I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 (2 page)

Crucifixes, short and long, hung from the doors and windows of their home.

An exhibit of offerings or spiritual shields sat at the doorstep: bowls of fruit, honey, sage, and white candles melting into one another in uneven heaps of wax castles. Shadows danced against the threshold in the flickering orange glow of the flames.

Weathered statues of saints stood side by side with lawn gnomes called upon to do battle with the
devils
—should they come to this picture-perfect manicured battlefield. I found myself more frightened by the hanging faces of bloody and beaten saints than the boogiemen.

I thought to knock, though it wasn’t my place to say that I felt the whole production was just a bad idea. No smoke signals—that was my rule. No call to attention if you want to survive—just lay low and you’ll be fine.

I knocked anyway, for their sake—

“Please go away! I have a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it,” the voice shook from behind the door.

The inflection in her voice told me she either didn’t have a gun, or hadn’t grown the nerve to use one yet.

 “I don’t want any trouble, ma’am. Just please put your things away before they come. They’ll know someone’s in there. Just put everything away quickly and keep quiet...can you hear me?”

I was only trying to help.

“Who are you?” she spoke from behind the door, only two inches of wood separating one faceless stranger from another.

“I won’t be the one kicking down your door, ma’am. I’m just a friendly voice who hopes you’re someone who listens. I’m going to go now.”

She let me hang in a long silence, and perhaps, that was my cue our conversation had ended, and I walked away.

Latches clicked and cranked open before she allowed me to reach the curb, but the chain remained.

“Are you alone?” She asked.

“Yes, I’m alone—and unarmed,” I answered, turning to show I was telling the truth.

“Who are
they
? You said
they…who
?” the voice softly demanded, a voice taken over with the first signs of an oncoming cold...or
infection.

“You don’t want to know,” I said, my thoughts contending with a feverish cry from beyond the door, a baby who might’ve been wrestling the same contagion as the woman who spoke to me.

 “We’re sick,” she admitted. “He’s not mine,” she continued. “My sister…she never came home after the storm and…we’ve been alone ever since. Can you help us? Can you stay with us a while? Talk to me, mister,” her voice cracked.

“I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t. You should get back inside now—and hide.”

“Please…ple-?” the young and faceless voice pleaded, crumbling and begging—like the baby who was competing for its life inside the house—to be held, to know she is safe and not alone. A stranger’s arms might do, but not mine.

“I can’t, I’m sorry, just go back inside now,” I said, prying myself away from the judgmental eyes of saints and gnomes. I was only trying to help.

“
They
, who are
they
, mister? Don’t leave, please!”

But I did.

Leaving was the only choice I had.

DUSTY TRAILS

Tuesday, December 17
^th
, 2013

3:25 p.m.

I found Dustin Walsh sitting alone on the steps in front of his home two weeks ago over by Sanford Avenue, hands and face caked in blood, but none of it his.

He was rocking back and forth, cradling himself as he stared at the ground.

It wasn’t until I thought to leave that he snatched my hand and wouldn’t let go. I really didn’t want to bring him home, but I couldn’t abandon the poor bastard either.

The front door to the Walsh home was open, and the family car remained in the driveway. I rang the doorbell twice before entering and following the trail of little bloodied sneaker prints back where I found both his parents face down in blood between the ottoman and the couch. 

The living room was a wreck, but the rest of the house was neatly intact and oddly smelled like puke and pinecones.

This was too clean for the Deviants. There would have been limbs hanging from the chandelier and shit everywhere. Those goddamn hoarders have no respect.

Family photos and personalized Christmas stockings graced the fireplace mantel with ornaments, candles, and knickknacks.

There were framed pictures labeled “Dusty’s 7
^th
birthday party” dated “September” on the refrigerator, making him and Kate roughly the same age, except Kate’s birthday is in June. I’d imagine they’d probably get along great if they got to know each other.

