Stay Dead: A Novel

by Steve Wands

  Gerty bit her lip and pulled out the metal shard. The pain hit her, and she watched as bright blood streamed from the wound. Her skin color grew pale quickly as she ripped open the sanitary pad and pressed it firmly to her wound. She held it there tightly as she watched it fill with blood. She began to cough and wheeze as her lungs took in some of the vital fluid.

  After about two minutes of keeping pressure on it, she pulled the pad away from the top of the wound just enough to fill it with some glue. The blood had stopped oozing but if she released the pressure too much the flood gates would surely open. She carefully began gluing the ends of her flesh back together, making sure to put glue inside the wound as well, no matter how painful it was. She used a lot of her supply of glue, and after a moment she put the pad back on full force.

  She waited a good long while before she moved the pad again. Eventually she removed it, and duct taped a fresh pad to her chest before returning to the gymnasium to rest. She had lost a lot of blood, and feared the damage to her lung may be mortal. Her cough had worsened---a sure sign of fluid in the lung. She went to sleep.

  The dead things had reached the building. Their cold fingers clamored at the brick exterior, feeling for a way in. They soon swarmed the front of the school in layers three, four, and sometimes five deep; all lurching forward to get inside. Some of them reached for the windows but none with any strength to shatter them just yet. There were so many of them, and so many of them unique in their grotesque appearances. One in particular had most of its face chewed off, so much so that its skull was more prevalent than what was left of its face. Another had her innards dragging behind her and splinters of bone coming through her leg and chest, as if she'd been hit by a truck.

  There were cops, and firefighters, paramedics, and other emergency responders---even a national guard member, whose uniform was so badly shredded he might as well be naked. None of them were pretty: they all had wounds, some more gaping than others. They came in droves, seemingly out of nowhere, backlit by the stars and moon casting their shadows towards the school.

  Ben had walked away from the others. He went outside to the fenced in area behind the school. The creatures had made their way there as well, and their dead fingers wrapped around the chain links of the fence like eagle talons grasping their helpless prey. The fence wouldn't hold forever, he thought, but walked up to it anyway. He could tell it excited the dead things. From his pocket he pulled out a knife. He stood directly next to the fence, close enough so that the dead things could almost touch him, and he could smell their rot oozing off like dew on the morning grass. He smiled a twisted smile and jabbed the dead things with his knife. He stabbed at their faces, fingers, and anything else he could reach. He relished at the thought of catching an eye with the knife, maybe he'd even be able to pluck one out.

  As he performed his wretched little version of Whack-A-Mole, he noticed on the overhang in the back of the building there was an access ladder leading up to the roof. He feverishly stabbed at the things as they continued to react to his presence. And when he felt contented he wiped the blood from his knife and walked back inside.

  Ben rejoined the others. "Found a way to get to the roof," he announced.

  Some people looked excited at the news, others seemed unimpressed. Most just wanted to get some rest.

  "That's awesome! We can go up there and pick off the troublemakers when we finish this up," Boone said, getting up from the floor, leaving Sarah and Mila to themselves.

  "Sounds good," Ben replied, licking his lower lip.

  Eddie and Joseph sat on the floor next to their mother, Janice. They were the shattered remains of a family. Janice looked like she crawled out from the pits of hell. Her face was mostly expressionless but she perked up when her sons sat next to her. She tried to smile but it was almost as if it hurt her face to do so. She was paper-thin, the desire to eat had left her and anytime she tried to eat, more often than not, she threw it back up. She no longer cared to live. She didn't exactly want to die, but life had lost its luster for her. She only wanted to do what she could for her remaining children and if that meant surviving, then that's what she would try her hardest to do. The three of them had been through a lot, but Janice was the one who witnessed it all first hand. She was the one who watched her husband being eaten alive by a swarm of the undead bastards as they invaded their home. His last words to her were garbled and intermixed with bloodcurdling screams between every other syllable. But somehow she understood him: get the kids and go, I love you.

