Order of the Dead

by James, Guy

  27

  Alan took a breath that was shallow and didn’t connect where it needed to, as often happened to Rosemary, especially when she was scared or nervous. He tried again, but the second breath fared no better. In spite of that, he began to speak, to tell the same story she’d heard before, except with more of the colors filled in.

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.” He paused, then began again. “I think my parents died on the first day of the outbreak, and I think my brother and sister died then too. They must have, because they were in DC when it happened. They’d all gotten together for a museum day and dinner, but I wasn’t able to go because of work. It was a busy time for my company.

  “I was at the office when the outbreak hit, churning out a land contract that we’d been negotiating for almost a whole year. Coming to terms was so important and it was such an important deal, it was so…” He sighed. “Meaningless. So all my immediate family died, taken by the zombies, torn apart, and I guess it happened while I was staring at some redline.”

  He found death, even violent death, was so easy to speak of now, and thought it must have been like this before.

  “It must have been like this before,” he said.

  “What?” Senna said. “Like what before?”

  “I mean before the—” he hesitated. What was he talking about? He closed his eyes and drew in a breath, “—the outbreak. Long before that, in the Middle Ages, and before then, too, when death was commonplace and unremarkable, horrible and feared but all around you all the time, something that couldn’t be turned away from. I don’t even know if they’re dead, not really. They almost certainly are, but I can’t really know that. Imagining what their last moments were like, and not knowing, that drives me crazy.”

  Alan’s stare became glassy-eyed.

  Moments went by and Senna became worried. “Alan?” she said. “Alan? Are you okay?”

  No reply at first.

  He tried to swallow and after a few attempts, managed it.

  “I ran,” he said at last, “like we all did. I ran and hid, and tried to stay alive as best I could. I didn’t have any survival skills…being a lawyer and sitting at a desk all day doesn’t exactly prepare you for the apocalypse. Even in the first few days, I was surprised at how long I was lasting, seeing all those other people around me, who...” He laughed sadly. “Lawyers aren’t supposed to have zombie apocalypse skills, and I even remember talking to one of the other lawyers at my company about it, before the outbreak, back when the idea of such a thing was a joke, something that’d never happen, something that never could.”

  He shook his head. “We were joking about it at lunch, and I joked about it all the time, in fact. I was never very good at taking care of myself, you know, keeping food in the fridge and stocking up on supplies and all that. My friends got on to me about it sometimes, and I always said, well, I want to be unprepared when the zombies come, because I want a challenge. I don’t want to be too ready with supplies and a bug-out pack and food. I don’t want to be in too good a shape for the zombies. Stuff like that.

  “Well, I couldn’t go back to my apartment when the outbreak hit. The zombies were everywhere, deciding for us where we could run. I was just trying to stay away from them, and it was probably for the best that I couldn’t get back to my apartment. I had nothing to live on there. Not much anyway. Maybe a bag of carrots, some condiments, some liquor. Less than a day’s worth.”

  He was beginning to look grim now, and feeling it too. The story was sucking him backward, and he was seeing images that he usually kept pushed to the furthest limits of his mind, skewered against the walls of his skull.

  “Of course if I’d still been in DC I’d have been dead twice over by then.” There it was, something positive to say, some faint spin of optimism, which nowadays most commonly took the form of: it could’ve been worse, worse meaning dead walking. “Moving down to Charlottesville saved my life.”

  Had he stayed in Washington, DC, and not taken the job in small-town Virginia, he would’ve died in the outbreak for sure. Or so he thought, because he was in the business of underestimating himself, always had been, and he was damn good at it, too.

  On this point, however, he was probably right. Only a tiny fraction of people who’d been in DC on the day of the outbreak made it, and all of them had been extremely lucky, assuming, of course, and as survivors must if they’re to keep their minds, that it actually was lucky to survive, and not the other way around.

  28

  Senna gently pulled the top of Alan’s shirt open, kissed his shoulder, then lay her head on it.

  “The first place I made it to and hid in was a storeroom of a consignment store. It was aboveground, but it was secure, with brick walls and metal shutters. It was on Route 250, a good distance away from the university and the more densely populated parts of Charlottesville, where most of the zombies had gone, but there were still enough zombies for it be dangerous.

  “There were four others there in the store: three men and one woman. Their names were Andy, Matt, Chris, and Julie. We were all scared out of our minds and couldn’t believe what was happening, it just didn’t make sense.

  “We only had what little food we’d managed to grab on the day of the outbreak. Well, two of the others did, anyway, and they were kind enough to share. I didn’t have anything, because I hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab anything while I was running.

  “What we had to eat ran out by the third day, and then we were hungry, and, sooner or later, we’d have to find food. We talked about what we could do, about how we could go looking for food safely, how we could avoid the zombies.” He shook his head. “We knew almost nothing then. Andy said that there was a mattress warehouse nearby, which serviced a good number of the mattress stores in the area. He told us that he worked running deliveries to it, and that it was secure and stocked with a decent amount of canned food, because it was a middle ground for some overflow deliveries that eventually made their way to the supermarkets in the area. After some talk, we agreed that the warehouse would be our goal, and, if possible, we’d scavenge what we could from stores that we passed on the way.