Carol, Steve,
and
Dustin
seemed like a nice family. Carol was kind of hot, Steve didn’t look like a douche, and the boy was all smiles and sunshine. They looked sugary and happy-go-lucky. Not happy just-for-fuck’s-sake “happy” like the Dudleys. You’ll find more joy and laughter among suspects in a police lineup than inside a Dudley photo album. They looked like the type of family that enjoyed annual vacations together, cuddled, and smiled for pictures (and never beat one another).

The Dudleys never dare embrace in photos like the Walsh family.

No, no, that’s close enough now, Uncle Richard.

Dusty should be fine as long as I keep him in Kate’s room with the baby gate in the door so he doesn’t get any bright ideas  and get himself into trouble.

I hose him down in the driveway so he doesn’t stink up the house, throw some of Kate’s clothes on him and shove food down his throat so he doesn’t drop dead.

6:48 p.m.

It’s the “calm before the storm,” and I can feel the prickling of pins and needles in my back coming to life again, like anxious little spiders dancing beneath my skin and crawling through my pours.

The pain has been unbearable since the surgery. I ruptured two disks in my spine falling from a scaffold at the job site two years ago, falling two stories and bouncing off the back of a cement truck, rendering me unconscious.

It left me disabled and unable to continue working in construction after 15 years of hard labor. Now I’m just simply constricted and can’t do much without a little help. I’ve been double-dipping in the medicine cabinet lately just to secure at least four painless hours of sleep at night.

YOU, ME, AND THE DEVIL MAKE THREE

Friday, December 20
^th
, 2013

8:25 a.m.

Fumes and a foul stench linger with the breeze this morning. The seagulls coming in from the west look sick from something they ate, and the traveling pack of brown mangy dogs look even worse. So weak their heads hang low as they amble by.

The shameless looters and hoarders have taken almost everything despite the efforts from the
Crusaders
trying to preserve order downtown. Food, medicine, clothes, fuel, money, supplies, you name it—nothing left behind but the decaying corpse of humanity after bleeding her dry.

A mass of bodies lay in the streets after the Main Street riots: people clashing, running in no clear direction of safety and into traffic. It was the Mardi Gras of road kill. It was the Tiananmen Square rally revisited.

The cops never stood a chance. New York’s Finest, in riot gear, attempted to suppress the mobs but vanished after day two of the fallout. No one knew if they were coming back once they retreated…and they didn’t.

 I heard the Mayor instructed NYPD to dispatch all personnel to Manhattan and stay there. I regret voting for that dumb son of a bitch.

The mobs and hoarders fizzled out after day four of the fallout as well, once the Deviants grew in numbers and started eating everyone.

On the other end, authorities cut our circulation from the outside, excommunicating us from the world.

I give it another month before this whole place goes completely down the shitter. Maybe that’s what they’re waiting for. Why should they get their hands dirty when we’re doing a fine job of digging our own graves?

Just sit back with a cold one and watch the world’s biggest
Battle Royale
from space until society completely collapses.

The Bible beaters, rallying by the Horace Harding Expressway and the cemetery with their placards, never tire. Yes, we know:
The End of Days, the Rapture, the Devil’s yadda yadda, God’s Wrath and He’s tired of our crap
.

Here’s a
Revelation
for you—

Fuck. Off.

I’ve seen the Devil, and it’s not Jerry’s wife.

I saw four punks taking their turns on a young girl in an alley behind Taco Barn the other morning while I was out hunting for food.

God almighty, they were going to town on the poor girl, as she lay there motionless in the garbage, with the same blank stare Dusty gives me when he gets hosed off in the yard. There was not an ounce of fight, pain, or even surrender in her eyes.

Those kids were knocking, but there was no one home. Total vacancy—
lights out
.

The boys forced their way inside her, one after the other, showing each other what fascinating little weapons their cocks can be. Oh, what big men you are.

“I fucked her with my dick! Did you see that? Yeah, man. High five!”

