“Don’t be deceived. We’ve had our share of tragedy,” Molly said solemnly.
“I’m sorry,” Hayden said.
“We all are; and sorry for your losses as well,” Isobel said. “We’d like to invite you to stay if it would suit you.”
“I’d love that. Thank you all. You saved my life.”
“Where will she stay?” Molly asked.
Isobel smiled at Molly, volunteering her recently vacated second bedroom.
“I’ll show you to our apartment then. Come on,” Molly said to Hayden.
Appearances
Vaughn was waiting upstairs. He had cleaned up his apartment, washed up, and had just one beer to relax. He sat on his couch and looked at a tabloid magazine he had picked up. The group had taken the girl in as he knew they would, now all he had to do was give her everything she wanted so he could get the one thing he needed.
“Play it cool,” He told himself.
First Impressions
Hayden was settled in to her new place on Molly’s couch but very eager to meet Tom, who had been kind enough to leave her peacefully sleeping and to offer her this refuge. She couldn’t find a moment of rest from all the residents. She went from loneliness and desperation to an overload of attention. She finally had to ask for some time alone.
“I was thinking about taking a walk upstairs to check out the rationing system,” she lied. It had now been three hours since she’d climbed the fire ladder. She was clean, dry and well fed. It was time to meet Tom.
“Can I go with her dad?” Gabe asked Rob pleadingly.
“I’d rather go alone. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”
“Are there any boy kids out there?” Gabe asked her as she walked away from him.
“I didn’t see any. I’m sorry. I can play a game with you sometime if you want,” she offered.
“It’s not the same,” he said unhappily.
Hayden felt nervous. Her heart was beating as she envisioned a handsome twenty-something greeting her at his doorway. She reached the top of the stairwell and stopped. The hallway here looked exactly the same as the one below. Six doors to six different apartments spread at perfect interval down the hall.
“Which one?” She asked herself aloud.
“Hey, I’m down here,” a strong voice said from the end of the hall. “You made it.”
“Tom?”
“Yeah. But I prefer Vaughn.”
A Minor Issue
Molly awoke to the sound of things falling off the bathroom counter. The apartment was dark which was frightening to her but she knew it could only be one person.
“Hayden?” Molly asked as she pulled her blanket tightly around her and walked slowly across her bedroom.
“Wha? I wasss jus brussing mah teef,” she slurred loudly and fell onto the floor of the bathroom with a thud. Molly shone a flashlight down on the girl. Hayden had toothpaste all over her face and she had her bra in her hand. The entire bathroom smelled of whiskey.
“Where did you get alcohol?” Molly asked, sounding more motherly than she intended. She knew there wasn’t any in her apartment.
“T- um . . . Vaughn. We hat a parrrrrtty an we drank and ffffucked. It wasss niccce,” Hayden tried to stand up again but was unsuccessful.
“Oh no,” she said; the only clear words out of her mouth. She puked on Molly’s feet and the area rug near the sink.
“Fuck,” Molly said as she reached in the dark for a towel. “Did you say you guys had sex?”
“Hmmm?” Hayden asked before she passed out on the floor.
Molly had no choice but to clean the girl up. She cursed to herself the entire time especially as she carried, half-dragged, Hayden to the bed in the second bedroom.
The Morning After
Molly woke up early and went to see Isobel before even eating. She didn’t think Isobel would be awake yet but she planned on waking her if that was the case. She knocked twice on the door of 205 and Ben answered, looking confused.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“I need to talk to Isobel about something. Let me in.” Molly pushed the door open, walked passed a still groggy Ben, and went all the way down the apartment’s interior hall to Isobel’s bedroom door.
“Isobel, wake up! We have to talk!” Molly yelled through the thin wood of the door.
The door opened and Isobel stood in a matching pajama and bathrobe set. She didn’t look happy to see Molly.
“Can this wait until after I eat?” Isobel asked through a yawn.
“No. I haven’t eaten either. That girl we let in is trouble.”
“What? Already? You told me she was free of wounds. She seemed nice and appreciative of our help. What could possibly be the problem?” Isobel looked annoyed, like maybe she thought Molly was overreacting.
“She left my apartment last night at some point, I don’t know when. That doesn’t matter. When she came back she was drunk and holding her bra. She said some incoherent stuff about Vaughn.”
“You think he gave her alcohol?” Isobel took Molly more seriously the second she heard the name Vaughn.
“He gave her a lot more than that. She said they had sex.”
Isobel was making Molly walk toward the kitchen as they talked. She dragged her slippers along the carpet which made Molly feel that under Isobel’s leadership, she was a lazy person.
“She’s a minor. That’s illegal,” Isobel said as she poured a bottle of water into a pot to heat water for coffee.
“That’s my point!”
“How did they meet? He never comes downstairs,” Isobel wanted as much information as she could gather.
“I’m not sure how she came to meet him.”
“Was she upset when she told you?”
“Nope. Happy as a clam. Drunk as a skunk.”
“Is she awake yet?” Isobel asked.
