The Dead Live On

by Cooper Brown, Julie

  Dawn was not in Tennessee like he said. A lamp without a shade was on the end table and was shining brightly over her form. She was strapped down to the bed, her hands bound at the wrist and hung from a hook in the wall above the head board. Her head was propped up on a pillow, and a bungee cord was strapped across her chest above her breasts, making her bosom look full and swollen. Her legs were spread far apart and tied to the foot board by her ankles. Her skin had a bluish hue, and her face was bruised severely. Her eyes were closed and she was still. At first I had thought he beat her to death and was getting angry with myself for not seeing the signs or hearing her screams. How could someone do this? I was not a nosy neighbor and I was ashamed looking in on this, but there was no gag on her mouth so why didn’t anybody hear her?? Then her eyes opened, they were the eyes of the dead.

  I could clearly see now, that she was infected. Her head jerked in the direction of the door. She began to …what seemed like sniffing the air, she was snapping her teeth together and turning her head at odd angles, and I don’t think she was able to see. She was beginning to struggle. Why would he keep her like this? I was about to find out, and what he did made this whole scene so much worse.

  Dan had come into view, he was completely naked and his organ was small and erect. I thanked my lucky stars for the size of Evan. (It’s amazing how you think the most inappropriate things at the worst times.) I should’ve turned from the window just then but I couldn’t. He then slathered some kind of lubricant onto his - you know, while he looked at her. And for just a second I thought that maybe he was going to masturbate instead, which isn’t much better considering he’d be beating off to a dead woman. He didn’t look nervous or afraid and he certainly didn’t look ashamed. Which he should have!!! I could not believe he was going to do this. But he did! I gathered that this was not his first time. I watched with disgust as he got onto the bed between her legs and sat back on his calves, put his thighs under her legs, causing them to bend at the knee and fall further apart. She was still sniffing and snapping at the air, he entered her and grabbed both her breasts, squeezing and twisting them in a way that would have brought a living woman to tears. His head went back and he proceeded to rape the reanimated corpse of his wife. There’s a word for that, necrophilia, or maybe now we gotta come up with a new word. One for screwing the living dead. Zombiphilia?

  How disgusting! I was horrified. He continued his grotesque pumping into her body and leaned forward to put his face just a hair out of reach of her snapping teeth. He was teasing her! And he was enjoying it! This was beyond wrong in so many ways! Before I could stop myself I slammed my open hand on the window and ducked. Shit, what was I doing peeping anyway? I didn’t need to see that. I should have run for Evan as soon as I saw Dan walk into the room.

  I looked back in to see if it got his attention, it must’ve startled him because he had fallen on top of her and she had a good size chunk of his cheek in her mouth trying to tear it off. He wasn’t even screaming, only using his hands to press her face away from him. I then noticed he had several older bites on his arms, he would be infected as well. I dropped the bag of food I was holding and ran home to get Evan. I threw open the door and they jumped up in surprise.

  “Evan, he is fucking a dead woman! I mean zombie. Dawn. She’s a zombie, and he’s fucking her and I scared him and she’s biting him, right now!” I said all this fast and frantically and Evan grabbed me by my shoulders.

  “Calm down, Jill. Tell me slowly.”

  “I’m gonna go get a soldier.” Old Joe said and hurried out the door.

  “I went to give him food, he wasn’t answering. I heard music in the garage he wasn’t there either, so I looked in his window. I shouldn’t have, I know, but I did. And he was screwing her!” I was still speaking a little too fast for him and my pitch of my voice kept rising; I was becoming hysterical as my mind continued to process it. He pulled me outside to go catch up to Old Joe.

  He and the soldiers were already knocking on Dan’s door, one of them was Asshole. They had their guns raised. Dan answered the door and looked right past the soldiers and glared at me. His cheek flapping and blood covered his face and upper body and hands.

  They rushed in and told him to put his hands behind his back, cuffed him and sat him on the couch. The ‘Asshole’ went back into the bedroom and the other soldier, Fraley was the name on his jacket, remained in the living room with us.