Yes, good for you. You defiled a helpless human being with all of your little penises.

Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, some say.

I have to go back outside and figure out how I’m going to remove that dead guy from the roof of my garage.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Sunday, December 22
^nd
, 2013

11:45 p.m.

What the hell?
I watched the Deviants’ strange goblin-like postures sneak in and out of view under the flickering streetlights . I heard a loud thud then saw what looked like a human head tumbling around on the front lawn. I wondered if the sound came from those monkeys pitching it at my front door. Then I wondered what it was that scurried off with the head into the night.

There were two fighting over an arm and jousting with body parts while another rummaged through the trash and hedges. Hm, will ya’ look at this. A Deviant over by the gutter, clumsily trying to repair a dead dog that wasn’t going to come back to life no matter how much it shook, nudged, and barked at it.

It all looked like the bullpen for the criminally insane before the big game, and I had the best seat in the house.

Their long, gray faces contrast the darkness, skin tightly stretched over bodies slumping forward, bones showing as if they are starving. Long arms dangle at their sides while their hands and fingers wriggle and twitch like insects trapped on their backs.

They vocalize sounds of an animal in agonizing pain—sad—tortured—needing to die already but just not there yet. Their cries sometimes intensify from timid howls to the maniacal cackling of a jackal.

There were five or six of them here tonight, and from my observations, I can see they’re menacing but dumb as shit. God, they are so dumb. They never stay long once they realize they can’t get what they’re after. Boredom sets in, and they move on and come back the following night doing the same. Maybe it’s the elusive memory that keeps them coming back for more, the slippery mirage, the intangible star shimmering in the mind’s eye, so lucid, yet burned out long ago leaving residue of a past life.

I’d be a liar if I told you those monsters out there didn’t scare the shit out of me. I find myself sleeping in the bathtub until they go away. They pound, they hiss, and they try clawing their way through my walls.

Smaller and uglier creatures rummage through waste and prey on other small animals such as cats, birds, or vermin. I call them Gaggles—animals infected by the virus. The Gaggles chase and harass the Deviants for morsels during kills.

The Deviants stamp them out and crush them if they get in their way.

There are also Deviants that will try eating themselves if they’re hungry enough, but that seems to be more common with the infected dogs and smaller creatures like the Gaggles.

No two Deviants are alike. Some suffer from the infection and rage more than others do. Some of the Deviants used to be my neighbors.

Some I didn’t care for that much, especially the Sweeney boys—the freebasing knuckle-draggers who promised to eat me the other night and destroyed my truck in the process—my beautiful truck.

They didn’t look much different from the one I peeled from the top of my garage earlier, and that
thing
was Peter Chen from five houses over.

I recognized the tribal dragon tattoo stretching over his left arm and his back when I chained him to my table saw in the tool shed. I considered dismembering him and getting rid of his body so he wouldn’t shake ‘n’ bake in the sun and attract more Deviants, but I didn’t have the heart to do it. After all, he’s dead.

Carving him up like a damn Thanksgiving turkey just isn’t something I’m prepared to do after what I went through with Jerry.

It’s harder to destroy something when you know it by name. Peter was only 22 years old, and I’d known him since he was 13.

He came from a big family, had a cute, quiet girlfriend and a good education. The Peter I knew was dead long before I found him. Not that it makes my job any easier.

Sorry, kiddo.

BURY X’MAS

Christmas Eve

11:22 a.m.

 ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a...nope, never mind.

Damn. Looks like the Deviants finally got into old man Joe’s place across the street after all. I haven’t seen Joe in a few weeks, and I’m guessing he’s dead or was one of the lucky ones who got out before the shit hit the fan.

I’m going to go with “DEAD” considering it would take Joe about fifteen minutes to shuffle and verbally assault the “spics, chinks, gooks, and jungle bunnies” during his trip to the mailbox every morning.

Dying like that can’t be dignified when you look back on Joe’s life. After all, the man fought in WWII and lived to tell about it.