When the Dead

by Michelle Kilmer

  Molly was surprised that the teen was smart enough to catch on to the personal element in Molly’s rants regarding Vaughn.

  “I’m not going to talk about it, especially with you. Just don’t piss him off, ok? You’ll get hurt.”

  The Mall

  Isobel used to enjoy taking walks outside, down the block, to the mall. But she hadn’t been out since the first day. On this particular outing Vaughn was going to the mall to look for a new pair of boots and anything else that might strike his fancy. Hayden had given him a list of requests too since he’d forbidden her to accompany him. He and Isobel left two hours before the sun was to go down.

  “We are going across the freeway. Less dead up there and it’ll give us a good vantage point to scope out the mall.” Vaughn explained as they climbed down the ladder of the fire escape.

  Isobel was happy to be outside but fearful of what could happen to her. There was no barricade to hide behind, no second floor safe zone to protect her from the undead. She carried a handgun in a holster and a metal bat. Vaughn had two different guns and several more weapons hidden under his clothes. Isobel, who was unfamiliar with most weapons, couldn’t tell what kind they were but, she knew they would do major damage to anything so unlucky to be in front of the firing end. Vaughn was wearing a backpack as he usually did when he went out. Isobel had a backpack too. She might find something she liked and she was planning on getting books for the others.

  It was only one block east to the freeway from Willow Brook. They crossed the street in front of the building and made their way through the parking lot of a large office complex. Zombies filled the lot, shuffling between abandoned vehicles, leaving rotting bits of body smeared on windows and doors. Some of them walked noisily which allowed Isobel and Vaughn to keep track of them. Some were amazingly stealth on their feet allowing them to get close without warning.

  Isobel was whipping her head back and forth so much she thought she’d end up with a pulled muscle. “We should tie bells to them. Shit. They are like ghosts.”

  “You need to calm down a bit lady,” Vaughn could see her fear. “Why’d you come out here in the first place? Your heart is going to jump out of that chest of yours.”

  “I told you why,” Isobel self-consciously put a hand over her breasts since Vaughn had taken his comment as an opportunity to stare at her there. She was still a woman after all. They made it to a stand of trees on the edge of the lot where they took a moment to catch their breath.

  Isobel felt almost invisible to them here and she wanted to stay for awhile. “There are so many,” she said, “I can’t believe how many. It looks like most people didn’t fare very well. Everyone is dead.”

  “Yeah but we aren’t. That’s what matters. ‘Sides, they don’t know they are dead,” Vaughn pointed out as he motioned her to start moving once again. She followed him over a chain link fence, through a grassy area and up an equally grass-covered embankment that bordered the freeway. She felt winded from the mini obstacle course but found strength to climb over the guardrail and continue on.

  “Whoa. Straight out of a horror movie.”

  Isobel had seen the freeway from Willow Brook before but seeing it up close was another experience altogether. The commuting traffic was still there from the day the plague hit Northgate but the cars weren’t moving nor were the people. Many of them had died in the backup; their cars left to idle until the fuel ran out; their bodies still in the cars or nearby, some starved to death, some eaten. Doors were open here and there; leaving Isobel to believe that some tried to make it out of the mess on foot. She looked south down the freeway and saw a few burned out cars and more of the dead. Someone had hung a hand-painted banner from an overpass. Its large red letters read “No Escape”.

  “It’s true,” Vaughn said, reading the sign for himself. “This was the last traffic jam of their lives; one they would never see let up.”

  Isobel shuddered and continued to survey the scene.

  “You are thinking too much about it. Try being more of a casual observer,” Vaughn suggested.

  “Casual?” Isobel pointed up the lanes. “There is a dead cop on the freeway near his wrecked patrol car. A gun is still in his holster. He didn’t have time to pull it out! How can I be casual about this when I know for sure now that no one is coming for us?”

  “You still thought someone might come? We have to look out for ourselves, Iz. That is how I’ve always lived anyway. Officer what’s-his-name isn’t even going to come back from the dead; they ate so much of him. So pay attention only to where your feet are taking you! Stop thinking and start doing.”

