Dead (A Lot)

by Howard Odentz

  “Don’t let them see you,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, duh,” she said. We crouched behind the checkout counter and watched the dead lurch by.

  “Do you believe this?” I said.

  “Which part?”

  “All of this. Who would have ever thought zombies could be real? Who would have even thought there would be a woman like Stella living not far from us, shut into her own little world like some reclusive celebrity?”

  “She is a reclusive celebrity.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  “Besides,” said Prianka. “I thought you were talking about our kiss.”

  Way to catch me off guard. I nervously cleared my throat and concentrated on two middle-aged poxers obviously having a beef with each other. One was snarling, and the other one was posturing like something out of a nature documentary. The whole thing was surreal—just like the bombshell Prianka dropped on my head.

  “Yeah, well, that was pretty hard to believe, too,” I said.

  “Why? Was I that bad?” she snapped.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I mean it was unbelievable.” I was going for the quick save but not doing a very good job.

  “What was so unbelievable?”

  “I . . . um . . . ugh . . . that you kissed me at all?”

  Prianka stood and stormed off toward the back of the store.

  Great. Just great. No pun intended, but this was virgin territory for me. Why did she have to be so confusing? So Prianka was sort of hot. So I sort of despised her. So she was kind of annoying. She was still sort of cool to have around. Someone really needed to hand me a road map because I was lost, big time.

  I stood and followed her to the back of the store but she had already stormed upstairs with some of the supplies. Of course she left the lion’s share for me.

  I guess I was being punished. I just wasn’t sure for what.

  37

  NO WONDER STELLA chose the bird she did. The rooster was a bastard and a half. Not like the white one, which was totally friendly. She could pick that one up and tuck him under her arm, and he remained perfectly content.

  But the one she wanted us to use? Let’s just say making direct eye contact wasn’t a good idea. We finally manhandled him into the cage, ruffled feathers flying everywhere, and locked him down tight.

  Andrew didn’t know quite what to make of the whole spectacle. He kept twisting his head from side to side and hopping back and forth from Jimmy to Sanjay. He even landed on my shoulder once before realizing he was on the wrong perch, which made him leap off like he’d been burned.

  On Stella’s deck there was a fire escape which led to the roof. We decided our first order of business was to clear all four sides of the building. If we could get that done, we had a chance at getting to the minivan and, after, to Chuck’s Hummer for the rest of our supplies.

  None of us said so, but we all knew we didn’t really need most of the things in the Hummer. We could have made due with packing up on groceries from the health food store. What we really needed were the guns. Even though none of us could shoot, without those guns, who knew how vulnerable we would be out there? I did notice, as disapproving as Stella was about the whole kids and firearms scenario, she added a book on basic firearms safety to Sanjay’s pile.

  We also needed the kayak or the kid would likely pitch a fit come bedtime.

  I took the fire escape first. Prianka handed the rooster up to me along with three bottles of lighter fluid and the rope. Then she climbed up followed by Trina, who was holding a shopping bag full of supplies.

  We carried everything to the front of the building and laid it all out in front of us.

  “Let’s see,” said Trina as she surveyed her booty. “We’ve got some empty bottles, a box of matches, and some old tie-dyed t-shirts I think may be pre-Woodstock.”

  “Aren’t those worth money on eBay?” I asked.

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  I patted the cage with the rooster. “I’ve got the bait.”

  Prianka picked up the coil of rope. “I guess that makes me rope girl.” She took one end and carefully threaded the rope over and under the mesh wire from one end of the cage to the other. In the middle of her work, the rooster let out a crow, and we all jumped. “Let’s hope that means ‘Here I am—come eat me,’” she said as she pulled about a two foot length through the other end of the cage and knotted it tightly to the rest of the rope.

  “If you’re rope girl, I’m cocktail girl,” said Trina as she filled an empty bottle about three quarters of the way full with lighter fluid. She rolled up one of the tie-dyed shirts and stuck an end all the way down into the bottle. The other end she let hang out. “Molotov cocktail, that is.” She soaked the end that was hanging out with lighter fluid.

  We all looked over the side of the building. There must have been at least a hundred poxers close enough to come running when the dinner bell rang.

  I lifted the cage up and over the edge.

  “Wait,” said Trina. “Maybe we should name her.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  Prianka looked the other way and tried not to let my sister see her roll her eyes.

  “Yeah. I think if she doesn’t survive unscorched, she should have a name so we can all remember her.” Trina thought for a moment. “Didn’t Sanjay say this kind of bird lays chocolate colored eggs?”

  “This kind of bird’s a boy,” said Prianka.

  “Well I think she’s pretty,” said Trina.

  “Then how about Cuckoo,” snapped Prianka.

  Hormonal much? I stood there watching my sister and Prianka having a little hissy fit over a chicken. I can’t say I wasn’t mildly amused. I needed a little bit of levity right about now.

  “I’m not calling her Cuckoo,” she huffed. “I don’t care if she’s a cuckoo moron or whatever Stella said she was.” Trina thought for a moment. “I know! I hereby name you Fudge on account of your chocolate colored eggs.”

