Stay Dead: A Novel (26 page)

“No…oh, fuck, man. What the fuck…” Keith
rubbed his neck.

“I know, I know. I’m heading over there now,
you two want to hop in and join me?”

“What else would we do?”

“Good, get whatever you have and jump
in.”

***

“Look, there’s a truck pulled over. Slow
down,” Judy pointed out.

“I am, I am,” Scott hushed her, pulling
over.

Jon-Jon and the others watched as Scott and
Judy pulled up alongside the truck. Eddie and the others tried to
look from the back seat. No one recognized the truck. Jon-Jon
slowly approached the truck, and before he could figure out who it
was Abdul-Ba’ith hopped out of the drivers seat and raised a
friendly hand in the air. Carrie followed him, and so did Alexis
after she told the kids to stay put.

Dawn got out of the van and ran over to her.
They hugged tightly and began to cry.

“Oh, God, you’re okay. We were so worried,”
Dawn said.

“Me too, did you happen to see where--”

“We got Yussef,” she cut her off before she
could finish.

“Oh, Thank God! I couldn’t find him and they
were going to leave…I had to get the others out of there,” Alexis
started.

“Shh. Come on,” Dawn said.

Joseph opened the side of the van and got
out. He smiled at her and she smiled back. “I thought I’d never see
you again,” he said.

“You’re not getting away that easy,” she
said, hugging him closely. Then making her way into the van to hug
Yussef. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry I lost you! Are you okay?”

He nodded shyly, as if he’d done something
wrong. Alexis lifted his head up with her hands, forcing him to
make eye contact with her red, crying eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

He couldn’t look away and mumbled, “it’s
okay.”

She hugged him again, tight enough to hurt,
but he smiled at the squeeze.

“What’s the plan?” Abdul-Ba’ith asked.

“Not really sure, man,” Scott said, “I guess
it’s just us that’s left. You know where the others went?”

“No, they just kept going,” Abdul-Ba’ith
replied.

“Well, fuck them then.” Scott was surprised
by his own harshness. “Don’t have a plan--they seem to be useless
anyway.”

“True,” he nodded in agreement.

Jon-Jon and Eddie joined them in the middle
of the road. “What are we doing?”

“That’s what we were just trying to figure
out. Any ideas?” Scott asked.

“Yeah I got a few… I think we should head
north. Get as far as we can. I think if we can make it to colder
climates we can let the weather take care of the dead and we just
worry about staying alive. My other idea is just to keep moving.”
He pointed at a group of lurkers that were staggering through the
brush just past the side of the road. “It looks like we got
company.”

“That sounds good, but how the hell are we
supposed to get north?” Scott said. “The roads are shit, you know
that.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.
What are our other options? We can’t go back. We sure as hell can’t
kill them all, they’ve already overrun the town,” Jon-Jon said,
trying to make his point.

“I say we start heading northeast,” Eddie
added. “Much of the shore towns should be pretty empty now. We can
just follow the coast up and hope for a blizzard.”

“A bit too early for a blizzard,”
Abdul-Ba’ith said.

The dead had found their way to the road. A
woman in a night gown staggered into view. Her left breast was
dangling out of her gown and looked like shredded beef. The entire
left side of her body looked like it had been bitten and scratched
repeatedly by a large beast. Her mouth mashed the air and a
gurgling noise crawled out of her throat.

“Time to go. Are we agreed?” Jon-Jon
asked.

“Sure.”

“Why Not?”

“Let’s go.”

***

Walter returned to the window. He stared out
at the dead. The bodies of the ones he and Jeff just dispatched
remained motionless. They beat them down with shovels and ran back
inside. Walter was still high on adrenaline but he had to remain
calm. He took several deep breaths and tried to relax but he was
too wired now. He felt like he’d drank an entire pot of coffee. His
hands shook and he couldn’t make them stop. His hands had a mind of
their own now.

“So we’re staying?” Barbara asked, Maria
standing at her side.

“Yep. I think its best. We don’t know what
the rest of the town is like. We could be running from the heat and
into the fire,” he told them.

“Okay,” she said.

“That okay with you?” Jeff asked Maria as he
returned from the bathroom, rubbing his stomach.

“Whatever you think is safest. I don’t want
to take the kids out there unless we have to,” she said as she
rubbed Jeff’s arm.

“Me too.”

Laura sat with the kids and watched them
play, oblivious to the dead outside. She could almost overhear the
conversation in the other room. She knew the kids weren’t paying
attention otherwise she would have gone in there and shushed
them.

“There’s more coming,” Walter said. “Look,
over there,” he pointed out.

“Damn,” Jeff said. “I wonder how many are out
there?”

“Probably a lot more than we think,” Walter
replied, “so long as we stay on top of them we’ll be all right,” he
hoped.

CHAPTER
28: Sinking ship

As Davis approached the station he had to
weave in and out of the dead that wandered the streets of his once
quiet little town. He turned down the street and saw the station
with a group of maybe seven or so of the deaders trying to get in
the front door.

“Bastards,” he grumbled.

