Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory

by Cotton, Daniel

  “My observation lit a fire under my nervous little lawyer. He demanded that the bag be weighed immediately and in front of him. It was almost a quarter pound light!”

  Eli has to laugh at the small time drug peddler being let off because Waterloo’s finest were pinching the evidence. “They just dropped everything?”

  “It was too much of an embarrassment for them, I guess. After that, I went into business for my...”

  “Psst!” someone hisses from below the dock.

  “…self,” Gar finishes and looks around his feet. “Careful, there’s some sort of snake around us.”

  “Psst! Gar!”

  “Holy crap! It knows my name!”

  Eli can only shake his head at his hopeless stoner friend. He kneels down to look between the weathered boards. “Hey, I think they’re looking for you.”

  “Perhaps they think I’m someone else,” Dan says. “Can I borrow your boat?”

  “First tell me why they’re looking for you. They called us in because they don’t want civies going out anymore. They said to be on the lookout for you.”

  “Two of my people went out and haven’t come back. I need to go and get them.”

  Soldiers head toward them on foot. Eli looks to his companions for advice, but they come up empty. “Gar, keep them busy.”

  “Fucking how?”

  “Be creative. Roll ’em one, tell them about God’s bugger, or about that crazy chick you met in Georgia.”

  “I’ll do all three, man!” Gar jogs to meet the soldiers halfway.

  Kelly helps Dan out of the water while Eli climbs back onboard. The pop star unties the lines that hold the boat to the dock. Trying to look casual, she and Eli hold a cooler between them to cover Dan’s entry. Kelly gives the craft a kick to send it drifting right before Eli guns the engine and cruises away at top speed.

  They travel around the barrier wall that was erected to keep adventurous trespassers from gaining access to the park without paying the exorbitant admission. Eli helps Dan because he respects what he’s trying to do, he respects him for holding the cure in his blood, but mainly because when they had compared their stories Eli realized Dan was the reason the dead left the suburban street he once lived on with his daughter. This allowed him to get his little girl to the Hammond Grand.

  They drift up to a dock on the other side of the wall. The world looks the same, but feels different. Dread builds in Dan’s chest, which he hates, but he also missed the feeling.

  “There’s a truck by the tackle shop that’s good to go,” Eli says. He hands Dan a 9mm. “Here. They let us carry outside. You’ll probably need it. I’ll have to tell them you took it from me.”

  “Thanks for your help. I hope this doesn’t get you in trouble or anything. I can hit you a few times to make it more believable.”

  “No, that’s ok. They’ll just have to take my word on it.” Eli laughs.

  Now armed with more than just good intentions, and with a mode of transportation, Dan is as ready as he can be. Oz and Carla had told him the route they were taking to Rubicon, so he assumes they came back the same way. All he has to do is find where they got separated from the group, track down where they may have gone from there, and, if they’re alive, save them. Sounds easy enough.

  16

  Carla and Oz watched in disbelief as the new zombie breed tore apart the dried out corpse Oz had removed from the car at the gas pump. It was a vicious, relentless attack. They ripped the dead woman’s limbs from their sockets and ate her dehydrated flesh. She’s merely an appetizer though. The main course is out of reach, but still they try.

  The radioactive dead pushed items to the fallen soda machine, but so far haven’t been able to gain the elevation required to climb as their quarry had. The trash can they stacked on top of it buckled under their weight when they all attempted to stand on it at the same time.

  Though the ghouls are able to work as a team, they still aren’t capable of sharing. They shove against an ice chest, scraping it along the pavement until it reaches their desired location. But then they push and fight one another to be the first to climb up. It’s still not high enough, however.

  ###

  Dan speeds along in his borrowed truck until he can go no farther. He comes to a halt at a horrific scene. Down the way is a mess of wreckage, where an overpass has been dropped across the highway. At the road’s edge is a school bus on its side, and a crippled semi has been abandoned in the path of oncoming traffic. But what is strewn over the road is the most unsettling: glistening bones picked clean, strips of cloth stiff with blood. Dan takes in the sight with a shudder. Guns lay uselessly by the skeletal remains. Many gleaming brass casings prove how useless the weapons were against the dead.

  This must be the place, Dan thinks. And this must be the work of the new dead. He turns his truck around, crunching over the scattered bones and heading back slowly. He wants to try and put himself in their shoes and see where they may have detoured since he hasn’t run across them yet. Surrounded by miles of nothing, Dan fights off thoughts that they are dead and tries to remain hopeful.

  The first exit the truck comes across offers a clue as to where they may have run. A twitching corpse is on the off-ramp. The ghoul is in tattered clothes and has only one working arm. The other limbs are present but paralyzed. It has gunshot wounds to the head, but as he was told this new batch need a little more prompting to go dead for good. The entire brain needs to be destroyed. Unlike the kinder gentler zombies he knows and loves, not just one round will do.

  The zombie claws at the ground, dragging itself inch by inch. Its fingers are worn down to nubs from the effort it takes to travel down the hill.

