Dawnland (Book 1): Pockets of the Dead

by Karen Carr

  Before I knew it, he was next to me pulling my hands from my mouth and cupping his hand over it instead. His grasp was strong, his hand tasted salty but fresh. He held me there, against his chest, while he listened and looked around. The last person to hold me in his arms was Stan, and Stan had never been able to make me feel like I did in this man’s arms.

  “You are not funny,” he said before releasing his grip, leaving me cold and tingling. He walked out of the church. He was heading to his bike. I didn’t want him to leave. I had to stop him.

  “Sorry,” I yelled and hurried after him, almost tripping over a leg and slipping in guts. “I’m sorry. I haven’t talked to anyone in a while.”

  “I’m sorry too,” he said. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder, got on his bike and started it.

  I didn’t want to appear too desperate, I couldn’t beg him to stay, but I had to do something.

  Chapter 5: Stranger Things

  November 18th

  101 Oval Park Place

  Purefoy Church

  Haverlyn Village

  He sat on his bike, the engine rumbling beneath his body. He had put on his aviators and was fixing his gloves to his hands. His crooked smile told me he wasn’t angry, but the furrow in his brow told me he was tense.

  “You coming?” he asked.

  The breath I was holding during the last few seconds came out in a rush. My head felt light, and my lips tingled.

  “Where?” I wanted to tell him I’d go anywhere with him, but if he went too fast we wouldn’t be safe, at least not until my aura caught up with us.

  “Once around,” he said, making the same loop in the air that I had made earlier.

  My head started to clear. “Sure,” I said.

  I got on the back of his bike, his rifle preventing me from getting too close to his warm body, and put my hands on his shoulders. He drove slowly around Oval Park Place, checking out every store front, every parked car, every bush and every window. When we came back to the church, he circled around one more time, this time slower.

  I could feel the tension in his shoulders ease as he passed by the storefronts again. Hopefully he would be convinced that there were no zeroes waiting to greet him. When we made it back the second time, he told me to hang on.

  The third time we went faster, so fast that I could feel the wind in my hair. He grasped my leg when I let out a slight gasp, which made me gasp even more. He didn’t let go of my leg, instead brought it closer to his body, as he drove around the green one-handed. I rested my cheek on his shoulder and glanced at his sideburns, following the neatly clipped hair into a patch of stubble on his jaw. I wondered who trimmed those sideburns; did he do it himself in a mirror?

  He parked his bike in front of the church and we dismounted. He took off his rifle and jacket and placed them on the grass. He was wearing a gray-black sweat shirt that looked like it could have been all gray at one time but was now caked with dirt. He smelled musty, but not stinky. In fact, he had a wonderful masculine smell.

  “You need some help with the church?” he asked. He sauntered toward the heap of bodies.

  “You believe me?” I asked.

  “I believe there are no undead creatures near us right now. Whether or not more will come is to be seen.” He picked up a head and looked in the eyeball holes, since the eyeballs were gone. “It does seem like they died naturally. There are no wounds in their skulls and their brains are definitely gone. That’s a good sign.”

  “So, you believe me?” I repeated.

  “Sure,” he said. “For now.” He tossed the head back on the pile. “Let’s get the rest of those stinking bodies out of the church and have us a bonfire.”

  “I call them zeroes,” I said. “You know, for nothing.”

  “Zeroes? I like that. They call me Huck.” He extended his hand and I shook it.

  I found out that Huck was from the mountains near Asheville, he liked to hunt, and he never stayed in one place for very long. He was visiting his friends up near Black Mountain when this all went down.

  I told him that I was from Chicago, he liked that—“a city girl,” he said-and that I was going to school to get my degree, which he liked as well. “Smart,” he said, which made me feel special. I always liked to be recognized for my brains and not my beauty, although I didn’t look very beautiful at the moment. My blonde hair was matted with human flesh and bloody ooze covered my arms and legs.

  Huck suggested that he drag the bodies out of the church and I do my thing with the plastic bags. He didn’t understand why I wanted to catalogue all their personal items, but when I explained it was to get the keys to the condos, townhomes and houses, he smiled. I made sure he knew the houses were off-limits because they were out of the safe zone. They weren’t really off limits, because if I was there he would be safe, but then zeroes might wander back into Oval Park Place and that would be hard to explain.

  “You have a whole system, huh?” Huck fixed on me with an intense stare.

  “It sounds stupid,” I said, recoiling from the heat in his eyes. They were the color of ice in the Antarctic, translucent blue.

  “No, I think it’s very smart,” he said, changing his gaze to my mouth and then lower, before he met my eyes again. “Shows initiative. You need that out here.”

  I covered my flushed forehead with my hand. I didn’t want him to notice that he had embarrassed me by giving me a compliment.

  He pointed to the rifle on the green. “You know how to use that?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, regarding the gun on the lawn. It would have looked so out of place in the old world, but fit in perfectly with this one. “I don’t like guns.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn to like them.” He opened the saddlebag on his bike and took out a couple of bandanas, one yellow and one blue. “You might be protected from the zeroes here, but what about the evil devils running around out there?”