“No, no. I think she’ll be sleeping a bit late today. She really was a mess last night,” Molly said, thinking back to the vomit on her feet.
“Well, what do you think we should do?” Isobel asked with a hint of exasperation as though the conversation was going nowhere.
“If her parents were alive they wouldn’t allow it,” Molly said assuredly.
“But they aren’t alive and one could hardly expect a girl of her age to listen to a group of strangers,” Isobel pointed out.
“I’ll talk to her myself then,” Molly huffed. She had wanted Isobel’s strong support but she seemed uninterested in taking up the battle.
“It’s up to Hayden to decide how she fits in our family,” Ben said from the living room.
“He could have drugged her and raped her!” Molly yelled. She was still reeling from her encounter with Vaughn in the third floor hallway. She knew what he was capable of. She knew the man would do whatever it took to get what he wanted.
Careful Confrontation
Back in her apartment, Molly fixed herself breakfast. She grudgingly saved some for Hayden, whom she’d lost a bit of respect for. She busied herself with an old magazine while she waited for Hayden to rise from the dead.
Hayden awoke and went straight to the bathroom. To Molly it sounded as though she brushed her teeth at least three times. When Hayden came into the living room she was holding her head and walking slowly.
“Uuugh. Is this what a hangover feels like?” Hayden asked as she fell onto the couch.
“Never been drunk before?”
“I have but I’ve never had a hangover. Tom gave me something strong.” Hayden leaned forward and laid her head in her lap, relishing the coolness of her legs.
“Probably some kind of whiskey. It’s his best friend.”
“Oh, do you know him well?” Hayden asked; interested in learning more about the man she’d given all of herself to.
“No!” Molly scoffed. “I was making a joke about his familiarity with alcohol. Why did you go up there after I warned you about him?”
“Why not? He se
ems like an ok guy to me.”
“You don’t know him. He’s a creep.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know him well,” Hayden countered with a snide smile.
“I know him enough to know that he’ll fuck anything with a girl’s name if he gets the opportunity.”
“He saved my life. I owe him something in return.”
“What the fuck do you mean by that?” Molly was confused and pissed that there was something more going on that she was unaware of.
Hayden started to pick up some of her things. She looked for her makeup bag, which she had managed to grab and keep with her the entire time she’d been outside.
“I mean if it wasn’t for his kindness in telling me about this place I would still be hiding in a cold room without food or weapons, wondering if each day I woke up was going to be the day that I’d die.”
“He brought you here?” Molly was baffled. “Where’d you meet him?”
Instead of answering, Hayden opened the small, zippered pouch that held her cosmetics. From it she pulled the scribbled note from Vaughn and handed it to Molly. She read the short note twice, attempting to find some hidden message between the lines.
“He is up to something. The Vaughn I know would have assaulted you in that room and left you to cry yourself to sleep. The bastard brought you here so he could use you. Don’t you see that?”
“Maybe I choose not to see it,” Hayden shrugged.
“You’ve been here one day and he’s already in your pants. That is hard to ignore.”
“I’m not stupid if that’s what you think and I don’t like him. He says he’ll get me anything I want from the outside. We have an agreement.”
“What out there could possibly be worth a minute with that man?” Molly was still having trouble comprehending what she was hearing from the scrawny teenager.
“Soda, makeup, chocolate, magazines. Other things that you guys don’t have and probably wouldn’t get if I asked for them.”
“Those things aren’t necessities, Hayden. If you haven’t noticed we are trying to survive here! That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the fancy stuff.”
“I’m sixteen. My needs are different than yours.”
“Just don’t come to me when you find out that all that matters to Vaughn are needs of his own.”
Fresh Air
Isobel went upstairs to see Vaughn the next day. She wasn’t going to bring up the topic of Hayden, as she knew that Molly wanted her to. She was there to ask Vaughn a favor. The building was starting to feel claustrophobic. As each day came to a close it felt as though the walls too were closing in tighter and tighter. Vaughn answered his door after one knock. Maybe he thinks I’m Hayden, Isobel thought. Horny bastard.
“Hey, Iz!” Vaughn smiled. Isobel was the one woman in the complex, other than Moira, that Vaughn never thought about screwing. Because of that, it was much easier for him to talk to her normally, without distraction. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to dominate her. She seemed to him to be one of the guys; a dominator herself.
“Hi. Are you going out today?” she asked as she walked into his apartment. It smelled like a perfume Hayden had brought in with her.
“Yes I am but not until a bit later in the day. Wanna come?” He wouldn’t mind her company out there. She wasn’t going to whine like Molly and it didn’t hurt to look at her, like Ben.
“I do. I need to get away for a bit. I need to feel alive.”