  “They’d be looking for shelter,” Dan says as he turns down the incline, running over the persistent corpse and making sure his front tire crush its head. That is enough to still the monster. If only he could line them up to dispatch them all at once.

  At the bottom of the exit, he can go right or left. A blue sign tells him he’ll find gas and food to the right, and pretty much nothing to the left. That’s where they’d go.

  He doesn’t have to go far before he finds a crucial sign that his friends are alive. “Fuck me!”

  Dan stops at the sight of the service station. The lot and pump area are clogged with zombies. The dead move erratically like drug users desperate for a fix. Their drug of choice is evidentially on the roof.

  ###

  “Hey, a truck!” Carla points. “I think it’s Dan!”

  “How can you know that?” Oz asks with disbelief.

  “He’s using his turn signal!” she says with glee. “Who the hell is that for?”

  Carla waves her arms overhead to catch the driver’s eye. The pickup’s horn blows in long intervals, wanting to get the attention of the dead. It doesn’t have to wait to see if the zombies will take the bait. Once the noise is issued, all their heads snap around to look at the new item that has been added to the menu. They run as the truck quickly turns one hundred and eighty degrees and peels away, taking the horde with it.

  Though the dead had gotten plenty to eat on the highway, and the morsel of their own kind in the lot, Carla figures they are still famished by how fast they take after the pickup. They chase it down the road and up the on-ramp. If it is Dan, she knows she’ll be seeing the truck come back into the service station’s lot pretty soon. He’s just making a small window for her and Oz to get in.

  Dan can’t believe how quick the dead are moving. They look like they’re on fast forward as they fill the rearview mirror. He lingers on the highway to ensure they take the bait before speeding back down to park where his friends climb down the wall.

  “It took you long enough,” Carla says, once she’s in the center of the cab.

  “I had a little trouble getting out.” He drives them from the service station.

  “I can see that.” She refers to his still damp clothing.

  Dan can’t turn left to head back onto the highway. The
dead are too thick and too riled up. He heads right, hoping to pull off the same trick he had just used to claim his friends, heading towards a series of dilapidated old factories.

  Oz hasn’t spoken a word since he got in. He examines his leg just above his boot. A groan of pain leaves him that makes Carla look at the spreading red stain. She lifts his pant leg and lets out a gasp. One of the zombies bit into her man.

  “Oh, my god!” she says. “Why didn’t you tell me you got bit?”

  “I was going to.” His voice is low, full of remorse.

  “Good thing we have the cure, right?” Carla says as she searches for something to dress his wound with.

  “I… never took the shot,” he whispers.

  “Yeah, right!” Carla nudges her boyfriend for his distasteful joke. When Oz doesn’t break from the melancholy act, she nudges him harder. “Tell me you’re kidding!”

  He shakes his head while he looks down at the wound. With so many people and so little cure, the military started administering it to the highest at risk of dying: the elderly, the soldiers, and the sick. Next came everyone else, so it wasn’t hard for Oz to slip through the cracks. “I meant to… for you and the kids. I just have a thing about needles.”

  “A thing! You have a thing!” Carla yells at him, shoving Oz as hard as she can. Though he has nearly a hundred pounds on her, she pushes him hard against the passenger side door. Carla’s eyes tingle and burn, wanting to release torrents of tears, but she refuses. She clings to the anger. Anything is better than the intense sorrow trying to come to the surface. The man she loves is as good as dead. “You fucking idiot!”

  “Carla,” Dan says.

  Carla grits her teeth as the burning in her eyes travels to her nose. A building agony that’s only a prelude to the emotional pain she’s in for.

  An uncomfortable silence has taken residence within the truck. A tension builds from the knowledge that they aren’t all going home.

  Dan has more bad news for his passengers that he doesn’t reveal. They are running low on gas and the dead have learned from the last time he used his maneuver. They create a wide formation to block him from doubling back. If they were the old variety, he’d be able to risk plowing through, but not with these zombies.

  Inevitable tears stream down Carla’s face as she weeps for Oz. Between the sobs, she tries to think of a way to fix this. “If we get you back… maybe the shot…”

  “I don’t think it works that way,” he tells her, hating himself for what he’s putting her through.

  “What about that thing Gar is always shoving in our faces… His bugger? God’s bugger!”

  “I like Gar. He’s harmless. But even if the eggheads would listen to him, there isn’t enough time. I can already feel it.”

  He knows he was foolish, and now he must accept the price. Carla hugs Oz, though she is still furious over his selfish actions. It’s the last time she’ll ever get the chance to hold him. He strokes her hair, milking what little time they have left for all it’s worth.

  They are running out of road. Ahead, where they should be able to connect to other routes back to the highway, is blocked by a wreck of cars. Dan has been able to keep a slight lead on the dead so far, but the truck is sputtering as the tank begins to run dry. Ironically there is a can of gas in the bed. They just don’t have enough time to use it. Dan pulls up to one of the defunct industrial buildings with a plan. It’s a long shot and rather absurd, but those have always been his best.

  “What’s this?” Oz asks.

  “Cornstarch factory,” Dan says. “Let’s go.”