  Fraley asked Dan how long Dawn had been sick, and why he didn’t inform them. Dan did not answer. Fraley also told him that he is infected and will be taken in to the hospital to be examined. After what seemed too long for Clark to be back there, we heard a shot and Dan continued to stare me down.

  Clark finally came back into the living room and said, “Woo wee, you sure had it made! Fine woman like that, got the zombies, and you was still giving it hell. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing. But you know what this means. You been bit, lover boy. Looks to me like you have been bitten, a lot! Put up a fight did she, now? Better dead than alive, huh?” and he snickered.

  Dan suddenly changed right in front of our eyes, he screamed and then rose up off the couch without a word and bit Clark’s nose clean off, the other soldier, Fraley, quickly shot Dan in the head and threw Clark on the floor and cuffed his hands behind his back, pulled him to his feet and said “Well Clark, it seems to me that you know what happens from here, and to be honest with you, there is none more deserving than you.”

  He nodded his head at us, told us to get home and got on his radio to dispatch a unit to pick up Clark and the bodies of Dan and Dawn. We told him about Jake’s body and he said they would remove it as well. Old Joe looked at Clark and said “My, oh my. How the tables have turned. You gonna get to see what it’s like to burn in your bonfire, boy. I’m just sorry I’m not the one throwing you in.” Clark spit a great big gob of blood at Old Joe, only a little made it far enough to hit him in the face. Fraley threw him down on the ground again and pinned him down with his foot. Clark screamed and fought and it looked like he was going to spit on Fraley as well, but Fraley put his gun to Clarke’s temple. “Now we both know, that I have every right to put a bullet in your brain, right now. Don’t make me do it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Once Evan and I got back in the house and settled down, he told me what Fraley told them. The infection was spreading too quickly and the troops were having trouble keeping it under control in the outer lying neighborhoods. Some of the soldiers were turning as well. The food busses were cancelled and the shelters they were working on were not yet functioning. At the end of the day, they were to abandon post and return to headquarters for further instructions, they were removing the remaining soldiers and placing them somewhere else. I asked Evan why the soldier would tell him this, he told me that he asked him the same thing, and Fraley said he told them so we could run.

  It wasn’t an hour after they hauled the bodies away, that I heard the commotion of people right out front. We stepped out on the porch to see what was going on. All of our neighbors save for Evelyn and Joe, were out there looking at Jake’s front porch. This had brought them out of the house. We stepped down to the street to see what they were looking at. The other people paid no mind to us then.

  Sue had come back, and she was leaning weakly and sluggishly slapping at the front door. Her clothes were dirty and torn in places. Her hair was a tangled mess. I’m sure we were all feeling sorry for her for just a moment, knowing what had happened with the children and Jake. Someone’s shoe scraped the ground, she heard it and her head cocked to the side, she slowly turned around, limping. We all gasped at this, she was infected.

  Her bloodshot eyes were sunken into deep dark sockets, a part of her bottom lip was missing and her right arm, her neck and right leg had big chunks of them missing. The wounds were a weird mix of yellow, purple and rust red. Oh, she looked just terrible! But yet she was standing and knocking on her own front door! Sue turned back around and began hitting the d
oor again; she didn’t try to attack anyone. No one said a word or moved. The soldiers had seen us all gathered and were walking our way to see what we were gawking at. Fraley saw her condition and shot her from where he was standing, blood splattered across the door. He gave Evan a look, and we all returned to our homes. But I was upset. How could she know where to go? She knew that was her house. She was dead by all rights, but she knew and that bothered me. I wondered how it looked to her.

  That is why I know that Evan is still there, somewhere deep inside. And that is why I will not put a gun to his head while he is looking at me. A part of him may be conscious enough to want me to do it, but he has no way to convey to me if he does.

