“What the hell was that noise?” Isobel asked Jeff as quietly as she could with still being audible to him.
“Vaughn has . . . turned,” Jeff whispered back.
“Can you crawl this way, slowly?” Rob asked him. As much as he despised Jeff for his poor choices, he didn’t want anyone else to die.
“Get the flashlight off of me! He’ll notice.” Jeff needed darkness to button his pants and conceal the handgun that tied him to Hayden’s murder. Ben did as Jeff said and lowered the light to his own feet. Once Jeff had the gun tucked in the back of his fastened jeans he started to move along the wall towards the others. As he did, Molly got onto her knees and crawled by him.
“Molly, get back here!” Isobel ordered. “What are you doing?”
“Hayden!” Molly whispered, her voice trembling a bit as she crawled closer to the girl. “Hayden, come on, we have to get you out of here.”
Another growl emitted from the unit and Hayden’s body was pulled in entirely. A trail of blood appeared in its place. The blood drove Molly to stand up and run forward to the light of the door. Something inside, something only she could see, made her scream. She turned to run back as Vaughn’s half-naked self came lunging out of 306. Ben aimed and pulled the trigger of his handgun. The bullet hit Vaughn in the head above his left ear. Vaughn fell forward, onto Molly, pinning her to the ground.
“Get him off! Get him off!” she shrieked over and over. Ben and Isobel pulled Vaughn off of Molly, careful to not get his blood on them. He reeked of beer and there was a baseball–sized bite wound on his left forearm. He had jeans on but his cock was hanging out of the open fly. Some of his semen had leaked onto Molly’s pajama pants. She screamed as she ripped them off, sitting in the cold in her underwear she began to cry. Jeff watched, and as he did a smile grew on his face. He had fallen into the deep end of the pool of insanity. He had killed his wife and enjoyed it. He had pulled a gun on friends and wanted more. He had masturbated to a rape in progress and wished for it to go on forever and he had shot a girl. As the group of residents flooded Vaughn’s apartment to check on Hayden, he crawled back to the end of the hall and touched the pool of Hayden’s blood on the carpet. This time he wouldn’t be admitting anything to anyone.
It All Adds Up
Hayden was lying where Vaughn had left her and Ben knelt at her side. The teen was completely naked, her panties lay nearby. A pile of the rest of her clothes lay deeper in the apartment. Porn played on the television, as usual. Inside the light of the apartment it was obvious that Hayden was dead. In her forehead was the bullet that had torn all of Willow Brook from its sleep.
He looked over the soft skin of Hayden’s body and found no bite wounds. “She wasn’t infected. What happened?” he cried at Jeff who was back in the hall, in the light of the doorway.
“I don’t know. Maybe Vaughn shot her when she was trying to leave? I think he was drunk again,” Jeff explained as if the reason was simple and clear as day. He didn’t point out the position of the entry wound, which faced him and not Vaughn. He hoped no one else would notice that bullet-sized hole in his story.
“He used her and then he killed her before she could get away from what he was about to become. Maybe if I hadn’t kicked her out . . .” Molly was barely able to breathe.
“Yep,” Jeff said.
“Fuck you, you’re no help. What’s wrong with you?” Isobel yelled at him.
“That is a good question,” Jeff responded as he got up off the floor. “As soon as I figure it out I’ll be sure to check in at a group powwow.” He walked away out of sight of the doorway and back to the second floor, stopping first to get the food he had come for. He grabbed a bottle of wine too, to celebrate getting away with murder.
“Don’t listen to Jeff, Molly. It isn’t your fault. Vaughn was unstable, drunk. Hayden was . . . pregnant,” Ben said as he placed a gentle hand on her belly.
“What?” Isobel was genuinely shocked.
“I think she may have finally told him and he lost it,” Ben said, his tears falling on her body.
“But who bit the amazing Vaughn?” Isobel asked sarcastically, “and how?”