  “The idea was to stay away from the large attractions like grocery stores, which we’d discovered were too dangerous. Too many other people were flocking to them, and that made them a popular feeding ground for the zombies. I wish it could’ve been different, but the people who were still alive were making too much noise in those days. They still hadn’t figured it out, and who can blame them? We’d barely gotten it ourselves, and only by dumb luck.

  “We didn’t have much of a plan for what we’d do if we got to the warehouse and it was overrun. We knew that was a possibility, but between trying the warehouse and starving to death where we were, we decided to take our chances because at least then we’d die trying. We could go from strip mall to strip mall until we were finally picked off and turned into one of those things.”

  Senna took Alan’s hand and squeezed it.

  “We waited in the storeroom for four more days,” he said. “We were starving by the time we left and if it weren’t for the running water there, well, we probably wouldn’t have been able to wait long enough for the noises outside to…to lessen, to stop being so violent and…sickening.

  “Finally, the zombies calmed. They went dormant, quiet, having found all the live prey that was close to them. We raised one of the storeroom’s shutters half a foot off the ground for a look and saw them everywhere, wandering in slow motion. I remember thinking how hideous they were, like chewed-up shells of people, stumbling around in some horrible daze.

  “They didn’t react to us, because we were too far away. We’d already noticed, on the day when we escaped to the storeroom, that if we stayed far enough away, and remained quiet, we could go somewhat unnoticed.

  “We were committed to the plan by that point, so we crawled under the shutter and out of the storeroom. We didn’t raise it all the way to avoid making any more noise, and becaus
e we wanted to keep a small escape hatch for ourselves in case the zombies forced us back inside. If that had happened…I don’t know. Anyway, it didn’t.

  “We stood up, and I stared at the new Charlottesville. I didn’t know then that all of Virginia was like that, too, and all of the United States, and the whole world. It was impossible to imagine.

  “We crept alongside the building, staying as close to it as we could and making as little noise as possible. We were lucky then to be far enough from the closest of the zombies that they weren’t drawn to us. We didn’t stay lucky.” He shrugged. “We made it a few strip malls over, about halfway to the warehouse, when we had to duck into a BMW dealership and regroup. We’d gotten to a point on Route 250 that was too thick with them for us to safely pass through. There were about a hundred blocking our way, and they were dormant, so we decided to keep our distance and steer a wide path around them.

  “After we made sure that there were no zombies or survivors in the dealership, we took a short rest there and washed up in the bathrooms. We made short work of the food we could find, mostly granola bars and some cans of soda that were supposed to be for customers.” Alan snorted. “I guess we were as good as customers then. When we were getting ready to leave the dealership, Matt freaked out.”

  Alan looked at Senna and she nodded. They both knew what that meant, having seen it so many times. The mental strain that came with leaving a place of safety, even if it was only temporary, to go back into the open where the zombies were, was too much for some people to bear.

  “We tried to calm him down,” Alan said, “but you know how that can be. He wouldn’t listen to us but just got worse and worse, and then he started screaming. We had to get him to stop, but we didn’t know what to do. So Andy hit him, again, and again, until Matt was out cold.

  “Seconds after Matt collapsed, the zombies were at the door, trying to break in, like damned clockwork. Inside the dealership, it seemed we’d found a way to stay beyond their reach, out of their radar or whatever we thought it was then, but then Matt made enough noise to attract them to us, and there they were, banging up against the glass, moving erratically and quickly, but with a definite purpose. They wanted in. We all stared at them—Julie and Chris and Andy and I—and we had no idea what to do next.

  “I remember the zombies’ eyes, how they never connected with mine, because the zombies weren’t using them to see anymore.

  “I whispered to the others that it was only a matter of time before the zombies broke in, that we had to leave right away. They agreed, but we didn’t know what to do with Matt, who was lying unconscious at our feet. I can still see it all so clearly, it was twelve years ago, Senna, and I can see it more clearly than yesterday, even though it’s not like what you went through.”

  “I know the feeling,” Senna said, and she did. There were scenes from the outbreak and the days right after it that stood in her memory too, with greater clarity than most other moments in her life.

  “There wasn’t enough time to find a car. The keys to the new cars on the lot were in a safe, and I hadn’t been able to find the keys to the safe, that and going out into the lot to find the car that matched the keys was now too dangerous. Andy suggested carrying Matt, but that would have been our collective death sentence.

  “We considered leaving him, but we weren’t quite hardened enough at that point to give that any serious thought. We decided to wake him up and have him run with us, to give him, and the rest of us, a fighting chance. We all picked him up and carried him to the back of the dealership, away from the zombies who were trying to get in through the front. If he woke up to that, given the way he was acting before, he would’ve totally lost it. When we were at the back door, we talked about which way we’d go, and how we’d run, and what to do if we couldn’t make it to the warehouse.