  “Yes drill sergeant,” Isobel said mockingly but, she knew he was right. She’d end up like Juan or Katie if she thought too much longer on the state of things. Vaughn had started to hop over hoods of cars making his trip across all eight or more lanes a quick one. Isobel chose to walk between the cars bumpers; trying the whole time not to think about her ankles being grabbed from under the vehicles. She avoided the vans and trucks too because she couldn’t see behind them. Vaughn was waiting on the embankment on the other side, a cigarette glowing between his lips.

  “There she is.” He swept his arm in front of him, a grand gesture for something as mundane as a mall. It was beautiful though, when Isobel made out the nearly empty lot in the evening light. “Everyone fled the city center, or tried to, the day it reached us. That’s why the freeway looks like that; too many people all at once trying to leave.”

  “This is going to be easier than I thought,” Isobel smiled. “There are only about ten cars in the entire lot.”

  “We can see them better too, if they start coming for us.” Vaughn tossed his cigarette onto a bare patch of freeway pavement and pulled a tattered brochure out of his back pocket. It was a mall map.

  “We don’t need that,” Isobel laughed, “I know exactly where the shoe store is. It’s just on the other side.”

  He tossed it to a gentle wind that had picked up and laughed too. “I should know where it is, I’ve been wandering around out here for weeks now. Guess I wasn’t paying much attention though. Lead the way.”

  Isobel took a deep breath and stepped carefully down the embankment. She liked having someone behind her to keep her safe but she had a horrible feeling that Vaughn would sacrifice her life in order to keep his own if the need arose.

  Zombified

  Rob’s favorite part of any day had become the evening, the night. When darkness fell outside he had the opportunity to watch his son return to normal since he could no longer stare at the dead outside. Gabe was happy, fed and playing with his toys again.

  “Raaaarrrgh!!! Mooooaaawwwrrgghh!” Gabe roared as he moved Lego figures around on the dining room table.

  “This sounds exciting!” Rob moved closer to watch the action his son had created. When he sat down he noticed that his son’s arms were covered in red and green marker.

  “What’s all this from?”

  “I made them zombies!” Gabe said happily as he held up two of the little plastic people. He had scribbled their faces with green and spots of red. “The red is where they are hurt. They ate everyone at the pizza shop and the pizza too ‘cause they thought it was people.”

  “We need to find you a friend, Gabe.” Rob sighed.

  You Are Here

  The Barnes and Noble loomed over them in the dark, its tall columns creating areas darker still, places for dead people to hide. Without parking lamps in the lot or lights on inside, the brick façade and rows of books were eerie. Isobel went through her list of books. Gabe wanted a dragon series and some comic books. Rob wanted some educational books for Gabe since he’d have to be homeschooled in some form. Molly wanted the three Sookie Stackhouse novels she hadn’t read yet. Ben “would appreciate an older classic”. Edward asked for something on the Civil War. Moira didn’t ask for anything but Isobel had seen some yarn and needles when the Cabels were moved to the second floor. She decided to look for a book on both crochet and knitti
ng if possible because she didn’t know what type of needles they were. The doors were unlocked so they pulled them open, taking a moment in the airlock to try to look around inside.

  “Hey Isobel, where am I gonna find that vampire shit?” Vaughn looked confused. Hayden had asked for the Twilight series to reread. Vaughn probably hadn’t finished a book in his whole life.

  “Why does she want to read about dead people walking around? She could just look outside all day,” Isobel laughed.

  “Don’t ask me. If she told me I wasn’t listening.”

  “Upstairs. Young Adult section.”

