Order of the Dead (6 page)

13

“Do you think we should find Tom and talk to him about it now?” Senna asked.

 “No,” Alan said, knowing what she
meant, “it can wait. He’ll want to know what there is to do about it, what
action
he should take, and I’m not sure there’s anything to do about it.”

“You’re right. Not a whole lot
to
do when you’re locked inside.”

“They won’t cancel the market for something
like this, an undefined threat, if it even is a threat.”

“Call off the market?” Senna almost
laughed. “No chance.”

They were walking back to their house,
which was the farthest dwelling from the center of town. It was the house past
the blown-down barn, the one with a good many traces of it left, like grave
markers continuing to hold its place in the world.

The makeshift street on which they
walked crossed over patches of pavement and uncovered ground that were all the
shades of mud. The pavement was giving up, letting itself be dotted by clusters
of weeds and patches of grass. The world was taking back the street, and the
street couldn’t care less at this point. As far as it was concerned, it just
wanted to wash its hands of the entire matter.

They waved to Chad and Laura Stucky,
who were sitting on their porch. Chad and Laura were in their late fifties,
which in New Crozet was bordering on elderly, though not quite there. They were
two of the town’s original founders, having holed up in their house—the one
they still lived in now—when the outbreak first…well…broke.

There were only two people in town older
than they were: Amanda Fortelberry, who was seventy-four, and Betty Jane Oswalt,
who was eighty-one. Now that Alan thought of it, Chad Stucky was the oldest man
in town. Women really did outlive men, apocalypse or not.

Laura waved back, and Chad nodded. He
might have waved were his arms not encircling his wife, holding her, and for
that Alan liked him, cold in manner though Chad often was in public, where he
liked to sport his well-worn frown of
extreme
disapproval. His wife was
a direct counterpoint, cheery and high-spirited, and she dragged him around
town on her various errands, which Alan was sure Chad liked. There was a good
man somewhere in there, beneath the surface.

The Stuckys had helped let Senna and
Alan settle in New Crozet, after all, when it had been put to a vote nine years
earlier. Alan didn’t know much about the couple, except that they’d met during
the outbreak and saved each other somehow, and though he sometimes wondered
what had happened to their families, or to their previous spouses, he’d never
ask. It was the same thing that had happened to all the previous families, of
course, but for some reason he wished to know the details.

Maybe it would’ve been alright to ask,
but Alan didn’t feel comfortable, and he didn’t want to show his hand, even to
the town’s
elders,
who were some of the most likely to understand his
obsession. And when he had occasion to wonder about their past, and all those
other pasts that had been cut short, and when that thinking got the better of
him, he was forced to go out into the fields alone, to be away from everyone,
to forget.

Laura and Chad’s eyes were drawn to
the Voltaire II and they followed its metallic bob up and down at Alan’s side
until it disappeared into the shadows of New Crozet, past the unseen guideposts
that marked the way to Senna and Alan’s house.

The Voltaire II had let go of her last
shrug, her complaints about the meager taking at the fence having gone
completely unheeded. Starved as she was these days, she couldn’t be too picky,
but damn it was that all? It wasn’t like the old days with Alan and the
rec-crews. It was
nothing
like the old days. This was so pathetic in
comparison, that it didn’t even recall any of her memories of real burning, of
good
burning. It was just a tease, brought to within a glimpse of the edge, and then
thrown back into a box to sleep. Teased and denied, again.

“They took another child to the fence
today,” Laura said, as unmindful of the Voltaire II’s frustration as Senna and
Chad. Alan suspected it sometimes, that the flamethrower had some kind of
gasoline spirit living in it, but there was nothing to do about it because they
lived in a settlement now and that meant no more missions and no more bonfires
in the name of taking back the world.

“Rosemary,” Laura added, when Chad
made no reply.

Chad nodded. “Yeah.”

The dying flames at the perimeter were
sending smoke drifting away from them, into the forest.

Laura looked at her new husband, her
final husband, she was sure, and nuzzled closer to him.

Maybe eleven years isn’t so new, she
thought, but it still feels that way.

Chad took her deeper in his arms.

“Being with you makes me so happy,”
she said.