  “To say that we were scared is an understatement, but it was time to make our move. We couldn’t stay there overnight with the zombies at the door, and we didn’t want to wait much longer and risk moving in the dark.

  “We shook Matt awake. He was drowsy, and calmer, but his head was in bad shape and he didn’t look like he could keep it together very long. We told him that we were moving, that we were doing it now, and that he could come with us or not. The thought of being left alone must have scared him even more than the thought of facing the zombies with us, because he sobered up real quick.

  “We snuck out the back door, planning to circle the mass of zombies on the road. We were moving together, quietly, keeping a good distance, or what we thought was a good distance, anyway, and we were making progress, when we had to make our way past a small, local donut shop.

  “The storefront window and the door were broken in. There were still donuts inside, sitting on the display shelves. Donuts. We were inside in moments, filling our packs.” Alan shrugged. “It made sense—the donuts were loaded with calories. They were stale, but we couldn’t be picky at that point. Stale calories were better than no calories.

  “And then the zombies were inside, coming after us and blocking our exit. It was obvious something like that might happen, but we were all caught up in the stale calories then. I was too. I had my second or third donut in my mouth when I turned around and saw them. We ran to the back of the store, trying to get away, and then, perfect timing again, the zombies broke down the back door, and were coming in that way, too.”

  Alan winced.

  “I got a sense of what would have to happen next. It came to me quickly, out of the blue, in fact. One of us would have to die for the others to have a chance—at least one of us. The zombies needed a diversion. I was scared and in a fight-or-flight state, so I wasn’t seeing everything clearly, but this rang through. It was my survival instinct guiding me, I know, but at the time that instinct was still not that good. I got to know it better later, a lot better.”

  29

  A cold wind swept down from the mountains and rushed past Senna and Alan. The blades of grass seemed not only to sway in response to the flow of air, but to shrink away from it and to remain bent even after the gust had passed, as if the grass itself were anticipating the bitter breeze’s return.

  “They tore Matt apart,” Alan said. “Andy tried to help him and they got him too. Matt and Andy had been closest to the back door. The zombies coming in through the front of the store were closing in behind us. They were moving really fast. Everything was happening very quickly.

  “Julie made a move toward the back, and Chris and I followed. Matt and Andy distracted the zombies long enough, and that let the rest of us get out through the back. There were more zombies outside, but not as many as we had coming after us from behind. We ran as hard and fast as we could. Somehow, we all made it to the warehouse by following Chris. He was young and strong, and Julie, well, she had one hell of a will to survive.

  “When we got there we couldn’t find a way in. The zombies chasing us were right behind us, closing in, and we were forced to confront them. I had an aluminum baseball bat. Chris had a large wrench. Julie had a fire poker. The stuff we’d picked up and hung onto. Random make-do weapons. We fought desperately, Chris and I aiming our blunt objects at the zombies’ heads while Julie tried to stab them. Running on pure adrenalin, we fended off the first wave of about half a dozen, but we knew it was only a matter of time until more came.

  “We had to find a way in or find somewhere else to hide. We made our way around the building, and, as much as we didn’t want to do it, climbed up into the loading dock bays and banged on the closed shutters. We were betting on there being other people hiding inside, and we turned out to be right. Good thing, too, because by the time we were let in, there were so many zombies at the base of the loading docks that it would only have been moments before they were climbing over each other and into the bays.

  “There were twenty-eight people hiding inside. They welcomed us—most did, anyway. They were relieved to see that some other people had survived, I think because that gave them hope that their
own loved ones might still be okay.

  “And of course there were the ones who resented us, who saw us as a drain on the limited supplies they’d secured for themselves. You know, the usual. The ones who didn’t take kindly to us joining them, we tried to make peace with. We were desperate. I was desperate, and I would’ve fought to stay there, but it didn’t come to that, at least not at first.

  “We stayed there for a long time. Two or three months. No one knew what to do besides stay put. Whenever any of us ventured out, the zombies would come to force us back inside. Help never came, but people would show up at the warehouse sometimes. It got to a point when there were fifty-four of us and nerves were beginning to run thin because we were all stuck there and our supplies were running out.

  “There was no plan for the future. We didn’t know what we’d do when the food ran out, where we’d go. We tried to put a rationing system in place, but the people who’d been the first to secure the warehouse weren’t having it.

  “Even though they’d been welcoming of others up to a point, they felt that the supplies were theirs to share as they chose, and not to be rationed or divvied up by others. After some fighting we managed to settle on a system. Not that it would matter for long. It all hit the fan a few days later when we got up one morning and fifteen people were missing, having made off with most of the food and water.”

  “Right,” Senna said. She’d heard plenty of stories like this one before.

  “It only got worse,” Alan said. “We were hungry, but we were trapped. There were times when we drew straws and sent people out looking for supplies. Sometimes they came back with a bit of food, other times with nothing, and other times not at all. After we lost about half a dozen people to these excursions, the people who were left in the warehouse refused to go.