Life Among The Dead

by Daniel Cotton

  Dan spits a piece of ear onto the floor that he couldn’t expel in front of the cultists. He turns the engine over and spots something on the dash that, at this point, seems like the most important item he could possibly recover. His smokes.

  “My lucky day.” He pushes in the vehicle’s lighter and waits for it to pop. He watches the dead bring the believers to Nirvana. Dan lights his cigarette gladly. He not only needs his fix, he also needs to get the taste of blood out of his mouth.

  Dan isn’t sure if it was intended as a commentary on his person, but those who confiscated his truck had it parked in a handicap space. He pulls out knowing he will go unnoticed since everyone is so busy at the moment. He charges through the chain link.

  Gaines is a ghost town; all of the dead had been lured into the old depot. He drags a long piece of the fence behind him. The steel makes sparks as it dances along the pavement. The cultists must have locked the perimeter fence again after knocking Dan out. He sees it is secured once more with a fresh padlock.

  “Let’s try this again.” Dan revs up and accelerates through the barrier. He flies down the tree-lined road once more. He wants to put as much road between him and Gaines as fast as he possibly can. He hates this town. He hates all the idiots who let themselves be taken by that man. He hates Greg. Most of all he hates being waylaid for something so stupid. He has somewhere to be.

  The trees are a blur as they pass by. The road branches off into other directions, but he continues northward at a break neck pace. He isn’t entirely sure where he is, but figures he can stop in a few miles to check the atlas in the glove box.

  The sickness has spread, he realizes. It’s not just Waterloo. It’s everywhere. He worries about his family. Have they met with any trouble along their way? Are they all right? He asks himself so many questions it hurts his stomach not knowing the answers. Dan’s left foot bounces with anxiety. He needs to take his mind off of it. It can only hurt his chances of success to worry like this.

  Dan pulls over to the side of the road, happy with the distance he has put behind him and those nut sacks. He pulls out the atlas and tries to find himself on the map. The soldier looks around for landmarks to help him pinpoint his position. A sign tells him that the State Penitentiary can be found where the road forks left.

  “There is Gaines.” He groans at the sight of the name. “I am…?”

  Dan traces the road he had traveled with his finger. He had lost count of how many turns he had passed.

  “State Pen.” He taps the map. “Here I am.”

  5

  Prison is hard on everybody. You find yourself locked away from the world among violent people. A person must learn to watch their back. Alliances and rivalries are forged out of necessity, the need to survive. Today, prison is especially hard for Charlie King.

  Charlie lies on his bunk staring at the plaster ceiling of his six by five cell. He lets his mind wander to better times. He thinks about high school, the last time he was truly happy. He thinks of all the people he knew. He was well liked, people trusted him back then. He thinks about all the girls he used to go with.

  The convict smiles as he reviews his most pleasurable conquests. He starts to get aroused when Ashley graces his mind’s eye. She was the aptly named student body president of his graduating class. He remembers the body she hid under those preppy clothes. The convict never understood how a guy like him could win over such a smart girl.

  Charlie’s hand slides under the waistband of his prison issued jeans, coaxing his old friend to full attention. He holds himself for the sixth time in the past 48 hours. There isn’t much else to do since the guards disappeared. The prisoners haven’t been let out of their cages since the vanishing act. There has been no yard time, no gym, and no showers. They haven’t even been fed. Needless to say, he has plenty of time on his hands.

  His mind creates the image of the school nurse for his enjoyment. He never learned her first name. He always called her Nurse Cummings. It was no wonder all the boys feigned illness to be sent to see her. She had a real knack for making a young man feel better. It was sad when she was let go for her amazing bedside manner. A seventy-year-old former nun, that Charlie tries not to visualize at the moment, had replaced her.