He nodded and kissed her gently on the
cheek. There was a frown on his face, as always, but that was just how he
looked. He knew he looked ugly and mean, and he considered that to be his lot
in life, nothing good or bad or special about it, not in the least.

“I love you,” she said, and to Chad,
it was like a dull knife dragging itself across his skin, reminding him of the
wife he’d lost, and the family he’d made with her, also lost, and the name rang
out in his mind like a chime tolling for pain.

Though perhaps it shouldn’t have hurt
anymore, it did, and her name came to him and began to sing in his head. He
pressed it back into the place it wasn’t supposed to leave. Stay there, he
commanded it. Stay shut up.
Please.
Over the years, he’d gotten better
at keeping it away, and now he succeeded in silencing it.

Their three girls: Anna, named after
his mother, Sarah, named after her mother, and Jean, and one on the way, a boy,
they were another matter. Maybe the boy would have been a John. Their names he
couldn’t put away.

Their
names flew tight loops in his mind,
night and day, rain or shine or lightning storm. They came to him now, and they
became like flying phones, ringing off their hooks, as their knives, sharper,
cut into him over and over again. He’d learned by now that their names would
haunt him forever, that much had become obvious.

They were dead, but they were
unforgettable. Sometimes he wanted to forget all of them, needing it badly, and
other times he was ashamed for wanting that in the first place.

They were his. Even though they were gone,
they were still his, and he was and always would be theirs. That was just how
it was. His mind, his soul, would never be spotless again.

Chad swallowed, looked at Laura and
said, “I love you.” It was true.

They sat for some time longer, until
the chill pawed them back inside, as if each of them was an unraveling ball of
yarn that, when clawed at and rolled about, always left some part of itself trailing
behind. And, like all people, that was exactly what they were.

14

Alan and Senna’s clothes were thick with the smell of burning, and when they
got home, they took them off and Senna jumped in the shower first, as she
always did, following their routine on nights like this.

Clad only in his boxers, socks, and
glasses, Alan went to the storage closet to put the Voltaire II away. It was a
prized possession, the thing to which he was most attached, besides Senna and
the children, and the only non-living thing he could even begin to care about.

He got to his knees, disassembled,
cleaned, and wrapped it, then put it in its bed of rags.

There was a Voltaire III and a
Voltaire IV, he was pretty sure, and he’d heard tell of a Voltaire V and even a
Voltaire VI, but he doubted the V and disbelieved the VI. Anyway, there were no
rec-crews now, not sanctioned ones, at least, and most likely not any left at
all, so there was no one to ask, and the traders were worthless when it came to
confirming rumors. They just fed and spun the gossip into heavier, stickier yarn.

That aside, it wasn’t like he wanted
another one. She was all he needed now.

The small Shell sticker on the chassis,
which peeked out from the Voltaire II’s shredded nightclothes, caught his eye.
The oil company wasn’t around anymore, not really, not unless the commandeering
of its fuel reserves by anyone and everyone who could qualified as still being
around. The memory of how the sticker had come to be attached to his Voltaire
II threw a quick jab at his mind.

“Allie,” he said under his breath.
“I’m sorry.” Allie had put it there, years ago, but he didn’t want to think
about her now. Her death hadn’t been remarkable, no one’s death on the
rec-crews was anything but expected, but there was one thing about how she’d
gone out that he never wanted to think about.

And, of course, it was all he did
think about when he remembered her, because that was how those things went. The
more you focused on not thinking about something, the larger it grew in your
head, until it pushed out everything else, and it was all that was left.

His joints creaking a reminder of the
whole getting-old thing at him, Alan got to his feet and backed out of the
storage closet. He shut the door, and, still backing away, stepped on something
soft. He looked down. It was a sock—his sock, and he noticed that one of his
feet was now bare.

I must’ve lost it on my way into the
closet, he thought. He shook his head in self-acknowledgment of what a mess he
sometimes was. He could burn the zombies, and love and protect Senna, and teach
the children of New Crozet what little he knew, and protect them too, but that
was all.

Keeping his socks from ending up
strewn about was an impossibility. It must have been a failing in his genes, as
was finding clean clothes to wear, even though Senna always left them for him
in the most obvious places, like the dresser, and the closet. Without her, he had
no doubt that he’d be lost.