  Prianka sighed, and I sort of snorted. “Fudge it is,” I said and began lowering the cage down over the side of the building.

  About half way to the ground, Fudge crowed again, but none of the poxers seemed to notice. I kept letting the rope out, hand over hand, until the cage hit the ground.

  Nothing happened.

  The dead kept meandering back and forth in aimless circles. None of them seemed to notice that a nice, juicy, bloody, dinner was being served up fresh and raw. Since the bird was just a teensy weensy bit of a dick and was probably going to be a poxer snack anyway, I pulled the cage up about five feet and dropped the rope. This resulted in two things. First, the cage made a reasonably loud clatter when hitting the ground. Second, Fudge crowed.

  Every poxer in earshot took the bait like they were all on remote control. In unison, their heads whipped around toward the cage sitting on the sidewalk in front of The Wordsmith Used Book Emporium.

  At first they didn’t start moving.

  “What are they doing?” said Trina.

  “I’m not sure—maybe waiting for an invitation to dinner?” I pulled up the cage and dropped the rope again. Fudge screeched when the cage hit the ground.

  This time, they heard the dinner bell and came running.

  38

  “SEVENTY-THREE,” said Prianka. “No wait a minute. Seventy-four.” Her hair covered her face as she bent over the side of the building. “Pull the cage up. The last thing we need is for them to get Fudge.”

  I chuckled and pulled up on the rope.

  “What’s so funny?” she snapped.

  “You called the chicken, Fudge.”

  “Grow up, Tripp.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Trina held the Molotov cocktail in one hand and the matches in another. She was
looking for a spot to drop the bottle so the home-made bomb wouldn’t just clunk a poxer on the head. She wanted the cocktail to hit the pavement and explode.

  “There’s no clear spot,” she whined. “It’s just one big mass of dead.”

  The zombies crowded around the cage, reaching up with their grubby mitts. I’m sure Fudge dropped a little fudge on them once or twice, but they probably didn’t notice.

  “Wait,” I said. “I have an idea.” I slowly began to shift the rope left to right, and the cage started swaying. The mass of poxers followed the swinging rooster like a beacon. First they all shuffled left, then they all shuffled right.

  “That’s good,” said Trina. “Keep doing that.”

  I could see her calculating where exactly the bottle would hit pavement close enough to light the poxers on fire. She followed the mob with her eyes as they all moved back and forth, back and forth.

  “The damn rooster’s going to puke,” said Prianka.

  I snorted. “I’m sure the damn rooster thinks he’s at an amusement park.”

  “Okay,” Trina said as she struck a match and lit the t-shirt soaked with lighter fluid. Flames burst into life.

  “One, one zombie, two, one zombie, three, one zombie . . . die,” she hissed and dropped the bottle over the edge. Fire plummeted past the dangling cage and hit the ground like a bullet. I immediately pulled Fudge back up and out of the way of the flaming carnage—and carnage there was.

  The bottle exploded and liquid fire doused the closest poxers. They immediately burst into flames and started squealing. One by one they popped, and burning chunks hit the next wave of undead. So it went, over and over again until almost every dead thing on the street was truly snuffed. Burning piles were strewn everywhere and that attracted more poxers. They were too stupid to realize that fire was bad, so they reached for the embers as though the crackling piles were something yummy to eat.

  Several more poxers were offed that way.

  “Pure genius,” I said. “I can’t believe that plan worked.”

  “One side down, three to go,” said Trina and eagerly filled up another bottle with lighter fluid.

  I went to pull Fudge back up to see if he was fried, but he crowed, so I didn’t bother. Instead I just dragged the rope around to the left hand side of the building. There was a small park there, carved out of a spot where a building must have been demolished. The park only had a few benches and a fountain. Some tents had been set up for Fall Fest, and there was another healthy poxer population in sight.

  This time around, the poxers noticed the cage immediately—maybe because I clanked Fudge against the side of the building when I turned the corner.

  Once again, I used the swinging rooster technique to get them all in a tight group. Trina lit the bottle, I pulled Fudge up, and she rained fire down upon them like some twisted demi-goddess with Zeus envy.

  Still, things don’t ever go smoothly, do they? One of the burning dead tumbled into the side of a tent before exploding, and the tent went up in flames, too. That one caught another tent on fire, as well as a third, which buckled sideways and fell into an awning on the side of the building across the little park.

  That building belonged to the little pig who built his house with sticks.

  The awning went up in flames fast. Before we really understood what was happening, the whole doorway was on fire. We watched the wood burn, unblinkingly, not knowing if we just did something very, very wrong or something very, very right.

  “Well that should keep them busy for a while,” said Prianka with her hands on her hips.

  “Yeah, but what if that place goes up in flames, or falls this way.” I pulled on the rope, hand over hand, until the cage was up and over the side of the building. Fudge the rooster blinked at me with his little, beady eyes but looked no worse for wear.

