Dying to Live: Last Rites

by Kim Paffenroth

  Lucy tensed at the sound of clanking chains. Two of the younger men were approaching with wooden poles about four feet long. A short chain attached a collar to the end of each one.

  The one named Terry raised his shotgun.

  “You collared ‘em before, kid?” CJ asked.

  Will took the collars in his hands, looking disgusted with their dirty leather and metal clasps. “No, we don’t use these.”

  “You hill people are so crazy,” CJ replied. “I don’t know how you do it. But they haven’t bitten you yet, so I figure you can get ‘em collared easier than one of us trying it. They’ll be spooked enough when we get ‘em to their new place. So go ahead.”

  Will approached Lucy with the collar and put it around her neck. He leaned close to her left shoulder to lock the clasp. The leather was cold and slippery—not just from the rain, Lucy felt, but from all the blood and grease it had scraped from hundreds like her. She bared her teeth at the young man holding her pole. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth slightly.

  Will moved in front of her so she couldn’t see the coward on the other end of the pole. Will’s eyes met hers again as he tightened the strap.

  “Tighten that strap more, kid,” CJ said. “I don’t want her wriggling out, and we both know she’s a limber gal—and quick. And you know damn well she don’t breathe, so don’t have any hard feelings about it. Get to it.”

  The strap constricted around Lucy’s throat. It didn’t hurt too much, though it still took every bit of her self-control to keep from telling these scared little shits to go fuck themselves.

  “I’m so sorry,” Will whispered. His eyes were wet. Lucy again thought she had chosen right.

  Will moved over to put the other collar on Truman.

  “Good,” CJ said; he didn’t seem as concerned with the security of his collar. “Cuffs next. Terry?”

  Shotgun at his hip, the cute one approached, holding out some black iron manacles with his other hand. Will took them. Lucy remembered seeing handcuffs before—shiny metal rings with a chain between them. These ones were crude, and perhaps homemade—just curved metal bands that locked together with bolts.

  Lucy held her hands out in front of herself, and Will sniffled a bit as he cuffed her. It took him awhile. Then he moved to cuff Truman.

  When he finished, the men forced them around, the collars scraping and tearing at their necks. Truman nearly fell to his knees as they manhandled him. Lucy reached to help him up, but they yanked her away. She growled, but stopped herself. The men started to push them up the dock.

  “All right, kid,” Lucy heard CJ say behind her. “Ambulance will be here any minute. I hope your girlfriend makes it.”

  And that was that. The two of them were now under the control of these savage idiots, being pushed toward some lights up ahead. When they got to the illuminated area, Lucy saw a gate in a tall fence that stretched across the shore at the end of the dock. Another man with a gun was there.

  “Whatcha got, CJ?” the new guy asked.

  “Coupla dead fucks,” CJ replied. “Two hill people back on the boat. There’ll be an ambulance here for them soon. The girl’s sick, but she’s not bitten. I checked her.”

  “Okay,” the guard said as he looked Lucy over. “These things good for anything, or is it time to pop ‘em?”

  “Oh, this one’s a pistol.” CJ laughed as he slapped the back of Lucy’s head, then grabbed a handful of hair and yanked. It didn’t really hurt, but it pulled the kerchief back. Lucy didn’t like that at all.

  She roared and whipped herself around so violently the man holding the pole couldn’t keep her still. She batted at CJ’s hand with her manacled arms and lunged for him. He stepped back, still laughing, and the man holding her tried to plant his feet and get enough leverage to wrestle her away from him.

  The guard from the gate shoved a black rod with two metal prongs into her stomach and she felt something bad through her whole body. Her muscles didn’t obey and she fell to her knees, twitching, her jaws clenched so tightly she thought her teeth would shatter. She spasmed for a few seconds before she could hear and understand what was going on around her again. All the men were howling with laughter, and it filled her with such fury she was able to force herself back to her feet. Lucy straightened the kerchief as she glared at CJ.