  Well, now is a good a time as any to tell you about our friend Jimmy. He’s the reason I know you’ll turn if you even get the infected blood on you without being injured. Jimmy used to live across the street from us until he broke up with his girlfriend. He was around twenty - three or twenty - four, I can’t remember, but anyway he was just a good kid with a lot of problems so Evan took him under his wing. He was always doing crazy stuff to his hair like spiked Mohawks and dying it blonde, the next time we’d see him it would be shaved off and back to black and then the next time after that it would be a different style and color again. The kid called us Mom and Dad sometimes. We trusted him enough to let him spend a few days with us when he fell on hard times. When he wasn’t staying with us, he would pop in from time to time and check on us to see how we were doing.

  We had tried to call him when all hell broke loose, but he never answered. We were worried about him but there wasn’t anything else we could do and we didn’t know exactly where he lived. We kind of figured he’d show up sooner or later, and he did. When he showed up, we were in the house trying to go through the rest of our things assessing what we were going to take with us, because we were leaving first thing in the morning. We heard Old Joe, repeatedly shouting at someone.

  “GET DOWN! RIGHT NOW! I SAID GET DOWN!” We ran out to the porch to see what’s going on and it was Jimmy, and he had blood all over him. No wonder Old Joe had his shotgun on him. Jimmy had his hands in the air and was already down on one knee saying, “I’M GOOD, MAN! I’m GOOD! Old Joe, It’s me, Jimmy! I’m OKAY man! PLEASE!! Don’t shoot me, man. I swear, dude! I’m okay.” Old Joe lowered the shotgun, walked over and grabbed Jimmy’s hand to pull him up, clapped him on the back and said “I’m sorry, son. You just never know these days. You never know.” He looked at his hand and noticed he had gotten blood on him and shook his head in disgust and said “Get the hell off the streets, kid. And what are you doing out anyway? No one should be out. The troopers are damned near gone, and the dead is gettin’ thicker. I don’t know how you managed to make it past that soldier up there looking like that. Evan, I’ll be waiting for you in the morning. Jimmy, you’re more than welcome to come with us.” He was coughing hard as he went back into his house. I know now, that he was getting sick from Clark spitting in his face. Even if we knew about it then, what could we have done to stop it? Not a damn thing.

  We went down on the lawn as Jimmy was picking up a metal fence post he had been carrying and walked up to us.“ Put that thing back down and go out by the shed. I’ll go get some clothes for you and Evan can spray you off out there. You ain’t coming in the house with blood on you” I said. So, Evan hosed him down and he went in the shed to change. The pants were a little too big for him because he was so skinny, and he used a shoe string from an old pair of Evan’s shoes, to hold them up. They came into the house and I had resumed gathering our things and listened to them talking.

  “So, how did you make it past the soldiers?” Evan asked. “I came in through the woods behind the empty lot, and when he wasn’t looking I ran but Old Joe seen me, hawk eye that old feller is. I thought his hollering was gonna get me killed. I’m glad they didn’t hear him” he replied. “Did you cut yourself, what was all the blood?” I asked as I looked him over and turned him about.

  “Dude! I got to kill a zombie! It was cool! I was riding my bike up 41 from San Carlos, headed here to your house and got a flat. I had to start walking. That thing just came out of nowhere and the only thing I saw was that fence post, so I picked it up and blasted his head like I was hitting a homerun, man! He tried to get up, so I hit his head about five more times. Smashed it up! It was nasty but I got a lot of anger out of me when I killed it” he chuckled. “I don’t feel bad cause it wasn’t a real person, then I started taking the side streets up this way.”

  “Who were you staying with?” I asked.

  “Some girl I met a couple weeks ago, but she didn’t come home after leaving on the bus to get food yesterday. So I figure she’s gone, I reckoned I’d come here with y'all, but I had to get up here quick as I could. We gotta get outta here, now. I saw four troopers bust in a door and shoot everybody in the house. They weren’t even infected!”

  “See, Jillian!” Evan said as he sprung up off the couch and began pacing the floor. “I told you this was going to happen! I’ve been telling you for years!” Evan had been dreaming about U.S. soldiers, breaking into citizen’s houses and shooting them down without explanation, ever since he was a boy. I thought it ridiculous at the time. I cut him off. “Now, wait a minute. How do you know they weren’t Infected, Jimmy?”

