Moriah (32 page)

After a while Kevin decided to go have another look at the zombies around back. He left the old dog where she was, taking his AK.

He found the pen much as he had earlier: locked and secure. The zombie with the beard and gut was standing closest to the bars, watching him. Kevin stepped nearer and looked in on it and the other dead things inside. The little girl one had shifted position, sitting somewhere other than where it had been before. The suited zombie had its back to him, its attention drawn to the palm trees.

Kevin didn’t see the yellow-toothed monstrosity at first, then spied it crouching in the shadows in its Guayabera.

The bearded zombie groaned, reaching between the bars, trying to touch him.

“You poor bastard.” Kevin wanted to reach in and pull the thing’s t-shirt over its stomach but thought better of it. That would be a good way to get his hand bitten off. And dignity, he reflected, didn’t mean anything to these things.

Its forearms resting on its knees, its hands upturned, the Guayabera-clad zombie studied Kevin intently, peering out at him from behind its bearded relation. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?” He took a step away from the cage. The thing gave him the creeps. “Bet you’re fast, too.”

He looked around the grounds, his eyes passing over the bare stump, the blue tarp pulled over the fire wood, up to the window where the woman had sat for who knew how long, back to the thing lurking in the rear of the cage, still watching him.

“Yeah, I bet you are.”

Satisfied yet still unsettled, Kevin returned to the wicker chair. The old dog had her head down on her paws. He sat back, the assault rifle across his upper thighs, listening. This island wasn’t
that
big. If Dee fired his pistol or rifle he’d hear it. Hell, if Dee
yelled
he’d probably hear it.

When she loosed a low growl at his side, Kevin looked from the old dog to the trees.

“What is it, girl?”

The dog whined and sat up, her tail sweeping the veranda floor.

Kevin leaned forward in the chair.

She raised herself as quickly as her old bones allowed and stepped daintily from the porch to the steps and the ground below.

“Hey.” Kevin stood.

She disappeared in the trees, her tail going the whole time.

“
Hey
!”

Kevin waited but the dog did not come back. He looked around the veranda, the rising sun flooding the pillared gallery above the rocker, his hand rising to his eyes against the glare.

“Yeah.” He said it aloud. “Something ain’t right.” The next few words he whispered to himself. “Come on back, Dee.”

In the house, he checked the windows on the ground floor. He drew back the curtains and opened the blinds, making sure each window was locked. Although he tied back the curtains, there were still shadows. Another hour and it would be fully light. Kevin thought about waking Riley but decided against it. Chances were he
was
being paranoid. It was understandable. Let Riley enjoy her sleep.

And then it hit him. A detail he hadn’t first noticed outside, one that now stood out crystal clear in his mind. The axe in the stump. Was the axe still outside? Kevin went to the window in the kitchen—there was the smaller axe on the granite-topped island where Riley or Dee had left it—went to look and see if he was really being cuckoo.

And when he looked out the window he could not believe what he saw.

Kevin flicked the safety off the AK-47 as he exited the house through the vestibule. Rounding the veranda, he scrunched up his eyes against the sun.

Dee had returned, settling his large, dark frame in the rocker. As Kevin neared—

“Dee, you’re not going to believe this.”

—something in his mind noted that Dee was a black man, and that this thing in the rocker rising and turning to face him wasn’t black.

It was burnt.

* * *

It took him awhile to get to the beach, but when he did Dee found the boat a few meters from where he found the dog.

There wasn’t much left of the dog. So little in fact that it was hard to tell that this was Kevin’s new friend. But Dee knew it was. Parts of her spotted the dunes, strewn over the cabbage palmetto and cacti.

Unlike the dog, the boat was immediately recognizable. They’d rode in it together, the four of them: Dee, Riley, Kevin and Bruce. They’d taken it down the river, all the way to Elmore and his uncle’s place. And here it was drawn up on the sand. Why here?

Dee knew
exactly
what it was doing here.

“Damn.”

He turned and hopped away on his crutch, cursing himself for leaving Riley asleep, for leaving Kevin by himself. He made for the palm trees and thought he should fire a shot and warn them.

He’d almost cleared the revolver of the band when a monster leapt up from the sand dune—a flash of yellowed teeth and dirtied Guayabera—and was on him.

* * *

She walked in a cold and threatening place, surrounded by the night. She walked towards a light. At first it appeared to her a star, the way it shone, its intensity, a pinpoint against the dusk. As she neared it, a figure stepped from the effulgence, a form beckoning.

Anthony
.

Not grown Anthony. Not Anthony as she had last seen him, but Anthony as a kid, the way she remembered him as a kid. He wore his beanie, the strings hanging down either side of his face.

He was speaking to her but she could not understand his words. The darkness followed, close on her heels, threatening to absorb her at any moment. Almost to her brother, she saw the concern writ on his face and heard him as he pointed behind her, into the dark, the Cimmerian shade imperiling the light.

Heard him clearly:
Sis, wake up.

She heard something mechanical in the distance, through the black. She turned—

Wake up, sis.

—and it was coming for her, through the night, through her dreams. Short and mean, backlit crimson. A blade in either hand, chopsticks in its hair. Blood coursed out of its mouth and ran down off its chin. And it was smiling as it came for her—

Riley sat up with a gasp. Morning light streamed through the slats over the window in the bedroom. She reached out but the bed beside her was empty, though still somewhat warm.

Dee.