  “See?” CJ said. “Gal’s a piece of work! Look at that! Eight-thousand volts and she’s right back on her damn feet! She’s one for the patrols, for sure. Keep our city safe, this one will!” They laughed some more.

  “The other one?” the guard from the gate asked.

  “Don’t know. Their owner said they were smart. He looks kinda scrawny.” Pause. “What do you think?”

  Lucy kept her eye on CJ, but at the edge of her vision she saw the guard move toward Truman. “I know a guy over at the Dead End,” he said. “He’s always asking me to send him some more smart ones, if we find any. You know how kids like that shit.”

  “Oh yeah, my kids love that—dead people doing tricks and shit. He pay you for that?”

  “Sure, CJ. You’ll get some. Don’t worry. Just look for Doctor Jack.”

  “Good. Terry—you and Bart take him over there. We’ll haul gorgeous here over to the City Patrol camp.”

  Lucy heard Truman wail. This time she could hear the zapping sound as the guard hit him with the same thing he’d used on her. Lucy tried to turn and lunge at him, but her limbs were stiff and unresponsive, and she immediately felt CJ kicking her legs out from under her. He followed up with a savage kick to her kidneys, as he and the man holding the pole shoved her face into the ground. CJ dropped his knee onto her spine.

  The cold metal of the automatic jabbed into the back of her skull. CJ leaned down till he was panting in her ear. “You just don’t know when to stop, do you, you fucking cunt?” he whispered. “Now darlin’, I think you know what I’m saying. So I’m gonna do you a favor I’ve never done for a dead fucker before. I’m gonna explain things to you. City Patrol loves tough, smart things like you. Pays good money for ‘em. So I’ll have second thoughts before I put your brains all over the fucking ground here. But your boyfriend? You two seem kinda fond of each other, as sick as that sounds. So some carnies wanna pay something for him, and I got to split it with these other guys? That’s not so much money. So Terry or Bart aren’t gonna feel so bad if they have to shoot him. You think about that before you act up again.”

  She scraped her nose and cheek across the pavement as she turned her head to see Truman. They were hauling him back to his feet. He looked limp, but his gaze was on Lucy, his hands stretched toward her.

  CJ sat up, the gun barrel still pressed against Lucy’s head. “Terry, Bart—you two get moving. I’m gonna sit here with my new girlfriend while you two take him away. Then we’ll try moving her. Gal’s got almost too much spunk.”

  They chuckled and hauled Truman away. Then they got Lucy back on her feet. There was nothing more she could do at this point.

  CJ holstered his pistol and brushed himself off. “See, that wasn’t so bad.” He started shoving her forward again.

  It was bad enough, but besides the strange device that had incapacitated her, it hadn’t been any worse than she had imagined. They were really pretty ordinary and predictable here, so they didn’t bother Lucy that much. It only worried her a little, that Truman would be more troubled by their behavior. He still believed in silly, sentimental things, and expected all sorts of absurd impossibilities. She hoped he always did, but also worried that belief might make his ordeal too much for him to bear.

  Chapter 10: Rachel

  It had been years since Rachel had seen a room this clean. When she was little, her mother kept things really tidy in their home, but this was way beyond that. The walls and ceiling were almost impossibly white. The sheets on the bed were softer than she’d felt since childhood: now there, her mother would’ve been able to match the care and cleanliness; the woman must’ve done two loads of laundry a day, every day. And n
ot just throw them in the washer, but the full deal—detergent (a special kind for delicate materials, too), fabric softener, bleach on the whites, dryer sheets; then everything folded and put away. Even when she lived in the city, Rachel barely bothered with such stuff, and certainly not since they’d been on the boat: there, she’d just rinse things out, hang them off the rigging, and call them clean enough. They always dried stiff and had an earthy, grassy smell to them, but what did that matter? Too many other things to worry about, and too many other things to enjoy.

