Rotten (6 page)

Rotten turned and Princess gripped my arm.  He stopped in front of the church and I saw the pile of burnt out dead in the front of the building.  I jumped from the vehicle, with Princess, Highland, and Rotten following, and approached the pile slowly.  I saw hints of pink plaid, green checks, and the familiar yellow dress.  I didn’t speak, what could I say?  That was Momma.  I knew that dress, had seen it easily hundreds of times since I was twelve-years-old.  Momma never threw anything away.  I dropped to my knees. 

“Dove!”  Princess wrapped around me.  Rotten grabbed both of my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek and Highland reached down and rubbed my back for a moment.  No one knew what to say, and I least of all.  There was my mom, a bit of yellow fabric over a dried carcass. 

“Shit!”  I threw them off and stood up.  I walked over to the gate that led to the cemetery and stared inside.  “Shit!” 

“We could bury her,” Rotten suggested.

“There must be shovels and stuff in a cemetery, right?” Princess said.

“No!  We don’t have time.”  I tried to settle my breathing and the numbness hit me.  If it hadn’t hit before with all we’d dealt with in the last hours, it certainly hit me then.  Yeah, I knew Heather and Penelope, but I didn’t love them.  My mom … I loved.  “We go on.  Let’s go.”  I turned back to the vehicle and I felt how uncomfortable the others were with my emotions, but I didn’t know how to change it.  That was my mom.

Rotten put his arm around me before I reached the car.  “Remember what you said, Dove.  It was God who brought her here, even if she had changed to something not human, it was God, hope, and her memories that brought her here.”  He kissed me lightly on the temple and pushed me toward the backdoor. 

I crawled in the backseat and Princess crawled over top of me and pushed Sully against the other door.  She reached into the back and Moonshine woke up enough to hand her a box of tissues.  I cried.  Princess petted my hair, hugged my neck, and handed me tissues to blow my nose. 

I gathered myself and sat up straighter when we turned into the old neighborhood.  We all did, except Sully, he stared out the window and sipped wine from the bottle.  We didn’t reminisce in words, but we all looked at the old familiar places where we played as children.  My mom had since moved into a smaller house on a golf course, Rotten’s parents lived in Arizona when they weren’t traveling the world, Moonshine’s parents had bought a trailer and land in a rural area beside the river, and Princess’s foster parents disappeared from the neighborhood shortly after she dropped out of high school.  Highland’s mom was the only one left in the old neighborhood, the place where we once regularly planned for the zombie apocalypse. 

We’d never asked about Highland’s dad and he never spoke of him.  It was just he and his mom.  Mrs. Williams is a kind lady, old fashioned in her demeanor.  She’s a bit out of step with the world and upon first meeting her you may assume she’s ditzy or shallow, but then she say something profound, totally blowing your mind, and smile and hand you a cookie she’s just pulled from the oven.  Frankly, Mrs. Williams is an enigma, just like Highland. 

Over the years we had discussed many times that Mrs. Williams probably knew what we were doing in the basement, especially after the night Moonshine puked peach moonshine on the wall.  But she didn’t say a word as she cleaned it up, and then she called our parents, and put us all to bed.  She had to know, but she told our parents it was a terrible case of food poisoning and refused forever after to go the Pizza Hut on the corner.  She had to know because what Moonshine puked up totally reeked of alcohol, and then Rotten puked.  The rest of us kept it down, but she had to know.

Rotten slowed and turned onto Cardinal Lane.  I straightened and grabbed my golf club and noticed that even Moonshine was alert and ready to slide over the seat with his two-by-four.  Rotten stopped in front of the house and we observed three husks in the yard, one by the garage door and the other two at the front door.  “What do you think it means, dude?” he whispered.

Highland rubbed his face.  “It’s Friday, right?”

Rotten nodded.

“Mr. Keppler from the shelter is at the garage to collect recycling and at the front are Miss Lily and Mrs. Eddy, quilting every Friday morning for the last fifteen years.” 

“What do you want me to do, man?” Rotten said.

“Turn in.”  He reached in his backpack and pulled out a control for the garage door.  Rotten started up the drive slowly and we watched the door begin to lift.  “Guys, get ready.” 

Moonshine slid over the backseat, settling between Princess and me and then lifted me and set me in the middle of the seat.  “I’m going first,” he said.

“He’s back,” Princess whispered in my ear.

“It’s dark in there.” Rotten stopped right outside of the opening.

“Just do it,” Highland said, rolling down his window and picking up the gun.  “Just do it.” 

Rotten pulled forward slowly, thumping over what used to be Mr. Keppler, and stopped when the tennis ball hanging from above tapped the window and marked the parking spot. 

“Flashlight!”  Highland snapped.

Rotten fumbled on the space between the seats and grabbed one of four.  He hit the switch and scanned his side of the garage.  Highland grabbed another and slowly panned it around his side.  “It’s clear here.”

“Looks good here, too,” Rotten said.

“All right.”  He hit the button on the control and the engine engaged, shutting the daylight out.  Highland sighed.  “Okay,” he whispered, “we go slow.”  He handed a couple flashlights to us.  “Moonshine, you check on the other side of Mom’s Jeep and Princess and Dove, crawl over Sully and check out that side.  We’ll all go out together.”

Princess and I crawled over Sully and pushed him to the middle of the seat.

“Ready,” I said and Princess turned on the flashlight.

“Go,” Highland said and we fell out of the SUV. 

I grabbed Princess’s shoulder and Moonshine screamed as he ran behind the Jeep, his two-by-four raised high.

“Well, it’s about time you got home.” Mrs. Williams stood in the doorway with a shotgun in her hands and wearing an apron over jeans. 

