Chantal Boudreau

by First Time Dead 01

  “One week from Saturday, meet in the square.” He looked at the woman and me. “You two will be a married couple. You have a week to come up with a credible background.” He scrutinized the large man and the girl. “He’ll be your uncle. I don’t think the age difference is enough to make him your father.” Then, he turned to the group. “Meet back here…same time on Monday. You’ll have your proof then.” He turned and faded into the crowd without answering any more questions or asking any names.

  The crowd disbursed, taking the rumbling discontent with it. The four of us volunteers were left standing in the wide-open, vacated space. Snapping out of my own stupor, I thrust my hand into the empty space between us.

  “I’m Stephen. Stephen Marr.” I turned my head to the right and nodded at the woman. “And this is my wife.” I hesitated hoping she’d fill in the blank.

  “Angela.” She didn’t disappoint me.

  The large man reached out and gripped my hand as if he were trying to save me from falling off the ledge. After the handshake, I flexed my fingers to make sure they weren’t broken.

  “I’m Bill Matlin,” he said after releasing my paw. “And I’d like you to meet my niece.” Bill winked at the girl.

  “Sharon.” The girl smiled like she’d just won Miss Zombieville 2025.

  After a short dispensing of pleasantries, we made our way to the literal watering hole, a defunct soda fountain called Sully’s. Before the infection, it had been the last old-fashioned luncheonette on this side of the state. It still had most of the red vinyl-covered swivel chairs lining the counter. Now, Sully’s was the only place with ice water.

  We slid into a corner booth and ordered. You could always count on seven cubes to a glass.

  “Do you think that Joe guy was telling the truth?” Bill asked as he lifted the cup to his lips.

  “I don’t see what use it would be to lie about something so disturbing,” Angela said. She tilted her head to the side as if she were a puppy trying to decipher a strange sound.

  “I don’t care what it is, I just want to see all that food.” Sharon’s eyes lit up just like my sister’s eyes used to do at Christmas.

  “If it is true, what are we supposed to do about it?” I asked. “I don’t want to be the one to start asking questions of the elected. I’ve heard they have ways of making people disappear.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” Bill said. “Nowadays, everyone’s got ways to make people disappear. Just push me off a rooftop over the fence. Poof. That’s all she wrote.”

  “Who’s she?” Sharon squinted, looking back and forth between us.

  “It’s just an old saying.” Angela reached across the table and patted the girl’s hand.

  Sharon flinched and drew her hand to her lap. She lowered her gaze to her glass of water.

  “I’m going to make a wild stab and guess that Joseph has a plan once he makes his point. We’ll just have to wait and find out.” Angela wiped a line through the condensation on her glass. “Now, what do we do about these back stories?”

  The rest of the evening slid by in quiet conversation and companionable laughter. It wasn’t the worst night I’d spent since the dead rose. Angela and I decided to become inseparable in order to learn each other’s quirks and make our supposed marriage seem more realistic. Bill had lost his young son two years before and had an empty bed he offered to Sharon.

  * * *

  We gathered again on Saturday. Everyone knew their part. I had my arm draped over Angela’s shoulder when we stepped into the square.

  “Howdy, pardner,” Sharon said with her thumbs looped at her waist. “Bill’s been teaching me all about the Old West. He’s got lots of books.”

  I smirked. She had reminded me of the westerns I used to watch with my dad.

  “So where’s Joseph?” Angela craned her head to look over my shoulder.

  “I’m here,” Joseph’s unaffected voice came from a man sitting at the empty fountain. “I have four bags. Each has your description. Take your bag; use what’s in it. Don’t let your guard down. Be careful.” Joseph stood. “I’ll see you all on Monday.”

  “You aren’t coming with us?” Angela’s voice squeaked.

  “No, it’s safer for you if I don’t.” Joseph turned and walked away, his shoulders back and his hands deep in his pockets. “One more thing,” he said without turning. “If they take any of you, don’t try to help.”

  Picking up the bag with my description penciled on the side, I opened the crumpled top just enough to peek. I looked up and saw the others had similar looks of shock on their faces. How had Joseph found such clean, formal clothes? I looked back inside the bag and pulled out a folded piece of heavy stationary:

  Your ticket is in the wallet tucked inside the pocket of your suit pants. Make sure you stick to your story. Don’t dress until you reach your destination. The guards will point the way. Tell them nothing but lies. J.

  “Rather cryptic,” Angela said when she finished reading her own note. “I hope it fits.”

  She held her bag open for me to see. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen red sequins.

  Bill stood and shoved his bag toward me. He had pulled his mouth back into a painful grimace. Taking the bag, I opened it. The shiny, flat round of a top hat was resting on what looked like the fingers of white leather gloves.

  “I hold no love for the finer things in life,” Bill said folding his arms.

  “Maybe it’s the only thing Joe could find in your size. I bet you’ll look handsome,” Sharon chirped. “I don’t think I’ll ever take mine off.” She looked up from her bag grinning in such a way that I could see a rotten molar.

