Moriah (35 page)

“I’m bit.” He pronounced it with finality.

“You’re…” She let his hand free and stood there looking at him.

“I am.”

“Oh, Dee.” Riley clung to him, nearly bowling him off his good foot, half catching him, helping Dee regain his balance. Despite the situation, he laughed, taking her face in both his hands.

“I just wanted to see you, before…” Dee looked into her eyes. “Make sure you were okay.”

“I’m okay.” Riley’s nod was exaggerated. “I’m okay.” She hadn’t let go of him.

“Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas were both on SCTV,” Gary mused, “weren’t they?”

“Hey, I know you just got back with your dad and uncle here,” Dee held her gaze, “but you want to take a walk with me?”

Riley looked at her dad, who did not appear too excited about the idea. “Yeah—yeah, okay.”

“I always thought Dave Thomas looked like Bill Murray,” observed Gary, plucking hairs from the back of his knuckles. “They were both in
Stripes
.”

“
Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
….”

The suited zombie shuffled around the veranda, one arm reaching out towards them, fingers splayed.

Dee raised the Python but Brent’s M-7 cracked before he could fire. The zombie fell to its knees and then on its face as Gary looked out from between his clasped hands.

“That was the last of them,” Dee told Brent and Steve. “He must have killed both of the dogs, too.”

“Is
Troll 2
really the worst movie ever made?”

“I don’t know, Gary.” Brent shook his head like he’d been listening to this for a long time.

“Let me help you.” Steve joined his daughter in supporting Dee. Riley gave her father a look. “Daddy.”

“What?”

“
Dad
.”

Steve understood, but this guy was bit. “I don’t ever want to leave you alone again, little girl.”

“Dad!”

“No, it’s okay,” Dee interceded. “Come on.”

Together, father and daughter supported Dee as they walked away from the house toward the beach.

“Why wasn’t Torok the Troll in
Troll 2
?” Gary asked rhetorically. “And what did
Troll 2
have to do with
Troll 1
, anyway?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“‘
You can’t piss on hospitality!
I won’t allow it!
’”

“Now you’re just talking nonsense.” Brent was standing over Chase’s body, the muzzle of his M-7 poking about in the remains of his skull. “Cover your ears,” he told Gary.

“Why?”

“Because I know loud noises bother you and I’m going to shoot this thing in the head.”

“There’s not much left of its head, is there?”

“Just cover your damned ears.”

Gary cringed behind clasped fingers as the shots reverberated from the house to the trees. “Is it still dead?”

“Yeah.” Brent looked up from the body. “It’s deader than shit.”

* * *

“So you knew my dad,” Dee was saying to Steve as they walked. “And you knew Tris.”

“Yeah. I knew them all.”

“She didn’t speak too highly of you,” Riley told her father.

“I don’t suppose she would.”

The going was slow but they were together, Dee and Riley, Riley and her dad. Dee requested they journey to the other end of the island, away from the motorboat and the skiff, away from the helicopter where Grimaldi and Alex waited. They made some small talk as they walked, trying to act normal when things were far from.

Chase was dead. He was really dead and the island held no other conceivable dangers. Yet Anthony wasn’t with them and Kevin was gone. Bruce hadn’t made it, nor had Tris or Evan or Troi or any of the others.

And still the dying wasn’t over.

The remainder of Dee’s existence stared nakedly back at the man and Riley.

They broke from the trees onto a rise that overlooked the surf and stood looking out upon the boundless blue ocean.

“I’m going to go on ahead here a little.” Dee limped forward on his foot.

“I’ll catch up in a minute,” promised Riley. She stood there with her father and they watched the doomed man totter off away from them, down to the sand, finally lowering himself to a seated position a couple of meters from the surf.

“Riley.”

She looked at her father.

“I couldn’t leave you out here.” Steve took off his sunglasses. “You and your brother. I shouldn’t have let you go—”

“You wouldn’t have stopped us, dad.”

“I should have tried harder.”

“No.
I
should have told Anthony there was no way we were going.”

“He wouldn’t have listened to you. You were always the stubborn one, vocally at least. But Anthony was just as stubborn in his own way.”

“You’re right.” She smiled, thinking of her brother. “I know.”

“I’m going to walk back that way.” Steve nodded towards the palm trees. “Wait for you there. You need me, you call me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Here, you’re going to need…” He extended his pistol to her, butt first.

“Dad!” She looked at him.

“Why do you think he wanted to go for a walk with you, Riley?”

“I can’t do that, Dad, not that…”

“It’s hard, I know.” Tears had welled up in his daughter’s eyes. “Look at me, Riley. Look at me. It’s hard, but you’ve got to do it. He wants you to.”

Dee was sitting on the sand with his back to them.

She sobbed freely.

“Get it out of you, now. Don’t let him see you like that. Be strong for him, Riley. Riley, you’re hearing me, right?”

“Yes, Dad.” She wiped her forearm across her eyes, sniffed, and took the Beretta. Riley pulled back the slide, chambering a round, checked that the safety was in place and stuck the pistol in the back of her pants.

“You be strong, little girl. For him.”

“I will.”

“You go.” Steve put his sunglasses back on. “I’ll be waiting for you when it’s over.”

“Okay.”