  “Devils?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t referring to some other kind of supernatural being let loose during the apocalypse.

  “You know, vandals—hoodlums, whatever you call them. Besides, what are you going to eat if you can’t kill a deer?” He handed me the yellow bandana, I smiled and wiped my face with it.

  “I was going to plant a garden, next year after the winter.”

  “You’re a vegetarian?” He tied the blue bandana around his face like a bandit and pinched his nose. Oh, the bandana was for the smell.

  “I can’t kill an animal, skin it, and then eat it.” I looked at the bandana he had given me. It was covered in blood and guts.

  “But I can.” He took the banana from my hand and tossed it on the ground. “So, we’ll make great partners.”

  I thought about what he said, we were partners, while we performed our bizarre ritual of cleaning up the dead. For the next few hours, he hauled the bodies out, one at a time, and dropped them at my feet. As he rested them on the ground, he’d say something to them, like “take it easy,” or “better luck next time,” in a strange way of showing his respect.

  The bride was hard for him to get out of the doorway, not because of her size, but because her dress had a large petticoat that kept getting caught on the door. It was an odd sight, him wrestling with a dead bride, but somehow I couldn’t find it in me to laugh. When he placed her at my side, he told her she “was lucky,” and that “marriages never last.”

  “Pile her,” I said after I took off her engagement ring and garter. They were strange keepsakes, but I felt like they belonged with her personal record along with the bridal bouquet. Huck picked her up again and tossed her on the pile, making her look like some morose doll on top of a wedding cake of bodies.

  The sun was low in the sky when Huck came out carrying the body of a small girl, not more than nine or ten years old. I gasped and felt woozy. Her daisy dress still looked crisp and clean, like she had avoided most of the mayhem. She must have turned early.

  “This is the last one.” Huck’s eyes
were red and watery. I didn’t think it was from the smell.

  “Bring her here,” I said. Her arm dangled by her side and her hand still clasped a bright red child’s purse. There was a doubled-up charm bracelet on her wrist. It was obviously too big for her.

  “You don’t need to check this one. She has nothing.” Huck walked around the mound of dead flesh with the final body.

  I felt a lump in my throat as he deposited her body on the other side of the mound, out of my sight. “I want her purse.” I stood up and was about to go get it, but Huck made a stopping motion with his hand.

  “Take it easy,” Huck said. “I’ll get it.” He disappeared behind the mound.

  There had been other children. I had already burned quite a few. That one though, that girl with the daisy dress and the charm bracelet, reminded me of my own sister and reminded me of how hard I had become in so short of a time. Was I really sitting on the ground with a pile of dead bodies sorting through them like they were dirty laundry?

  Huck brought the red purse back and put it in a plastic bag. I labeled it with the words Church and Daisy Dress, gave it a number, and placed it in the pile with the others. He handed me the bracelet and I put it on my wrist to help me remember what once was.

  “It’s time to torch.” Huck grabbed the cans of lighter fluid I had brought out and began pouring them on the pile, dousing them well.

  I moved all of the bags I had created and put them in the pickup truck, which was a safe distance away. I brought out a lighter, which Huck took from me. He lit a doused rag and tossed it onto the pile of bodies, which ignited in a voracious flame. We watched the flame lap up the corpses in silence. The air stunk with burnt hair and bad barbecue.

  “Can we say something,” I asked, still mesmerized by the flames.

  “Like what?” He lowered his bandana.

  “I don’t know,” I said. When I burned the dead, I said a little prayer in my mind, but it wasn’t really words, more like thoughts. I didn’t know any actual prayers.

  “I’ve got this. My uncle was a Deacon.” Huck took off his leather gloves and recited the Lord’s Prayer, which I recalled from a book my mother read me when I was young, so I joined him. I knew a prayer and it made me feel good to say it, especially in front of a church. After he was done, he looked from his bike to my truck, as if deciding what to do next.

  “I have running water,” I offered. “Want to shower?”

  “Are you kidding?” He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me gently.

  I blushed. “I have keys to several places,” I pointed to the condos next to Pizza Adamo which I had discovered had solar as well. “Solar powered water tank.” I pointed to the big water tower that fed Haverlyn Village in the distance.

  “I think I have died and gone to heaven.” He kissed me on the cheek, making me blush, especially when he wiped his mouth.

  I walked with him across the green, into Pizza Adamo’s. I went behind the counter where I keep the stash of keys to known addresses and pulled out the bag for a third floor one bedroom and handed him the bag. He opened it, took out the wallet and looked at the license.

  “James Douglas,” he read. “Born, December 12th, 1991.” He looked at me with a blank expression in his eyes. “Died?” I touched his hand. For a moment I felt my strength seep away.

  “How long have you been alone?” he asked.

  “Since the beginning,” I said. “What about you?”

  He looked at me like he was considering his answer. “My whole life,” he said and smiled his crooked one-sided smile.

  We were both dirty and bloody and gooey and grimy, so we decided to part ways after I showed him where the apartment was and meet in the morning. I wondered if he would still be here in the morning. I wondered if it would just turn out to be a dream. He asked if he could drive me home, which made me laugh, but I wouldn’t let him.