“Can we turn that shit off?” Ben yelled when he finally realized the porn was playing. Isobel found the remote and stopped the immortal porn stars in mid-moan. Rob brought Hayden’s clothes over to her body and he and Ben redressed her. Isobel found a clean sheet to wrap her in.
“Why did you have to see him tonight? Why didn’t you come to me?” Ben asked her as he carried Hayden’s swaddled body to the balcony’s edge. He let go and it dropped into the dark of early morning with a thud on the frosty ground.
Molly rushed to the bathroom as vomit was rising in her throat. Isobel could hear her heaving into the toilet and then crying; the sound of something being dumped on the tile, and a small scream.
“Molly, what is it?” Isobel pushed the door open. Molly was crumpled on the floor in front of the toilet, a box full of prescription drugs had been emptied all around her. Two pill bottles were clutched in her hands.
“This is the heart medication that Moira ran out of! He has at least six bottles of it in here. That man is a fucking monster.”
Isobel took the bottles from her hands, set them on the countertop, pulled her from the floor and held her close. They cried for awhile together, for Moira and Edward and for Hayden, for the group’s ignorance and Vaughn’s selfishness. Molly needed the affection and she held the hug longer than Isobel expected her to. When they came out of the bathroom, Ben and Rob were struggling with Vaughn’s dead body.
“Tuck it in. I don’t want that shit touching me,” Ben yelled at Rob.
“So I have to touch it?” Rob shot back.
“Nobody has to touch his dick. Dump him over how he is!” Isobel yelled at them both.
“He doesn’t deserve special treatment,” Molly added.
Without a sheet or farewell, they threw Vaughn’s body over the railing to join Hayden and their unborn child. Ben went back into the apartment and gathered up all the porn DVDs he could find and, one by one, chucked them at Vaughn’s body as the sun slowly rose.
“You fucking ASSHOLE! You could have had a FAMILY and her, you could have had her but you don’t value ANYTHING!” Ben screamed. He closed his eyes in sorrow but continued to throw DVD cases onto the ground below. The dead were gathering from the sound of his voice. Ben opened his eyes to see them stepping on the cases, breaking the plastic and it made him smile the smallest of smiles. He dumped the rest of them onto the heads of the undead and let the empty cardboard box fall as well.
Through tears, the group went through Vaughn’s apartment and took anything they wanted: weapons, wine, toothpaste and the last issue of Rolling Stone to ever be published. Ben was close in size to Vaughn so he took all the clean shirts he could carry, which wasn’t a lot (of clean ones).
Self Worth
Before Isobel closed the door to 306, Molly paused, looking into the bloody, ransacked apartment. She thought back to when Hayden said she was using Vaughn too, that there were mutual benefits to their agreement. Vaughn left this life happy, drunk, and satisfied, if a little numb from the infection.
“Was it worth it?” Molly asked the empty room. Isobel stood behind her but didn’t say anything. She knew Molly wasn’t talking to her; that she needed this moment with her ghosts.
“What do stolen designer clothes even mean when you spend your time naked and on your back? Whore!” Molly yelled.
This shocked Isobel to hear, but she understood Molly’s anger and how it stemmed from regret. She was painting Hayden as doubly wicked in life so that she could be more easily forgotten in death.
“And he would have fucked you no matter what your perfume smelled like!”
Isobel knew this to be true. Vaughn was the dirtiest, horniest man she’d known. He could find beauty in a worn out, elderly barmaid if it meant he’d get laid.
“You can’t even read those stupid books he got you now! You can
’t sell yourself for your own happiness, Hayden.”
“Because when you do that,” Isobel interrupted, “in the end there isn’t any bit of you left.”
Separate Ways
Willow Brook was dead quiet for the rest of the day. After the difficult morning, everyone went back to their own apartments and beds. It was early evening before anyone rose from slumber but even when they did, they kept to themselves.