* * *

She went down to the beach and sat beside Dee.

“Do you know that ocean goes on and on and on?” he asked her.

“It does?” As soon as she got it out she thought it sounded stupid and wished she hadn’t opened her mouth.
Of course it does
.

“You’re here,” Dee remarked.

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“I’m glad I’m not alone.” Dee reached out and took her hand. “What are you going to do?” He squeezed it and smiled at her. “After this?”

“Go home with my dad. I sound like some kind of kid, don’t I?”

Dee smiled a little smile, looking back out over the sea. “You’re lucky, you know, to have your dad.”

“And you were lucky to have yours. Where I come from, your dad is like a god or something.”

“He wouldn’t have liked that, but I think it’s cool.”

He squeezed her hand again before letting go. She thought he was concentrating fully on the ocean until he spoke to her again. “I don’t know…if I ever thought I’d actually find him out there. I guess I kind’ve liked going off and being alone, being able to think. You know?”

“Would you like to be alone now? I can go.”

“No—stay, please. I’m glad you’re here.”

He unfastened the Velcro of his belly-band and tossed it aside. Dee broke the cylinder on the Python and checked the load. Satisfied, he snapped it shut and, gripping it by the barrel, offered it to Riley. “Here.”

“I don’t need that.” Her words sounded cold to her own ears.

Dee gripped the revolver, hefting it in his hand. He looked down on it, considering its history, the solemnity of all those who had held it before him. He nodded and laid it in the sand at his side.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day today,” he remarked. “Alex seems like a nice enough guy.”

“He’s nice enough…”

“But?”

“Yeah,
but
.”

“Go easy on him, Riley. The guy came all the way out here to find you. Broke his ankle. Got sprayed by a skunk.” They laughed a bit together at that. “That’s got to count for something.”

“It does. It’s noble, but…”

“There’s that
but
again.”

“But I like
you
, Dee. I want
you
.”

He blushed. “You just made my day.” He stared into her blue eyes. “You know that?”

“Why’d you…” She quieted for a moment, not wanting to lose it. When she could say it, she said it very fast, wanting to get it out there. “Why’d you have to go and get bit?”

Dee considered her question and a myriad of answers, the paths his life had followed to arrive at this day, his last. “Yeah, it sucks. But,” he remarked without hesitation or any sense of irony, “I’m glad it’s you.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel great.” He was amazingly calm, at ease even, staring out across the water. “I like talking to you, Riley.”

“I like talking to you, Dee.”

“I always have.”

A sea bird winged its way past overhead.
Keee
,
keee
.

“Well,” he looked at Riley one last time, “I’m ready, whenever…”

“Can we just sit here for a little while? You and me?”

“For a little while.”

They sat together, neither feeling the need to speak, content with each other’s company.

Dee regarded the sun, bright amid the cobalt blue. The surf washed up on the shore and retreated, foamy scum left running behind. The ocean was strong in the air, heavy with salinity. Beach grasses swayed hypnotically in the cool morning wind. Somewhere above them, a bird.
Keee
,
keee
.

Dee thought of his father. He thought of Riley seated near him, his love.

He didn’t hear the shot.

As I was finishing up
Eden
, a sequel was writing itself in my mind. With
Resurrection
, a trilogy became a quartet. These things happen.

I don’t want to say this is it—never say never, right?—but this
is it
for the time being, for the conceivable future. I will say that if I want to revisit the zombie genre again I think I’d do so with another
Eden
book. I mean, why go about reinventing the wheel? (Aside from Nazi zombies, that is; there will be Nazi zombies in the
I Kill Monsters
series).

There are many people to thank. First and foremost, my lovely and loving wife, Myoungmee, and our children, Tony Michael and Honalee. I’d like to thank my parents, who indulged the hours upon hours of reading that marked my youth. I used to write action-horror stories that involved my elementary school friends—Greg Pasquale, Thomas Chodakiewicz, Chris Giardullo and Chris Kozlowski—and then when I was in high school, friends like Mark Fotakis and Octavian David. These stories usually saw each of us rising up at some point to play the hero before being dispatched in some horrific way. Thanks, guys!

Three men have been instrumental to my writing
career
(if we can call it that). Robert Kennedy, for whose
MuscleMag International
I continue to work, cut me the first real paycheck I’d ever received for my writing and took the time to comment on and edit my work. The late, great Joe Kincheloe—and his wife, Shirley Steinberg—is responsible for the publication of my academic works. Joe will never be forgotten. Jacob Kier reissued
Eden
when it was just a self-published book that no other publisher or agent cared to look at. I am grateful to them all.

I appreciate and thank George Romero for providing the template and Robert Kirkman and JL Bourne for growing the genre.

Above all, I thank the readers. We writers don’t work in a vacuum. We write to be read, by ourselves and by others. Without readers, our existence would be a meaningless, solipsistic exercise. I really like hearing from the people who take their valuable time and spend their hard-earned money to read one of my yarns; I can’t promise we’ll become pen pals, but if you take the time to email me at
[email protected]
, I promise I will write you back.

Valerie Nieman is an award-winning writer, teacher, and editor whose work emerges from her Appalachian roots. She is the author of three novels, the most recent of which,
Blood Clay
, has garnered critical praise and reader raves.