  A girl pushes her way into the spotlight of his masturbation fantasy. She always gets him home; Lydia, his gothic goddess. He found her dark makeup mesmerizing. He loves to remember how her long black hair moved as she rode him, and how those dark locks would tickle his chest when she leaned forward. Her skin was very pale from her avoidance of the sun, as if she truly was a creature of the night. He remembers the feel of the rough cold tombstone under his back. Lydia always wanted to do it in the cemetery.

  Almost there. He chooses to finish by reliving one encounter in particular. It was midnight on Halloween, and his dark hearted lover had a set of vampire teeth. He replays the scene as tension builds in his pants. She had him leaning against a tree. It turned her on that the tree’s roots bisected a grave.

  “It gets nourishment from the body.” Lydia had said while on her knees, her black fishnet stockings getting soaked as they pressed into the grass. She undid his pants slowly, smiling up at him with those devilish fangs. Once she had his pants to his ankles, a cool breeze caressed places breezes seldom go. She had hissed at him, opening her black stained lips wide before…

  “Are you hungry?” A voice asks Charlie from below.

  “What?” He responds, losing his precious train of thought. Lydia, Nurse Robins, and the extremely flexible Ashley are gone. He stares once again at the cracked ceiling.

  “I asked…” The voice speaks again as the owner starts to rise from the bunk below. The double-decker bed shakes from the movement Charlie’s cellmate makes. The man quickly pulls his hand away from his retreating erection and covers the diminishing bulge with the tail of his shirt.

  “Are you hungry?” The skinny man in glasses reiterates.

  “Of course I’m hungry, Mitchell. Those fuckers haven’t fed us in two days.” Charlie completes his sentence with a frustrated sigh. He shifts his pelvis trying to relieve his discomfort.

  “I wonder what’s going on. They never do this.” Mitchell says looking through the bars.

  “I know.”

  “Maybe it’s a punishment of some kind.”

  “They can’t do it forever. They have to feed us.” Charlie reassures.

  “Yeah, but I’m just so hungry.”

  “I know!” Charlie says loudly out of frustration. He has listened to the man say that for the past two days. “I promise, you will eat again.”

  Mitchell is quiet for a few minutes. He just stands there at the bunk beds, looking out through the bars of the cell. He sits on his mattress and mutters. “Fuck, I need food.”

  Charlie doesn’t want to hear him mention eating again. It makes it worse for him. He always believed that the one thing that can’t solve a problem is bitching about it. He decides to share with the annoying man a trick that may help. In the very least it should shut Mitchell up for a while.

  “I knew this guy once,” Charlie begins. “From the Philippines…”

  “Where’s that?” Mitchell interrupts.

  “I don’t know. Some Asian island I believe.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Just listen. He was from a poor part of the place. He and his people were always starving. He told a friend of his out there how hungry he was, and his friend told him a trick on how to alleviate it. He told it to me, now I will tell you.”

  “Will it help?”

  “Would I mention it if it didn’t work?” Charlie waits for a response, taking the smaller man’s silence as a ‘No’. He continues. “His friend told him he should spit in his belly button.”

  “What were they fags?” Mitchell laughs.

  “Not in his friend’s belly button. His own. I know it sounds weird, but it works.”

  Charlie can hear the man below spitting.

  “I can’
t get it in.” Mitchell whines.

  “Lick your finger and do it,” Charlie coaches from above. “Like a wet willy.”

  “Hey! It does work. I feel much better. Thanks man.”

  “Don’t mention it. I was sick of your bitching.” Charlie says, following the ceiling cracks with his eyes.

  “Sorry. Did your friend have any tricks for boredom?” Mitchell asks.

  “I only know one and you ruined it for me.”

  “I did…? Oh shit! That’s what you were doing. I am so sorry.”

  Screaming from the hallways draws Mitchell from his bunk. He bounds to the bars, pressing his head against the steel in an attempt to look down the corridor. The other prisoners have been calling out since the guards vanished. They scream for food and their rights. They try to raise any acknowledgement they can. The only answer came in the form of those among them who screams back, telling them to shut up. Under all the bellowing there is an underlining moan.