The house was silent around her. He must have risen sometime earlier. She yawned and wiped her eyes. Riley found the Taurus under her pillow and placed the revolver on the three-draw bureau with the arched mirror while she made the bed. She folded the top sheet down over the top edge of the blanket. She retrieved the pillows from the floor—knocked there last night—and fluffed them, replacing the shams before adjusting them on the bed.

Satisfied, Riley placed her five-shot revolver on top of the pillow and stood back to admire her handiwork.

She padded across the hardwood floor sockless, the grain cool beneath the balls of her feet. Outside the bedroom, the long hallway was deserted, the stairwell yawning at the end of the corridor. A powerful shaft of light beamed in through the window above the curio table and she held up her forearm, squinting against the glare. The door to Kevin’s bedroom was closed. Riley figured he might still be asleep. She would have been, if Dee were next to her still.

In the bathroom with the door closed, she urinated in a pan. Looking at herself in the mirror, her eyes swollen from a good night’s sleep, her hair in disarray, Riley smiled. She ran a brush through her hair several times, trying not to think that it had once belonged to the dead woman in the chair, knowing it had. She was going to have to do something about her hair.

* * *

When she stepped back into the hallway, the door to Kevin’s bedroom was cracked open and there was something in the air, an odor. Maybe Kevin was up. The sun continued to flood the corridor and Riley thought about closing the blinds. She decided she’d get it later, her back to the brilliant light as she descended the stairs. They creaked under her bare feet.

“Dee?” Riley stepped into the vestibule. “Kevin?” It smelled like someone was cooking something, and it hadn’t necessarily turned out well. Men in the kitchen, Riley thought and smirked. She’d heard people used to joke about that. The rifles were absent the umbrella stand and no one answered her, which led Riley to believe they were outside where they couldn’t hear her.

She was going to open the door and step out onto the veranda when her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to see what was cooking in the kitchen. Riley passed through the living room, through the sheeted room with the ladder and paint cans, and into the kitchen. The stink hung heavy in this room, yet there was no evidence of a meal’s preparation.

Everything was as it had been the day before, their few supplies neatly stacked, the vegetables they’d taken from the garden atop the kitchen island next to a pitcher of water. She’d left the axe here, too, she thought, but wasn’t certain. It wasn’t here now, so Dee or Kevin had probably snagged it.

Riley considered the veggies and chose a zucchini. She bit into it and found it wasn’t all that bad raw. Not all that good either, but it was fresh food. The kitchen was cooler than the rest of the house, like it had a draft. It’s autumn, Riley told herself. Winter would be here before she knew it. She wondered what winter on an island was like.

Filling a glass from the pitcher, Riley sipped her water. She circled the granite-topped island, taking another bite from her green squash. The stove and burners looked unused, but still that smell persisted. Looking out the window, Riley almost choked on the vegetable in her mouth.

The zombie pen was open and empty.

She forced herself to chew the food in her mouth and swallowed, setting the remainder of the zucchini next to the sink. She’d parted the blinds with her index and middle fingers. As she stared at the pen, her hand reached out to the knives set in the wooden block beside the sink. She moved from handle to handle, seeking out the largest knife in the set, and when her finger brushed against the glass she’d set down and knocked it to the floor the noise it made shattering startled her.

She yanked her hand back and touched her chest, breathing fast.

“Wow.”

Riley laughed at her fear, how easily she’d frightened herself. Dee. He’d
really
wanted to get rid of all those zombies yesterday. She guessed she hadn’t understood just how much. The largest knife was missing—see, she told herself, Kevin and Dee
had
cooked something for breakfast—but Riley drew another blade from the block. Just in case.

She’d asked Dee to wait for her, that they could do it together. After all, he was wounded. How was he going to finish off the remaining four undead? Riley hadn’t heard any shots, which was unusual.
Something
had woken her, some noise. Not gunshots. Dee
was
crazy, she decided, if he was out there finishing them off without a gun. Riley almost put the knife back but didn’t.

“Ow, shit!” She lifted one foot and stepped daintily from the broken glass and pooled water, stepping clear of the mess. She looked down at the sole of her foot. No blood. She hadn’t cut herself. She looked back at the water and shards of glass. She was going to have to clean that up, but first she wanted—
needed
—to say hello to the two men. She sought reassurance. Gripping the five-and-a-half-inch boning knife, Riley crossed the kitchen, retracing her steps through the empty room that was being refurbished and then the living room.

She opened the door to the vestibule and the suited zombie was standing
right
there. It raised its hand, index finger extended, as if accusingly. Riley slammed the door in its face. She pressed her back to the wood, her heart hammering in her chest. The thing outside moaned and pawed at the doors. She set the lock and stepped back, staring at the doors, wide-eyed. The undead had its face pressed against the side window, looking in on her.

Dee
.
Kevin
.

Riley trotted back through the rooms into the kitchen, pausing briefly to look out the window on what appeared an otherwise calm, cheery morning. She stepped over the shattered glass and around the island, out of the kitchen.

In the mud room, the back door was ajar.

The draft in the kitchen
.

A trail of blood—smeared across the floor—led into the darkened parlor. The door to the basement was shut. Riley approached the back door slowly, the boning knife raised defensively.

She stepped out of the house. The porch swing hung still in the fall air.

“Dee…” She called out weakly, then once more, louder, stronger. “
Dee
!”

The zombie came around the corner of the house, hell-bent on devouring her. It ran in its dirtied sundress, arms and legs akimbo, a mix of hunger and animosity writ on its rotted face. It gained the porch and rammed its bonneted-head into the door, which Riley had thrown closed behind her. It bounced back and faced the locked door. Frustrated, it wailed.