  As she slowly drifted up to consciousness, Rachel found herself wondering if her mother had been happy, doing all that work. And if her mother had been fulfilled by those things, what’d that make Rachel, with her lazy, sloppy, hedonistic ways?

  Rachel’s head throbbed and she felt a little woozy. Nothing like before, but still nowhere near right. Given how she’d felt the last time she’d been conscious enough to think, it was natural for her now to entertain the idea that this was wherever you went when you died. She toyed with that thought for a minute as her gaze drifted to the half-open window, where the sun was shining in. Rachel remembered something about rain and the ship rocking, remembered thunder and strange voices. So it made a sort of sense that this was some other world: the weather was different, it was so much cleaner than anything in the real world—quieter and calmer, too—and things didn’t hurt anymore. Oh—and she was thinking of her mom so vividly, almost feeling her presence. That part made Rachel feel really glad to be here, and she half expected to see her mother when she turned to the other side.

  No—just Will, asleep in a big chair. Rachel’s mind shifted, first to chide herself for being so silly. If she’d died, she would’ve opened her eyes to find the regular old dirty world. She’d probably be seeing it through some cloudy gunk, too, since dead people’s eyes were always so messed up, except Lucy’s. And she’d almost certainly be wracked with the desire to kill everyone around her and tear into their warm flesh with her teeth. God, how could she be so stupid as to think she’d drifted straight to some heaven of clean sheets, bright sunshine, and her mother’s love? That wasn’t even a story you told kids anymore. It was just crazy.

  Rachel sighed. It was nice to be alive, too. She’d fought so hard and rebelled against death for days when she was sick, it made her feel good and proud to know she’d won. But what was this place? She tried to roll toward Will, and she felt some resistance, something pulling on her left elbow. She looked down to see a tube running from her arm to a bottle hanging up above—more things she hadn’t seen in years.

  Keeping her left arm still, Rachel managed to nudge Will with her other hand. He woke with a start and looked at her. The smile spread across his face immediately. “Oh, Rach, you’re awake,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “Better,” she replied. “Not great, but better. What happened? Where are we?”

  “We found this city. They call it New Sparta. They brought you right to this hospital, got you hooked up to the medicine.”

  Rachel considered the tube and bottle again. “Medicine? How do they have medicine? It’s all too old. It’s been years since we had any.”

  Will took her hand. “They make it, I guess. They took one look at you and said you had malaria. They said it was common around here, with all the mosquitoes, but with drugs you should be better in no time. I was so afraid you wouldn’t make it. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Rachel smiled at him and noted how his countenance brightened. She so had him hooked. It was nice to be wanted so much, to have so much power, especially after nearly losing everything and being reduced to a wandering meat puppet with no control. How could she have been glad, even for a moment, to be rid of life and all of its perks—like having a gorgeous man who loves you and who’ll do anything for you? She squeezed his hand—and if it were possible, he looked even more enthralled by her.

  Rachel stopped smiling as she remembered something that bothered her. “Where are Truman and Lucy?”

  Will lowered his gaze. “They took them away.”

  “You mean they—um, they killed them?” Rachel asked. She was grateful to be alive, but knowing those two were shot in the head would still make her feel like shit, especially for poor Truman. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.

  Will looked up. “No, not that.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “They said they would put them to work.”

  Rachel frowned. “Work? That’s weird.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how exactly things are done around here. But they said some of the dead do work, if they’re smart enough.”

  “And Lucy went along with that?” Rachel was sure Truman would’ve been okay with it—but Lucy? No way.

  Will nodded. “She did. I asked her. I couldn’t just force them to go with the people here. And she was—I don’t know. Not exactly emotional, but like she was really determined to go through with it, if that’s what it took for you to get better. Passionate—maybe that’s the right word.”

  “Really? Wow.” The idea of Lucy being passionate about saving her took some getting used to.

  Will leaned closer and spoke more softly. “And then she kissed me. I think.”

  Okay, that was just too weird. Rachel cocked an eyebrow at him. “She—kissed you? Where?”