  Charlie and Mitchell are silent as they listen to the pathetic and incessant screams. Charlie tries not to hear them calling out. He has a problem he has been debating for the past couple of weeks. Under his pillow an object makes a bulge, the source of his inner turmoil. The small lump feels enormous under his skull. He lights a cigarette.

  “Do you have another one? I’m out.” Mitchell asks.

  “Last one.” Charlie replies.

  “Damn it.”

  Charlie takes a long drag. It isn’t his last. He still has two more in his pack. He feels guilty now for holding out.

  “Here. You can finish this one.” Charlie hands it down.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I should be getting more tomorrow. My mom said she’s going to visit.”

  Mitchell takes the half smoked cigarette and draws deeply. He says thank you, but Charlie doesn’t answer. The man on the top bunk rolls over to face the wall. His head travels over the lump under his pillow. It feels like a boulder. The debate rages in his brain. You have to, he tells himself. I don’t know if I can, he counters.

  Theirs is the only quiet cell on the block as Mitchell smokes the acquired cigarette all the way to the filter. Charlie turns over. His head, once again, climbs over the mountain under his pillow.

  “Do you know Sartori?” He asks.

  “I know of him. Why?” Mitchell replies guardedly.

  “I don’t know. I just heard the name mentioned out in the yard and was wondering.”

  “He’s insane. He’s a killer. He runs a gang of cons in here. Stay clear of that man, and never get on his bad side.”

  Charlie already knew all of this. It’s Sartori’s bad side that he’s trying to avoid.

  “How do I stay off his bad side?”

  “Just don’t cross the man. Stay off of his radar.” Mitchell emphasizes.

  Charlie is already a blip on the radar, and Sartori has him locked in. The man confronted him in person and gave him the object under his pillow. He told him to use it.

  It would be like an initiation into the gang. It would mean safety. Nobody messes with Sartori’s crew, not even the guards. He’s as well connected on the outside of the prison as he is on the inside. He can erase your entire family without lifting a finger.

  Mitchell walks over to the stainless steel toilet bolted to the wall. He urinates as he speaks to his cellmate. “I’m on his bad side.”

  No shit, Charlie thinks.

  “He thinks I snitched on him.”

  “You didn’t, right? Why would you?” Charlie asks.

  “No. It wasn’t me.” Mitchell says. “I guess he had some plot to escape. It got blown, and somehow my name got dragged into it.”

  “He thinks you told?”

  “Seems that way. I think it was one of his own men. He must have told the warden because that’s the only person who isn’t afraid of him. I’m just a scapegoat.”

  Charlie fingers the object under his pillow. He has only looked at it twice since it was bestowed upon him. Once, when he received it, and once again when he slid it to where it resides now. It’s a long nail; the end is wrapped in electrical tape, making a thick handle.

  The instructions on how to use the shiv were very clearly stated. “Stab him. Make it hurt.” Charlie wonders if he can plead Mitchell’s case with Sartori. The man is innocent. The thought makes Charlie laugh a little. Who in here isn’t?

  Maybe Sartori planned all of this? Charlie wonders if the absence of the guards is the kingpin’s doing. It would be perfect timing. Mitchell stands at the bars again, resuming his vigil of the hallway of screaming criminals.

  “I’m getting hungry again.” He says holding his stomach trying to cease its rumbling. He hates being hungry.

  Mitchell’s resumed hunger pains disappear quickly as a new sensation takes over. A sharp pain in his lower back takes center stage in his mind as he is stabbed repeatedly.

  He screams into the hall of murderers and thieves, there is nobody to come to his aide. His cries for help just join the cacophony of voices and moans.

  Charlie has an arm through the bars so he can pin the frail man against the steel as he perforates vital organs. Mitchell’s screams cease after receiving a dozen stabs to his rib cage. His chest cavity could no longer sustain enough air to breathe, let alone yell. Charlie continues his attack until the man’s body goes limp.

