Life Among The Dead

by Daniel Cotton

  “Maybe.” Becka considers what he has said.

  “I don’t think you should kill yourself. It’s selfish. We need you.”

  “It feels good to talk about it, doesn’t it?” Becka says with a smile.

  “Yeah, it does.” Dan replies.

  “Have you talked about it with anyone else? Heather or Bruce?”

  “Not everything, no. I will… I just need time.” Dan tells her. The girl stops in the snow and fishes in her pocket. She pulls out her dice and hands them to Dan. The multi-sided game pieces look like opaque gemstones.

  “I want you to hold these for me.”

  33

  Operation: Saturation Bombing

  The liberation of New Castle has commenced. Hector and Becka fly up and down the streets of New Castle on a snowmobile, delivering their payload. Not a single zombie is felled in this wave. Water balloons are non-lethal.

  Festive colored rubber sacs splatter the already slow moving deceased as they try to follow the speeding sled. The bombardiers take note of the locations of the corpses, and try to get them all moving towards the center of town.

  The operatives slide to a stop on the hill where the others wait in the wings. The passenger on the back of the snowmobile gets off.

  “Too many for an accurate count.” Becka reports as she removes her helmet. “We found most of them on Main Street, some stragglers are heading that way, hoping to catch us. They are as slow as death.”

  “Of course they are,” Dan says as he peers at the street through binoculars. “It’s the dead of winter.”

  Dan focuses on one dead man in particular, just an average townie in jeans and a light jacket. He watches the corpse walk along the street towards the hill like all the others. He moves as if he has no knees or elbows, like a mummy. His joints must be frozen solid, Dan thinks.

  The zombie hesitates. He is trying to take a step with his left leg, but it is not moving. The limb stays behind. He begins to drag the stubborn appendage until his other leg becomes nonresponsive. He falls over like a little green army man, a non-poseable action figure. Dan nods to Bruce.

  “Let’s move out!” Bruce commands and the living head down the hill in droves. Men and woman from the ranch and their neighbors are armed with; axes, shovels, tire irons, and baseball bats. It’s going to be a one sided, hand-to-hand battle.

  34

  Operation: Catharsis

  Statues frozen in time populate the streets of the town in perpetual strides. Some had fallen over and are locked in awkward positions. Their eyes move tracking the meals they can no longer reach for.

  The survivors batter the dead. The quiet afternoon becomes a rhythmic beating that sounds like concrete being hammered. The stiffened flesh and chilled bones shatter to pieces under the savage attack.

  Dan catches himself more than once taking a little too much pleasure in the raid. He often knocks over a corpse and continues to break limbs well after the head is pulverized. He sought revenge on the living dead. Bruce redirects him when he sees his nephew cracking off arms and legs with superfluous strikes.

  “Hey!” He chastises. “We have to clean this shit up afterwards. I don’t want some kid stepping on an errant tooth and starting this crap all over again.”

  They scour the streets and the yards. They run a police line through the woods. Not a stone is to be left unturned until Bruce and Dan are satisfied that every last one is neutralized. Search and destroy.

  The Charles River runs along the town. Actually, it runs around it giving New Castle its name. The Charles is a partial moat. Dan rediscovers this fact during the attack on the dead. While clearing the corpses on the old bridge into town when realizes he had crossed it when he had entered that night. He was completely blinded by the snow and by some stroke of luck he didn’t go over the side killing himself and Jack.

  Broken body parts and fragments are carefully collected and tossed into the streets as if they are pieces of wood. Someone acquired a snowplow from behind the town office to clear the debris. The survivors have to start the more dangerous leg of the operation, the house to house searches.

  Since the dam keeps the power on, furnaces continue to release white smoke from their chimneys, the homes will be warm. Teams of three are made and stationed in an organized fashion at strategic locations. They are to go down the lines of businesses and houses throughout New Castle. Bruce lays out the procedure.

  “I want these places checked from top to bottom, every closed door is to be opened. Look in closets, under beds, open cupboards, and crawl spaces. From the cellars to the attics, let’s get it done.”