The Good Old Days
No one came to the group breakfast the following day at Isobel’s other than Ben and her. What group were they anymore? She and Ben had canned pears, granola bars and some re-hydrated eggs that they found in the food stash. They sat quietly, looking out the window. There were many more dead outside than Isobel had ever seen before, as though they were flooding into the area. She finished her food and went to her balcony. From there she began to pick through the crowd, searching for people she recognized from around Northgate, wondering if she might see Markus but hoping that she wouldn’t.
The first zombie she recognized was a kid that had worked at the McDonald’s counter up the block. He still had his uniform on. She imagined he smelled like a mix of fryer grease and decay. Next she saw a woman that she remembered from her QFC shopping trip on the first day. They had shared a laugh when they’d both wanted to go down the coffee aisle but beans covered the floor. It was almost impassable. The woman hadn’t purchased much food that day and by the looks of it, it hadn’t lasted. She’d been forced outside and the gamble had not paid off.
“I think that’s my bank teller,” Isobel said as she pointed to an angry looking corpse in a ratted negligee. Ben joined her on the balcony to see who she was referring to.
“Yeah, I know her too,” Ben commented but then went back inside.
“So many kids,” Isobel said to herself. She said it very quietly, afraid that Ben might hear and be reminded of the loss of Hayden and her unborn child. There were so many of them in the street today. “School let out,” she said louder.
“Huh?” Ben asked.
“Nothing, just talking to myself,” Isobel replied.
“Don’t make that a habit. Some might call that crazy.”
Isobel sat on a deck chair, away from the railing, and closed her eyes. She tried to think of life when it had been more normal. Days when she could go on a walk outside without looking over her shoulder or ride her bike without fear of being chased. She daydreamed of long hot showers, fresh food and fresh air. It filled her with regret for all the things she didn’t do. When life had been normal, she barely took walks outside. She sat at home on her computer in her stuffy apartment. Her bike knew storage more than it ever knew the streets. She’d always taken her car everywhere. She’d hated the chore of showers and so took hers quick and her food came more often from a frozen box than a field. She opened her eyes again, faced with all the time in the world but she couldn’t do any of it. She went back inside and sat next to Ben on the couch.
“Living has become the chore. If we don’t work hard at it, put it on our checklist to mark it off, we wouldn’t make it through the day. I would give anything to lay outside on some grass, undisturbed, unthreatened by walking death, with the sweet smell of nothing in my nose!” Isobel said, almost poetic in her comment.
“Me too,” was all Ben had in response, partly because he was surprised at Isobel’s show of such sensitive emotions. The other half of him was gripped by sadness over Hayden’s death. She had been an unexpected bright point in his dismal existence. Her news of the child that could be his, if he wanted it to be, was even greater still. Needing time alone and wanting to properly grieve, he left Isobel’s and went upstairs to 305.
Pages
Ben broke down as soon as the door closed behind him. He had been unable to keep both Anna and Hayden safe. On the coffee table he found the pregnancy book that Hayden had been reading and that had belonged to Jill previously. Many of its pages had been earmarked in anticipation that the knowledge would be needed. He took the book to the kitchen and tossed it into the sink. He dug through the drawers until he found a box of matches. The first three didn’t strike but the fourth match caught fire easily. Ben touched the tiny torch to a corner of the book and watched as the pages blackened and curled. The smoke was heavy and it hurt his lungs but he didn’t care. All he wanted was for the memories and the guilt to leave. The smoke became so thick that he had to sit on the linoleum and wait out the fire. He traced the lines of the flooring, remembered that Molly had said she’d slept on it, and he lay down. As his skin touched the cool surface an alarm rang out but he didn’t move. It felt so good to him to be far away from the world above that pained him.
Revenge
Molly had been thinking a lot about the day before. Vaughn’s mysterious bite wound and Hayden’s death. She could come up with multiple theories as to how Vaughn had found himself with a set of undead teeth on his arm. And Ben had given a plausible reason – the pregnancy – as to why Vaughn might be angry with Hayden. But two things nagged at Molly’s head. Why would he kill her over that and what the hell was Jeff doing in the third floor hallway?
