The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Micah stuck the gun down the back of her jeans. She was such an odd duck, almost happy at this turn of events. But Zaley wasn’t unhappy herself, so who was she to say anything?

  Elania shoved the money deep into her jeans pocket and said, “Hey, if we don’t come back, Zaley, will you do something for me?”

  “Yeah. Anything.”

  Her dark eyes were somber. “Get to a safe place, wherever that is, and call my family. Tell them how much I love them, and goodbye.”

  “You’re coming back,” Zaley said.

  “But if I don’t,” Elania said. A weak smile touched her lips. “Tell them I got into Pewter after all.”

  Then Elania and Micah were walking away. Zaley stood there with Corbin and Austin, none of them knowing what to do but watch until the others were gone. Wind blew drops into Zaley’s hair. A motorcycle buzzed along the road beyond the We Got Gas.

  In the distance came Micah’s faint contralto. “Zaley shot the Shepherd! But she did not shoot the de-pu-ty!”

  “I think that impresses her,” Corbin said.

  “I think she should shut the fuck up,” Austin grumbled.

  The library. Goody-Goody. Zaley had things to do, things only she could do for their makeshift family, and she was just standing here wasting daylight. Patting the dog on the head and squeezing the boys’ arms, she set off alone.

  Austin

  Dale Summit had pissed him off.

  He was a handsome guy with a beautiful head of shiny black hair and a generous mouth, but through that mouth came every idiocy imaginable. He had shown up sporadically at Welcome Mat just for the joy of picking a dumb fight. Micah scored a point into the sociopathic category on an online test, as she’d bragged, but Austin thought Dale would score even farther into that range. Rumor said he’d asked out a girl in special ed just for the fun of standing her up at last year’s prom. Austin believed it.

  While creeping behind the houses to pick one to rob, his mind fixated on that old blow-up with Dale. Austin had been talking about the media representation of black men when Dale interrupted to say that he didn’t know why anyone thought black guys got such shitty treatment. White dudes did, too. Hello, what about Time Change or Life Sux or The Murbles? The first was a sci-fi hit centered on a federal agent and her war against an evil Caucasian overlord threatening to rip apart the fabric of time. The second was a reality show with three of the most piggish white boys ever to stain a camera lens. The last was animated, and the relatively Caucasian father of the Murble family couldn’t even work a can opener.

  A can opener. They needed a can opener. Austin spied over a fence into the backyard of the last house in the row. Through a window was a kitchen. A kid yelled one yard over and he ducked.

  So Dale didn’t know why Austin had a problem. There were three examples of white male oppression, and besides, Time Change had a black male boss for the lead. The agent took the orders of that man and respected him greatly. The piggish boys of Life Sux had a black friend with far better manners, and girls were all over him. Dale never made it to his observations of The Murbles, because Austin exploded.

  He started with Time Change. That was just an inversion of the Uncle Tom days in film, where the handful of black dudes on screen were helpful servants who taught white kids to dance or protected the white leads from danger or listened to their privileged white troubles and offered a balm in fried chicken. Now in the twenty-first century, Hollywood just pushed them up to positions of power but gave them as little lip service as before. So what if Ms. Federal Agent respected her boss? Did he have a wife? Kids? Hobbies? No one knew. He was just there to issue orders. He didn’t exist outside of that role, whereas she did in a boyfriend and cat, in friends and family and a bowling league. She was a complete character where the boss was a cipher. The cat was more fleshed out than the boss. His name was Fuzzbutt, and he licked the icing off her Danishes if she wasn’t watching.

  As to Life Sux, when the piggish white dudes needed fake IDs, they called up their black friend. Of course he knew how to get those! When the piggish white dudes decided to steal a car, it was the black friend who hotwired it. So while the show didn’t supply a very impressive portrayal of white, it wasn’t doing any favors to black either. If Dale didn’t like to see three idiots getting hammered every week and vomiting into pools, he could flip the channel to a better selection. Austin didn’t have that luxury. He was a helpful boss or a polite criminal element, he was a sixty-year-old newscaster or he was invisible.

