Stay Dead: A Novel (14 page)

Jon-Jon turned to look at the wreck. Through the
mangled metal and shattered glass, he could see Gerty with a
mouthful of flesh. They were all dead inside, yet they continued to
move. No one was near the truck. He took aim at the gas tank and
fired a shot. There was a small initial spark of an explosion,
enough to set the wreck to fire. It burned bright and hot.

“
Let’s move,” Jon-Jon suggested.
“We’ll be surrounded if we stay any longer.”

“
What about them,” Eddie
asked.

“
Leave’em,” Jon-Jon said
coldly.

“
He deserves to die,” said
Julio.

“
We didn’t mean it,” the boy
cried.

His dead friend began to twitch back from the brink
of death. Eddie filled the twitching creature’s head full of
bullets; the blood blew back on to him, and onto the crying boy who
played soldier.

The driver of the Humvee began to stir. He lifted
his head, blood spilling from his nose. Some of his teeth were
missing, and his face was swollen. He looked out at the scene with
blurred vision, not knowing what was happening. He pulled a gun
from his side and took aim at Eddie—the only man he could see
holding a weapon. He saw his friend dead, and his other friend on
his knees crying. Anger moved his pains to the back of his mind. He
shakily took aim and pulled the trigger. A three-round burst of
fire cracked through the air.

Julio turned to the driver and charged at him with
empty fists, but Jon-Jon’s bullet beat him there. The driver
slumped back, his hands clutching at his chest as blood gurgled up
from the bottom of his throat. Dead things began to descend upon
the area, though not many. And more would follow.

Damian was reluctant to leave the van. His wound
continued to bleed but he wanted to be of help. Once he got out he
could see that Julio was visibly shaken up. And when he could see
the aftermath he knew why—he wished he had gotten out of the van
sooner.

He ran to Julio’s side, gun drawn. Though the driver
was dead, Julio reached inside to pry the gun from his hands. It
was an M162A Rifle, which was deceivingly light, though quite
impressive to look at and hold. Julio felt an immediate surge of
confidence. He turned to look at the crying mess of a drunken kid
who stayed slumped down on his knees.

“
Get up,” Julio called to
him.

Eddie turned to Julio. “What are you doing?” he
asked quietly.

Julio ignored him. “Get up!” he yelled at the
boy.

The boy refused to meet his gaze. “I don’t want to
die,” he whimpered.

“
Don’t do this,” Damian said, but
remained at his side.

“
I’m not doing anything. He is,”
Julio pointed at the boy who was now standing on rubbery legs.
“Good, now take you’re dead friend’s gun over there,” he told
him.

The boy listened. He moved as slowly as the dead
things that approached.

“
Good, now shoot your friend in
the face till he dies again,” Julio ordered. He pointed at the
driver of the Humvee whose dead hands tried to open the
door.

The boy looked at him, his sorrowful eyes expressing
a new emotion: disgust.

“
Shoot him in the fucking face,”
Julio screamed.

The boy followed orders. He shot his friend
repeatedly in the face, leaving nothing but a pile of red mush on
top of his dead shoulders. Julio smiled, then raised his new weapon
and shot the boy dead with a three round burst of gunfire. Several
people screamed in opposition, but their protests couldn’t stop the
bullets.

“
You’re on your own,” Eddie said.
“You ain’t coming with us,” he said, holding his gun steadily in
the direction of Julio’s face.

“
That’s fine,” Julio said, “I’m
better off without you clowns. Been downhill ever since we met
yall.”

Julio looked at his friend Damian. He could tell he
didn’t approve of what just happened, but it was too late to take
it back. He walked back to his truck. Damian looked at the faces of
the new friends he made on the road, clearly sorry for his friends’
actions. He shook Eddie’s hand, and then Jon-Jon’s and waived at
the rest of them. He hopped in with Julio as the other people in
his truck left, finding refuge with the others who would stay with
the convoy.

“
You know you’re welcome to stick
with us,” Eddie called out.

Damian heard the words, but could only nod. He knew
he was welcome to stay, but his loyalty was to his friend. Julio
pulled the truck out of line and headed away as fast as his four
wheels would take them.

The convoy drove off again, leaving nothing but
regrets and the dead behind. The dead were too slow to follow. The
dead boy who found it fun to play soldier rose from the
tear-stained dirt and followed along with the other dead
things.

CHAPTER 1
4: Tomorrow never
knows

West Virginia.

Mount Weather Special Facility.

In the deep recesses of The Mount Weather Special
Facilities a woman by the name of Rachel Lucas, a biologist of some
note, is examining the reanimated cadaver of a young soldier. She
is dressed in a canary yellow hazmat suit with a clear visor and
breathing apparatus. A similarly clad armed guard stands just
outside of her room looking in through a large window.

There are thirteen other such rooms on the
floor.

Rachel speaks into a recorder attached to her
clothing. Her specimen is strapped down securely to an examining
table with his arms and legs spread. The specimen’s head is
strapped down but it has full mobility of its jaw. Rachel has
already taken blood, tissue, saliva, and all other possible samples
from the specimen for examination later.

She circles the creature slowly, paying close
attention to physical movements. She has orally noted, by way of
her recorder, any and all observations, no matter how minor they
may appear to be. There is also a video recorder set up in the
corner of the room

She has worked for many days on her current
specimen, seemingly without rest, but with very little to show for
her efforts. She is expected, by her superiors, to have an
explanation for things that cannot be reasonably explained.

The specimen moans, his eyes follow her around the
room. They are yellowed and dry, the blue color of his irises muted
and nearly disappearing. The dead soldier moaned again, this time
for a longer period of time. “Yyyrrrrrrrrgggggnnnuhhhh,” is how it
would be spelled if the sounds could be turned into letters.

