Stay Dead: A Novel (18 page)

Once he opened the unit, he noticed the circuit
breaker had opened. He was surprised a fuse hadn’t blown, but was
relieved that the job would be even easier than he had anticipated.
He simply closed the circuit breaker allowing the electricity to be
distributed again. He monitored it momentarily, making sure it
didn’t open again and when it didn’t he closed the unit and
signaled Frankie down below to bring the crane back down.

On his descent he shone his flashlight around. He
looked at the surrounding area and noticed nothing beside the
streetlights flickering back to life.

“
Looks like you did it,” Jon-Jon
called up to him.

“
Easy as pie,” he replied, and
after saying it realized how hungry he was. “Now, how about getting
me some food, huh? And maybe a toothbrush? Then we can go around
some more and see if there’s any other downed lines.”

“
You got it. A bar of soap
wouldn’t kill you either,” Davis smiled, looking at the lights from
town.

Angus’ skin grew pale in the darkening evening. His
arm burned and he couldn’t bring himself to look at the wound. He
knew what it meant, people died quicker from a bite—he didn’t know
why, no one did. What he did know, or thought he knew, was that it
wasn’t the bite that turned you into one of the dead things. No
matter who died and how, they came back—bite or no bite. Some took
longer than others, and the bitten could last a day or more before
dying and returning. He’d seen it happen too many times over too
few of days. He didn’t want to wait for it to overtake him. He
wanted to die on his own terms—it was all he had left, and he was
lucky to have that much.

“
I used to have a drug problem,”
Angus said.

“
What’s that?” Keith said, having
had one as well.

“
I started out smoking
marijuana—everyone was doing it—till they started cracking down on
it. Then I was doing coke, though that was harder to get and
eventually I got hooked on heroin—thank you very much Miss
Morphine.” Angus looked at the stars. “Once I got home from ‘Nam I
was hooked. It took a good woman, my wife Betty, to get me
unhooked. But I was never really unhooked, I’d think about it at
least once a day, not all day mind you, but in passing—quickly, you
know.”

“
Okay,” Frankie said, taken back
by how much Angus was sharing with them and at such a
time.

“
Sorry to ramble…I guess what I’m
trying to say is that…I want…I want you to…to kill me. I want one
of you to ram as much heroin into my veins as it takes to kill me,”
he stared at Davis.

“
Are you serious?” Davis
asked.

“
Yes, sir, I can feel myself
dying. I can feel this little darkness beating in my heart, gnawing
at my mind. I can feel it in my gut, like I felt back in Cambodia,
only this time there is no hope.” Angus began to cry. “Please, give
a dying man a blindfold and one last smoke,” he pleaded. “Death has
her cold fingers wrapped around my throat.”

“
If that’s what you want,” Davis
said, holding back tears for a man he’d only know in the last few
hours. A man by all accounts he should care less for. Regardless he
empathized with the man, and hoped to hell he would never be in his
place. If death is what he wanted, then death is what he’d
get.

CHAPTER 17
: One more time to kill
the pain

Under the grassy surface of Mourningside Cemetery
the long dead clawed their way upward. Some of them moved slower
than others, but some, very few, moved faster. Moving through the
dirt was no easy task, hundreds of pounds of dirt lie on top of
each dead individual. But they didn’t have to worry about pain or
breathing. Without the woes of the living to keep them down they
continued their deliberate rise toward the surface.

Below the heavy grey block of concrete we all get
when we reach the end of our lives clawed the hand of the man whose
name was etched in stone, to forever remain at peace under the
ground. It would seem he was not at peace, however, as something
stirred him back to life. He clawed and fingered his way through
the dirt pulling himself upward. His mouth and throat filled with
dirt. His finger tips would have started bleeding days ago had he
any blood left in his body. The make-up that sat heavy on his face
during his viewing rubbed off long ago. He was persistent, as were
all the dead underground, the long dead, and he won the unannounced
race to the top.

