Dawnland (Book 1): Pockets of the Dead

by Karen Carr

  “Lily?” I asked, hoping she was alright, hating myself for wishing it was Trevan.

  Even though I was still dizzy, I pushed myself up and over to Lily. Tears filled her eyes as Trevan slipped from her hands and onto the floor. He had been the one that was shot. There was blood on his shoulder.

  “Trevan,” Lily whispered.

  “Your turn,” Trevan said. He was half kneeling and half sitting on the floor.

  I managed to walk over and discreetly kick the gun away so that he could not grab it and shoot us all.

  “Trevan,” Lily repeated as she opened his shirt. “Help me,” she said to me. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”

  Blood was oozing slowly out of Trevan’s shoulder. From my wiki reading, I knew that if the bullet had hit an artery it would be coming out faster and in spurts, so I thought that was a good sign. Trevan was also breathing normally, felt warm but not too hot, and was actually trying to sit up. I hoped he would be alright for Lily’s sake and for mine too. He was a male. We would need him expand the human race.

  “Exit wound,” Lily said, pointing to another hole in the back of Trevan’s shoulder.

  I had a supply of bandages back at the village, the Professor might have had some medical training, and antibiotics were also abundant in the village pharmacy. I would have to abort my mission to search Saudah’s apartment and to go Christmas shopping, and take Lily and Trevan back to the village.

  Lily packed a few clothes and some food into a duffel bag. She took Trevan’s gun and stuffed it behind the clothes, but she kept hers strapped to her hip. Trevan was moaning in pain, so Lily went behind the bar in the restaurant and brought him a bottle of peppermint schnapps. He took a swig, and then another, and mellowed out after that.

  By the time we were ready to go back to the village, it was dark. We decided not to wait until morning because we would be less conspicuous at night. We didn’t want the gang of kids roaming the town to find us and take all of our supplies. Plus the kid, Maxwell, might try and abuse me, or bring back a gang of abusers. That is exactly the trouble I wanted to avoid.

  Trevan and Lily had mopeds, which they had hidden in the alley behind the restaurant. Lily handed me a white helmet painted with purple flowers.

  “You’ll have to take my moped,” Lily said. “I’ll have to ride Trevan on his.”

  “No, I can’t,” I said, refusing the helmet.

  “You’re still woozy,” Lily said. “You are more likely to fall over. You need the helmet more than I do.” She tried handing it to me again.

  “I can’t,” I said again. She looked at me like I was being difficult. “I don’t know how,” I clarified. “Besides, I have a bicycle. It’s in the bookstore. I don’t want to leave it here. It’s my favorite.” Also, mopeds were too fast. My zero killing virus wouldn’t be able to keep up with us. I didn’t want to ever have to kill another zero like I did after my trip to Walmart.

  “It’s easy, just like a bike.” She tried to hand me the helmet for a third time.

  “Just take the damn helmet and let’s get out of here,” Trevan snarled. He held his shoulder while he swayed back and forth. I wasn’t sure if the sway was from the alcohol or the loss of blood. “I want to take a damn shower. You promised me hot water.”

  I snatched the helmet from Lily and put it on. “Fine. We are going ultra-slow though, because I will fall off if we don’t.”

  “We can get your bike some other time,” Lily said.

  I put down the helmet’s visor hoping that it would hide my anger. I felt stupid for being so angry about leaving a bike that wasn’t really mine in the first place, but it felt like I was deserting a friend. In fact, I was deserting Saudah because I hadn’t bothered to check her apartment.

  The moped turned out to be easy to drive, but I still pretended to fumble, keeping our pace slow. A mile from downtown, we came to the mound of dead zeroes made from when I had lunch on top of the pickup.

  It was an eerie scene in the moonlight. Once a zero died, and all of the zero’s traits were gone, the bodies appeared human again. While this bunch stunk of rotting flesh, there weren’t many wounds. I suspected they must have all turned together that night when the horrifying smell that Ara mentioned turned everyone in the cafeteria.