  “Built of bricks,” said Trina as she worked on preparing another fire bomb. However, when we went to the right side of the building, we found that most of the poxers were attracted to the smoke and flames in the park and were headed in that direction.

  That just left the alley. We carefully gathered our supplies together and climbed down the fire escape. Jimmy and Stella were on the deck nervously staring at the burning building next door.

  “Worked like a charm,” I chirped. Stella just stared at the flames next door as they rose higher and higher.

  “That’s an historic building,” she said to the wind, her eyes focused on the flames. “Did you know that?”

  Tears streamed down her face as she stared unblinkingly as the wooden building burned. Jimmy took her hand as the flames grew. They licked at the second story windows, and pretty soon smoke started pouring out of the top floor.

  The poxers that were still mobile in the park grabbed at the fire and burst into flames one after another. With every squeal, Stella shuddered.

  “The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and wrath,” she whispered as she surveyed the chaos. “He takes revenge on all who oppose Him and furiously destroys His enemies.”

  She pulled her hand away from Jimmy’s and turned to us.

  “He displays His power in the whirlwind and the storm. The billowing clouds are the dust beneath His feet. His rage blazes forth like fire, and the mountains crumble to dust in His presence.” Stella wiped tears from her swollen eyes. None of us said anything, maybe because there was nothing to say. Stella sniffed. “Yeah, well, I never took much stock in the bible, anyway.” She turned to watch the building burn. “Besides, God didn’t do this,” she said. “It was man. It was man who did all this.”

  39

  WE ENDED UP staying the night. I really didn’t want to and neither did Trina, but we both knew that we couldn’t just torch a building then leave Stella there by herself. Besides, we were all exhausted. We turned a lot of poxers into toast. I doubted the ones left were bright enough to regroup by morning.

  Besides, if my parents were at Aunt Ella’s, we were sure they’d wait for us.

  Prianka and I went back down to the agricultural cooperative and brought up one of the bright, plastic wheelbarrows. We figured Sanjay would be cool with sleeping underneath it.

  The whole time we were down there, not a word was shared between us.

  Later, as the sun sank in the sky, we all sat on Stella’s deck and watched quietly as the wooden building next door crumbled in flames. Every once in a while, we heard a poxer squeal and pop, which was totally eerie. Still, I think we all felt comforted knowing there was one less of those things in the world.

  We didn’t talk much. Everyone was spent. I found myself staring at Prianka more than a few times, and she actually caught me once. My faced turn red. Trina sat right next to Jimmy, leaning up against him. Finally, he stretched, yawned, and when his arms came back down, one draped over my sister’s shoulder.

  Sanjay lay with Poopy Puppy on the floor, perusing the same stack of books that Stella had given him. I couldn’t imagine the size of the brain that was storing all that knowledge, but I was grateful he could.

  Andrew perched on the top of Sanjay’s back with his head tucked underneath his wing. I guess I was glad that he was with us, too.

  We ended up going to bed early. Prianka had surprisingly little trouble convincing Sanjay to sack out underneath the wheelbarrow. Stella brought out a bunch of blankets and pillows and apologized for not having beds for us to use. We were grateful for what she had. For some reason, each of us hugged her goodnight like she was our mom or something.

  When we finally did fall asleep, I dreamt about school and Spanish class. The teacher, Mr. Santos, was talking so fast that I couldn’t understand anything he was saying—and I was pretty good at Spanish. He kept talking faster and faster until he finally started yelping. After that, his head exploded.

  I woke with a start. Trina was cuddled against
Jimmy. Prianka was up and standing by the window, staring out at the darkness. I stood and went over to her.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Can’t sleep?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Bad dreams.” I looked past her into the night. “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m just looking,” she said. “I can’t believe we burned down a building.”

  “I can’t believe ninety-nine percent of the past three days.”

  She sighed but stayed quiet. After a couple minutes I turned to go back to bed. Prianka reached out her arm and stopped me.

  “Thanks,” she said—again. Prianka Patel was being appreciative all over the place.

  “For what?”

  There’s a whole lot of things she could have said like ‘thanks for saving me and my brother,’ or ‘thanks for helping with the wheelbarrow,’ but what she ended up saying caught me by surprise.

  “Thanks for staring at me,” she said. “Just . . . thanks.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up because I smelled something really good. Stella was in the kitchen cooking. “What smells amazing?” I asked her

  “What smells amazing is pumpkin muffins with cinnamon, scrambled eggs courtesy of the chickens out on the deck, and apple pancakes,” Jimmy chimed in. Everyone else was already up and eating.

  Who knew when we were going to be able to eat like that again, so we polished off everything.

  After, we readied ourselves to leave. Our first order of business was to open the blinds, go out on the deck, and check to see what the poxer situation looked like below. The building next door was still smoldering. Black smoke rose out of the pile of ashes and sailed off into a perfect sky.

  Prianka climbed up on the roof. A minute later she came back down and reported that the zombie numbers were more or less under control. Sure, there were a bunch of them still around, but they seemed to be further down the street toward the center of town. We all looked over the back of the deck and made sure that the alley was empty. Thankfully it was.