  Without further probing, the couple follows their leader into the dark plant. They lock the door behind them and wedge it with a crowbar. Dan leads them deeper through the shadows of the windowless place, towards the back, using his refillable lighter that he’s kept in working order though he had quit smoking months ago. Carla has a small flashlight that she uses to cut away the darkness. The dead bang at the door behind them.

  Dan had worked in factories before, but not like this one. His occupation was CNC, but most industrial places have certain things in common that he thinks he can use to buy them enough time to gas up and get home.

  The howling dead pound on the door and along the corrugated walls, trying to figure a way in. Oz and Carla move to a space within the plant with a high ceiling. This area has windows all around that allow them to see big silo-like tanks suspended above conveyer belts. Dan assumes this is where they used to fill bags and boxes with powdered cornstarch.

  He takes in the area as if he’s looking for something, though he’s never been here before. He spots it by tall storage racks that extend all the way up the back wall and end at a sky light. They can’t just climb and expect the dead to stay inside while they gas up and take off. They’ll need to ensure the dead can’t follow them. “Oz, can you break that water main? I wanna flood the place.”

  “Sure,” Oz says, not seeing where this is going.

  Carla stands idle, listening to the dead scream outside. They have made it around the building and have it surrounded. The tops of their heads show through the windows, and she knows it’s just a matter of time before they find something to push over so they can crawl in.

  A few whacks with a fire axe opens the thick pipe, and a torrent of water flies out. Oz returns to Carla’s side as Dan comes back from closing the door that separates this space from the rest of the facility. Water is already up to their ankles as he gets to work on the next phase of his plan.

  Dan runs to each hanging silo, breaking off the spouts that hold back the factory’s product, spilling the white powder onto the conveyors where it collects then falls onto the flooding floor. With every vat contributing, it isn’t long before the rising water becomes murky. He just hopes the proportions are adequate. The mixture needs to be more watery around the walls and windows for this to work.

  “Magic Mud,” Oz says, smiling as he realizes what Dan is up to. He joins him in kicking the concoction around to mix it.

  “I’ve heard of this before.” Carla aids them in their mixing. “This another Uncle Bruce thing?”

  “No. This one’s all me actually,” Dan says, giving a proud smile as he remembers having the rare privilege of explaining this simple experiment to Bruce as a boy. “You probably made it in grade school. Magic Mud is a colloid. It moves as both a liquid and a solid.”

  “My feet are sticking.” Carla tries to lift her legs but the mixture sets like concrete around her boot.

  “Good! That means it’s working,” Dan says. “You two better start climbing before this stuff gets too thick and too high.”

  “Not this time, boss.” Oz unslings his SAW and hands it to Dan. “I’ll draw them in, you get my girl home. Take care of her and my kids. Tell them every day that I love them.”

  Dan had asked Oz to promise the same thing a while back. “Of course.”

  “Come with us.” Carla buries her face in his broad chest, about to cry once more.

  “Hey.” Oz lifts her chin with one finger to meet her eyes. “What do we say?”

  She recites the words she had engraved on Oz’s SAW, “Live now, cry later.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Carla starts climbing the racks.

  Dan shakes Oz’s hand. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Don’t be. Thanks for coming out for us. You take care of my girl, get her home. It’s been an honor, muzzleloader.”

  “You too, duct tape.” Dan swallows his sadness while turning away to climb out of the factory.

  A metallic scrape from outside lets them know the dead have propped something beneath the windows. Glass begins to crack.

  Shrieks echo within the industrial space as the new breed enter. They drop into the packaging area as their prospective meal calls to them from the center, “Come and get it!”

  The thickening flood is inconsistent since the exact recipe couldn’t be made. Some areas are watery and others are rock solid
, but the dead will help to mix it. They land in the milky white mud and stick like flies in honey, and the mixture holds stronger the more they fight against it. The trapped corpses create an island that the other zombies coming in use, only to add to the gathering mass like a volcanic formation in the sea. The enclosed space still fills with water and powdered cornstarch, and soon it will cover everything below the windows.

  Oz backs away from them slowly so he doesn’t agitate the concoction and can walk freely. He screams for them to come and claim him as he does so, drowning out the wails of the dead.

  ###

  On the roof, Dan moves to the side so he can look over at the corpses who continue to enter the building. Once all the zombies have entered the trap, he returns to Carla who sits at the skylight. It pains her to hear her lover calling for the dead, but it’s worse when he goes silent.

  “We have to go,” Dan tells her softly. “Are you with me?”

  Carla doesn’t meet his eyes as she nods and gets to her slime coated feet. Together, they head toward the front of the plant where Dan finds a way down. Carla collapses into the passenger seat while he fills the tank from the gas can in the bed. With a shake of the container, he judges they should have just enough to get back to the park.

  Carla stares out her window as they head back toward the highway. She’s lost within herself, wondering how she’ll ever get to sleep without her big teddy bear beside her, how she’ll break the news to Oz’s many children as well as her brother Sid. Sid had really taken to Oz. After all the losers he saw her with it was refreshing for them both to have a good man like Oz around, someone Sid could look up to.