  Vaughn pushed the second set of doors open and they walked inside. Isobel moved to the left and hopped behind the checkout counter to get something between her and the darker black of the store interior. She scanned slowly with her flashlight across blank journals that would remain forever empty, calendars that counted days that didn’t matter, novelty items that weren’t worth much when things were normal and now just made her laugh to think that anyone ever cared about mini Zen gardens. Those small patches of combed sand and tiny pebble sit abandoned on countless office desks, with no one left to bring tranquility to. Some horse head bookends caught her eye. Those are heavy looking. I could kill a zombie with one, she thought as she gazed at the sturdiness of the equine bust. She snapped out of appraisal mode and verified there were no undead nearby. Moving through the discount book rows, towards the language and travel sections, she kept her handgun in front of her. Still, she could find no sign of . . . life.

  A door marked ‘Employees Only’ was propped open and a rectangle of blackness was just beyond. Isobel started to move towards the threatening void when Vaughn came from her right. He was eating what looked like a rice krispie treat from the café.

  “Gross, Vaughn.”

  “It hasn’t gone bad. It’s like pure sugar, Isobel. You should eat one too. They’re still really tasty.” He pushed the partially eaten square of cereal and marshmallow into her face. She pushed it away, a bit pissed off at him for wasting time.

  “Have you just been snacking or did you look around too?”

  “I checked the magazines, the café, computer books, crafts, and the music section. There isn’t anyone down here. Let’s check upstairs.”

  “We can’t. We’ve got to look in there still.” She pointed to the open door but didn’t have the guts to shine her flashlight in.

  “What have you been doing over here? Looking at THIS?” He chuckled loudly as he pulled a plastic-wrapped calendar from a shelf behind him. Twelve Precious Puppies of 2012 stared at her. It was a strange feeling, seeing something so innocent with a gun in her hand, looking for dead people to re-kill.

  “You really know how to lighten the mood,” she said with a half-laugh. “But more seriously, I’m not as skilled at ‘sweeping an area’ as you are, Vaughn.” A quick image came to her mind of the dead gathering outside the bookstore, following the smell of Vaughn’s cigarette and her fear, the sound of Vaughn’s booming laughter. Delaying no longer, she raised her flashlight and gun at the doorway. Ten feet down the hallway a zombie stood facing away from them. Its hair mostly gone and its ears chewed away.

  “I don’t think it can hear us,” Isobel said hopefully but quietly. The corpse started to slowly turn around, the light of the flashlight drawing it toward the doorway.

  “What do you bet it can still see with those rotting eyes?” Vaughn said. It had completed the turn towards them and finally saw Isobel and Vaughn, waiting to be eaten. It started jogging. Vaughn dropped the calendar from his sticky fingers, found his handgun and blew the head away. He walked into the hall and started checking doors but they were all locked.

  Isobel bent down to look at the body. She saw the name badge on her shirt. “She worked here. How sad. She didn’t get to go home to her family.”

  “How do you know that thing is a girl? It’s gooier than the rice krispie snack I ate.”

  Isobel shot a mean look at Vaughn.

  “Sorry. Just an observation.”

  “She has eye shadow on. Or, she did anyway before you shot her. My flashlight hit the shimmery blue of it when she turned around.”

  “Ok. Well, she is redead now so she doesn’t matter anymore. So can we move on?”

  Back in the main store Vaughn’s gunfire had alerted the small group of undead on the second floor. One had already fallen from the balcony ledge and splattered in a grotesque spread in the middle of the lobby between the escalators. The head had cracked open and the decomposing remains of the brain were soaking into the carpet. Isobel brought a hand up to cover her nose. The smell was unbearable. One arm had come off on impact and rested on the New Releases in Non-Fiction table. Another zombie had come towards the down escalator (which had become stairs in the power outages), stepped and tumbled all the way to the first floor. Body rot covered the sides and steps and the corpse, however mangled, was still moving at the bottom. The middle-aged woman was shuddering, trying to move toward Isobel inch by inch. Vaughn found an unabridged dictionary and brought it down on the corpses head.

  Dead (ded) adj.

  1. No longer living.

  2. Having no capacity to live: inanimate.

  She was dead.

  “Who’s next?” Vaughn yelled in a macho, bring-it-on type voice, as he looked upstairs. He tossed the bloody dictionary onto the stomach of the dead woman and started climbing the up escalator.

