The Dead & Dying

by William Todd Rose

  And I blamed those damn zombies for all of it. It was like these creatures suddenly embodied every horrible tragedy that had ever touched my life and I wanted nothing more than to crush their ugly fucking faces beneath the heel of my boot, to hack limbs and feel their cold, putrid blood oozing across my hands. A shot to the head was too kind for them, too easy. I wanted to make them suffer, to rip them apart with tooth and nail if necessary, to actually feel their bones crack and break….

  I’d found a lawnmower blade in the barn when I was looking for a shovel to bury Josie with. Also found some duct tape and I’d ended up wrapping the silvery stuff around one end of the blade until it bulged out and formed a handle of sorts. And this makeshift weapon became the sword of an avenging angel: a dark angel who tore through the countryside and burned with righteous anger, cleaving a trail of destruction that marked his path with signposts of arms and legs and headless torsos.

  I can’t reckon I can rightly say how many of those bastards I left lying in little chunks. Enough so that my shirt and jacket became so stiff with congealed blood that it seemed as if they’d been dipped in glue. Enough that I had to sharpen the blade at least twice a day and was continually keeping my eye out for more tape to patch up my handle.

  But even then it was never enough. I wanted to wipe each and every last one of those god forsaken nightmares off the face of the earth. And when the last one had fallen, when the world had been cleansed of their filth, I would raise my blade to the sky and shout at the top of my lungs: Is that the best You got? What now? Bring it on! Just You fucking try me, You sanctimonious bastard!

  Of course, that day never came. In the end there were simply too many of them and I was so damned tired. Hatred takes a heavy toll on a body: it saps the strength from you so slowly you don’t even realize you’re reacting a fraction of a second slower than the day before. You don’t notice that your lawnmower blade isn’t sinking into the skull quite as deeply as it used to. You have no clue that all you really want is a deep rest and an end to all the torment and anguish that gnaws within you like a pack of famished rats.

  But I made it pretty damn close, didn’t I? I reckon about eighty or ninety more miles and I would’ve been there. Still, maybe it’s for the best that I got myself bitten. What did I really expect to find there anyway? Some sort of absolution? Some kind of forgiveness? Well, maybe I never really deserved it anyway.

  I mean, who the hell leaves a little boy to die alone? It doesn’t matter that he was fading fast anyway. I should’ve stayed with him up to the very end. Hell, at the rate the sickness took hold after he ate the flesh from that dead freshy it wouldn’t have taken long. The last time I felt for a pulse it was so shallow and weak that for a moment I thought the boy had already turned.

  To be entirely honest, I really didn’t know what to do. I was scared, sad, angry, and defeated all at the same time. If only I hadn’t left the damn backpack behind or had taken the time to raid that grocer before entering the church. If I’d only put a little more fucking thought into my half-assed rescue or never left the boy alone to begin with….

  I’d done nothing but destroy every life I’d touched since this damn thing had started. Every idea I had seemed to have a way of backfiring on me. So yeah, I threw me a little tantrum in that church. Anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor ended up flying through the air and smashing against the walls: song books, candle holders, pews… I tore through that building, cussing at The Man Above, tears streaming down my face, lost and confused.

  I’d snatched this picture off the wall of Jesus with all these little children clustered around his feet. I held the gilded frame so tightly that the edges started cutting into my fingers and I pressed my face up so close that my spit peppered the glass as I yelled. I can’t rightly remember exactly what I was shouting but it was something about how it wasn’t fair, how this wasn’t supposed to happen to kids, and that I didn’t know what the hell He wanted out of me.

  After a bit, I threw that picture so hard that I kinda stumbled over my own feet as I let it go. I fell to the ground and heard the shattering of glass at the same time my body thudded against the floorboards.

  My head shot up and I saw that the picture had flown right through one of the stained glass windows and the stench of the crowd outside filled the room like air rushing into a vacuum. I picked myself up and stood directly behind the boy, who was moaning so softly now that it sounded more like a wheeze.

  I looked at the bloody vomit that caked his Power Rangers t-shirt, at the way his veins seemed so dark against his pale skin.

  Pulling my pistol from my waistband, I leveled it at the back of his head. The barrel was mere inches from his sweat drenched hair and I knew I should pull the trigger. That I should end his suffering and give him the same gift I’d given his mother.

  But I couldn’t do it. God knows I wanted to. My brain was telling me to pull that trigger but my body was in the midst of a full blown mutiny. All I could do was stand there and cry as I thought of that little girl in the forest.

  Mister, I….

  I couldn’t kill another child. I just couldn’t. So instead, I turned tail and ran. I scrambled back up that ladder and shimmied across the church roof just like I’d planned. Into the branches, then from tree to tree, and then finally dropping to the forest floor. And I simply walked away, trying not to think of the little boy who had utterly depended on me. The boy who was now taking his final breaths utterly alone.

  I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but the rain is really pouring down now. I can hear it slapping against the roof and the wind is slamming the door against the wall as cool wind gusts into the inside of the shack. The breeze causes the exposed nerve endings in my side to scream in agony and I grit my teeth as I close my eyes.