  We had to walk the mopeds through the corpses, like I had done earlier with my bike.

  “Is this where is starts? The wall of protection?” Lily asked.

  “Sometimes the waves that kill the zeroes reach out this far,” I said, hoping they would believe my lie. “But they shrink again quickly. The only safe place is inside the village.”

  We had to push the mopeds over several bodies that were layered too thick to get around. The three of us worked in a team, first pushing Trevan’s bike over, and then Lily’s. When we stepped on the bodies, they let out various sounds like air wheezing out of lungs, blood curdling out of veins, and ribs cracking.

  “I’m going to be sick.” Trevan looked pale-green in the moonlight.

  We managed to get over the bodies and to the other side of the mound without anyone hurling or heaving. There were bits of flesh and guts stuck in the moped’s wheels, so we had to pick them out with our hands.

  “Can we get the virus from touching this stuff?” Lily asked as she flicked some goop from her fingers.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But I don’t really know.”

  She cracked a bottle of water and rinsed her hands off with the liquid. Trevan and I did the same with two more bottles, and then poured the remaining on the seats of the mopeds and wiped them clean with a cloth.

  We made it to the village a few short minutes after that, going full moped speed down the road. We had seen no sign of life, living or undead, so risking a zero attack for speed was worth it. I wanted to get home, and like Trevan wanted a warm bath before I curled up in my bed.

  It dawned on me that my new apartment was now home. It shouldn’t have been mine, and in the first weeks it felt like I was an intruder. But, something had changed while I was downtown. It was like my new life was falling into place and I wasn’t fighting it so much anymore.

  My world was getting bigger and smaller at the same time. I had met new people, but would not be able to go anywhere without them for fear of their lives. It was my job to protect them from the demonic creatures brought to this world. I looked at the moon and marveled at its size. It would still be possible for me to come out late at night, when everyone was asleep, like a vampire.

  Chapter 13: Keys

  December 9th

  700 Oval Park Place

  Pizza Adamo

  Haverlyn Village

  Lily and Trevan had settled into one of the apartments on the opposite side of the green as the Professor. I told the Professor about them at my last therapy session, and he agreed to have them come over for Christmas. He said if it would stop me from brooding over Huck, he would gladly host a celebration. I knew the only way he would attend is if we had it at his place. In three more days, Huck would have been gone for three whole weeks. The flip calendar I made when Huck left was almost finished.

  Trevan had been feverish for a few days, but Lily told me the antibiotics finally began working. I hadn’t seen Trevan that much myself. He preferred to lounge around in bed complaining about his stiff shoulder, but Lily helped me every day. She told me they had found recordings of college games, football and baseball, in their new apartment and Trevan spent most afternoons watching them, yelling at the television like he was watching the game in real-time. He had been a member of the Tar Heels basketball team and those games were apparently most annoying for him to watch, even though he knew the outcomes and sometimes even saw himself playing.

  This day, Lily and I agreed to meet in Pizza Adamo’s to sort through some of the belongings that I had acquired from the pockets of the dead. I wanted to make sure that I kept important things like photos and mementos and catalogued driver’s licenses with keys and addresses. We then planned to match keys wi
th apartments and cars so that we could get ready for our guests.

  Pizza Adamo’s had a big wood fireplace and I had a warm blaze going when Lily came in.

  “Hi,” Lily said. She sniffed the air. “It smells like pizza. Yummy.”

  “Sorry, just left over pre-apocalyptic smell,” I said. She laughed.

  Lily and I had revealed bits and pieces of our lives to each other over the last few days. It turned out we shared similar memories growing up in the Midwest, massive quantities of snow, Christmas caroling, and big Thanksgiving dinners where everyone had fought. We talked about school and her classes. Mi-Yung had taken one of her classes. It was a surreal moment for both of us, which ended up with a hug while we both shed some tears for Mi-Yung.

  I spread out some of the zip-locked bags filled with the lives of the dead. Lily stared at the gruesome pile.

  “Sit,” I said.

