Stay Dead 2: The Dead and The Dying (6 page)

“
Yeah, yeah you’re right.
Fuck it. Let’s go.”

“
Good, we’ve been at this
for an hour and all these empty cars are giving me the fucking
creeps. Big time.”

“
Seriously.”

“
Hey…”

“
Yeah?”

“
Can I ask you something
without you thinking I’m crazy?”

“
Too late.”

“
All right. It’s happened a
few times now, and since we’ve been looking through these cars it’s
happened a few times more.”

“
What’s
happened?”

“
I think I’m seeing ghosts,
man. But not just seeing, like I’m feeling them too. It’s really
fucking weird. It’s like a cold shiver runs right through me, or
I’ll see like a shadow move that shouldn’t be there. It’s not like
I’m seeing a ghost, like Sixth Sense or something, but more like a
feeling, like I just know.”

“
You’re freaking me out
even more now. You know I fucking hate ghosts. Mom used to talk
about that shit all the time with Grandma when she was alive. I
wouldn’t be able to sleep for days. And now you’re going to start
with it.”

“
Do you think I’m losing
it?”

“
Yes. No, well I don’t know
man, I’m not seeing anything weird, except for the
zombies.”

“
I knew I should’ve kept my
mouth shut.”

“
I believe you, but I just
don’t want to think of anymore freaky shit. Zombies. Ghosts. What
else, man? What’s next?”

“
Gremlins.”

“
Gremlins would be a walk
in the park. Shit, they could be pets. All you have to do is follow
two rules: no eating after midnight, and don’t get them wet. How
hard is that?”

“
You guys talking about
Gremlins again?” Chung-Hee asked.

“
You know it.”

“
Dude, give me a Gremlin
Apocalypse over a Zombie Apocalypse any day.”

“
Amen.”

Abdul-Ba’ith stood beside his truck
stretching his legs. “You should stretch, too,” he suggested to
Carrie.

“
No, thanks.”

“
We’ll be driving for a
while. It’s not good for circulation to sit so long without doing
some stretching every now and again.”

“
How about fuck
off.”

“
How about you go find a
vehicle and follow behind the rest of us?”

“
Is that a
threat?”

“
Take it as you will, but
if you end up getting a blood clot because you refuse to get out of
the car and stretch your legs you are threatening my life, Alexis’s
life, and the children’s lives. So, please get off your big ass and
stretch out for a few minutes if you plan to keep driving with
us.”

Carrie didn’t respond, but she stared
at Abdul-Ba’ith with an incredulous look etched across her face as
she got out of the car and walked away.

Alexis looked at Abdul-Ba’ith and
asked, “Do you think she’ll find another ride?”

“
Sadly, no. I’m sure she’s
going to hide behind a car, stretch, and then come back to
us.”

“
How has she made it this
long without someone killing her?”

“
I’d say luck, so maybe it
will be good to have her with us.”

“
Can we strap her to the
roof?”

“
If she keeps up her
wonderful attitude I’ll figure something out.”

Sure enough, Carrie had come back. She
didn’t look at anyone in the truck, but climbed in and sat
down.

Jon-Jon, sitting comfortably in his
new van worked his way to the grass median where he then led the
convoy to the other side of the highway. It looked much easier to
navigate then the right side and hopefully it would take them past
whatever had caused the traffic jam to begin with.

7 LOOSE END

(back to
top)

He felt alive, even though he was
anything but. The wind whipped his hair around like blades of grass
in an open field. His arm hung out the window, and he sat slumped
in his chair as if it were a throne fit for the King himself. He
had a belly full of the darkest energy that surely ever existed. He
thought it felt a lot like a belly full of whiskey on a cold night,
but there was a hell of lot more to it than that.

There was someone, or something,
inside him. In some ways he felt like a limb, or part of a hive, he
thought. He didn’t feel like a puppet on a string or anything like
that, but he knew he was tapped into some serious shit. Maybe the
Devil himself was taking a liking to him.

Whatever it was seemed to know
everything that was on his mind. And he too could feel parts of
conversations, emotions, but it was all just a soft noise in the
background of his mind. Questions were answered with a sudden
understanding. Pain became pleasure. Feeling his own body going
through the early stages of physical death simply felt like the
sparks that would start a fire.

He could feel, as if by some form of
autonomy, where the living and the dead were—an internal compass
for them both. It was with that knowledge that he knew what streets
to turn down and what direction to take to get to his destination.
He wanted to find the one that got away. And after he was done with
her, he was going to track down those other self righteous sacks of
meat and rend them each to a slow death between his
teeth.

***

Days earlier…

Sarah wasn’t entirely sure how she did
it. Or how she even had the courage to try, but it was that or it
was letting that sick fuck have his way with her and then kill her.
Her body ached from the fight, and even worse was the pain she felt
in her ankle. The pain burned brightly, traveling to her knee. The
way she hobbled into the woods, putting all her wait on the pad of
her foot and off her heel was alleviating the pressure a touch, but
come tomorrow her entire foot, and probably her leg would
hurt.

She knew she couldn’t keep this up
much longer. Jumping off the roof saved her from that maniac, but
she now had the attention of several deaders that were following
her into the thick of the woods. She was moving quicker than them
for now, but she wouldn’t for much longer. The pain was dominating
her, and all she wanted to do was sit down and nurse her wounds.
The dead didn’t think like that, if they thought at all. They
didn’t get tired, and they sure as shit didn’t care about their
wounds. As slow as they were they would never need to stop and
catch their breath.

