When the Dead

by Michelle Kilmer

  The door closed and Isobel wanted to cry. “Have they looked outside lately? Their car is parked across the street. That’s impossible.”

  “That is their mistake to make, I guess,” Ben said as they returned to the stairwell to check the second floor.

  2nd Floor

  Ben and Isobel knew that Angela Turner of 204 was dead. While eating breakfast that morning they watched her corpse walk by the building. She must have been bitten while jogging on one of the first days because she was wearing spandex and tennis shoes; splatters of her own blood covering the workout gear.

  206 was empty and smelled of fresh paint. Rob Pace was supposedly living in 203 with his son but no one answered when Ben knocked. Isobel waited a moment and then knocked herself. This time the door opened.

  “I’m glad to see you are alive,” Rob commented with relief in his voice. “I saw Ben here walk by the other day covered in blood with a gun in his hand, he went to your place so I was sure you were a goner. I can see now that I misinterpreted the scene.”

  “His girlfriend was infected and he had to . . . help her. He came to my place because he was in shock and didn’t know what to do. We’re friends.” Isobel informed him.

  “If you are friends then you can come in and meet my son.” He opened the door all the way and allowed them to enter. The apartment was messy, Isobel noticed, guys really don’t do well without women, do they, she mused. Once she was further inside she noted that the place was quite tidy but a scattering of the child’s toys was making it look less so.

  Just like Molly, they had music turned up to drown out the noise from outside. Rob talked to Ben while Isobel and Gabe played with toys.

  “I’m concerned about the first floor. With all the windows and sliders in the apartments they are bound to get in,” Rob worried, “it’s only a matter of time. If we can find someone to volunteer to watch Gabe, I’d be happy to help you guys reinforce everything.”

  “Have you met Molly from the third floor before? She’s really easy to get along with. We could ask her to hang out with Gabe,” Ben suggested.

  “She’s great!” Isobel added in.

  “I have met her actually; we’ve gone out for drinks once before. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind at all. Gabe has met her too which will help him feel at ease without me around for a few hours.”

  Isobel went upstairs to ask Molly if her earlier offer to help still stood. Her heart leapt. She was happy to spend more time with the Pace family. She stopped cleaning her dishes and followed Isobel downstairs to assume her role as “the babysitter”. To which Gabe responded that he “wasn’t a baby”.

  Molly agreed. “You’ve got it all wrong guys! I’m not a babysitter . . . I don’t play with babies.” She sat down immediately; legs crossed Indian-style and started to build Legos with Gabe, who was smiling ear-to-ear at Molly, a pretty girl he remembered as liking his dad, who was nice, and who knew how to build with the multi-colored bricks.

  Now a group of three, Ben, Isobel and Rob checked the last apartment on the second floor.

  (Un)Charismatically Cold Blooded

  Jeff had found no joy in killing Sheila and the dog, not in the acts themselves. His satisfaction and content came from the silence that fell across the apartment when the deed was done. He’d been able to enjoy one wonderfully lonely day before the silence was broken once again.

  Ben was regretting rapping his knuckles on the Browns door. He knew they had problems and he had heard fighting from their apartment yesterday, while he had been making coffee for his injured Anna across the hall.

  “I hope the dog is tied up,” Ben said. “I hate that thing.” Last year he had the chance to meet the dog and its owners when they moved here from New York.

  “I hate it too. It attacked me the other day,” Isobel said.

  “It attacked me downstairs about a year ago when I was checking the mail. That dog is psychotic.”

  “I don’t hear any barking,” Rob observed.

  “Strange. It never stops barking, I swear to God.”

  Ben knocked again and Jeff, Sheila’s husband, slowly opened the door.

  “Oh, hi guys. I hope I haven’t been making too much noise. Come in!” He said happily; his eyes a subtle mix of fear and exhilaration.

