Living Dead (5 page)

Chapter 7

It’s dusk and the dead people have been eating in the back yard for hours. The feast has attracted many of the neighbourhood street walkers, and now it’s like old times at Scott’s parent’s house. Old times when their barbecue nights in the back yard turned into impromptu block parties. Nights where Cooper and Scott would siphon booze out of bottles in the fridge or left sitting on the counter, and when they were caught by the grownups they were scolded, but not too harshly because it was summertime and everybody was drunk and happy.

Cooper talks about all of this while the four of them sit around the table, being quiet and watching to see what Scott will do next. Right now, he’s doing nothing. He’s staring at the table. His hands are in his lap.

Some nights, there would be twenty or thirty people from the neighbourhood at the house. Everybody drinking and smoking cigarettes. Potlucking supper. Bringing bags of buns and salad greens and hotdogs for the kids, who ran wild until after midnight when things started dying down.

“All they care about now is the food,” Bretta says.

After that, Cooper doesn’t feel much like talking about it anymore. He stares into a cup of water instead.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do,” Denise says.

Bretta doesn’t know what she means, or she just wants to hear someone say the thing they’ve all been thinking. “What can we do?”

“We can leave,” Denise says, and not for the first time.

Bretta laughs. “And go where?”

“I don’t know,” Denise says. “Coop?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not a terrible idea, though. There is going to be fewer dead people out on the open road. Maybe even some live ones.”

“There has to be, if you think about it,” Denise says, nodding. “You can probably see dead people from five miles away. Shoot them with a rifle, or just run over them with a tractor or something.”

“You didn’t see
Night of the Living Dead
?” Cooper laughs. “It was in the country. Those people were doing pretty much the same thing we’re doing here. Except there was a black guy.”

“What does a black guy have to do with it?” Denise asks.

“Nothing. They just run faster and they won’t get caught.”

Denise puts a knuckle in his ribs. “Racist!”

Cooper laughs, because she bumps the table and spills his water. But he stops laughing when he sees Bretta watching him. And then his smile melts away when he looks at Scott staring at the table, head down; not paying attention to anything.

Bretta rubs Scott’s back. “He can’t travel like this. He’s gonna need some time to heal up. Maybe in a week or so, when he’s feeling better.”

“He can’t walk, yeah,” Cooper says. “But neither can we. What about food and water? We still have lots here, and we’d need a van or something to haul it all.

“We don’t even have a car,” Bretta says. “We going to leave everything behind and go wandering around a canola field?”

“Maybe,” Denise says. “If it means getting out of the city. We can’t keep dumping shit buckets out the window.”

“We have no medical supplies,” Bretta says. “And somebody drank the rubbing alcohol.” She looks at Scott when she says it and Cooper scowls.

“Anyway,” Denise says. “There’s backpacks and lots of extra clothes downstairs. Scott’s parents thought of everything.”

There’s tension hanging in the air, and nobody wants to address it, so they keep dancing in circles. Cooper makes jokes and Bretta complains, and Denise sits on the fence between them. Scott sits at the table ignoring everyone. Sometimes he has his face in his hands, and with his elbows on the table the bandage Bretta made for his arm is visible. They’re running out of medical tape for the gauze so she used duct tape last time. It hurts when it pulls off, unless it’s slippery with sweat. He can stretch it with his finger and slide it off his hand like a silver bracelet.

“We’re fine now, but we might not be in a few weeks, or a few months,” Cooper says. “Whenever it happens, we’ll start getting weak as our supplies run out.”

“We may not be able to escape when that happens,” says Denise.

“If there’s any kind of emergency,” Cooper says. “Anything. We’re are all done for.”

“But there’s people and shit out there,” Bretta says. “It’s not just about dead people.”

“We haven’t seen anyone in a long time,” Denise says. “If we they did see them, they could just as easily come into the house as they could run us down on the open road.”

“There are no open roads,” Bretta says. “They’re all clogged up with cars.”

Denise nods at that. “She’s right, there.”

“I think you should go,” Scott speaks, and his voice is tired and dry, like the gash on his arm took the liquid from him and not just the blood. Like his vocal cords are dusty old piano wires, brass wound tendons that have gone black with age. “And I think I should stay.”

Cooper and Denise both stare across the table at Bretta, and nobody speaks until she does.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying I’m going to stay here,” says Scott. “I’m saying you three should leave while you can. Before you all end up like me.” His words are dust by the end of the sentence, and he can barely get them out. He reaches for his cup of water and his hand shakes when he lifts it to his lips.

“What the hell does that even mean?” Bretta asks.

Scott keeps drinking from his cup. After the water is gone, he stares into it without answering. His hand is still shaking, and he watches the movement of the last drops of water slide around in the bottom. He sets the cup down and folds his hands in his lap. He rubs the palm of his hand with his thumb but stops when he notices Cooper staring at him.

Bretta puts a hand on Scott’s shoulder and asks him again.

“I’m sore,” Scott says. “My back hurts. I think it did something when I bled out. I can feel it, you know? My brain—” He points at his hairline. “There’s something… not. I dunno.”

Denise has her hands on her neck. “You think he might really be sick?” she asks quietly. But they all know she doesn’t mean sick, not really. She means
infected
.

“Sick,” Scott laughs. His eyes water and he rubs them with the palms of his hands.

“He’s not sick,” Bretta says. “He’s just worn down.” She tells them he lost a lot of blood. “Any of you would feel like shit, too.”

Denise nods, but Cooper doesn’t.

“I can’t feel my heart beating,” Scott rubs his chest. “I can’t get warm.”

“OK, so what the fuck does that mean?” Cooper asks.

Bretta grabs Scott’s hand. “Of course you can feel your heart beating.” She pushes her fingers into the meat on the inside of his forearm, checking for a pulse. He starts to pull away but she hangs on.