  We reached the gates near the assembly building. The guards looked at our tickets and pointed the way to the changing rooms. The men’s room was something from another time. Polished marble gleamed on the floor and the walls. Unbroken floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined one wall. Marble sinks with hot and cold running water lined another. Unripped, upholstered benches were placed around the expanse of floor. An attendant waited at the door with what looked like aftershave and towels. Bill and I both tried to remain nonchalant. If we were supposed to be here, I doubted we’d be gawking.

  Once we’d washed and changed, we went to wait for the girls.

  “No apocalypse can change the amount of time it takes a woman to get ready for an evening out.” Bill sat slouched on a concrete bench with his elbows resting on his splayed knees.

  Out of habit, I checked my wrist. I hadn’t worn a watch in years, but wearing a tie and new shoes almost made me feel like the past six years hadn’t happened. I rubbed the place on my arm where the watch should have been as I looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

  My jaw dropped when the sharp click of high heels sounded on the pavement and drew our attention.

  “You can pick that chin up off the ground now, Steve,” Angela said. A smile glittered in her eyes as she slung a black scarf over her shoulder.

  Sharon teetered to catch up with Angela.

  “How, exactly, am I supposed to look like I belong here when I can’t even walk straight?” Sharon flopped onto the bench beside Bill who was still staring at Angela.

  “Huh?” Bill said when the girl shoved his arm off of his knee. “Oh, yeah. You’ll be fine. Right, Angela?”

  “If it gets too uncomfortable, just sit down and wait.” Angela reached toward me and handed me the blue rubber band she’d had in her hair. “Hold onto this, I don’t have pockets.”

  I snapped the band around my wrist where the missing watch would have been.

  “Is everyone ready?” I asked.

  Heads nodded, and we made our way into the assembly hall.

  The odor of the food threw my senses into overload as soon as the door opened. I could smell the bacon first. My mouth started to water. My eyes glazed over, and all I could think about was crunching down on a dish I used to eat at breakfast at least four days a week.

  “This must be how the zombies
feel when they see us,” I whispered to Angela. “All I want to do is find where that smell is coming from and devour as much as I find.”

  We made our way through the other revelers and each picked up a China plate from tall stack on a linen covered table. I glanced back at Sharon. Bill was talking to her in a voice too low for me to hear, but I assumed he was explaining how a buffet worked since the girl wasn’t old enough to remember.

  When the line was short enough to see the tables piled with food I hadn’t seen in ages, I stifled a gasp. Then I flinched when Angela’s China plate crashed to the floor behind me. When I saw Angela gaping at the table filled with food, I nudged her with my elbow. She snapped out of her bewilderment and smiled up at me.

  “I’m such a klutz,” she said, looking from me to the pieces of plate on the floor and back to me.

  “Don’t worry, you can share my plate so you won’t lose your place in line,” I said, patting her back with my free hand.

  As we reached the edge of the table, we saw a man across the table grabbing every serving spoon he could reach and piling things on his plate. Jostling people in front of him, he reached his spoon further up the table.

  A man in a black suit stepped up behind him and whispered something in his ear. The jostler reached into his pocket, pulled out a ticket, and showed it to the man in the black suit. After a cursory glance at the paper ticket, the man in the black suit said something into his wrist and grabbed the other man around the chest.

  “Hey! What are you doing? I have a ticket,” the imprisoned man shouted. Trying to break free, he twisted against the man in the black suit. The suited man’s grip must have been strong, because he didn’t break a sweat. He just carried his captive through a door in the back of the room.

  “I guess we can’t look too eager to eat,” Angela whispered in my ear. She grabbed my elbow.

  After what seemed like a century, we reached the food. I was having trouble not emulating the man that had been hauled through the door. Everything glistened in gravy or juice. The fruit dripped with diamonds of fresh water as if it had just been washed. Nothing had the gray-green tinges of mold that I’d gotten used to in my own kitchen. I reached for a roll. Not thinking, I was expecting the hard-rock bread everyone had been eating for years. My fingers mashed into the soft, fleshy crust. I was more careful with the second roll I picked up for Angela.

  “I think we can tell which roll is yours,” Angela said, poking her finger into my mangled roll.

  A spoonful of potato salad, a few slices of roast beef, spears of fresh asparagus, I filled the plate without covering all the white China. Half way down the first table, we stepped out of line and found two empty chairs. I placed the plate in front of Angela.

  “You first, I’ll eat what’s left.”

  Angela unwrapped the silverware from the table and spread the crisp white napkin over her lap. She sliced off a piece of beef and hesitated before sliding the fork into her mouth. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she chewed. The corners of her mouth turned into a grin. I had to guess that the food was good since she wasn’t stopping to describe it.

  While I waited, I took a more inclusive look around the room. There were six doors on the back wall of the room. Two men in black suits guarded each door. Every few minutes, I watched as one man would leave his post and approach a guest. Each time, the guest produced a ticket. Sometimes, the guest was left alone. More often, the guest was escorted through one of the doors. The man in the black suit would return to his post a minute later without the guest.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder as Angela slid the plate in front of me. I glanced at her face before looking behind me. Her face, flushed from the excitement of the evening, was ashen. I felt her hand grip my knee under the table. I heard a voice whisper in my ear.