Loneliness
The day was crisp and clear. A perfect fall day and its afternoon promised more of that perfection. Isobel hadn’t given Ben much time alone. He was happy for that. He was able to keep his head from thoughts of Anna. With Isobel making plans with Vaughn he looked for distraction elsewhere. He picked up his acoustic guitar; something that had been spared any blood or brains in his apartment. Today was the first day he strummed its strings and the gentle hum of them overwhelmed him with emotion. He wasn’t good at playing anything. He knew a handful of notes, mostly the more sorrowful sounding ones, all of the minors. He closed his eyes and built an image of Anna on the back of his eyelids. He tried to remember her smiling. She could always hear a wrongly played note but she always encouraged him to try again. His goal had been to learn at least one song and play it all the way through for her. “Something I can dance to,” was her request.
He imagined that moment; saw her legs moving to a gentle melody produced by his fingers and hard work. He smiled until a wound appeared on her leg that he couldn’t imagine away.
Ben stood up and smashed the guitar down on the coffee table. The wood body cracked and splintered. He brought it down again. The neck split. He wanted to see her and hold her again. He felt that he had two choices.
1. Remove the tape of his apartment and bathroom doors. See Anna. Remind him that she was unreachable, untouchable.
2. Pick up his handgun, pull the trigger and hold her again.
He picked up the gun but it didn’t feel right to him so he set it back down and walked out of the apartment door. He would mourn her properly, at her side.
“I liked the strumming but that bit at the end, with all the banging, you need to work on that part,” Edward laughed. He had entered the hallway at the same time as Ben. He could see the pain on Ben’s face. He put a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Something’s bothering you. Do you want to talk?”
Ben nodded his head and broke down again.
“Come in and sit with me for awhile,” Edward gestured into 206.
Living On
“You know she hated me when we first met? It took me three weeks to convince her I was worth talking to,” Edward told Ben between drags from his pipe. Moira was sitting in the living room with them but politely minding a crossword puzzle.
“I can’t believe that,” Ben looked at Moira and caught the tail end of a smile. “You guys are perfect for each other. Anna and I talked about this all the time, you know, growing old together.”
“I know you are missing her,” Edward pointed at Ben with the end of his pipe. “You carry it around with you and every day without her, it grows heavier on your soul.”
“What would you do if something happened to Moira?” Ben asked. “Sorry Moira.” He quickly followed.
“That is an important question,” Moira looked up at them. “One I would love to know the answer to. Edward?”
“It would pain me, of course. She is a part of me. But we all have to keep living on as long as we can. Fight for our own survival. That is what the ones we love who have passed on would want, right? You’d want me to keep living, Moira, wouldn’t you?”
“I would. Besides, I think you’d sooner live without me than you would that pipe of yours. Best to stay alive until you at least run out of tobacco,” Moira laughed.
“Bahhh. Can’t get a serious answer out of her, ever!”
Ben stayed for hours, delighting in the company of the Cabels. They were right. The best he could do to mourn Anna’s loss was to live.
Forms of Decay
Gabe couldn’t stop looking out the window. His toys lay abandoned on the living room carpet, his half-consumed lunch sat on the table. The dead were getting grosser and he was fascinated.
“What is that?” Gabe asked his dad.
“What are you looking at now?” Rob said as he pulled himself up off of their overused couch. He joined his son at the window. The glass was grimy and covered in small handprints. “You’re going to start cleaning the window, dude.”
“Look at that guy! He is super icky! All his skin is gone,” Gabe pointed at a bloody corpse that kept walking into things, trees and such. He’d rubbed his own skin off.
Rob’s heart sank at the interest in his son’s voice. Gabe had always liked worms and dirt. He was a boy after all. But now it sounded like Gabe was developing morbid fascinations. “Do you want to do something else, sport? Maybe we could go on the roof and toss the football or something?”
“Yeah! Let’s go to the roof. I can see
more from there!” His son jumped away from the window to grab a jacket.
Left Out
“Don’t you have a date with Vaughn or something?” Molly asked Hayden. The teen had been getting in her hair all morning; hanging around the shared apartment and singing loudly to pass time.
“He’s going out and he doesn’t want me to come,” Hayden said with as much pout in her voice as a five year old whining over an unshared toy. “He’s taking Isobel. I don’t know why he’d want to hang out with her. The way she acts, she’s practically a dude.”
“That is probably why. There is a point when men get sick of women, you know.”
“Vaughn will never get sick of this,” Hayden ran her hands down her body.
“Gross. Don’t talk like that in front of me. What you do with him, I don’t want to hear about.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Hayden saluted Molly. “But don’t you ever want to be adored?”
“He’s too busy with his son,” Molly regretted divulging her continued interest in Rob to Hayden as soon as it had come out of her mouth.
“Ooooh, you like that Rob guy? I guess he’s ok. He looks like my dad. Do you want me to say something to him? I could.”
“No, don’t say a damn thing!” Molly’s cheeks flushed red from embarrassment and anger. “He’s made his decision.”
“You have to look like you want a man. You look like you want a cave to curl up and die in.”
“I’m not going to advertise. I’m not a flirt like you.”
“You really do have issues, Molly.”
“And you don’t? I’m trying really hard not to judge you for your choice in men.”
“What did he do to you?” Hayden asked bluntly.
When the Dead Page 13