  “On the forehead. I think. It was so lightly, I couldn’t tell. I don’t know why she did it.”

  “Kiss? Not bite? Come here.” Will leaned forward and Rachel put her hand behind his neck to pull him closer, as she inspected his forehead.

  “No. Really. She just barely pressed her lips against me. She was acting really strange, but she’d already said she wanted to stay here so you could get better, so I didn’t argue. Don’t worry, Rach, she wasn’t being like a—well, like dead people usually are. She was being like a real person.”

  No, no marks, and Rachel ran her fingers all over his forehead a couple times. “That’s really strange, Will. I don’t think the two of them even kiss. I mean, not that I’d watch. It’s too gross.”

  Will sat back up and took her hand again. He chuckled. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I told them we’d come get them when you got better. I don’t think they’ll like it here too much and we shouldn’t leave them too long, wherever they took them. People can be mean. I don’t want them to get hurt.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” Well, Rachel would wait and see about that. They’d have to find out more about this city and what went on here before they went around demanding to have their zombies back. There might be rules about that. And Truman and Lucy might be okay, wherever they were. This place seemed too nice to leave without considering everything.

  Rachel settled back down into the pillows. Damn, those were really soft, too. What the heck did they fill them with to make them feel that good, that luxurious?

  She sighed. “I guess I better rest some more. Just that little bit of talking got me tired.”

  “Yeah, they said you’d need to rest a lot before you were all the way better.”

  Rachel closed her eyes and smiled. “I bet they have hot water here. I mean really hot water that doesn’t run out.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she heard Will say as she drifted off. “Probably.”

  “Hmm, a hot bath is going to be so nice. I haven’t had one in forever.” Rachel thought of the water caressing her body, the warmth soothing her mind. Oh my God—maybe even bubbles. That’d almost be too much to hope for, but if they had rooms as clean as this, they might have any luxury she could think of. Yes, this place definitely needed more investigation before they went traipsing back into the malaria-infested wilderness.

  Chapter 11: Truman

  The two living men led Truman away. He couldn’t see where Lucy had gone. He knew she could take care of herself—much better than he could, most likely—but it was just a man’s instincts to protect the woman. The living took that away from him, and that made him ashamed—and angry at Will for getting them into this mess.

  Lu
cy had been right about the other people. He’d told her everything would work out, but she’d been right to mistrust them. They didn’t deserve trust, and they certainly didn’t deserve all the comfort and safety of this place. They used a cattle prod on people—how much more barbaric could they get? Well, he’d probably find out soon enough.

  And if they were going to treat him and Lucy like animals, maybe they’d get what they deserved: maybe some dead people would make them into food. Truman had never entertained or enjoyed that thought until he saw Lucy on the ground, writhing from their cruelty. Now he longed for it with every step he took.

  The younger man, Terry, held the pole attached to his neck. The taller one, Bart, came up and walked beside Truman, who kept his gaze down.

  Bart gave Truman a shove with the stock of the shotgun. “Hey,” he said to Terry. “That crazy guy from the hills said he was smart. He don’t look so smart.”

  Truman kept walking.

  “Leave him alone, Bart,” Terry said. The kid didn’t seem quite so bad. “He’s just dead. We’ll all be like him someday.”

  “Not me,” Bart said. “I’ll eat a bullet first. Not gonna walk around like this bag of shit.” He stuck the business end of the shotgun in Truman’s face this time. “Right, Mister Smart Zombie? You’re nothing but a bag of shit, aren’t you? Shit for brains, is more like it. What the hell did that guy want with you, anyway? Were you his dad or something? Fuck—people got to shoot their own parents all the time. He should know better than to keep your sorry ass around.”

  “Stop it, Bart,” Terry said more plaintively. “He can’t help it. It’s just how they are.”

  “Well, I can’t help how I am, either. And I can’t help he’s a bag a shit. What’re they gonna do with him at the Dead End, anyway?”