

  “She’s not, Starshine,” Charlie said, continuing to pile beer atop hard liquor. Misty had taken away the gin bottle, and Charlie had simply gone to the cooler. He looked at Stacy’s face, which was pretty enough, before staring at her large chest. “Jesus, you’re annoying.”

  “Okay, Charlie,” Misty said. “You should probably go into the back and lie down. I’m not in the mood to hear your voice any more.”

  “I’m not tired,” Charlie said, his words slurring together. “I’m wide awake and listening to the President and he’s telling us what to do.”

  “You’re shitfaced and you’re going to pass out at that table.”

  “He’s telling us how to get out of this mess and I’ll be damned...”

  “And I’m not gonna help your ass to bed.”

  “...damned if I’m gonna miss it, this is the broadcast of the decade,” but he was already facing away from the screen, rolling his eyeballs in search of his bottle.

  “Go lay down, Charlie,” Misty growled.

  Charlie wavered like an out-of-use marionette before turning slightly and saying, deliberately, with the authority of a man who has just won the argument, “Tasgal is on the couch.”

  “The bed,” Misty said through clenched teeth. “Now please let me listen to this, dammit.”

  “Who’s Tasgal?” Stacy asked. Misty didn’t even bother looking at her—just rolled her eyes and shook her head and continued to stare down Charlie. He weathered it for a few seconds then gave in, got to his feet, and took his time getting to the back.

  “If Crate were in here, he’d take you for one of them and shoot your ass.”

  “Urm,” Charles said, reaching the door that lead to the living quarters behind the store. He looked back and shook his head, eyelids heavy. “We should tie him up.” He shrugged and belched. “I guess.” He turned and left.

  “What’s he talking about?” Stacy asked.

  “He’s drunk,” she said, downing her beer and getting up from the table, walking to the counter, where she paced, her eyes on the television. “Now just be quiet a second, okay. Get yourself something to drink from the cooler.”

  “Oh,” Stacy said, eyes wide, acting surprised, like she hadn’t been waiting for the invitation. “You sure?”

  “Please.”

  “Okay, then,” Stacy said. She pushed away from the table and went over to the cooler. Glass tinked against glass, and she returned with a bottle of Miller Lite. “Thanks.”

  “Mnn,” Misty said, staring through the television. Richard Nixon attempted to field questions from a gang of reporters all trying to out-shout the others. The President lifted his hands and begged for silence. The Secret Service guys to his left and right were getting shifty, looking nervous. To Misty, it looked as if they were about to drag their boss out of the room, or maybe put a few rounds into the ceiling to quiet down the commoners.

  Neither happened. The room got itself under control long enough for someone from CBS to ask Nixon to confirm the report that Soviet submarines had been detected just off the coast of Alaska.

  “To hell with that,” another reporter shouted. “What about the Gulf of Mexico? They’re in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. President, or are you unable to comment on that at this point?”

  “I’ll be back,” Misty said. “Stay right here.” Stacy looked at Misty down the length of the bottle held to her lips. She raised her eyebrows. Misty stepped outside. The bell did its thing.

  “Yeah,” Crate said, drinking from an old liquor jug filled with water. Misty could not remember the last time he’d gotten drunk, and the joint he’d smoked earlier was, as far as she knew, the first he’d had in months. He was on the ball, the old bastard, and if they survived this, it would probably be because of him.

  “When do you want to do it?”

  “Sooner the better, I guess,” he said, frowning up at the light illuminating the parking lot. “Think I ought to shoot it?”

  She read his gaze. “Why?”

  “This place stands out at night. We could use a little darkness.”

  “We won’t be able to see them.”

  “My eyes are just fine, woman. I’ll see them when I need to see them. Better than theirs, leastways. With the lights out, maybe they’ll just keep on walking by,” he said, leaning forward and looking toward the door leading into the store. “Gotta turn out the lights in the store, too. Move everyone into the back.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “I’m sure I don’t want to know what it feels like to be eaten alive. I’m tired, Mis. I need some sleep.”

  “But I think we—”

  Crate waved an annoyed hand at her face. “I didn’t say now, dammit. I know what we need to do right now, so let’s do it.”

  They stepped into the store. Stacy opened her second beer. She looked up at Crate, let her eyes drop down to the rifle in his hands for a second, and smiled. “You coming in here to shoot me, Crate.”

  “You should be so lucky,” he said.

  Misty locked the door.

  “What’s going on,” Stacy asked. “Are there more?”

  “Not yet there aren’t,” Crate said, leaning his rifle against the waist-high ice cream cooler. He stepped over to the counter, his eyes on the television. An anchorwoman with her face cinched up like a purse spoke of Soviet troop buildup along the border of someplace she’d never heard of.

  “Nothing�
�s looking good,” Misty said.

  “Huh,” Crate said, and shrugged. “No real surprise there.”

  Misty kept her eyes on the screen. Crate watched television a little longer, before grabbing his rifle and stepping toward back of the store.

  “Where you off to,” Stacy asked.

  “We got a little business to take care of, Starshine,” he said, frowning at her. “You stay put. Come on, Mis.”

  “I hope I’m as frisky as the two of you when I’m your age,” Stacy said. She smiled and knocked back her Miller Lite.

  “Yeah,” Crate said, and left. Misty followed.

  Tasgal lay with his injured forearm across his face. His gun lay on his stomach, his left hand resting atop it. His mouth was open. He’d kicked off his boots.

  “Eric,” Misty said, nudging him. “Wake up, kiddo.”

  Eric Tasgal mumbled, shifted. Misty stared at the gun on the young policeman’s chest, hoping his fingers would draw away from it. They didn’t.

  “Eric.” Louder this time, with a little more force. He jerked his right arm away from his face. His left hand seized the gun and his eyes opened. He blinked up at her, his eyes devoid of comprehension, and she yelped, backing away, nearly stumbling. Certain that he would open fire.

  He didn’t raise the gun. The confused look on his face gave way to awareness, and he licked his lips, blinking.

  “Sorry I startled you,” she said, stepping toward him. Behind her, unseen in the darkened hallway, Crate sighed. She wanted to punch his teeth down his throat.

  Tasgal looked down at the gun in his left hand. “I... I startled you,” he said, sitting up. He placed the gun beside him on the couch and moaned softly, working the fingers of his right hand.

  “You okay?” Misty asked.

  He made a fist and winced, looked up at her. His face was too pale.

  “No,” he said. “This hurts like hell.”

  “All I have is aspirin,” she said. “Aspirin and grass.”

  “Yeah,” he said, leaning back and staring down at his right forearm, which rested upon his lap like a dead fish. Above the place where he’d been bitten, the gauze was stained deep red bordering on brown. Gingerly, he poked at the bandage with his left forefinger. He sucked air between his clenched teeth, looked up at Misty. “Now would be good.”