“It’s not there,” Scott says.

“Shut up.” She moves her fingers around. She presses harder. He shakes his head and sighs, and she makes another adjustment.

“Well?” Denise says. She and Cooper are holding hands under the table.

“Just a minute!” Bretta says, louder than she should. Cooper looks at the walls, waiting to see if the dead people notice the sound of her voice, but they are still busy in the back yard with Nancy and Allen.

Bretta jams her fingers into Scott’s arm. She cocks her head to one side, like she’s listening to something. As if her hearing is somehow connected to feeling a pulse in his arm. Scott has his head down, watching as her fingers carve pink welts just below the inside of his elbow. And then she lets out a deep breath.

“There it is,” she says. “Right there.”

Scott puts his fingers beside hers and looks at her. After a moment, he shakes his head.

“It really isn’t.”

“I can feel it,” Bretta says. “Scott. I can, yes.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Scott says. He pulls away and holds his arm flat out on the table. He balls his hand into a fist. “Coop? Can you?”

Cooper reaches out and presses his thumb into Scott’s arm.

“Not your thumb,” Denise says.

“You’ll just feel your own pulse if you use your thumb,” Bretta says. “Use two fingers.”

Cooper looks at Denise, hoping for a lewd joke, but she’s too busy holding the collar of her shirt. Cooper presses his fingers where Bretta did, and then he nods his head. “Yeah, I feel it,” he says. “It’s right there.”

“Can I?” Denise says, holding out her hand. Scott nods and shifts his arm so Denise can reach.

“Use two fingers, like Brett did,” Cooper says, hanging the punch line out in the air one last time. Denise presses her fingers into Scott’s arm.

“Oh yeah!” she smiles. “It’s right there.”

Scott pulls his hand away. He clenches his fist several times before checking again. He shakes his head. “You’re all wrong. You can’t feel it. It’s not there.”

“It is,” Bretta says.

“Look!” Scott yells, and they all jump. He puts his hand on his forearm again, pushing down until the meat bulges around his fingers. “Nothing.”

He puts his fingers up under his jaw beneath his ear, so he can press them against his carotid artery. “Nothing.”

He puts fingers along both temples and squeezes, watching Bretta. “Nothing.”

He jams his hand into his underwear. He stands up so everyone can see where his hand is. Looking at Cooper, he says, “Fucking nothing.”

“Sit down,” Bretta says. She grabs him by the arm. “Relax. We’ll figure it out.

“I’ve been checking.” He sits unevenly and his chair clunks the floor. “While I was in bed. I kept checking.” He sighs. “I can’t find it.”

“What about the temperature thing?” Denise says, making the sign of a gun with her finger and working her thumb like a hammer.

Scott shrugs. “I have no idea. I can’t get warm. I feel like a fucking corpse.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Bretta gets up and grabs the first-aid kit off the counter. She pops it open and pulls out a little grey gun. She sits back down and grabs Scott by the back of his neck.

Scott begins to struggle, but Bretta shakes his arm. “We’re going to check your temperature. Right now.”

“Isn’t that thing for babies?” Cooper asks.

“It works on adults too,” says Bretta. “You think it can tell the difference between a baby ear and an adult ear? How is that possible?”

Cooper shrugs. “I dunno. Size?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Bretta says. She leans in and puts the barrel of the thermometer in Scott’s ear.

“How did we even end up with that thing?” Cooper asks. He gets up and grabs the first-aid kit, and then rifles through it. He drops a tensor bandage on the table, and a long string of plastic bandages in plain white paper. He pulls out the bottle of rubbing alcohol and holds onto it, sloshing it around and watching the liquid inside.

“Don’t even think about it,” Bretta says.

“My mom had it for my dad,” Scott says. “He was a baby about getting his temperature taken, so my mom picked it up to make fun of him for it.”

“That’s funny.” Cooper drops the bottle back into the box. “I wasn’t going to keep it.”

“What’s it say?” Denise says.

Bretta pulls the barrel from Scott’s ear. There’s a screen where the hammer would be on an actual gun, and Bretta squints to read it. The front is shiny and yellow with ear wax.

“Thirty-five point eight.” She turns the gun and scowls when she sees the ear wax. “Okay, you’re a little low. But that doesn’t mean anything.” She rubs the earwax on the sleeve of his shirt and puts the little gun on the table.

“It’s not right,” Scott says. “I know what I’m feeling. I don’t know. I’m fading, or something.”

Denise puts her hands on the table. She clears her throat. “Maybe we should tie him up?”

“We’re not doing that,” Bretta says. “Denise? What the hell!”

“It’s not a bad idea, Coop,” he says, turning to his friend.

Cooper doesn’t say anything, but he’s nodding his head.

Bretta says, “There’s no way you’re tying him up.”

“It’s for your protection,” Scott says. “I’m not feeling right. It would be safer. Just for a little while. Look what happened to Nancy.”

“Yeah, and we dealt with her.” Bretta takes a breath. “We’ll keep an eye on you for a couple days. I don’t want you tied up because of circulation. You’re still really weak.”

“Okay, so we’ll watch,” Cooper says.

“Fine, we’ll watch.” Scott stands up and shuffles off toward his room. “I’m gonna get some sleep while I can. Before they start trying to get through the walls again.”

The discussion over, they all get up to go. Cooper sends Denise down the hall to their room, and after Scott wanders off to bed, it’s just Cooper and Bretta and Cooper grabs her arm as she walks by.

“Hold on a second,” he says, his voice quiet. “I need to talk to you.”

Bretta crosses her arms. “So talk.”

Cooper can tell she’s looking for an apology for the alcohol again, but that isn’t what he wants to talk about. He’s got his mind on something else, something that happened a long time ago.