  Ben had never seen Jeff like that, all chipper and smiley. The contents of the kitchen cupboards had been thoroughly emptied onto the countertops and it looked, just as it had sounded, as though Jeff was alone.

  “What happened in here Jeff?” Rob asked as he picked up a dented can of string beans.

  “Sheila was looking for some dog food. She did this. I was sick and she wasn’t handling this well, and she just lost it. But I took care of it and things are fine now.” Jeff strummed his fingers on the countertop impatiently.

  “Did she leave?” Ben asked as he turned to look down the hallway.

  “Kind of. She is . . .I . . . they are dead. I . . . strangled them. I couldn’t handle the bitching or the barking anymore. But don’t worry, I’m not dangerous. I won’t hurt anyone else. I’ve been putting up with her shit for years. You all know that, don’t you?” The words spilled from his mouth. He held his hands up in surrender.

  “The dog too then, Jeff? What have you done?” Isobel was trying very hard to figure that out.

  “I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. This plague outside has got my thinking messed up but I’m ok now.” Now that the truth was out the look in his eyes changed from fear and exhilaration to desperation.

  Isobel had a bit of a moral dilemma. She’d taken Ben in even though he’d shot his girlfriend, but she was a zombie! Jeff? He was a killer plain and simple, and one without a pang of regret. Isobel and the others couldn’t stand Sheila either but they didn’t want her dead. I’ve seen people eating people, touched a dead body, seen brains blown out, and heard a murder confession in under five days time, Isobel thought, the world truly has been turned inside out. Because of this shift, everyone had to change their way of thinking. Jeff did what he felt he had to do to survive this nightmare. What could they do but believe that? What would they have done if the situation was their own? With living people becoming a scarcity, they had to try to find the good in those left, in one another. Hope their hardest that there was a speck of it to find and cling to.

  There was no more work to be done in 201 except help Jeff clean up the mess by repacking his cupboards. As the group put his life back in order, they concocted a story about Sheila’s whereabouts that sounded plausible. If the truth came out the other residents might not be as understanding as Ben, Rob and Isobel had been. Still the three of them felt wrong inside for the cover-up.

  Before going down one more flight of stairs to the first floor, they armed themselves the best they could. Ben and Isobel had their handguns. Rob had a machete from Ben, who’d used it while hiking during the summertime. And it was decided that Jeff would not be given anything sharp or loaded. He was trusted with a baseball bat from Rob‘s apartment, a purchase Rob had made for Gabe but he‘d yet to use it. Isobel grabbed a few pairs of rubber gloves from Angela Turner’s apartment and an old blue tarp that Ben had used for camping. She put Jeff in the lead so they could keep their eyes on him.

  1st Floor

  The second floor residents moved slowly down the stairs, listening as hard as they could for any of the undead. Once at the bottom, they went silently to work. Rob and Jeff kept a look out near the front door as Ben and Isobel picked up the body of the office manager. Ben let Isobel lift the feet end of Susanne’s body since he’d made a mess of the head end earlier. Isobel kept her eyes closed as they placed it in the center of the unfolded tarp that they had laid on the hallway floor.

  They left the tarp in front of the main office door, to wait for more bodies, as they started the frightening task of going door-to-door on the first floor. The windows of Willow Brook were old and, with enough pressure, easy to break through. Isobel had no idea what they might find.

  U
ncertainty

  The Cabels were hunkered down. They hadn’t left their apartment in days. Edward had taken some of Moira’s heavier hand-stitched quilts and nailed them over the windows and sliding glass door to keep the light and the life from drawing the dead towards the apartment. Moira was the friendlier of the two and had always tried to be polite with others in the building. Edward was 86 this year and she, 84. They were the oldest people living at Willow Brook and the younger generations needed some guidance, she thought. But since the dead were walking around she had felt it best to withdraw; keeping the door locked and only the company of her husband. It pained her though and she often looked through the peephole for signs of life.