  I made sure he went inside, saw the lights go on the third floor, before I walked the perimeter. I walked the radius with his apartment in the middle so he would be extra protected. I knew he was still close enough to me to be protected by my aura, the whole green was, but I did not want to take any chances. I have never believed in love at first sight, or in finding my soul mate, but this night I believed in both. This night I believed I had met my match.

  Chapter 6: Warmth

  November 18th

  501 Oval Park Place

  Haverlyn Village

  After I showered, I wrapped a towel around my body and went to the large set of loft windows in my living room that overlooked the green. The street lights were on and it was foggy out, giving the oval a solitary feeling, but I was no longer alone. Huck’s presence, even though I couldn’t see him, was etched in my mind. I saw him riding his motorcycle around the oval, faster and faster, and re-lived how it felt to have my hair lash my face in the wind.

  I touched my cheek as I recalled the first moment I saw him and the thrill I felt when I realized I was not alone anymore. He could have been evil or awful—a killer or rapist, but he was gentle and genuine and strode with a strong sense of purpose. Our purpose was now together in this new world.

  I would have never looked at a man like him in my old life, too rugged, too handsome and obviously not a college graduate. My type was smart in an insulting-serious kind of way, like Stan who had never been able to get over the fact that I was smarter than him. My type treated me like a child, protected me from everything in a claustrophobic kind of way, but never would have carried a gun. Maybe it was time to change my type.

  Gazing through the telescope down Oval Park Place, I saw the occasional cat prowling through the cars, but otherwise it was quiet. My view of the entrance to the village was blocked by the stage at the front of the green and the bushes behind, which was the only drawback to the location.

  It would have been a fabulous view before the apocalypse. In the summer, they held concerts on the stage, amplified by the superior sound system. Local theater groups performed Shakespeare, Mamet, or A Christmas Carol as they were going to do this year. Movies were shown on a big screen brought down by ropes from the stage ceiling. But now it stood dormant. Next year its stone façade would be overgrown with weeds if I didn’t take care of it. My life was forever changed. I would be farmer, a homemaker, a mechanic and perhaps a mother to a new generation.

  Adam and Eve, Huck and Hella—were we the only survivors? There were sure to be others, especially in the more isolated regions, like in the mountains where Huck was from. I wondered what Huck’s purpose was in coming here. He was the kind of guy that did things for a reason and I was sure he was searching for something.

  I scrutinized Huck’s bike through the telescope. The grime covering the tank hid baby blue paint and a flying yellow tiger, and the bike had no license plates. There wasn’t anything to stop me from going over there to look in his saddle bags, to find out more about him. I had done it with the dead, searched through their things; it wasn’t a stretch to do it with the living. I wondered if he was there, in the window, looking at his motorcycle to make sure it was safe.

  There was nothing in Huck’s window, but the curtains blowing in the breeze. The lights were out and the window was open, perhaps to hear danger coming from the outside.

  It had been the scariest, loneliest, most daunting weeks of my life—nothing can top waking up finding everyone gone. I had been bitten, beaten and chased by zeroes. I was sure Huck and I shared similar experiences and I wanted to talk to him about it and everything else that we had endured apart. I wanted to find out if we would now endure it together.

  Just as I moved the telescope to entrance of Huck’s building, it opened. I almost bit my tongue when I saw him appear on the street. His wet hair glistened in the streetlights; he must have taken a shower. He was wearing a clean white tee shirt, blue jeans, and big black boots and was carrying his rifle over his shoulder. He walked toward my building in long, slow strides, his head constantly turning in surveillance. The air must have been
cool on his skin, it was only in the fifties, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  I slipped into my bedroom to put on my yoga pants and a tee shirt. Even though there were designer clothes in my closet, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Chistian Dior, I chose to wear my own. It still felt strange taking other people’s things. Sleeping in their beds was hard enough for me.

  I flipped down the stairs to let Huck in. By the time I got down there, he was standing outside the entryway with his hands in his pockets resting his back against the door. He turned around just as I reached for the handle. His face felt so familiar to me that I ached to be near it. The passion in his eyes, in his mouth, in the way he stood betrayed his true feelings. My body, my mind, my soul felt the same.

  “I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he said, a frost covering his expression, but his eyes betrayed him.

  I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t stop staring into his eyes. He took a step into the lobby and embraced me with his arms. His lips hit mine by the time the door shut behind him. I took two steps back and fell against the stairs. He fell on top of me and continued to press his body into mine. I didn’t want him to stop, not now, not ever. But, I still whispered it in his ear.

  He pulled away and sat down on the steps beside me.

  “Sorry,” he said as he brushed his fingers through his thick brown hair. It fell back down loosely over his eyes.

  I was silent. I couldn’t tell him the reason I wanted him to stop was because I didn’t want him to see the gnarly zero bite on my hip. He would figure out what it was instantly. The mouth imprint was clear and obviously human. He would wonder why I wasn’t dead or worse—think that I was infected. I didn’t want to explain my secret to him, not yet and maybe not ever.

  He gripped my hand and placed it on his lips.