  I gave her a notebook, pen and a sharpie and explained to her how I numbered every bag and listed the contents in the notebook. I also put a digital camera on the table for us to share, explaining that I took pictures of everything. If there was a key in the bag, I instructed her to make a note of what type and to put the bag in another pile. We agreed that when we had a dozen bags with keys, we would stop and search the area for apartments and cars.

  Lily pulled out her gun, placed it on the table, and sat down on the opposite side of the bench from me.

  “You always have to carry that?” I asked, referring to the gun.

  “Trevan insists. He still doesn’t believe that this place is zero proof. Besides, it’s my gun. My father gave it to me as a going-away present.” Lily had taken to calling the zombies zeroes too. It was easier to think of them as nothings.

  “I suppose it’s better to be safe,” I said. “Those kids are still out there.” I opened a five gallon container of guts that I had not been able to separate from the artifacts of the dead. The smell was so powerful that I gagged and wished I brought my yellow bandana. The contents reminded me of the inside of a pumpkin, all stringy and sinewy, and the seeds resembled the treasures that I was searching for, keys and rings and other objects.

  Lily had told me about the gang of kids that ran through downtown. She said there were five or six of them, all different ages. She knew which boy cracked my skull open, Maxwell, and said he was the meanest of the bunch, torturing cats and dogs in the street. That boy had extreme emotional problems.

  “Those kids are probably all dead by now,” Lily said, sounding like she was talking about a spoiled crop of vegetables. “Sorry,” she grimaced. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that, like I was talking about something other than human.”

  “Yea, it’s weird,” I agreed. “I can’t stop thinking about Huck, but I am sure he is dead too.” I put on rubber gloves and brought over a bowl of fresh water to rinse the objects in.

  “Don’t start that again,” Lily said. “He’s going to come back. The way you described him, he’ll probably be flying back in a helicopter, or on a giant kite, maybe even on a Pegasus.”

  I laughed. “Did I really make him sound so epic?” I squished through the gruesome mess until I came up with something solid.

  “I think you are taking school-girl-crush to the extreme,” Lily said, her eyes filled with a sisterly concern. “I get that you think he’s the last man on earth, the one for you, but what if he isn’t everything you think he is?”

  “I already know he’s not.” I told her about the picture I found of a mysterious woman in short shorts. I had taken that picture and the other trinkets from Huck’s pocket, put it in a bag and filed it in the back with all the other bags. “Do you think he’s coming back?” I asked her. “Honestly?”

  She looked at me with a matter-of-fact expression. “The mountains?” I nodded. She shook her head. “No. We’ll find you someone else, I promise. And if we don’t, I’ll let you borrow some of Trevan’s sperm for your project.”

  What she said about Huck sent a chill through me. She thought he was dead. I had told her how I wanted to repopulate the earth. She told me she didn’t want to have any kids with Trevan or anyone. She didn’t seem to care too much about rebuilding humanity, which disturbed me. It was still nice to have her company and I was grateful for that.

  “I don’t need Trevan’s sperm. I have the Professor.” I smirked.

  Lily laughed and spread some paper towels on the table. She took one of the plastic bags, opened it and pulled out a wallet. She took out the driver’s license with a pair of tweezers that she had brought from her apartment. The license was covered in a reddish-black jelly—rotting flesh or some other ghastly substance. Lily wiped it off with a damp towel and patted it dry. She was much more precise than I was and a better archeologist.

  “It’s a New York license. He must have just moved here or was visiting—a student.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Devlin McDaniels,” she read. “From Buffalo. Born in March. Twenty seven years old. Here’s his car key. It should be easy to find, New York plates. Did you take notes when you collected these?”

  “Most of the time, but if there’s nothing on the bag I might have a picture. I haven’t had a chance to catalog them. They're on my laptop. Most of the bags are from bodies I found around here, and some down the road on the way to Walmart.”

  “You shop at Walmart?” she asked.

  “Yea, sure,” I said. “I mean it’s not really shopping any more is it?”