  “Because the man said he wasn’t! They just kicked in the door, raised their guns and the man said that there weren’t any Infected in there. I didn’t hear any of the troopers say anything. They just started shooting and the others inside were screaming and begging until they had all been shot dead. They didn’t even use their machine guns; they shot them one at a time. It scared me to death! I ran as fast as I could to get off that street so they wouldn’t see me out. It ain’t safe to stay here anymore. I would have tried to call you but I lost my phone last week and I don’t know your number without it.”

  “The phones went down yesterday, internet too, and only static on the radio. We can’t get any information,” I said. “How do you know they weren’t just a rogue unit?”

  “I don’t,” he replied “but do we really wanna stick around and find out?” We updated him on things that went on around here. After we told him about Dan and Dawn he said, “I always knew he was a sick fuck. No pun intended. I never liked him.”

  “Well,” Evan began, “It’s eight thirty (p.m.) right now. We’ll leave at dawn. Old Joe wants to leave at eight, but I think the earlier the better. I don’t think the few soldiers that are left here are gonna come shooting us down. Fraley told us to run, so I know he’s not going to come up here and shoot us. Jill, make sure we have enough for all of us, we don’t know how long it will be before we will be able to get a hold of anything. We all need to rest. We’ll sleep in shifts. I’ll go first so I can watch during the night. Don’t let me sleep longer than five hours, but wake me if you need me or anything else happens.” He went into our bedroom and shut the door.

  I continued with my checklist and finished packing up and noticed Jimmy had fallen asleep sitting up. I left him there and started gathering our weapons, two guns and a pair of scythes.

  I walked over to Old Joe’s and knocked on his door, to tell him we were leaving earlier. He did not answer, I assumed he went to bed, we would see him in the morning.

  About an hour went by and Jimmy woke up. He went into the bathroom and I heard the sink running and I thought I heard him vomiting, I thought he was probably sick from what he’d done earlier. He stayed in there for a good ten minutes, when he came out he asked me, “Do you mind if I go back to sleep for a while?”

  “Of course not,” I told him “Get all the sleep you can. We’re leaving early.” He lay down on the couch and was out like a light. I sat and rolled the last of my smoke, it was just a small joint. I knew I wouldn’t be smoking it any time soon so I tossed it in my purse and forgot about it.

  Around two thirty in the morning Evan woke up and got in the shower. I put the clothes I wanted him to wear on the back of the door,
and then went back over my list again to make sure I had everything. Evan finished his shower and told me to get some rest. I told him to go over early and get Old Joe, that I had tried but he didn’t answer.

  I needed rest, though I wasn’t sure if I could fall asleep. I prayed for everyone’s safety, I prayed for my sisters to be safe. I knew it was going to be the last time I slept in my bed and I wanted to enjoy it. I got into bed and borrowed deep under the covers. I must’ve fallen asleep pretty quickly because I don’t remember anything after that thought, until I woke up to a gun shot in the house.

  It startled me so bad, that when I jumped up I almost broke my neck, because my feet were tangled in the blanket. I kicked it away and flung the door open to see the wall ahead of me in the living room covered in blood and brains and I could see the soles of Jimmy’s tattered shoes. It took a second for my mind to adjust to what I was looking at, I thought of what Jimmy said about the soldiers and the fear hit me like a brick. An icy chill worked its way from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, causing the sensation of my hair standing on end and an empty, hollow feeling in my stomach developed. Where is Evan?

  I ran up the short hallway and it seemed like it took forever until I saw Evan, standing stock still with the gun still aimed at where Jimmy must’ve been standing, there was a faraway look on his face. I looked down at Jimmy’s body on the floor, the back of his head was blown out and its contents were now sliding down the wall onto the back of our couch.

  I went up to Evan and softly told him “It’s okay. You can put the gun down now.” I put my hand on his arm and gently pressed to make him lower it. He was still looking at the bloody wall and clearly in disbelief of what he’d done.