The ground swelled and pulsed as his fingers flicked
through the damp blades of grass that lie over him. A moment later
his entire hand and part of his wrist burst through the ground and
grasped at the air, as if choking some invisible throat. Eventually
he pulled his entire body from the blanket of dirt. What skin could
be seen through the sheen of dirt and rot was as pale as the
maggots and worms that clung to his rotting corpse. He was buried,
as most men, in a simple suit slit down the back. His shoes and
socks didn’t make it to the top, not that he cared. As his body
slumped to the ground some of the dirt knocked off. His gaping maw
full of dirt emptied to the ground as well, though much of it was
left dangling from the top of his mouth and stuck at the back of
his throat. Other hands began to find their way to the surface as
well.

***

Behind the cemetery, in the shadow of the woods
sitting on top of a large rock were best friends Brian and Chris
(whom everyone called Teets). They were almost old enough to drive,
though they both knew how to already. They snuck away most nights
in one of their parents’ cars to find a place to smoke up. They
dared not do it too close to home. Getting busted would surely be a
buzz kill, and neither wanted that. As high as the sky would allow
was their preference and Mary Jane was their pilot. The ship of
choice for the evening was a dutchie.

Teets unwrapped the vanilla flavored Dutchmaster
cigar and began to lick the entire thing. Getting it wet enough so
it wouldn’t crack. Then he bit off the end of it and spat it out.
Then he carefully picked at the outer leaf and unrolled gently,
hoping it was wet enough to come off in good shape. Then he removed
the cancer papers and gutted the tobacco.

Teets sat cross legged at the top of the rock. He
had an issue of Batman that was bagged and boarded in his lap.
Inside the comic he had rolling papers and a razor, in case he
needed them: they were always there and his parents would never
think to look in a comic book for such things. He emptied the bag
of sticky-sweet-smelling buds onto the board and broke it apart,
digging out the seeds and stems. He liked to chew on the stems as
he rolled, so when he found them he popped them into his mouth.

Brian was watching Teets work his magic. Brian
preferred the ease of a bowl or the soothing sounds of a bong but
there was something about a dutchie that he just couldn’t resist.
Rolling wasn’t his strong suit, so he studied Teets’ technique. He
could roll a good joint, wasn’t too bad with a blunt, but when it
came to a dutchie he just couldn’t pull it off.

With the world being the way it was they had been
rationing what little they had left of the Lady Jane. Be it
boredom, or a loss of appetite the two couldn’t wait to get out and
partake in the old ritual. Most of the time they would smoke in the
back room of the gas station where they worked at the edge of town,
but it had been closed for a few weeks now.

Teets rolled the unwrapped blunt around the hefty
helping of buds, smoothing it out as he did so. He wrapped it
tight, but not too tight, then licked it around a few times and ran
the lighter around it to dry it up. Teets dusted off his comic and
tossed it to Brian who threw it in his backpack. The work was done,
and now it was time to set the lady on fire and watch her burn.
Mary Jane, how the boys love you!

Laying on the giant rock with their eyes to the sky,
the two youngsters passed the dutchie back and forth: puff, puff,
give. As the orange tip of burning bud and browned leaf continued
to slowly disappear the two grew increasingly stoned. Stoned stupid
was what they were, giggling like it was their second or third
time, which was years ago. They both swore neither got high their
first time, but they did, which is why there was a second and a
third and so on.

Unsure if they could even finish, they began to hear
noises—paranoia was beginning to set in. Every rustling of the
leaves was an FBI agent. They’ve been watching them for years. They
finished Mary off, pinching their fingers together in a desperate
attempt at one more hit. Brian, trying to get one last kiss from
the lady, burnt his finger and dropped the tail end of the blunt
into the leafy bottom of the woods. Teets slapped his arm.

“
Fucker, there was another hit
left in that.”

“
Dude, it was kicked.” Replied
Brian with a dry tongue.