  For the first time, she saw movement. “Something’s going on in the hallway. A few of the residents are out there. Edward, come over here!” She snapped at her husband whose nose was in a book.

  “Alright, alright. Let me finish the chapter.” He grumbled without looking up.

  “Come right now! They have guns!”

  Edward jumped up as quickly as his 86-year-old body allowed. He had never been a gun enthusiast but, the times had changed and a loaded weapon was something he had been dreaming about.

  “Don’t open the door yet Moira. Let’s see what happens.” Edward moved to the peephole but was disappointed. “You can’t see anything! There’s no one there.”

  “They were there a second ago. They looked like they were planning something.”

  Edward remembered the gun. “You are sure they were people from the building?”

  “Absolutely. That girl from the second floor and the man with the little boy were there.”

  “They brought the boy down?” Edward was astonished. Who in their right mind would bring a child anywhere that you had to take a gun to visit?

  “No, I was just telling you who the man was.”

  “Oh. And they were alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m opening the door a crack. Just to see what’s going on.” Edward grabbed the doorknob and Moira’s hand followed to stop him.

  “Be quiet and don’t let them know we are here.”

  “I know! Now, let go.”

  Moira moved her hand from his to her side, where she started to nervously twist the pale lavender fabric of her cardigan. Edward opened the door and peered down the hall just long enough to see two men near the front door and the girl and the father that Moira had seen. He closed the door.

  “They are going into that Asian boy’s place.”

  Gate to Hell

  The sliding glass door was halfway open but the glass was still intact. Why would anyone open that door? Rob was hoping they‘d find Ryan so he could ask him that very question. The apartment was torn apart and two bodies lay on the living room floor. They were unmoving and both had the handles of kitchen knives protruding from their heads, one from the chin, and the other from an eye socket, both blades completely sunken in.

  “Oh my god. Who are these people?” Isobel gasped. The wounds were more disgusting than bullets and bite marks. “Neither one of them is Ryan.”

  “Look at the bite wounds. These people were infected.” Rob had knelt down and was wiggling the handle of one of the knives.

  Isobel hit him on the shoulder. “Stop that! It’s gross! Get up and help me.”

  He hopped over the bodies to close and lock the sliding glass door. His shoes pushed up blood from the carpet. The hanging blinds had been torn off their track in the chaos of the event so the dead outside could see Isobel and Rob.

  They checked the remaining rooms and didn’t find anything or anyone else until they reached the bedroom. Ryan stumbled out from behind the door, grabbed Isobel and went directly for her shoulder. A corpse is touching me! Her mind was screaming. And then she was screaming like the SUV driver days ago, shrill and without end. She couldn’t believe that it was happening. Ryan’s hands were ice cold, his teeth were biting air and he smelled of urine and feces. Isobel was so close to him that she could see the flecks of dried blood surrounding several wounds on his arms and face. Before he had knifed the strangers in the living room and stopped them for good, they had succeeded in passing the infection to him.

  “Don’t let him bite you!” Rob yelled as he pushed Ryan off of Isobel and raised the machete high in the air. He swung down and the machete hit Ryan’s arm with a thwack. Rob pulled up again and this time managed to lodge the blade in Ryan’s shoulder which enabled him to hold Ryan at a distance.

  “Finish him, Isobel! Shoot him!” Rob ducked his head and she barely regained composure to put a bullet just below Ryan’s left eye.

  Ryan had been a decent guy. He’d helped Isobel move in to Willow Brook three years ago. Now, thanks to her, his body lay on the floor in a dirty heap of ruined life. She burst into tears and Rob embraced her tightly.

  “It’s ok, it’s alright. You had to do it.”

  “I know. I just wish I didn’t have to.”

  Snack Time

  “Did you hear that?” Gabe yelled, looking at the floor. He and Molly had built a castle and were about to attack it with an army when a scream erupted and a gunshot popped somewhere below them.

  “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry, ok?” Molly smiled at him. “Hey, maybe we should take a break and eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Gabe said.