  Rifles and guns replace hand weapons. Bruce wants the first place cleared to be the local gun shop. Firearms are commandeered and distributed. They are loaded for bear. Bruce plans to make this the armory when they have the Castle back. The man who ran the shop was an enthusiast of reloading ammunition. All the components to reload are there in great supply; brass casings and primers, projectiles of every caliber, and enough black powder to put the store into orbit. Ammo will not be in short supply.

  Dan and Bruce volunteered for the most heart breaking assignment; the elementary school. Heather is with them. Dan would have preferred if she had stayed at the ranch with Lindsey and Barbara to take care of all the little ones, but she insists.

  “I’ve already lost you twice.” She tells her husband. “Besides, you said it would be easy.”

  He had meant the frozen dead would be easy. He is afraid for her safety on this assignment. If he had known she would be up for this, he would have chosen a different mission. It is too late. Everyone else appears relieved that they don’t have to do it.

  The three stand outside the schoolyard looking in. A cigarette is tucked in Dan’s chapped lips as he gazes through the chain link fence, leaning on a sign that reads: Smoke free school zone. The playground is enclosed in the steel fencing. Zombie children of various ages slowly wander through the snow.

  “Are you guys ready for this?” Bruce asks.

  “Yup.” Dan sighs.

  “I think so.” Heather adds, but she looks nervous. Dan knows it isn’t the fact that she has to enter a dangerous situation. It’s the fact that the dead are children.

  “Remember,” Bruce tries to make it easier. “They’re just zombies. Think of them as zombie midgets, or undead Oompa loompas.”

  “Let’s get it over with.” Dan says, aiming his M-16. The assault rifle is military issue and capable of firing a three shot burst that the soldiers nick named ‘Rock and Roll.’ He has it set to single fire.

  Dan lines up his sights and fires a round that shatters the head of a boy wearing a red ball cap. Bruce is having a hard time using his hunting rifle with the scope. He doesn’t want to see their faces in such detail while doing this. He switches it out for his Winchester lever action.

  Heather has gone to the range with her husband on several occasions. She is a pretty good shot, but hates guns. She timidly looks down the barrel of Dan’s hunting rifle. He had adjusted the scope to make it out of focus; she sees a blurry blob when aiming at a pint sized zombie. On top of the blob is a smaller mass, the head. Just aim at the center, she tells herself.

  Heather squeezes the trigger and the blob explodes like a clay pigeon. At first she gets that happy feeling one gets when they hit the target at the firing range. The momentary elation evaporates when she inspects the result of her shot. A little girl stands frozen, leaning back on the metal slide. She has no head on top of her purple-jacketed shoulders. Heather feels faint, all the color drains from her face.

  “Are you all right?” Dan asks his wife.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t have to do this.” He tells her.

  “Yeah, we got this.” Bruce backs Dan up.

  Heather leans on Bruce’s old work truck that contains many different firearms for them to choose from. She watches the men go back to destroying the zombie children.

  Dan tries to keep his mind off the task b
y thinking about the spread of the plague. I wonder what time these kids got to the school, he concentrates on the timetable. We got it in the morning, maybe it hit here later in the day. When did Gaines get hit? Dan thinks about the stranger who had entered. There were no houses around there for someone to be wandering about in a bathrobe. Dan finds the job goes smoother if he works on the mystery in his head.

  Bruce has a similar problem with the assignment. He chooses to focus on the next phase of taking the town back, the rebuilding. He is more verbal in his attempt to distract himself.

  “We can salvage this chain link to build the wall around the town. We only need to enclose half of it since we have the river as a moat. We can also make use of the picket fences, and all the useless doors from inside the homes to reinforce our Great Wall. Who needs a door between the kitchen and the dining room?”

  They circle the large building of red brick to ensure all the outside zombies have been eliminated. Tiny bodies lay broken on the pure white playground in their brightly colored coats; hats are strewn about with no heads inside them. Dan and Bruce trade out their rifles for pistols, they will work better in a more confined space.