  The assailant backs away, allowing his victim to slump to the floor. He can’t believe what he has just done. The bleeding man rolls over, his glazed eyes look up at the man he thought was his friend. Charlie can’t meet his gaze. Mitchell’s mouth quivers wordlessly, asking why.

  The alleged rat is dying on the floor. Charlie feels weak as he stumbles to the bunk beds. He curls up on the bottom rack in a fetal position. He keeps his back turned to the man who bleeds out, dying on an empty stomach.

  “At least I’ll be safe now.”

  6

  Dan has a route planned that should keep him out of thickly populated areas while still allowing him to reach New Castle in about a day or so if he really pushes it and doesn’t sleep. The atlas gets folded up and stowed in the glove compartment again.

  He looks around before adjourning his pit stop. He glances at the sign that indicates the prison is near. Having just left his own jail he can sympathize, but not too much.

  “Lucky bastards are in the safest place in the world.”

  #

  There is no traffic in his path, and no law to answer to. Dan has the cruise control set at ninety miles per hour. Johnny Cash sings to him along the way. The tape player has an auto flip function. He has heard each side three times.

  Staring blankly at the road that unfolds ahead of him, his eyes are feeling heavy already. Highway hypnosis is pulling him out of reality as miles of tar pass beneath him. He knows he will be in trouble if he can’t snap out of the trance.

  “I need something to give me a jolt.” He slurs. He blinks his eyes though they wish to stay closed. Something shines on the road up ahead. Sunlight glitters off of something about a quarter mile away.

  The curiosity breathes new life into the sleepy driver. He sits up straighter, trying to see what the object is. He wonders if it might be some sort of mirage.

  The single spark of glare becomes several, moving in a line towards the red truck. It appears to be a convoy. Dan feels apprehension and decreases his speed in case he needs to act. The .38 is now on his lap.

  The lead car is a blue sedan that is setting an extremely slow pace for the vehicles that follow it. It almost comes to a standstill as it meets the red truck traveling at an equal crawl.

  Dan waves at the driver of the sedan. Two people inhabit the front seats. The passenger is aiming a rifle in the soldier’s direction. They look just as leery of Dan’s intentions as he is of theirs. The hoods and sides of the cars are peppered with bullet holes.

  The driver returns Dan’s wave when they meet eye to eye. Relief seems to wash through the woman behind the wheel. She is pretty with shoulder len
gth blonde hair, wearing a white tank top. Dan wonders if it’s his uniform that puts her at ease.

  Dan and the drivers of the other vehicles wave at one another as they pass. Just a palm held in the air acknowledging the kindred spirit the survivors share. It is a phenomenon Dan always found fascinating. Truckers wave to other truckers, bikers wave to fellow bikers. It’s a salutation to their unknown brothers and sisters of the open road.

  Dan knew there had to be others out there. The world isn’t a lost cause after all. It isn’t completely fucked. Groups are out and about, seeking safe harbor. But, is there safe harbor to be found?

  His mind once again starts to reel with worry. What if Heather and Vincent haven’t found New Castle? He ponders. What if something awful has happened? He needs to get to them as fast as he can. Dan presses his foot on the accelerator until it hits the floorboard. The speedometer climbs over one hundred miles per hour.

  7

  Hours have passed. Johnny Cash has long since abandoned the soldier. The tape unwound itself in the player resulting in a tangled mess of black cellulose that now hangs from the console.

  Dan’s stomach rumbles. He regrets not stopping the convoy. They probably had food. I could have traded for some. Traded what? He asks himself.

  The truck is also getting hungry. Dan is running on fumes. He is in the middle of nowhere, all around he sees only trees and fields. The desolation depresses him. His only comfort is in knowing he is on the right track, every so often he is able to catch a glimpse of the Charles River to his right.

  According to the map Dan has a turn coming up ahead that will enable him to avoid Worchester and skirt around some place called Poland Creek. It looks like a small enough town that he could blow right through, but he doesn’t want to chance it.