  “Oh, well, do you have anything you can share with me?” Molly asked happily.

  “Do you like crackers?” Gabe jumped up and ran to the kitchen. “I can give you three.”

  Molly laughed. “Only three? I’m hungrier than that! Bring me the box.”

  Gabe complied and carried the entire box to the living room.

  Spooked

  Isobel’s screaming and the gunshot had gotten the attention of Ben and Jeff, who’d come running in to help. Several of the undead outside the complex had noticed too. The corpses turned towards the noise and it became evident, with thirty of them approaching, that the group would have to reinforce the sliding glass door. They moved the entertainment center and the couch and managed to block the visual connection but the damage had already been done. The flesh eaters knew there was life in the building. Rob, Isobel, Ben, and Jeff stood there for a moment behind their miniature blockade, quiet and stunned.

  “We need to move quickly now. If they get in we’ll have to shoot them and that will only draw more,” Rob broke the silence and they knew that he was right. Keep on task or die. So Isobel distributed the gloves with shaking hands and they moved the three bodies to the tarp. They had only checked one apartment and already the blue plastic was looking full. Isobel turned back to apartment 101 and locked the door forever.

  When she turned to face the others she saw faces peeking out of apartments 102 and 104; drawn out by the sound of gunshots and screaming.

  “Markus? Edward and Moira?” she had remembered their names from the tenant list. She approached Edward and Moira’s door as Markus came quickly out after hearing his name. “We live here. It’s ok. Are you alright in there?” Isobel tried to sound as friendly as possible, though her heart rate was still elevated and her breathing ragged from the altercation with Ryan Hong. She also still had the gun in her shaking hands. She handed it off to Rob.

  The Cabels came out slowly, their eyes darting back and forth from the tarp of bodies to the weapons still in others’ hands. Long life can give one insight and, therefore, make the aged more cautious; a good quality for survival. After a second and third scan of the group, the elderly couple determined them to be friends and invited everyone into their darkened apartment for a moment of peace.

  “So they got Ryan, huh? That’s a shame.” Markus was excited with all the people around him but saddened at the loss of his neighbor across the hall; he’d had a bit of a crush on him.

  Rob nodded his head solemnly. “But you’ll be happy to know that he didn’t go without a fight. He took two of them out before he died.” An image of the feet of the dead on the tarp, one set bare and cut
open, the other in scuffed men’s dress shoes, gum stuck to the bottom of one, crossed Rob’s mind and he shuttered.

  “Good for him!” Markus smiled and threw a fist in the air. “By the way I’m Markus, nice to meet you.” He extended his hand.

  Ben politely shook his hand. “We know who everyone is,” Ben waved the tenant list, “but I guess we should hang on to our civility and introduce ourselves anyway.”

  As the group exchanged pleasantries Isobel was admiring the handiwork of the old couple. Even though the sun was shining brightly outside, the apartment’s only source of light came from lamps and candles due to blankets blocking and covering the windows and door. The result was effective. There wasn’t one bang or bump against the glass on their side of the building. They were invisible to the dead.

  “Do you know about anyone else on the first floor?” Jeff, who had been very quiet until now, asked. “Any information would be helpful.”

  “Well . . . the Allen family across the hall in 103 went out of town two days before everything started. They asked us to watch the cat. But the cat didn’t come back after the first day; probably got spooked.”

  “What about the two apartments at the end of the hall?” Ben asked.

  Moira looked worried. Edward explained. “We heard a gunshot from Juan’s place on the second day. I don’t know what that means for him but, he never came and asked for any help after that.”

  “And the girl in the wheelchair, well, we hardly ever see her anyway so I assumed she was fine on her own. She has a lot of pride over her being so independent too. I didn’t want to bother her,” Moira added.

  “Let’s check the Allen’s apartment for supplies then, get it barricaded, and see what’s up with Juan and Katie,” Isobel said.