  I listen to the patter and think that maybe it’s time to leave all this behind. I’ve lived long enough to hear that final storm and that’s all I really wanted. Maybe now I can know peace.

  The pistol feels so heavy that it takes every ounce of concentration I have just to lift it. But isn’t this how it always was in the books and movies? Our so-called hero with the barrel of a gun in his mouth, a single round in the chamber, ready to usher his way into death?

  I open my eyes to take one final look at the world and see that dark silhouettes are shambling through the doorway. Looks like I reached this decision not a moment too soon.

  A flash of lightning illuminates the shack in electric blue and for a moment everything is as clear as day. I can see the decayed and peeling flesh of the rotters, the way their wet clothes cling to frames so frail and withered that it’s amazing that they can still stand at all. And I can also see that the one out in front, the one leading the pack so to speak, used to be a little kid.

  Another flash of lightning right after the first and I see the small rotter is wearing a tattered t-shirt that’s splotched with bloodstains. But I can just make out the Power Ranger logo and it takes only a fraction of a second for memory to overlap with reality.

  The lightning fades and I can hear the scuffle of feet against the floor. So close now that I can smell the rot and mildew.

  The barrel of the pistol floods my mouth with a metallic taste, like sucking on a penny.

  I try to tell myself to just do. To pull the trigger and end this fucking thing.

  But I can’t. It’s like I’m suddenly paralyzed and this thought keeps going through my head. What are the chances that out of all the rotters out there this particular one just happened to find me?

  Lightning again and the creature that used to be Jason is only a few feet away now. There’s no recognition on his face, no emotion what-so-ever. Just that empty stare of the walking dead.

  None of the zombies are close enough yet to even think about taking a bite, but I feel someone lightly touch my arm. The hand is warm and for a moment my heart forgets to beat.

  “You do whatever you think is right, baby. I’ll always love you no matter what.”

/>   I love you too, Josie. I think I loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough to make up for everything else.

  I take the barrel out of my mouth and aim into the darkness. When the next flash of lightning bathes the inside of the shack, Jason is leaning forward, his mouth opened wide, teeth ready to tear and rip.

  I pull the trigger as I should have so long ago and the bullet tears through his tiny skull as his body falls.

  Go, now. Be with your mother.

  I let the useless gun drop to the floor and squeeze my eyes shut as the first hands begin tugging at my clothes.

  It should only hurt for a little while. I don’t reckon I can have all that much life left in me.

  Still, at least I fulfilled the promise I made to the only woman I’d ever truly loved. At least I kept my word.

  I found what I was looking for. And –maybe – what had been looking for me as well.

  I close my eyes and await the end.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Named by the Google+ Insider’s Guide as one of their top 32 authors to follow, William Todd Rose writes dark, speculative fiction which often lends itself to the bizarre and macabre. With short stories appearing in various magazines and anthologies, his body of work also includes the novels Cry Havoc, Shut The Fuck Up and Die!, The Dead and Dying, and The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People, as well as the short story collection Sex in the Time of Zombies. For more information on the author, including links to free fiction, please visit him online at www.williamtoddrose.com

  If you enjoyed The Dead & Dying, you might also enjoy these other books by William Todd Rose:

  SEX IN THE TIME OF ZOMBIES

  Even in a world filled with the living dead, sex exists.

  A stripper hell-bent on survival faces off against the living dead in a no-holds barred dance of death.

  A lone soldier, separated from his unit, finds that the ghosts of his past may very well be more dangerous than a hotel overrun with zombified furries.

  A boy faces his inner demons, ready to do anything to be accepted by his peers.

  A woman, captured by slavers, finds out there are worse horrors than the walking dead.

  From the first day of the undead apocalypse to points far in the future, this book explores the roles sex and sexuality play in determining survival.

  Sex…zombies…love.

  Let the infection begin.

  THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY INFECTIVE PEOPLE

  Bosley Coughlin can travel through time. And the future does not look good.

  Through a heady cocktail of drugs and the occult, Bosley slips through time and space and glimpses The End. Cities lay in ruins, and those who still cling to life hide in the rubble like frightened animals. Walking carcasses shamble through the debris exacting a horrible fate upon any living they find.

  This horrific future is the only world fourteen year old Ocean has ever known. Starving and alone, she struggles for even the most basic of necessities: food, water, shelter, love…

  In the present, Bosley stumbles across Clarice Hudson and soon realizes that she is much more than a simple shop girl. One by one, she displays the seven symptoms of the contagion that will bring Bosley’s world to an end and create the nightmare Ocean calls home. Clarice may hold the key to stopping the coming apocalypse and sparing Ocean from the atrocities of mankind’s imminent future… but only if Coughlin is willing to push beyond every notion he’s ever held about right and wrong.

  “Compelling, interesting, and will keep you intrigued from start to finish… a very unique and wild ride.”--Patrick D’Orazio, author of COMES THE DARK

  “There is a very TERMINATOR-esque feeling to the narrative… deserves a spot on your shelf.”—T.W. Brown, author of ZOMBLOG

  “I kept imagining The Dude (from THE BIG LEBOWSKI) telling a drugged out version of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE… This is a book that is really worth reading…”--BuyZombie.com

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