  3. Lacking feeling or sensitivity.

  Vaughn was dead.

  Isobel vomited and wondered to herself: What book was she looking for that was worth her life? Isobel still cared for others; she wasn’t dead yet.

  She followed Vaughn up the escalator, making sure not to rest her hands on anything. Near the top they turned to face the balcony opposite them. Two zombies shuffled about but had lost the direction of the gunshot, leaving them without a clear destination. Vaughn, liking a challenge, took aim at the one closest but hit it in the neck so it continued to move around. The other zombie started to walk towards the balcony railing. Vaughn shot it in the face and it fell out of view.

  They checked the Children’s section directly in front of the escalator. It was a wreck, books scattered everywhere, but no surprises, no undead children. Isobel found the dragon series Gabe wanted and put it in her bag while Vaughn kept watch. Once again they split up. Isobel went toward the games and upstairs bathrooms. She found a display of classics on the way and selected two for Ben: A Tale of Two Cities and Frankenstein.

  The men’s bathroom was empty except for someone’s final shit, left in a bowl. The woman’s bathroom was not. Isobel tried to open the door but it only moved an inch before it was pushed shut from the inside.

  “Go away!!!!” A man’s voice yelled coarsely. Isobel jumped back, frightened by the unexpected noise. He didn’t sound well, as in mentally stable. “I don’t like you. I don’t know you.”

  “I’m not one of them,” Isobel assured him, coming closer to the door again, “if that makes a difference.”

  “You can’t have this place. I found this place.”

  She could hear his footsteps on the tile floor of the bathroom, pacing back and forth.

  “I found it!” he yelled.

  “I don’t want your hiding place. You can keep it,” Isobel laughed to herself thinking what a horrible hiding place a cold, unsecured bathroom was, especially once the water stopped running; especially inside a book store with little food or warmth. He didn’t have to convince her and he didn’t try. He said nothing else for a few minutes so Isobel tried again.

  “Do you need any help?” She wasn’t going to invite the man to live with them or even tell him where they came from. He was unstable for sure. But maybe she could bring him a magazine or a rice krispie treat.

  “Do you have water?” Upon uttering the last word his throat became drier, more rasp, and completely sane.

  Isobel had a bottle, three quarters full, in her backpack. It wouldn’t do much for a man that refused
to leave a terrible shelter. Perhaps only stave off dehydration by a day. Next to it in the bag, Isobel found an unopened granola bar. She tapped on the door with a knuckle. It opened two inches or so, not wide enough to jam a shoe in, but wide enough for passing the poor meal through. A dirty hand grabbed the bottle and bar and the other hand slammed the door closed again.

  Isobel decided not to tell Vaughn about the squatter. That wouldn’t end well and if Vaughn had taken this side of the top level, it would have started much differently too. Moving down the hall Isobel stood in front of another door marked Employees Only. She hesitated a second and then checked for any give. Locked! Thank god, she exclaimed in her head. She wasn’t cut out for adventure.

  She spent some time browsing the comic section for Gabe. While scanning the titles she found a graphic novel series called The Walking Dead. She took a couple volumes, thinking they could learn something. She wondered if the authors and artists where still living. I bet the authors never thought their comic might be used as reference, she thought. She heard Vaughn finish off the zombie he’d shot in the neck on the other side of the top level.

  With the store clear they grabbed the rest of the books for the other Willow Brook residents. In the cooking section Isobel came across a book called Life in a Can. The book was full of recipes using only canned goods. A read she would have never even glanced at before, it had now reached a near-Bible importance to her. She excitedly stashed it in her backpack, looking forward to getting creative with her can opener.

  Before going back downstairs Isobel looked towards the hallway. She thought about telling the man that he could come out of the bathroom and be safe in the larger store. Maybe there was something more to eat in the café. But there wasn’t any way to help the man and keep the knowledge of his existence away from Vaughn.

  “Come on Isobel. Enough books. I want some new shoes.”