  “May I see your ticket, please?”

  I turned and stared into the ice blue eyes of a man in a black suit. I reached into my suit jacket for my wallet. As I opened the fold, the smell of leather assaulted my nostrils. It smelled too new. The man placed a hand on my shoulder and smiled.

  “No, you’re fine. I must have been mistaken.” The man slithered back to his post.

  I could feel my heart start to beat again.

  “You go ahead and finish that,” I said pushing myself away from the table. “I don’t feel hungry anymore.”

  “Are you sure?” Angela asked as she picked up her fork.

  I nodded and stood to search the room for Sharon and Bill. I found Sharon looking lost next to the dessert table.

  “Where’s Bill?” I asked as I watched her eyes dart from face to face.

  “I don’t know,” she said wiping her nose on her elbow-length glove. “He was here. I went to the bathroom. When I came out, I saw them dragging him into one of those doors at the back. We have to help him,” Sharon said. Her eyes were wild inside their sockets as she chewed on a bloody fingertip.

  “We can’t.” I put my arm around Sharon’s shoulder and tried to lead her back to Angela.

  Sharon ducked under my arm and ran for a door. The guards at either side grabbed her and shuffled her through without a word.

  Even though the dessert table was filled with delicacies I hadn’t seen since before the outbreak, I had no interest in sampling anything. Not even the strawberry shortcake tempted me. I had seen enough. Angela had procured a plate of chocolate cake, but only pushed the frosting around the plate.

  “Sharon and Bill are gone,” I said in a whisper as I smiled at Angela. “I think it’s time we left.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to find them?” Angela let the fork clatter to her plate. “We should at least wait to see if the elected show up.”

  “No, Sharon and Bill got taken by the guards. I don’t know why, and I don’t think it’s safe for us to stay to see the elected.”

  Angela gave up her protest when another woman was dragged through one of the back doors. We slid from our chairs. I squeezed Angela’s hand as I led her from the room. We went back to the changing rooms. When I came out, I waited ten minutes, fifteen, half an hour. After an hour, I asked a woman going into the room to check for Angela. Even after the apocalypse, there were some things I couldn’t bring myself to do. Entering a ladies’ room was one.

  When the woman returned, she told me that there was no one in the room except the attendant. The attendant refused to say anything. I hunched my shoulders, crammed my hands in my pockets, and made my way back to my rooms.

  The time came to make my way back to The Ledge. The crowd was smaller, and Joseph never showed. I told the crowd what I’d seen: the masses of food and the disappearing guests. I told them I had no idea what to do, or what the plan had been in the first place. All I knew was that three new friends had disappeared from my life and I felt helpless. Then I left them there.

  * * *

  Later that week, the well-fed elected passed a decree stating that any infected were to be taken to the dispatch center and destroyed upon detection. They said that there would be no waiting period and no incarceration. The official story was that an infected had bitten a dispatcher and the dispatcher had been infected. The official story was a lie. I knew all the dispatchers. We were all healthy, and we were now jobless. None of us would kill the living. That wasn’t how we had been trained. The only time the job had failed was when a new recruit hadn’t respected the boundaries.

  The next week, everyone found with something as minor as a fever was taken to where I used to work. I didn’t hear the gunshots, but the walls were thick. My rooms became my world. There were no jobs to find, and the sparse food was delivered to the door. Every time I opened a can, I regretted not trying the strawberry shortcake.

  One night, I was reading a creased and torn paperback. I must have dozed off, because a knock startled the book to the floor.

  “Who’s there?” I said reaching for my rifle.

  “It’s Joseph.”

  “What do you want?” I stood behind the door with the barrel pointed cen
ter mass at where a body would be standing on the other side.

  “I wanted to apologize and explain.”

  There was silence on both sides of the door.

  “Can I come in?” Joseph asked.

  I unbolted the door but didn’t unlatch the chain. Opening the door, I peered at Joseph through the crack. His face was bruised, and his nose looked as though it had been broken in two places. A gash on his cheekbone was swollen and infected.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, still peering over the chain.

  “Probably the same thing that happened to the others. It was a man with a cane,” he whispered through the opening. “Please let me in. I’m pretty sure they’ll shoot me if they see me looking like this.”

  I closed the door and let the chain swing free. Pausing a moment to recheck my rifle, I took a breath. I opened the door and Joseph walked through. Once he was inside, I closed and bolted the door behind him.

  “May I sit?” he asked, motioning to my threadbare sofa.

  I nodded and continued to stand with my rifle at my side.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” Joseph began. “It had never happened that way before. Sure, some had been taken, but I was always able to get to them before anything happened. There must have been a leak. No one should have known about all of them. You were the only plant to escape.”

  “How many were there?” I asked when Joseph took a breath.

  “Twenty-five.”

  “What do they do with the people they take?” I asked him as I pulled a wooden chair from beside the wall.

  “I’m not sure, but I think they’re all beaten for information. After that, I don’t know.” Joseph dropped his face into his hands and flinched when the bruises pressed into his fingertips.

  “You’re lying. What happened to the others?” I had to know, and without getting taken myself, I figured this was the best chance I had.