  But she couldn't get the kids: Lizzie and Shaun were upstairs and the stairway was blocked by the mayhem she was witnessing. She ran outside and screamed up to the window, calling to them. The kids came running to the window, but they were being chased by one of the shambling dead things that had managed to make it upstairs into their room. She screamed for them to jump, but they were too afraid. She screamed so loud it hurt her teeth, and Shaun jumped to her but not before the creature had bitten his throat out. He died in her arms as she watched her only daughter get eviscerated on the windowsill.

  When Shaun came back to life it was in her arms. He moaned for her warm flesh. She dropped him and stepped away, only to fall to her knees sobbing. Shaun came at her quickly; the fresh dead were quicker at first, though they eventually slowed down. It was then that Eddie and Joseph had returned from trying to get their grandmother, which had failed miserably---she'd been dead long before they arrived.

  They returned home to see their youngest brother lurching after their hysterical mother. She screamed unintelligibly, and one could see why---how could you put what she was seeing into anything that made? They grabbed her and pulled her to the car as their father stumbled from the front doorway; his eyes and throat were missing and replaced with red pulps of flesh. They drove off then to Frankie's house, only a few streets away where a similar scene awaited them.

  "What the fuck is happening?" Joseph screamed.

  No one had an answer. Eddie tried to follow the road as his eyes swelled with tears, and Janice trembled hysterically in the back as she stared out the window at the dead pieces of her heart.

  Eddie, Joseph, and Janice sat together for a bit, not saying much of anything and trying not to break down and cry. They couldn't, not now. There was simply no time for it. They had to survive.

  Jon-Jon found Dawn sitting next to Ricker, and if Ricker wasn't so damn old and ugly he'd be worried that they had something going on. Not that Jon-Jon and Dawn had anything going on, but that didn't mean they weren't striving towards something, however subtle. Something was going on there. They both had lost someone, everybody lost someone, but they found something in the other that comforted them, and that was all they needed for the time being.

  That's all anybody needed, to keep them going.

  CHAPTER 9: One bad apple spoils the barrel

  From the roof of the school Boone peered out over the edge, looking down at the dead things that reached up. Near him were Damian, Ben, and Alexis, who also peered over the edge. Alexis was biting her fingernails nervously and cracking her neck. Ben was nearly expressionless and Damian was disgusted and angered. The smell was overpowering and if it hadn't been for a slight breeze it would've been downright unbearable.

  Damian moved over to the far side of the roof and stood on the edge. He unzipped his pants, pulled out his member and urinated on the creatures below. He shifted from side to side making sure to spread his piss to as many of those things below as he could. Boone looked over and laughed and Ben snickered as well.

  Alexis didn't even notice; her attention was focused on the creatures coming in the distance. She shivered and headed back downstairs. So many in such a short time, she thought. The three men stayed on the roof taking it all in, and gagging on the stench.

  "Fuck, man, what're we supposed to do?" asked Damian.

  "Nothing much we can do," Boone said tiredly. He was weary of being the appointed leader. He didn't know what to say anymore. He was tired and

/>   "Not if they keep coming like this. I can't figure out why there's so many of them, and why do they seem to be drawn to us?" Ben added.

  "Fucked if I know, man," Damian added as he looked out at the night.

  "I say we stick around here as long as we can, maybe we can wait them out, maybe they'll move one?" Boone didn't sound as if he could convince even himself.

  "If they moved on, we wouldn't be here." Ben grunted. "I'd say, that's the damn problem."

  "Fuck this, I'm gonna go to the kitchen and get me something to eat. If y'all get sick of staring at these freaks feel free to join me. Chef D's gonna whip something up." Damian then laughed as he made his way to the other end of the roof.

  "Doesn't sound like a bad idea," Ben said, "could always go for another cup of coffee. I'll be down in a few."