“
Whatever…let’s get something to
drink. I got some Dr. Pepper at my place.”

“
Awesome.”

They slid down the rock with backpacks in hand.
Their eyes were red and their mouths dry. They tried to play it
cool, but they were too damn high to do so. They giggled all the
way back to the hole in the fence at the back of the cemetery. Once
they got there, they froze in mid step.

“
Dude, are you fucking seeing
this?” Brian asked.

“
I don’t want to be, Bri,” Teets
mumbled.

“
It’s like Night of the Living
Dead out there.”

“
No, way, it’s more like Return of
the Living Dead.” Teets replied.

“
Fucking zombies, man, that shit
ain’t right,” Brian said as his mouth got dryer. “We need to tell
everybody—I can’t believe they’re coming out of the
ground!”

“
Yeah, I guess whatever’s been
happening isn’t terrorists, or rabies—well, I guess it still could
be--”

“
Shhh,” Brian cut him off. “Do you
hear that?”

“
Hear what?”

From behind them staggered one of the long dead that
must have found its way through the hole in the fence. Most of its
clothing was now gone and its skin looked like dirt covered bark.
The thing looked more like a mummy than any living dead thing the
two of them had ever seen in the movies. It didn’t have any eyes,
just holes filled with dirt. It raised its hands to grasp at the
back of Teets’ neck but Brian pulled him forward and began to
run.

“
Fuck, come on man,
RUN!”

“
Shit, shit, shit! Stoner’s always
die in the movies, dude,” Teets cried.

“
This ain’t the damn movies, just
run,” Brian hollered as his baggy jeans almost tripped him
up.

They ran like hell was hot on their heels. The dead
thing followed, slowly, very slowly.

CHAPTER 18
: Situation
degenerates

Sal was running on two hours of very unfulfilling
sleep. He drank coffee after coffee as he fought to keep his eyes
open. Now he was riding around town on patrol, looking for any
signs of dead invaders. He hadn’t found any and hoped that meant
there weren’t any to be found. He blinked so often and at such
lengths it was possible that he drove past one and hadn’t
noticed.

So, when Brian and Teets came running up to the car
he was surprised because they appeared to come out of nowhere. His
eyes were probably shut for a good minute and only opened at the
noise of their hands slapping on the window, which caused his heart
to a cartwheel. Sal braked, and threw the car in park. He looked
pissed off, not at the two of them but at being awake when he
really didn’t want to be.

He stepped out of the car and made a
shut-the-fuck-up kind of motion with his hands and face as Brian
and Teets rambled incoherently.

“
What the fuck are you two idiots
saying?”

“
Dead people at the cemetery,”
Teets said, out of breath and breathing hard.

“
That’s usually where dead people
go—hey, you fuckers been smoking up? You reek to all hell! God
damnit!”

“
No, just a cigar--”

Sal cut Brian off mid-sentence. “Can it, don’t
really give a shit right now. You kids ain’t doing any coke or
speed, are you?” Sal asked, wanting it for himself.

“
No sir, definitely not!” Brian
began to worry.

“
Uh-uh,” Teets said as he shook
his head.

“
Hmm, all right. Now, what the
hell is going on? Spit it out!” Sal barked.

“
Dead people at the cemetery…are
coming up out of the ground,” Teets told him.

“
No shit?”

“
No shit,” they both
replied.

“
Get in the back,” Sal said,
opening the door.

Brian and Teets looked at each other. They were
stoned stupid, reeking of weed and carrying some, along with
rolling papers and blunts and getting into the back of a police
car. After a moment of hesitation they got in. Once inside their
high began to come down.

Sal drove up to Mourningside Cemetery and could see
from inside the car that a number of things had dug their way to
the surface, and still more were in the process. He couldn’t
believe it. They had searched the area days ago, and had kept an
eye on it in passing while patrolling the town. Now, there were
dozens of dead people walking around after digging themselves up
and out of their eternal resting plots.