Letting a half-grin slide onto his
face, Alan tromped tiredly into the lightly steaming bathroom and pulled the
shower curtain to one side. His heart fluttered.

Senna, wet, half-soaped, and assailed
by the spray of water, was standing under the showerhead running soapy fingers
through her wet hair. Small white bubbles were gliding down the long strands
and down her tanned, elegantly arched back, and lower still.

Turning to look at him, she smiled.

“You gonna take that sock off or
what?” she said, pointing down. Alan, who’d forgotten that one of his feet was still
covered, quickly pulled the sock off, threw it behind him, and stepped sideways
in an awkward lurch to regain his footing.

“I’ll help with these,” Senna said,
and reaching out of the shower with her sudsy hands, relieved Alan of his
boxers. Then she pulled him into the shower. He joined her, gladly, wordlessly,
and drew the curtain shut.

Afterward, they dressed in fresh
clothes. For Alan, the smell of burning seemed to linger in his nostrils.
Whether it was from the fire that night, or one of the many zombie fires he’d
set in his years, or all of them, he wasn’t sure. He often thought he smelled
burning when there was in fact nothing on fire. Maybe his sense of smell was
off on account of all the smoke inhalation he’d endured, he didn’t know.

Senna went to the kitchen and began making
something to eat. Alan watched her for a while—he loved to watch her when she
was preparing food. There was something primal about it that made him happy,
turned him on, and made him love her even more all at the same time.

At least she doesn’t have her apron
on, Alan thought. I wouldn’t be able to handle that.

He walked over to her, put his arms
around her and kissed her neck. She moaned softly, looked up at him, and the
smile she gave him was so genuine, so open, that he couldn’t help kissing her,
and deeply. When their lips unlocked, he glanced at what she was making,
smiled, kissed her on the cheek, and let her get back to what she was doing.

He began to pace back and forth across
the kitchen threshold, and Senna turned, sensing that he was beginning to do
this. It was a habit of his, an overused one, and one that Senna still managed,
somehow, to find endearing.

Alan’s hair was wet from the shower,
and he was running his fingers through it nervously and pushing his glasses,
which kept slipping down slightly from the top of his nose, back up so the
lenses were lined up with his eyes. The frames needed tightening, but he kept
forgetting to fix the tiny screws. He was bad about pretty much everything that
had to do with taking care of himself, and yet he’d managed to get on in life,
even after the outbreak.

15

As part of his pacing route, Alan was keeping an eye on the fire that was
burning in the living room hearth, which he’d put on once they’d gotten a
thorough cleaning in the shower. The air was too cold for this time of year,
and a chill kept wandering in uninvited. The house was old, and the unwanted nip
was a reminder that some winter-proofing still needed to be done.

It was nice to have a fire, but it
would have been nicer not to have one right now. They needed to save their
timber for the winter.

The kitchen was a long, dimly-lit
rectangle, and the glint of the living room’s fire lent a wavering glow to its
threshold, where the brunt of Alan’s pacing was concentrated. Deeper in the
kitchen, the shadows won out for control of the rectangle’s middle portion,
until the faint light from a singular and improbably small bulb at the kitchen’s
end showed its stubborn force, keeping the shadows back. That was where Senna
was, in that lighted alcove, opening and closing cupboards and jars, mixing
dried foods together, and pouring water.

Alan thought of how near the town
entrance was. Theirs was the closest house to the gate. It made sense, as they
were the most experienced at dealing with zombies, the ones that the others
would look to if something went wrong.

The house had been a fixer-upper, that
was for sure. Alan remembered how much fun it had been to get the dilapidated
structure out from under its state of disrepair into a condition that was
inhabitable. In those days, busy as Senna and he were in reviving the house and
cultivating the farmland that belonged to it, he’d been able, at times, to
forget that his life was anything other than that of a normal, small-town
farmer, perhaps even one who was living before the apocalypse.

So there was a very tall fence
encircling their property, so what?

The work had helped restore much of
his mind, which he hadn’t realized was beginning to lapse during his time with
the rec-crews. Even his nightmares had ebbed and settled into a predictable
rotation that made the nighttime livable.