The moon was obscured from the thick
branches overhead and all Sarah could see were thin slivers of
light on the edges of the trees. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark,
but this deep in and the moon might as well have not existed. Her
lungs burned, her leg throbbed, and she just wanted to give in but
the sounds of the deaders crunching leaves underfoot spurred her
forward again.

As she trotted painfully through
territory unknown, images of Boone and Milah flashed through her
mind. Though her and Milah had been friends for a few years, they
both took to Boone quickly as if they’d known him far longer than
the few days they really did. Despite it being the end of the world
they made the best of it. Laughs were few and far between but when
they did occur they were sincere and contagious. She missed them
both dearly, but the loss of her friend Milah was devastating. It
numbed her, and wedged a ball in her throat. Her eyes were wet with
tears of pain, and if she ever survived the night she would weep
unending for her friend.

When Sarah thought all was lost and
her legs were giving out and tripping her up more than they were
carrying her forward she lie on the ground weighing out the benefit
of getting up and pushing forward again. She would just collapse
again. The sounds of the dead behind her had softened. Perhaps some
had decided to go back, and the others were slowly catching up to
her. Whatever the reason, she still could not see a reason to push
herself up. Then she noticed a light on in a window just past the
edge of the woods. She made it. She was at the end, and there was a
light. Then the light went out and she got up to find what house it
came from.

She hobbled out of the woods and onto
a street. She stood at the corner of Werrlein Ave and Mathis Street
watching the windows on the second floor for signs of life. Most of
the homes were boarded up on the first floors, and some on the
second as well. The light in the window she saw was definitely from
the second floor. She knew it wasn’t the first house, but that it
was certainly one of the first few.

Looking and listening for signs and
sounds of life only revealed to her the sounds of the dead closing
in. Their moans mixed in with the crunching of leaves and twigs.
She turned to her right at the sound of something dragging on the
street—it was a deader with a mangled foot that dragged behind it
as it walked. With each step the ruined limb scraped against the
blacktop, and she soon realized that the scraping noise was the
sound of its bone scraping the black top. There was no shoe, sock,
and barely any skin left. She wanted to throw up, but instead she
decided to start screaming.

“
Help! Please help, I know
you’re there!”

She moved down the street, screaming
herself raw.

“
Help you coward! I can’t
run anymore, please fucking help me!”

Her eyes were wide with terror, she
was bordering on madness now.

“
JUST LET ME IN! I’m not
bit. I’m alive! Fucking help me!”

She had almost lost her voice when a
window opened and a man yelled down to her, “Jesus Christ, lady,
shut the fuck up. You’re going to bring them all over
here.”

“
Let me in, please. I’m
begging you,” she cried.

“
If you’re bit, or
bleeding, I will shoot you dead.”

“
Fine.”

She made her way over to the house.
The man closed the window and ran down the stairs to open the door.
She nervously moved the small front porch as she could hear
movement behind the door. The man was pushing stuff aside. A
barricade, she figured. She could hear him grunting as something
slid slowly across the floor. Just down the street came the
scraping sound of the dead man and his ruined foot.

Scrrtttch… Scrrtttch…
Scrrtttch…

Sarah wanted to scream. To pull her
hair and scream like a woman gone mad with clumps of hair and scalp
in her hands.

Scrrtttch… Scrrtttch…
Scrrtttch…

Dead things stumbled out of the woods.
They began to moan for her. The sounds of teeth clacking
together.

Clack-Click-Clak-Clik…

Scrrtttch… Scrrtttch…
Scrrtttch…

“
Come on, come on,” she
whimpered.

When the door finally opened she could
swear it was as loud as a gunshot. A man with a gaunt face and a
week’s worth of stubble opened the door and peered out. His eyes
were wild and he held a small pistol in his hand.

“
Have you been bitten?
Scratched?”

“
No. I swear. You can check
me when I come in, just please…”

“
I won’t hesitate to kill
you,” he warned.

“
Fine,” she said, pushing
her way in.

“
Help me barricade the door
again.”

She hobbled over and helped the man
push a heavy bureau against the door. She doubted she was much
help, and then they moved some smaller pieces of furniture around
the sides of it.

“
Now, come on, upstairs. We
have to get their attention away from the house.”

“
How?”

“
Just come on.”

The man took the stairs two at a time
and Sarah did her best to keep up but all she wanted to do was
collapse. She stumbled at the top of the stairs, catching herself
in the doorway as the man opened the window.

“
Get down,” he told
her.

She squatted, and a sharp pain
traveled up her leg from the way she positioned herself. “What are
you doing?” She asked in a pained voice through gritted
teeth.

The man grabbed an empty glass bottle.
Sarah thought it was an empty bottle of vodka, but she couldn’t
tell for sure in the darkness of the room. “I have to distract
them, otherwise they’ll start trying to get in here. This worked
before, and I hope it will again.”

He through the bottle out the window,
arching it over the corner of the roof of the adjacent house, and
hoping it smashed into the street. He held his breath for a moment
and heard the telltale shatter of the bottle. He grinned in delight
and then poked his head just above the windowsill to look out. He
couldn’t see if they’d gone towards the bottle or continued toward
his home.

“
Can’t see shit. Stay
here.”

She nodded, thankful for not having to
move. She sat down, putting her back against the wall, as the man
stepped past her and quietly moved down the stairs. He stood at the
bottom of the steps listening intently to hear if anything was
coming up the steps or scratching at the door. He heard nothing and
assumed his distraction worked. He was happy there were only a few
of them outside. Any more and they would probably have drowned out
the noise that the bottle made. Their moans and grunts alone
weren’t very loud, but coupled in the dozens and they were
deafening.