  Yeah, but you people are only a few percent of the population anyway. Then Dale segued to how there’d be more room for blacks on screen if Hollywood didn’t feel compelled to put token fags there. His wrist flapped to make his point, and he grinned like he’d won. Something was wrong in his head, much more so than the loose screw Micah had in hers. He was never allowed to attend a meeting again and called them Unwelcome Mat in the hallways. Every time Austin saw a dildo stuck to Dale’s locker, he rejoiced.

  But he wasn’t rejoicing now, lurking behind this fence to play the part of a burglar. Angry to be in this position, it brought up other angry memories. His mother, Rudy French, the Shepherd who killed the doctor . . . his brain rifled through them one after another.

  The yelling kid quieted at last and a door slammed. Austin straightened.

  The row of tiny houses butted up to the woods, which had let him creep up unobserved to the fence to check them out. His stomach was tight. It didn’t look like anyone was home in this last house. No car sat in the driveway. There wasn’t a doghouse or food bowls. A window was wide open to a bathroom. He watched for heads going back and forth inside. All that moved was leaves in the wind.

  No one would be able to see him if he did this at night. Then again, at night whoever lived here would likely be home. Creepy sounds from other rooms had always chilled Austin when he was a little boy; he’d never conceived of himself as the cause. There could be some old woman inside that house, taking a nap or reading a book in her recliner, and Austin was about to scare the daylights out of her.

  He decided to watch and listen a few minutes longer. Corbin and Bleu Cheese were off scouting for grocery stores, minimarts, and fast food joints close to the woods to explore the contents of the dumpsters. Austin had done the grease-slicked dumpster behind the We Got Gas with them before going off on his own. It had been emptied recently, but they sifted through the stuff at the bottom with a stick. Old meat, pieces of cardboard, newspapers, nothing promising, and then Austin worked the stick under the lid of a box and pulled. Inside was a jackpot. Bleu Cheese whined in excitement as the boys got it out. The lid of the dumpster fell with a clang when Corbin lost his grip on it, and they dashed away into the woods with their treasure.

  Within the box were five packs of sunflower seeds with a black line of grease over the packaging like a dolly had run over them. The packs weren’t broken, just soiled. The line of grease also marred a package of crackers, some of which felt crushed inside. There was tired fruit: three black bananas, five apples, two oranges, and a bruised pear. The best was six dry bagels. The boys took the box home in triumph and stowed it there. The pear and one of the bagels did not survive the trip.

  Home. Right now, Austin was looking at someone’s home. He’d so much rather be doing dumpsters. But with the damaged fingers of his left hand, Corbin was going to have a harder time lifting himself over fences and through windows, and doing it quietly and sneakily.

  The house was silent. Austin wanted to get this over with, so he jumped the fence into the backyard and ran to the open window. They had to have food, and the gnawing pain in his stomach over the last few days was raw in his memory. That had overwhelmed him with misery, having nothing and not being able to get anything to relieve it. One day he’d eat in the best restaurants and forget this ever happened to him. In that far future, he wouldn’t remember being joyous over a box of old and damaged food in a gas station dumpster. Austin was hungry for that day. He’d only tell the guy w
ho shared his life about what he’d had to do to survive long ago, at night and in whispers.

  What a joke. What guy would want Austin with his stamp? Austin didn’t want himself.

  On the other side of the window was a toilet. He stepped on the closed lid, cringing at the creak, and got down to the tiled floor. Sweet Jesus, he was in someone’s house, and planning to rob it. For a moment, he stood there to listen. There was no scuffling of feet, no television playing or the sounds of pets.

  Past the bathroom was a bedroom. The bed was unmade, the sheets yellowing, and jars full of cigarette butts were on the dresser. That was weird. Shaking the pillow from the pillowcase, Austin opened the top drawer to a tiny display of men’s clothes. He plucked out the three pairs of rolled up socks and dropped them in the case. The next drawer had T-shirts and the bottom held an extra blanket. Austin took all of it and closed the drawer. Crumpled on the floor were ripped, paint-stained overalls. He left them there.