As she crawled passed him in the dim hallway she could see the gun tucked into his pants. After seeing the wound in Hayden’s head, she knew it had been Jeff but she didn’t want anyone to know. Jeff would kill more if confronted and now that he had a weapon it would be difficult to ever deal with him again.
Molly’s confidence had grown as well though. After beating a man to death for food she felt like she could take on Jeff. The drawstring of her food bag pulled out easily; she checked it for strength and practiced looping it around a bag of flour, pulling it tight. She heard a smoke alarm going off in the building, somewhere above her head. She watched out the peephole of 204 while Isobel ran upstairs to investigate. Less than a minute later, Rob exited his apartment across the hall to follow. It was an unplanned and perfect coincidence. She only hoped that Jeff didn’t struggle and make too much noise with Gabe in the apartment next door.
Fire and Rescue
Ben looked up to the ceiling and the stormy, cloud-filled sky that he’d created there. Isobel was there now, above him. She’d found him and the fire and she was yelling at him.
“Get out of here, Ben! Get up!” she screamed. In her hand something red and round was killing the fire he’d made. He sat up and he could see that the flames had grown to touch the cabinets. She was losing and it made him happy that the fire would win the battle.
“It’s all got to go,” he said as he lay back down.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Rob yelled. He’d heard the smoke alarm and run upstairs. In the kitchen of the Cooper’s old apartment he found Isobel trying to suppress the flames. He went to the hall to turn off the blaring alarm. Back in the kitchen he attempted to drag Ben to the living room. “Isobel, he passed out. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Make sure he’s still breathing. I don’t know how much smoke he inhaled,” she answered, still battling the flames but now in control of the fire.
“What’s burning?” Rob asked as he pulled Ben a few inches closer to safety.
“The cabinets but it started with a book,” Isobel responded, coughing from the smoke.
“Which one?”
“I don’t know! I just want to know if he meant to burn the place down,” she said as she set down the extinguisher and wiped sweat from her brow.
“That would be a problem.”
“A problem I wouldn’t even began to know how to handle,” she sighed.
Options
Somewhere the building was burning, the air filling with smoke, but it felt as though the air of 201 had changed for the better. Jeff was looking to the future. With a gun, food and no way – beyond breaking down the door – for the others to enter his apartment, he finally had options. The only one he actually felt like pursuing was to find Markus. It was easy, in Willow Brook, to take sides when you were surrounded by people driven by fear. But maybe, Jeff thought, if I find him and
we’re alone I can convince Markus to take me back. And if that didn’t work, he always had the gun.
He was packing a light bag for traveling as the muted wailing of the smoke alarm stopped. He finished folding a sweater and a change of socks into the bag and was standing up to leave when he heard a knock on his door.
Molly Mathay, Actress
Molly stood outside Jeff’s apartment, the rope behind her back, a lonely look upon her face. Jeff wasn’t going to let her in but he felt the need to brag about his mission to rescue Markus and Molly could tell him how to survive outside. Hell, she’ll be happy I’m leaving, he told himself.
“Molly, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Jeff said with happiness that she knew was false.
“I’m really sorry about everything that has happened. I was feeling alone and we haven’t talked much beyond fighting more recently. If you had a second, I was thinking maybe we could spend some . . . time together,” she said with enough flirt to confuse and intrigue the man.
“Yeah, things have gotten pretty bad between us. I was planning a trip outside. Maybe you can help me with that?”
“I think I can, you know, since I’ve been out there before,” Molly nodded and smiled.
“Great, great. Come in then. Have a seat. Do you want anything to drink? I have wine.” Jeff allowed her in and took off his backpack, setting it down inside the doorframe.
“Wine would be wonderful, thank you.” Molly looked around for the gun but she didn’t see it. The bag, Molly determined. She watched his every move. With her back facing away from him to conceal the rope and her body between him and the bag she waited for the moment. He turned to the cabinets to find two wine glasses.
When the Dead Page 26