Making the place their own had been
therapeutic for Senna as well. She liked that they’d lain claim to the best
arable land in the town on account of the fact that the rest of the people in
New Crozet wanted nothing to do with living so close to the perimeter. Besides
taking pride in the perceived danger of her property, she discovered a deep
love for planting crops and growing her own food.

It gave her a feeling of being
connected to the land that she hadn’t experienced before. She ate what she
grew, and she traded what she couldn’t or didn’t want to eat for goods that the
other townspeople produced, and the things the traders brought.

She’d been obstinate about the plot of
land, too, having told Alan where they’d be living. Remembering that still made
her smile. She wouldn’t have taken no for an answer, but she also knew that he wouldn’t
deny her the indulgence of choosing their home.

Since they’d met, he’d been so kind
and sweet that she sometimes thought he’d move the world for her if he could,
and, on occasion, she was sure that he did.

They regularly went out at night for
walks around the perimeter, saying hello to Corks as they made their way around
the town. On nights like tonight, when they went to the perimeter with one of
the children and went through the exercise that they’d gone through with
Rosemary, they usually didn’t go out again.

Senna thought of Corks. She worried
about him from time to time because he often appeared distraught and uneasy,
and he’d seemed especially troubled tonight, but that was understandable given
the practice session with Rosemary. She wondered if she and Alan should break
routine and go for their walk so they could see if Corks was alright.

“Did Corks seem off to you tonight?”
Senna asked.

Alan shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.
Why?”

“I don’t know, he just seemed more
nervous than usual.”

“You think we should go check on him?”

“No,” Senna said, but thinking maybe
they should. “It was probably because of Rosemary, and we wouldn’t want Corks
worrying about us being worried about him.”

“That would just make him more stressed,”
Alan agreed.

Dismissing her worry and filing it
away for later, Senna put down the bowl in which she was mixing dried potato
flakes and honey. It made that sound that glass likes to make when it settles on
a counter. She’d been listening to the footfalls of Alan’s nervous pacing,
framed within the crackling of the fire. His presence, as always, was comforting.

Smiling, she walked over to him, put
her hands on his shoulders and squeezed, pressing downward at the same time, making
him stop in place. She kissed his mouth, then gave his bottom lip a playful tug
with her teeth.

Pressing her body against his, she
moaned as the longing grew deep in her belly. She kissed him again, and he
kissed her back. Then she broke away and walked backward, beckoning for him to
follow. Powerless to resist the lilt of her body and the sudden playfulness of
her mood, he followed.

She took his calloused hand in her own
and led him to the bug bite couch in the living room. She lay down on it and
pulled him on top of her, and he threw the frayed couch cushion that was above her
head to the floor.

“You need to de-stress, relax a
little…let the rest of the tension out,” Senna whispered. “Let me help you…some
more.”

Alan looked at her. She had a coquettish
grin on her face and her head was cocked slightly, at an angle that was
undeniably jaunty.

He began to take his glasses off, but then
she put her hands on his, stopping him.

“No,” she said, biting her lip and
grinning, “keep them on. You know how I like that. Keep them on…for me. The way
they glint in the firelight…makes you look just a bit…evil.”

He did know she liked the black-framed
glasses, so he let his hand drop away from the frames and put his arms around
her. She moaned, then wrapped her legs around him and squeezed. Alan leaned
into her with more of his weight, and she moaned again, her mouth staying slightly
open. He bent down and kissed her deeply. They began to move rhythmically, and
then she was tearing at his clothes and he was reciprocating, her want igniting
his own.

Moments later, they’d succeeded in
getting most of each other’s clothes off. A button had been freed of its
stitching on Alan’s shirt in the struggle, and was now lying beside the
fireplace, inches from the flame-licked timbers.

The exposed flesh of their lean and
suntanned bodies was glimmering in the light of the flames, and beads of
perspiration were gathering in their usual, strategic places. She pulled him
down on top of her, making sure her nails were grazing his skin, and loving the
feeling of their toned, sweaty bodies mingling.

Their movements became more sporadic,
and in their give-and-take locomotive of pleasure, you could see the
desperation with which they lived in the post-apocalyptic world. Their bodies were
infused with an awareness that this might very well be the last time, so let’s
fuck each other’s brains out, shall we?

Framed in waning firelight, they gave
in to an unabashed and unbridled lust.