  He listened again. Nothing. Going down the hallway, he peeked into the other side of the house. No old woman was napping in a recliner, or clutching her pearls at the noise. The living room had a plasma television, a nice game system, a laptop, and hundreds of DVDs, which he bypassed for the kitchen. Dirty plates were stacked in the sink. Austin opened the cupboards, rejecting the plates and bowls, and adopted six cans of soup.

  Everything was mixed up inside the drawer, measuring spoons and ladles, a meat thermometer and tongs and spatulas. He pulled out an ancient can opener. They didn’t need the Hug the Cook apron in the second drawer, or a set of glass wine corks.

  He opened the fridge. Bread. Water. Cheese. A box half-full of cereal. Austin wedged everything into the pillowcase. He bypassed the beer and helped himself to three strawberry yogurts. Those would last fine until tonight without refrigeration.

  He wanted to leave a note saying sorry. Hopefully the guy was smart enough to figure that the robber was just hungry and cold, not looking to jack his good stuff. Austin wouldn’t feel quite as violated if someone came into his place and took only food and clothes.

  The weight of what he had taken was straining the seams of the old, thin pillowcase. He twisted the top of the fabric and pinched the neck to close it. The contents clanked. It was time to get back home.

  Forgive me.

  A car rumbled down the road. Austin rushed back to the bathroom, snagged the towel on the hook, and launched himself out the window. He swung the case over his shoulder and sprinted through the backyard to the fence like a bad Santa going in reverse. Dropping the case over the side, he heaved himself after it. Children were shouting in play from two yards down, a ball soaring back and forth to crest the fence at the apex of its flight. Austin ran away with the case in his arms.

  Once back on his driveway, he slowed. He would still feel violated, knowing that someone had intruded upon his space. He’d go through his belongings in horror, searching for what was gone. His mind would rail against this strange person picking through his stuff like it was a minimart. His cereal, his cans of soup, his towel, and the guy’s home was going to seem less sacrosanct to him. And Austin couldn’t explain that he was a zombie who wasn’t allowed to shop in regular stores, and was only trying to get the hell out of this net.

  He just wanted to live.

  The dog barked inside the house. So they were back. Corbin wouldn’t understand this. Taking something out of a dumpster wasn’t at all like robbing a house. Sliding open the glass door, Austin entered their weird home with the writing all over the walls. He breathed in the scent of burgers.

  “Oh, thank God. It’s just you,” Corbin said, peeking around the corner. “You okay, man?”

  “No,” Austin said. The dog danced around him. He wasn’t a bad person, but he’d just done a really bad thing. It made him feel like shit. “Did you get anything?”

  “Yeah. I found an elementary school. I thought about how we all threw out our fruit and stuff after lunch. The kids left for the day and I took a whole trash bag out of a can by the playground. I hid in the woods for twenty minutes, thinking I might go for another, and then I saw a woman come out of the cafeteria with another bag. She unchained the fence around the dumpster and threw it in, rechained it and walked off. I went back and cracked it open just enough to go inside. Come see.”

  Laid out on the floor in the bedroom were a dozen apples and oranges, plastic baggies with veggies and sandwich halves inside, even two unopened juice boxes. It only looked like a lot because they had had so little. Corbin knelt down by a garbage bag and pulled out whole burgers in paper wrapping. Happily, he said, “Ten burgers, a bag full of carrot and celery sticks, we’ll eat all right tonight.” Bleu Cheese settled down in the doorway with her eyes on the burgers.

  Austin lined up the cans of soup, the cereal, the rest of the food and the can opener. Mad that Corbin didn’t have to deal with any pangs of conscience, he didn’t speak. Corbin read his mood and didn’t talk either. Then the rolled up socks hit the floor, that poor dude’s socks, and Austin sank against the wall to stare at them.

  Out the window, afternoon had turned to evening. They needed to start a fire. Austin should have searched the drawers more carefully for a lighter or extra matches. He had a bunch, but they should get more.

  Corbin picked up a pair of the socks. “May I?”

  “They aren’t yours!” Austin burst.