  “Why are you taking a girly gun?” Bruce refers to Dan’s 9mm.

  “I like a good rate of fire.” He explains in defense. He retaliates, pointing at Bruce’s .44 magnum.

  “What? I want stopping power.” The older man defends.

  “Stopping power? They only weigh fifty pounds.”

  The pits of their stomachs hurt them as they walk up the sidewalk to the front doors of the house of learning. Heather watches them as they go bravely, to do what few people could. It doesn’t make them heartless; on the contrary, she thinks it’s the most humane act a person can do. Who would want their child left like that? She certainly wouldn’t.

  Double doors open into a vestibule, warm air spills out as they enter. Before them is another set of double doors. They pause before venturing into the main hall, wanting to plan this out. The doors have long narrow windows that they can view the inside from. The lights are still on and the passageway appears clear as far as they can see. A short flight of stairs heads down, not too far beyond the door. The ceiling lowers following the risers, obscuring their view.

  “What do you think?” Bruce asks his nephew.

  “We secure the halls,” Dan starts lighting a fresh cigarette. His nerves are shot at this point. “We shut the doors that are open along the way, and then take it room by room.”

  “What are you doing?” Bruce points at the cigarette. “This is a school.”

  “Not anymore.” Dan protests.

  “It will be again.”

  “Let’s just do this.” Dan says.

  They enter the hall, keeping low as they try to see what may await them down the stairs. They duck walk to the steps and climb down sideways on all fours. The overhead lights flicker. Further down the hall some of the illuminated panels are black, their bulbs have burned out and there is no one to replace them.

  The school is thankfully only one story and just covered grades K-6th. The building is built like a lower case ‘T’, branching out at the middle.

  The tall men feel like giants in the elementary school, everything is geared for the little learners. The walls are plastered with paintings done by the zombies inside, before they became zombies, sloppy artwork hangs proudly depicting happy home lives and what they wanted to be when they grew up, wishes that will never come true.

  The place smells of decay and of spoiled milk. The two men see a dairy cart had been spilled over, the small cartons had ruptured when trampled; thick curds rot on the floor.

  They close doors as they proceed down the hall as quiet as possible. It is devoid of any movement. The classes however, are not. Waist high ghouls mill among brightly colored decors and furniture built to their size. Carpet squares are laid out for their eternal nap time that will never end. They definitely don’t want to alert the tiny zombies to their presence just yet.

  The executioners reach the intersecting hallway. Peering around the corners they can see a few of the small threats pacing around. The men dash across the open hall, hoping not to be spotted, or heard.

  Dan risks a look around the corners. They did it. The dead have not noticed them. A walkie-talkie squawks loudly from Bruce’s belt.

  “Alpha dog, this is Red Rover. What is your location?”

  Who the fuck’s that? Dan wonders. He can’t remember who they had given the other device to, but he is going to get an earful if they make it out alive. Bruce answers the communication device by throwing it down the hall they had come.

  “We could have used it to call for back up.” Dan tells him.

  “Yeah, that would have worked too.” Bruce responds. Moaning is filling the halls. The sound is different than what the larger, adult sized counterparts make, higher in pitch and lower to the ground. The sad pleas echo off the walls of the narrow hall.

  The fun sized dead come out of the rooms they have not yet closed. Zombie tots round the corners of the hall, converging on Dan and Bruce.

  “Do you still feel bad for them?” Bruce asks.

  “Yeah, just not as much.”

  The dead fall one at a time under their fire. This school accepts kids from nearby towns; it becomes clear to the men that they are outnumbered. There are just too many of them to deal with like this, getting too close, too fast.

  Emotionless cherub faces close in around them with vacant eyes that see flesh to satisfy their ceaseless hunger. The bites that had infected them are grotesquely noticeable, Dan’s heart go out to them as he puts bullets into their heads.

