He returned to the dining area and his heart sank at what he found. Gabe had left his chair and sunken under the table. But he wasn’t crying or cowering, he was playing with action figures, making gunshot sounds.
“What are you playing champ?” Rob was curious how the gunshots had inspired his child.
“Zombies and Indians! They use-ta be cowboys but something happened. Then the Indians stole the guns and now they are winning.” The boy stopped playing and came out from under the table. He looked up at his dad and the worried look on his face. “We are gonna win if they get in, right? We just need one of the other Indian’s guns.”
“I don’t know if we can trust the other Indians yet. The one with the gun that we heard already has war paint on. Let’s finish eating.”
The two ate the rest of their now slightly-cooled meal. Rob reflected on his child’s coping mechanism. He wasn’t sure if it was healthy or not and he had no one to ask for advice. What would his wife had said? Would she ban the word ‘zombie’ or encourage Gabe to play to his heart’s content and discourage Rob from micromanaging their child? Rob decided he would just have to let Gabe do his own thing.
Anna
She could hear running coming closer to her door and then, on the other side of it, her neighbor Ben yelling her name.
Isobel opened the door before thinking and she looked upon a blood-covered and wide-eyed Ben. He’d shot someone and he still held the gun, dangling in his right hand. He pushed past Isobel, which was a bit relieving to her, and went straight to her bathroom.
Had dangerous people gotten in the building? She didn’t have answers yet so she closed and locked the door and went to the bathroom after him. Ben was avoiding looking in the mirror as he frantically washed the blood from his arms and face. Isobel stood in the doorway scrutinizing every inch of his skin that was visible looking for bites. Clean.
“Anna kept coming at me. I couldn’t kill her.” He mumbled with his head in his hands as he sat on the couch in Isobel’s living room. Isobel sat across from Ben in an armchair with the borrowed handgun set close to her on the coffee table, between her and him. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Ben because he had a bit of crazy in his eyes and his dead girlfriend’s blood on his shirt. She kept her eyes directed somewhere between the floor and the gun.
“What happened to her Ben? It was a bite, wasn’t it?” Isobel had to know. Ben took a deep breath and on the exhalation started to explain what happened to his girlfriend.
“I put her in th- . . . I put Anna in the bath because she said she was cold. She was crying the whole time. She was so frightened after being attacked that she hadn’t stopped crying since it happened. She was in a lot of pain so I thought a soak might help her relax. When she was naked in the water the blood washed away I saw her leg. There was a big chunk missing from her calf.
“I had heard on the news that bites made people die but it didn’t look like a bite, not from a person, there was too much skin and muscle missing. An animal would more likely have taken that much tissue.
“I should have taken her to the hospital but they kept saying to stay inside and she was uncomfortable when she moved. Then her body started going numb. I couldn’t reach anyone to send an ambulance anyway! I left her in the tub and went to the kitchen. I . . . I made coffee.
“When I went in to check on her she had already died and come back. She must have gotten out of the tub first, because it was drained, and then died on the bathroom floor. But like I said, she was back up again and she started coming at me. Her breasts and hair were hanging down and dripping water everywhere. She looked really pissed off and she grabbed me and tried to go for my arm.
“I knew it was the infection when she started to try to bite me. I love her but I didn’t want to catch it. I had to protect myself. My gun was on the side table by the door so I picked it up, closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. She released her grip but quickly got hold of me again. When I opened my eyes I saw that I had hit near her heart but it didn’t make a difference to her! I just kept shooting and she kept coming.
“I shot until she fell. It was when I shot her in the head that sh . . .” He stopped there and started crying again.
Ben and Isobel went to take care of Anna’s body. They put her in the bathtub and covered her bullet-riddled nakedness with large black garbage bags taped to the edges of the tub. Isobel felt like a criminal with a weak stomach or without conviction, as she kept stopping to puke in the toilet while they were disposing of Anna. They closed and sealed the bathroom door and apartment door with tape as well. Ben had made a mess of the place in his bout with Anna. It had become uninhabitable.
Ben moved in with Isobel. He crashed on the couch. As he was recounting his story earlier, Isobel kept waiting for the cops to show up. Someone must have called 911. There was a dead body down the hall! But no one ever came and Isobel remembered that she herself had never picked up the phone to call 911 for others in peril during the last three days. The sirens stopped yesterday anyway and Ben had told her that it was pointless to call. He either got a busy tone or a pre-recorded and repetitive message that told him to keep the line clear for emergencies. This was a fucking emergency! Isobel had helped to dispose of a body! On the fourth day a single corpse didn’t qualify as an emergency anymore.
Ben had brought over a lot of food as well as some extra bedding and several bulk packages of water. Isobel had never had roommates and didn’t want them either but it was much safer and less lonely with another person around. Ben also brought more skill with a weapon and he had dealt with one of the infected. Before today, Isobel had never seen a dead body that close before or touched one.
One had definitely never touched her and she planned to keep it that way.