  Boone returned to staring at the creatures, hoping to find something in their eyes that made sense. But before he could find any answers, he felt the cold sharp pain of a knife being violently forced just left of his spine. Ben wrapped his hand around Boone's mouth as he twisted the knife and pulled it out only to repeat the act a few more times before taking his weapon and shoving him off the roof.

  If the creatures could rejoice, they would have. Instead they pulled the warm flesh from Boone's body and moments later he stood as one of the dead.

  Ben joined Damian in the cafeteria for a snack and some coffee. Chef D made a sizable stack of French toast for the two of them. The smell must have traveled to the gymnasium, because Frankie and a few others came to see who was cooking what and where the rest of it was.

  "That other fool still on the roof, huh?"

  "Yeah, said he was hungry though. He'll probably come down once he smell's these though," Ben laughed.

  Once Ben had his fill he left the cafeteria and wandered around the dark and nearly empty school. He ran his fingers along the lockers, and looked into the empty rooms. He stopped for a drink at the water fountain, and then headed for the gymnasium to get some rest.

  There he found an empty corner of the room and sat down. He rubbed his temples, and then his eyes. When he looked at his hands he could still see some of Boone's dried blood.

  He looked to the farthest object from him and focused on it, he then repeated this exercise on the people in the room. He started with the left hand side, moving toward the right. He wasn't so much sizing everybody up as he was categorizing them. Ben loved to look at someone and then label them. It was something he began doing when he was very young, and had kept repeating throughout his life. He especially loved doing this at stores, watching what people bought, how they dressed, how quickly they walked. The quicker he could label a person, the more disposable they were; the harder to categorize, the more dangerous they were. Boone was easy; the leader. Shorty was his mask, a companion by shared disaster as it were, a way that he could seem less threatening to a group. People were hesitant of loners. Shorty was many things to Ben, therefore Shorty ended up in the miscellaneous section, were he would remain until further scrutiny. Scott and Judy could be summed up as lovers, but that was too easy. Strange would be a better fit, but they both had layers beyond that, either way they were too dangerous. Jon-Jon was simple, but was one of the reasons Ben was still alive now, so he got a free pass. Ricker was annoying, but he was constantly with Dawn. Dawn was thrown into the weak category, but being that it seemed she and Jon-Jon had something going on, she got a pass by association.

  He kept playing his little mind games, and he was so enthralled with it that when Shorty came to sit by him it took Shorty snapping his fingers in his face for Ben to notice. Ben put his mind game aside so he could put his mask on. He made small talk with his friend, Shorty the mask. But he had an image in the back of his mind of a face he wanted to erase in the second-in-command category, a dangerous choice.

  Dangerous as it might be, Ben just had a thing against authority. It was the one category he hated more than anything.

  CHAPTER 10: Can't always get what you want

  Two women from the group, Mila and Sarah, left the gymnasium. They had rested, even managing to sleep a few hours. The two of them groggily walked the halls of the school, which were being patrolled by Eddie, Frankie, Joseph, Alexis, Shorty, Ben, Damian, and a few others. Mila and Sarah began asking around for Boone. They had become friends with him during their journey.

  The three of them had met while escaping their local hospital during the first few days of this would-be apocalypse. Days later they joined up with Jon-Jon, which later merged with Eddie's group. And now here they were. They walked toward the cafeteria after Damian had mentioned that he might be in there. Benoverheard him and began to make his way there via an alternate path, hurrying his pace once he rounded the corner and was out of site.

  Mila and Sarah looked around the cafeteria, but it was empty except for the scent of syrup. Ben came in behind them.

  "Hey," he said, "guess everybody left eh?"

  "Oh, heh, yeah I guess so," said Sarah.

  "Have you seen Boone around?" Mila asked.

  "Last time I seen him we were on the roof," Ben replied. "I can take you up there. Maybe he's still there."

  "Sure," Mila replied. Sarah also nodded in agreement.