  “Got a plan?” Dan asks over the gunfire that offends their ears in the confining corridor.

  “Let’s not die.” Bruce answers.

  “Good one. You should patent that shit.” Dan slides a fresh clip into his gun. He is afraid he might not have enough. Bruce points to a fire extinguisher on the wall. Dan fires a round into it. A cold burst of compressed air knocks down the lightweight dead around the blast zone. This creates an opening for them. The men sprint over the small bodies before they can get up.

  They run through the hall, hoping to find a room that isn’t occupied, but aren’t faring too well. The zombies from Sesame Street keep exiting from the rooms ahead of them. All they have managed to do is buy a little time.

  “Your turn.” Bruce tells Dan. “Make a plan.”

  “Build a time machine and bring more people next time around.” Dan says. He sees they are standing outside of the school nurse’s office. The door is closed. He kicks it inward.

  The nurse is in a white uniform, covered by a gray sweater. She is very old and it is hard to tell if she is alive or dead, she just stares at them. She isn’t advancing.

  “Are you alive?” Bruce asks her, stepping into the room. Dan had almost shot her without finding out first. He wishes he had just fired when she steps towards Bruce trying to grab him. Dan’s uncle fires his large weapon under her chin. Her head disappears, reappearing all over the ceiling.

  The men shut themselves in the small medical unit along with the headless corpse. Dan locks the door by a small button on the knob. It turns out to be a divided door like at Bruce’s. The top and bottom halves open independently. He leaves the top open since the dead that plague them are so short.

  The two Williamsons are sorely in need of back-up. There are no windows in this room, and no way out other than the door the Children of the Damned are behind. They can see the tops of the little demons’ heads. Behind them, teachers and parents are leaning over the kids, gripping the top of the door trying to pull themselves closer.

  “How many shots do you have left?” Dan asks.

  “Not many. You?”

  “Same. We should radio for help.” Dan sarcastically suggests to his uncle. “Oh, wait…”

  “I was agitated.” He excuses himself. “Someone will come for us. It isn’t like we’re alone in the world anymore.”

&n
bsp; As if answering his psychic plea they hear gunfire. It sounds like a rather large weapon. Its discharge takes two chunks out of the crowd at the door.

  “That’s my double barrel.” Bruce says. The men can hear a gun being dropped to the floor followed by the sound of a smaller weapon being fired. Dan recognizes the telltale rat-tat-tat.

  “My M-16.” Dan smiles. “It’s Heather.” Dan means this in two ways. He had named his rifle Heather in boot camp. His uncle said it was bad luck to name a gun after your girl. At the time, Heather was just the name of a girl who was way out of his league, and not yet his wife. Dan sees his bride appear in the doorway.

  “Come on guys. I can’t do it all myself.” She says to the two men hunkered on the floor, waiting to be saved.

  “See.” Bruce says as they join Heather in the hall. “Woman with assault rifles are just plain sexy.”

  They clear the passage and the rooms. The school looks like a massacre just took place. Sad bodies are strewn everywhere. Outside the nurses office the walls are coated with blood and brains.

  “What a mess.” Heather says. “We have to clean it, don’t we?” She doesn’t seem excited about the prospect.

  “Not exactly,” Bruce consoles her. “Becka’s always looking for work.”

  35

  Operation: Cleanup/Rebuild

  People carry the corpses out to the streets like yesterday’s garbage. Snow plows and four wheelers equipped with small blades clear the sidewalks and driveways. All the inactive dead are piled in the middle of the park and doused with gasoline. The fire spit a foul smoke into the air as it consumes the fallen creatures of nightmares.

  As the units secured homes and buildings, they had spray painted green ‘X’s on the front doors to indicate the space is safe. It had taken them well into the night until every door adorned the mark of the living.

  The entire operation yields 37 survivors who had hidden from the dead. This is a thing to celebrate. On their way to the center of town to claim victory Hector stops Dan, Heather and Bruce. He has been searching everywhere for them. The deaf young man hands Dan a note before sprinting away.