  Dropping them, Corbin said tightly, “Fine! I didn’t think all three pairs were for you.”

  After a strained quiet, Austin looked at his lap and whispered, “I robbed a house today. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

  “I don’t think, given these circumstances, that we have any other option.”

  “I’ll do dumpsters, but I won’t do houses.”

  “Okay.”

  Not wanting Corbin to be mad, Austin tossed over the socks as a peace offering. “The guy didn’t have much. Maybe right now he’s come home, opened his fridge and found it empty.”

  “And right now our rooms are empty at home, because it isn’t safe for us to be there,” Corbin replied, accepting the socks. Austin relaxed that they were okay. “If they’d just left us alone, Austin, we’d never have done what we did.”

  The guy could be a Shepherd. Oh, Austin liked that possibility. Then he didn’t feel so bad. Taking off his filthy socks, he pulled on a pair of the clean ones. They were thick and warm. If Zaley didn’t want that last pair, those could be mittens for when it was so damn cold at night. And they had a blanket! It was a ratty old blue thing, nubby fabric and with a loose silk hem, but that was better than nothing.

  Corbin picked up the can opener and the dog food from the minimart, but set them down before opening the can. “We should save that for the road. Tonight it’s burgers for all.”

  “Burgers and strawberry yogurt and overripe bananas,” Austin amended. That was how they had to think, what food kept and what didn’t.

  He started a fire with more wood from the shed. Darkness was falling fast outside, the temperature dropping, and Zaley hadn’t appeared. They ate a big meal and Corbin watched out the window for her. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “Yeah. She doesn’t have a stamp. No one is going to bug her,” Austin said. Of all of them, Zaley knew what it was like to do something so contrary to your self-image that you stepped into utterly foreign emotional terrain. To kill someone made her feel nothing and angry at the same time; to rob a house made Austin feel violated when he was violating someone else. It was nonsensical and perfectly sensible all at once. She was a killer and he was a thief, and days ago they’d just been ordinary seniors at Cloudy Valley High School.

  If someone ever broke into Austin’s house in the future for clothes and food, he had to remember not to be too upset. That person had serious need to do it. But he would also never leave the windows open, not even in the back of his house, and his guy would remember to close them when they went out for dinner at the best restaurants. They could have a dog like Bleu Cheese,
who’d take a chomp out of a Shepherd to protect her people. Austin liked cats better, but a dog was smarter. A cat would just watch an intruder, or hide behind the sofa.

  Corbin was still looking out the window. “She shouldn’t have gone alone.”

  “We couldn’t go with her,” Austin said.

  “She shouldn’t have been forced to be a youth Shepherd on those Penger streets. Wouldn’t that have pissed you off, back when you and Elania were dating? To know she was out there in the night like bait for any pervert?”

  I’m gay, Corbin. Austin couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not when they’d be sharing a blanket tonight. He didn’t want Corbin to think differently of him. But as a friend to Elania, yes, it would have pissed him off to think of her out in the dark. “Yeah.”

  “You don’t do that, send out a one-armed, unarmed girl into the night. That’s like asking something to happen. At least Micah had that random dog with her.”

  “You saw Micah out there?”

  “Yeah, she stole someone’s pet and walked by my house one night last summer. Fucking loon.” Corbin laughed as Austin rubbed the dog’s belly. He’d get a better-looking dog, one that wasn’t cross-eyed.

  The fire popped and crackled. The sky blackened. They guessed at the time, unable to check on Austin’s cell phone while still in the net. Austin wrapped the extra T-shirts into a pillow and covered himself with the tattered blanket. The dog slept at his side. Brennan’s robot book was on the floor, but he didn’t pick it up to read by the firelight. Distracting himself was a way to attract something bad.

  He willed Zaley back in his mind, with supplies or without, so he could give her a yogurt and be in her company. But Corbin understood a little. They’d be old men in a really expensive restaurant one day, Austin and Corbin dressed in their finest, with waiters and busboys rushing around to serve them fancy dishes. Unaware that these two geezers had eaten rejected burgers from an elementary school dumpster.