Fuck It List
When Tom Vaughn moved into Willow Brook he considered himself lucky to land in 306. A corner apartment with an extra window in the bedroom, no one living above him to stomp around, and a next door neighbor that was young, hot, and instantly added to his “to do” list. He’d benefited from the first two strokes of luck but not yet the third. The world was ending and Vaughn was determined to add her to his “done” list. So he drank a little bourbon for support and walked next door.
He tried the doorknob first and found it locked. ”Figures,” he mumbled. “She’s probably locked up tight herself. I’ll change that.” He grudgingly knocked, a bit louder and more threatening than he meant to due to the bourbon making his hands heavy.
Molly Mathay opened her door and stood face-to-chest with her huge next door neighbor. “Hi Tom, um, what’s up?”
“Hey . . .” Vaughn couldn’t remember her name, he wasn’t even sure that he knew it to begin with. “Can I come in?”
Molly was suspicious. Tom had never come over before and he was a creep, a military-obsessed, angry creep that today smelled like some kind of alcohol. “No, I’m kind of in the middle of something.” She closed the door a little and it made her feel better.
“I think we can both agree that things being how they are, one could get lonely and want to more actively seek comfort in others.”
Was Tom blushing? Had he changed his ways in the face of death? Molly was caught off guard by his sensitive choice of words.
“So, you wanna fuck?”
“You bastard! No! I don’t want to fuck! Not you anyway! Leave me alone!” Molly slammed the door and locked the dead bolt. She was disturbed and pissed off that she hadn’t looked through the peephole before opening the door to Tom, the dick on two legs. She could have avoided the whole situation.
On the other side of the door, Tom had already convinced himself that Molly would show up to his apartment later, begging for him to get inside of her.
On her side, she was shaking and already heading to the kitchen to deal with the emotions in a plate or two of food.
The Fifth Day
Both Isobel and Ben slept well on the fourth night. They woke up to a gentle collective moan coming from outsid
e but the walls of the building were thick enough that it was slightly muted.
“It’s like a twisted sleep noise machine,” Isobel laughed.
“I think they call this setting ‘Undeadscape’,” Ben played along, smiling.
“You’re getting that one confused with ‘Hospital Ward’ or maybe ‘Complaining’.”
“A bit darker than the usual Ocean Waves, Mountain Stream or Woodland Birds for sure.”
The smile left his face as he remembered killing Anna.
They decided over a breakfast of cold cereal and bananas that they needed small projects to keep occupied. Being stuck inside especially in dreary Seattle will wear on everyone eventually, even those who hadn’t had the unfortunate opportunity to kill a loved one yet.
The most urgent tasks were to find out if they were alone in the building and then to fortify the place to ensure their survival.
The plan for the day:
1. Gather important documents from the main office (floor plans, tenant lists, etc . . .)
2. Go door to door, starting on the third floor, and count bodies (living, dead, and undead)
3. Kill any undead
4. Collect all bodies and place in basement
5. Fortify all of the first floor windows and doors
6. Arm tenants
7. Take stock of supplies
8. Wait it out until the end
The end an unknown date and resolution, it still felt important to have it on the list.
“Something we can look forward to.” Isobel patted him on the back as she got up to make coffee.
The Main Office
Ben and Isobel set to their first project. The main office is on the first floor and Isobel hadn’t been to ground level since Tuesday, four days ago. She was scared to death. Not knowing what they would find, they both brought handguns. As if on cue, the moment they reached the bottom of the stairs they were greeted by a walking corpse. It was badly rotted and barely recognizable as one of the office staff, except for the nametag labeling it as “Susanne” the “Building Manager”.
Covering their mouths from the awful smell, they both attempted to take aim with their free hands. Ben waved Isobel off and he shot the office lady. With a loud *pop* his bullet took a chunk of the decaying head with it to a nearby wall, the one with the mailboxes. Seeing a piece of head blown off put Isobel into a temporary shock. Her legs were weak and she had to rest against the wall or she would collapse completely. She coped in difficult situations by thinking practically. They are going to have to replace those keyholes, maybe even the entire set of mailboxes. I don’t see any easy way of cleaning the brains out, she focused on the mailman’s probable confusion during repairs. Where would he leave the mail if the boxes were under maintenance? This was all of course under the assumption that the mail would be delivered again someday. But, unknown to Isobel, the mailman looked quite similar to the way the office lady looked now, somewhere beyond the walls of Willow Brook; forever wandering the streets, but no longer delivering mail.
Ben was whispering and somehow yelling at the same time for Isobel to focus on finding the keys to the office. Given a new, less bloody item to fixate on, Isobel found the office keys quickly. They were attached to a belt loop of Susanne’s khaki pants but the door, which was directly across from the stairwell, was already unlocked and ever so slightly ajar.
Ben stealthily locked the front door of the office that opened to the street and closed the blinds. The only desk in the room was heavy but they were able to move it against the door to hopefully deny any further entry. With the key to the file cabinets, courtesy of Susanne, they could find the information they needed but, there were rotted bits of flesh on some of the drawer handles, also courtesy of Susanne. Ben wiped the handles clean with an unused napkin from a fly-covered, half-eaten teriyaki takeout meal on the desk. The poor woman was interrupted by death in the middle of her lunch.