  Ben climbed the rungs of the ladder to the roof, with Mila and Sarah behind him. He walked them over to where Boone's last breath had been. He hadn't planned on doing anything to the girls but once they were up there and all alone, he couldn't help but play his mind game.

  The only ties the two women had were to Boone, and they were the only ones who seemed concerned to where he was. With them out of the way too, Ben thought for sure no one would go around looking for him.

  They were only tied to a man they didn't yet know was dead. No one would miss them. They fit into plenty of Ben's categories, and certainly weren't dangerous. If he could put just one label on them it would be toys. And Ben loved to play with his toys, especially now with all the time the end of the world afforded him to do so.

  "Well, he was up here earlier, maybe he's in the bathroom," Ben chuckled.

  "Okay, well, thanks. I guess we'll just go back down," Mila replied. "If you see him let him know we're looking for him."

  "Sure, sure, no problem. Hey, before you two go back down come take a look at this. There's so many of them things, it's crazy," Ben said insistently.

  The two women walked over to the edge of the building next to Ben. He watched their faces as they scanned the crowd of dead people. He hung on their every reaction, and waited for the one he was hoping to see. Sarah was the first to notice; her expression was of confusion and then dawning horror. She grabbed Mila's arm and pointed to the dead Boone below them. Mila's expression mirrored Sarah's and as they turned to look at Ben he plunged the knife into Mila's throat. She grasped at the knife, her eyes wide and unbelieving. Her feet fumbled backward and Ben kicked her in the stomach forcing her over the side as he wrapped his hand around Sarah's mouth to gag her screams.

  Mila fell over the edge. For a moment it looked like she was crowd surfacing at a metal concert, but the hands that would ordinarily keep her afloat and grope at her feminine qualities instead only pulled her down. She writhed in pain, kicking and screaming as the creatures pulled her to the damp earth. The last face she saw was Boone's, right before he took a bite out of her's. Luckily for her, the knife wound bled her out before the dead could tear her apart. Soon enough she would rise as one of them, and wouldn't even bother with removing the knife.

  Sarah struggled to break free from Ben's grip. But so did many other women before her, and none of them were ever successful... save his earliest work.

  So, when Sarah did break free it was a huge shock to Ben, and also exhilarating. She kicked him and stomped him, bit at his fingers and squirmed. But it was a combination of the squirming, the stomping, and the shifting of her weight and a well-placed elbow to the side of the face that knocked Ben to the side.

  It wasn't much, but it was enough to get free of him
and put some distance between them. She screamed for help as loud as she could, as she continued to back away from the crazy eyed man that had killed her only two friends she had left on this earth. As her heart filled with rage she realized her screams were not saving her. That rage, however, was turning into something. She could feel it rising up inside her, like boiling water spilling out of pot.

  Sarah charged at her attacker, with eyes as fierce and unforgiving as his. She tackled him to the ground and wailed her fists into him. Ben, caught completely off guard by her assault, could do little to avoid her. She pummeled him repeatedly, breaking the skin of her knuckles on his face and teeth. Ben did what he could do to block her, but she was too fast in her fury and high on adrenaline.

  Ben managed to roll off his back and onto his side as he shoved her off, landing a hateful right hook to the side of her face. She bled on impact and staggered to the side but quickly got to her feet. The two of them faced each other again, back in the same situation but all the worse for the wear.

  "You got some fire, sweetheart, I'll give you that. But we're just having a little fun," Ben smiled.

  "Go to hell," she screamed.

  "This...IS...hell, bitch, and I'm the devil!" Then he smiled wider.

  "You ain't shit! You're just a sick fuck!" she snarled back at him. "And when everybody finds out what you did, you'll be a DEAD sick fuck!"

  "Like I said, this is just for fun. I was hoping for a little something more, but I can see you're really not all that into me. Give your little lady friend a kiss from me," he told her as he pulled a gun from his waistband.