I’d never seen Mrs. Williams in jeans.  She always wore dresses, skirts, skorts, or pedal pushers, and truth be told, some great vintage fifties garb that she found down at Princess’s gallery, but never jeans.  And a shotgun? 

“Come in, come in,” she opened the door and smiled.  I noticed that even though her hair was not in its perfect style, she still wore lipstick.  And then the scent of bacon hit me.

Moonshine caught it next and laughed.  “I love you, Mrs. Williams!”

“Love you too, Michael.”  She smiled.  “Come on kids, we have a lot to do.”

Highland smiled and grabbed his backpack from the seat of the car. 

As we piled into the back door and introduced Sully, Mrs. Williams pulled out plates of sausage and potatoes from the oven and then set a platter of sliced tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumbers, and chucks of cheddar on the table.  “Sit down,” she said, sliding a pan of biscuits in the oven. 

As we took our old familiar places around the table she set down three different juices and a gallon of milk.  “You guys need your energy, help yourself, and the coffee is brewing.”  She glanced at Sully as he settled at the head of the table, a place we’d never seen anyone sit.  “No alcohol at my kitchen table, young man.” 

I had to give Sully credit; he nodded his head, stood up, and set the bottle on the counter.  “I lost the lid, ma’am,” he said and I nearly laughed.  Ma’am?  They were about the same age, but there is something about Mrs. Williams that just demands respect.

Mrs. Williams nodded and poured him a glass of orange juice.  “Sit down and drink your juice.”  She patted him on the shoulder.

She went to the stove and poured a huge bowl of eggs into a giant black skillet and began stirring.  “Help yourselves, kids, the eggs will be done in a minute.” 

I grabbed a slice of tomato and Princess a slice of cucumber. 

“Protein, girls,” Mrs. Williams said, her back to us.  “You’re actually in the zombie apocalypse now, you need protein.  Plus, we have to bury some bodies.”  She stirred harder and checked the biscuits.

“What?” Highland jumped from his chair.  “What bodies?”

“Well, Midget for one.  I didn’t know dogs could get infected, Wayne, I’m sorry.”  She set the spoon on the side of the stove, gave him a hug, and then returned to the eggs.  “And Lydia Cane and her mom, Eden.”  She stirred harder.  “I didn’t know it was happening.  I mean how many times have you kids sat around this table plotting and planning?  Hundreds?  I always thought I should encourage it, it’s imagination - I shouldn’t discourage that - but I certainly didn’t believe it.”  She turned off the heat under the iron pan and continued to stir. 

“I had just finished digging up that old, dead, peach tree in your dad’s garden.  I know it was late.  I probably shouldn’t have been out so late, but it was the anniversary of his death and the tree he planted has been dead for at least two years.  I had a glass of wine,” she glanced at Sully, “and decided it was time.”

“I didn’t see them until I had clipped all the branches, cut the trunk up, and moved it to the street.  I had just gotten back into the yard, getting ready to dig up the roots when they hopped the fence.  They hopped it like monkeys or something you’d see in those crazy movies you kids watch.  Eden went at me and Lydia got Midget.  I had the shovel in my hands.  You know, the root cutting one you just ordered for me?”  She smiled over her shoulder at Highland and poured the eggs in a large bowl.  “I killed her.  And then Lydia came at me, I still had the shovel in my hands, I killed her, too.  And I thought Midget was just injured and I ran to him.” She sighed, and set the bowl of eggs on the table. “Luckily, I still had the shovel.  You kids never talked about zombie animals.” 

“Fuck!” Moonshine shoved a piece of sausage in his mouth.

“Language, Michael!” Mrs. Williams said sharply and checked on the biscuits.

“Yes, ma’am,” Moon said, and chewed his sausage.

“Zombie animals?” Princess nibbled on a piece of cheddar.  “Why didn’t we think of that?”

Highland paced and wiped his face from a paper towel he snatched from the roll.  “Midget?” he whispered.

“I’m sorry, honey.”  Mrs. Williams rubbed his back.  “I’ve got the downstairs windows covered, and I started on the upstairs.  I thought you guys might need some sleep, so we have fresh sheets on the beds and I stored about forty gallons of water, I know that’s not much, but I’ll have more by evening.  I don’t know when the power or the water will go out so in the mean time, we take advantage.” 

“Mom, you’re awesome,” Highland sat down at the table, wiped tears from his eyes, and spooned some eggs in his plate.  “Okay, guys.  Animals go zombie, now we know.  Let’s eat.” 

We ate and we talked like we did when we were kids - we plotted the zombie apocalypse with both laughter and seriousness.  Sully didn’t say much, he ate and he ate well, as did the rest of us, but he didn’t speak.  He glanced at the bottle of wine on the counter a couple times, I thought longingly, but he didn’t reach for it. 

We talked about zombie animals.  That was shocking to our senses, as many movies as we had studied, as many crazy teen novels as we had read; we weren’t prepared for zombie animals.  How would you even know if an animal had gone zombie?  We had to kill animals, too?  I sat back, chewing some bacon, and thought it interesting that we would kill zombie people without much thought, but stumbled when it came to animals.  Even freaking zombie animals. I took a sip of juice because it was hard to swallow.  And then Moonshine spoke up and I almost spewed.  I’m not sure if the reaction was from humor or terror?

“Can you imagine a zombie owl?  F….”.  He glanced at Mrs. Williams and smiled.  “Or a zombie cat?  A raccoon?  A roach?  Je…”  He paused.  “Can you imagine?  A zombie crow?  A hawk?  A coyote?  Freak!  A Tiger?”  He laughed and coughed.  I think he was feeling the same emotion I was, torn between humor and terror.  He wiped his nose, took a sip of juice, and bit into a biscuit.