She notes the verbalization and continues to spiral
around the room. Her recorder beeps to let her know its memory is
nearing capacity. The recorder appears to malfunction as it begins
playback in reverse. Rachel hears a word she does not recall
saying, and a big bright light bulb turns on in the back of her
head.

She rushes out of the room to her computer, where
she has downloaded all of her digital audio notes and can access
her video recordings. Rachel begins to systematically review all of
her notes in reverse playback, isolating the audio segments in
which the specimen can be heard verbalizing. She has a small yellow
paper pad next to her mouse and a black fine point pen. She writes
down a number of words: pain, hungry, help, brains, flesh, meat,
need, hell, hurts. Rachel, though not entirely convinced, believes
that her dead specimen is communicating.

She listens to the segments repeatedly, and hears
the words again. It’s not her weary mind playing tricks, the words
are there. Distorted? Yes, but there all the same. She’s reminded
of her youth when her and her older brother would spin their
records in reverse in an attempt to hear satanic messages that
never appeared. It would seem now the message had finally
arrived.

She wants to share her findings with her colleagues
and superiors, but knows that she has to have something more solid
than a random series of words. Rachel suits up one more time to
enter the examination room. She has a new recorder with a fully
charged battery, and a number of questions to ask the dead
soldier.

Rachel was never much for questions. She always
preferred to find the answers for herself. Even in college when she
was encouraged to ask questions she often hesitated, she’d much
rather be the one to answer them.

This time was different though. Now she couldn’t
wait to ask her specimen a number of things. She only hoped he
could understand her. She pulled a steel chair from the corner of
the room and situated it in such a way that she could make eye
contact with her specimen.

“
Hello,” she started, “can you
understand me?”

The creature looked her in the eyes, moving its jaw
in a biting motion. Rachel repeated her words exactly.

“
Sssseyyy,” the dead thing
croaked.

Rachel played back her recorder and nearly jumped
off her seat once she heard his response. She was slightly more
disturbed now, more than she had ever been since the dawning of the
dead things.

“
What is your name?”

“
Ssseellemmmmaaann,” the soldier
hissed.

“
You don’t remember your
name?”

“
Nnnnnn,” it said.

“
What do you want?”

“
Hssselffffeeffiiilllll.”

Rachel had a sick feeling building up in her
stomach. It soured her throat and made her heart beat rapidly.

“
Why do you want life…and…flesh?”
Rachel asked.

“
Nnnniiiuurrrnniiappppppeessaee.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Yyyrrrrgggggnnuhhh,” it
rasped.

“
If I feed you, will you answer my
question?”

The dead soldier was silent for a moment, then
garbled a sound, “Ssseey.” It didn’t sound like anything more than
a primal grunt, more like a hissing, really. But once Rachel played
it back she believed he said ‘yes’.

Rachel shuddered and left the room again. She
entered a larger room with additional specimens, limbs, and
equipment. There were several guards, one for each specimen, and
three lab technicians all in the same get up that Rachel wore.

She filled out a request for human tissue samples
and handed the sheet to one of the technicians. He nodded and held
out an extended hand in a gesture to a specimen that was strapped
to an examination table. The specimen, an elderly female, had
already been sampled. She had missing limbs, organs, skin, muscle
tissue, you name it and it was sampled. She was a veritable buffet
table of undead delicacies. Rachel pulled forth a small container
and a scalpel and began to carve slices of her belly away.

She made sure to get a variety of selections and put
them neatly into the container, all while the creature watched her
with the one eye that hadn’t been sampled yet. The specimen seemed
almost sad, though Rachel had never witnessed any of them express
emotion and realized she was projecting her own feelings
instead.

Once Rachel had finished filling her container she
placed the scalpel in a red hazmat container attached to the wall
for later sterilization. She weighed the container and the previous
technician noted it on her paperwork as she left the room.

Using a pair of surgical tongs, she dangled the
strips of flesh over the specimen’s mouth. The creature seemed
uninterested in the rotting room-temperature meat that hung just
near his lip. She tried the different selections of flesh, and
still, the creature would not eat.

“
You said if I fed you, you would
answer my questions…why aren’t you eating?” Rachel asked, as she
began to question her own sanity. She was talking to a corpse, and
trying to feed it. She wondered what she might do next—dinner by
candle light?

“
Gggniivvviiiilllll,” it
moaned.

Rachel played back the recording.

“
No way,” she said, “that is not
happening, you can lie here and rot.”

Rachel stormed out of the room, unsure of her own
sanity.

CHAPTER 1
5: Unearthed

It was nightfall at the Mourningside Cemetery and in
its few mausolea the long dead twitched and writhed in their
eternal resting places. They moved incredibly slowly, at first, but
with each successive motion their decomposing remains miraculously
gain a fluidity close to that of the other dead things walking the
earth now. Similarly, the dead buried in the ground began to move
in a way that would matter to those above. Their dead fingers
created little tremors that began to splinter their coffins and
move the dirt up and off. They were rising up from the bowels of
the earth.

One woman, long dead and at the rear most mausoleum,
staggered to her feet. She pushed the cement slab of her tomb to
the ground, allowing herself to slither out and stand up on two
feet again. It shattered into large chunks upon impact. She stood
in the moonlit interment space on legs the color of rust. Her grey
gown, which had been a white grown when she was laid to rest, bore
the black beady fruits of mold.

In life she had the most beautiful blonde hair, but
now she only had a few straw colored wisps that looked more like
cobwebs than anything else. Her eyes had long ago withered away to
dust. Her skin shriveled so tightly to her bones she stood as
barely more than a skeleton in a burial gown. She took another
step, landing uneasily as her weight shifted forward.

The dead woman had taken hours to move herself to
the door of the mausoleum, and when she got there the door would
not budge, it was secured with a chain.