They now had floor plans, a current tenant list, and a city map in hand. Before going door-to-door, they returned to the second floor and Isobel’s apartment to scan the tenant list and label the floor plans to help guide and prepare them. They wrote the last names and number of occupants on each apartment and checked their guns.
“It isn’t going to be fun discovering how inaccurate these numbers have become,” Ben said somberly.
Meet the Neighbors
It took Ben and Isobel all day and part of the evening to secure Willow Brook. The third floor was where they started their door-to-door head count.
3rd Floor
The hallway was slightly smoky when they reached the top of the stairs. 302 was empty, as the tenant list had said. In apartment 301 they expected to find 2 people but it was also empty except for some moving boxes and packing supplies.
There was no answer when they knocked on 303’s door. Ben unlocked it with the master keys taken from Susanne and found that no one was home. He locked it back up to give Mr. Lee a chance to come back. If he didn’t show up within a day or two, they decided they would come back up and take his food and anything else useful.
304’s tenant was the cause of the smoke. The door was open and a heavy fog came from the apartment. Music played loudly and no one responded to Isobel or Ben as they called out from the door jam. They entered with guns drawn on high alert and, in the kitchen, gave Molly Mathay quite a scare.
“I thought you were one of them!” She was screaming with a dirty spatula raised in one hand, the other hand resting on her heart. Isobel and Ben lowered the guns and Isobel ran forward and hugged Molly. She was so overjoyed to see another survivor, especially another woman.
“Maybe you shouldn’t leave your door open with only a spatula to defend yourself,” Ben suggested, laughing a hearty laugh that made Isobel smile. The sight of the fully-loaded spatula truly was so funny that even Molly started laughing.
“I burned something and had to air out the smoke but I didn’t want to open the window and let the dead smell in. Maybe you shouldn’t come in without knocking,” Molly reprimanded her visitors.
“We did knock, and yell,” Isobel said as she pointed to the stereo system that was pumping out a foreign band, “but you can’t hear anything when it’s turned up to 11.”
Molly jogged over to the radio and turned it down. “Sorry about that. I don’t like hearing them outside either. So, what’s up?”
“We are checking out who is left in the building and making sure that it’s secure.”
“Glad somebody is doing something nice for others, unlike the asshole in 306. He came over yesterday and asked me if I wanted to screw him, just because the world was ending! I’ve had my door locked and closed because of him, until the burnt food anyway.”
“We were about to check in with him. Hopefully he doesn’t greet us with the same proposition,” Ben joked. Isobel thought it was nice to see him smile some more.
Molly laughed too but her face turned grim. “Be careful around him. And if you guys need me for anything,” she offered, “you know where to find me; just follow the smoke.” She walked them to her door and watched as they walked to 306.
Tom Vaughn greeted Ben and Isobel with a hunting rifle. Even before knowing he had asked Molly for sex, Isobel never liked the guy. He double-parked, complained to the office about trivial things, and left cigarette butts smoldering everywhere he went. He was an all-around dick so she wasn’t surprised to have the gun in her face. Ben felt the same as Isobel, except for the surprised part. He never expected to have a gun in his face. They tried to explain to Tom what they were doing but he didn’t care.
“I have enough supplies to keep me alive in here for months. I don’t see the point in being friendly. If they get in and you run up here and they follow you, I’ll shoot all of you, alive or undead. Have fun in your little club.” He finished his impolite declination by slamming his apartment door in their faces.
Ben looked at Isobel and she nodded in silent agreement.
“We won’t come back to him
unless we absolutely have to,” Ben declared.
Expectations
That left one more apartment on the third floor for the pair to check. The Coopers, a young, very pregnant and very determined couple, were set on getting to a hospital in case their baby decided to arrive.
“We aren’t risking a home birth without a trained midwife! We’ve been up for days discussing it. There isn’t another option. She could die here!” Austin was standing in front of Jill. A woman can always convince another woman. I can’t let them talk alone, Austin thought as he kept an eye on Isobel.
“Jill, do you agree with him?” Isobel pressed on.
“I do; he’s my husband. I’m scared to go outside but you have to sacrifice for your child. You’ll feel the same way when you have a baby.”
She kept her eyes down as she replied, staying focused on the task of getting everything she would need into two bags, a duffle bag and suitcase, with the awkward movements her large belly caused. Austin had stopped paying attention to Isobel and Ben and was attempting to make phone calls, each as unsuccessful as its predecessor.
“You won’t get through. We’re too far into this,” Ben tried once more to get through to Austin. “The hospital is one of the worst places to go, haven’t you been listening to what the news is telling us!” But Ben was as unsuccessful at convincing him to stop as Austin was at making the calls connect.
“We are adults and until today you haven’t shown any interest in us or our lives so I’m not quite sure why we would trust the life of our child to you now.”
With that said, Austin forced Ben and Isobel out of the apartment. Just before the door closed, Austin had one more thing to add.
“You’d better let us leave before you board up the front door! We won’t be held prisoner.”
When the Dead Page 3