  We both laughed and only stopped when we saw Trevan coming through the door. He was wearing a man’s bathrobe, and silky pajamas printed with little lobsters. On his feet he wore wool lined leather slippers. The whole outfit must have been from somebody else’s closet, because I did not see Lily packing any pajamas.

  “Morning,” he said. He staggered over to us and sat on the bench. He smelled like booze, his eyes were bloodshot and a rash ran across his cheeks.

  “You didn’t brush your teeth,” Lily said.

  “That is correct.” Trevan put his head down on the table.

  “You need to brush your teeth.” Lily rubbed his shoulders. “And floss. We don’t know any dentists in the area.”

  “There are plenty of dentist’s offices,” I offered. “There are two in the oval, adult and pediatrics and an orthodontist’s office. There is also a dermatologist’s office, too, in case you want to look for some cream for your rash.”

  Trevan raised his head slightly. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Well, you did try to kill me,” I said. “And Lily,” I added. I put a cleaned-up Swiss Army Knife on the table and dug in the bucket of slime again.

  “Oh come on.” Trevan watched me dig through the goo before turning away in disgust. “You are going to bring that up again?” He regarded our pile of plastic bags and the things on the towel in front of Lily. “Hey, what are you guys doing anyway?”

  “Recording archeological remains.” Lily held up another driver’s license, this one local but I couldn’t read the name.

  “You’re excavating? That’s creepy,” Trevan said. He held his hand to his forehead. “I didn’t know you had a creepy side, Lily. Thinking about it gives me headache. Where’s the aspirin? The bottle in our place is empty.”

  “That’s not why you have a headache.” Lily shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  “There’s a pharmacist a few doors down,” I said. “He’s fully stocked, the door’s unlocked. You should find whatever you want in there.”

  “Pain killers?” he asked.

  I glanced at Lily. If Trevan was moving from booze to pain killers we were in trouble. Lily stared back at me, her eyes registering disbelief.

  “I better go get him something.” She got up, put her cloak on and wrapped a scarf around her neck.

  “Hurry back,” I said. I didn’t want to be left alone with Trevan for very long. People say you can’t choose your family, and the same held true with the apocalypse. You couldn’t choose your survival-m
ates. Trevan sat on a chair next to the big fireplace and rested his feet on the hearth.

  “You know my father built a pizza oven in our back yard,” Trevan said, not really to me, more like he was talking to himself. “He used to have these great pizza parties. We’d each make personal pizzas. Dad would get out all the ingredients, regular stuff like sausage, pepperoni, chicken, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and then different things like spinach, watercress, grapes and let us choose what we wanted on our own pizza. I’d divide mine up in quarters and make each piece a little different. Sometimes I wouldn’t even put cheese on them. Dad always said he liked mine the best.”

  “Your father sounds like a nice guy,” I said.

  “He was an asshole,” Trevan said. “I caught him sharing a smooch with a neighbor at one of those parties. That wasn’t the only time either. Mom never left him, although she knew. I’ll never do that to Lily.” Trevan examined his hands. They were shaking. “You got any booze here? I could use a shot.”

  “No, but there’s a bar down the block,” I said. “It’s open twenty four hours a day.”

  Trevan scowled at me. I guess he didn’t like my sense of humor. The flames from the fire reflected in his ashen face, making him look like an old man. I wondered if his spirit would ever come back, or if it would be buried deep below the pain of this new life forever. Suddenly, he rose from his spot and let out a loud groan.

  “My head is killing me.” He walked to the window to look out. “Where is Lily?” She should have been back by now.”

  I felt myself becoming angry at him. We were all in the same situation. He had no right to make it worse for us. He had no right to shove his pain in our faces.

  “Why did you put those clothes on?” I asked. “They’re not yours.”

  “What, these?” he asked. “I found them in the closet.”

  “I think it’s kind of ghoulish to wear dead people’s clothes.” I dipped into the bucked of flesh to find another solid object. My fingers found a ring.