“You want to pull up and I’ll shoot them?”
Keith asked.

“Yeah, guess so.”

Davis pulled up, trying to avoid the
shambling dead that walked toward them. His truck had taken a bad
enough beating as it was and he’d like it to remain drivable. Once
they were close enough Keith began to pick them off. They never
turned to see why their brethren were falling down dead. All they
seemed to care about was getting inside the doors. Keith took out
the last one and they headed for the doors.

The doors were locked, but looking out at
them was a younger woman with haunted eyes. When she realized that
Davis, Keith, and Topher were not flesh-eating zombies she unlocked
the door and let them in.

“Where’s Jones?” Davis barked.

“He’s in there,” Danni said as pointed to the
room where she’d left him.

They rushed past her and moved toward Jones.
She locked the door again, staring out through the blood streaked
glass. Clem greeted them with a grim expression that said hello and
sorry at the same time. He moved out of the way and joined Danni by
the door.

“Jones,” Davis mumbled.

“Hey…guys,” he coughed, revealing a smile
full of bloody teeth.

“Shit, man… I can’t believe this is
happening,” Keith said as he looked at his friend, already mourning
him.

“Me neither…we still going…fishing this
weekend right?” Jones asked.

“Yeah, man, definitely…” Keith began to
sob.

“You better be able to get your ass up early,
though,” Davis joined in. “None of that nine o’clock bullshit.”

“You got it…” Jones eyes rolled up into the
back his head.

“Oh, no…” Keith whimpered, “is he…?”

“I think so.” Davis’s eyes welled up.

Jones didn’t move. His chest didn’t rise and
fall, and when he opened his eyes again their friend was nowhere to
be found in them. The dead Jones moved fast, lurching toward them.
He grabbed Keith’s arm but he was able to pull it away before Jones
could bite it. Davis put two in his head. Blood spattered all over
the HAM radio behind him. Topher walked away, heading toward Danni
and Clem. He introduced himself as Keith and Davis let their
emotions get the better of them.

“I think we got trouble,” Danni said.
“There’s a lot of them coming up.”

“Yeah, shit. More and more keep coming into
the street,” Clem noted.

“I should’ve never left,” Topher mumbled.

“What’s that?” Clem asked.

“Nothing.”

Clem continued to stare out the window. The
dead, in all their sickening varieties, stumbled forward. Some
walked on broken legs, others crawled on the pavement pulling
behind a trail of intestines, some walked with a hitch or a twitch
and others seemed to walk as well as the living.

“Hey, Sheriff, I hate to bother you right
now, but we got plenty of company coming up the street.”

“Let me see,” he said as he made his way to
the door.

He looked, and he didn’t like what he had
seen. His expression grew grim and his eyes narrowed. “Keith,” he
said as he turned toward the man, “let’s get to the armory.”

Keith nodded, wiping away a trail of tears
from his cheek.

“You two stay here and make sure they don’t
get inside. We’ll be back in a minute. I hope you two can
shoot.”

By the time they returned from the armory the
dead had swarmed the front doors. They clawed and bit and struck
the glass. Danni and Clem had retreated to the second set of
double-doors and locked it as well, peering through the much
smaller windows in the centers of the doors.

“Fuck, they got here quick.” Davis dumped his
armful of weapons on the nearest desk. The others did the same.

They all took up arms. Davis quickly showed
Clem and Danni what to do with what they had picked up. They opened
the set of double-doors and began firing through glass entry doors.
The sounds of the multiple weapons firing was intense. Glass
shattered to the floor as the bullets pierced through finding their
intended targets. Their ears rang from the firing and quickly felt
cotton-filled.

Despite the proximity to the dead, the number
of headshots were small. Most of the bullets hit dead flesh, but
not hard enough to push them back. The few that were shot in the
head dropped to the ground, but the others moved forward without
the obstacle of the glass doors.

Davis quickly took aim and dispatched as many
as he could while Keith reloaded and helped the others do the same.
The dead were able to close the distance from the entryway doors to
the doors the living fought to protect. The plan was to kill them
all and flee in his truck. The plan failed…miserably.

Behind the dead were more dead, and behind
those were even more. Though they had the weapons for the job, they
didn’t have the personnel.

“Get inside,” Davis yelled.

“Shit. They’re getting through!” Keith
yelled.

They continued firin. More dropped, but
plenty more were there to fill the void. They couldn’t keep them.
They were pushing through the door as Davis and the others fought
to close them.

“God damn it! Fall back!” Davis screamed.

They fell back to the first row of desks, and
continued to shoot the oncoming dead. They flooded in. The dead
that led the way acted as shields for the numbers behind them and
before long they were in the station and forcing the living to
continue moving back. They grabbed what extra guns they could, but
it quickly ceased to matter.

“Get to the back!” Davis yelled, as he ran to
lead the way.

Once at the rear of the station the front
filled in quickly. Davis looked out the window in the back and saw
that the building was surrounded. There was no way out. They
sacrificed their chance of getting downstairs, as well as the roof,
by running to the back of the building. Now they had only three
choices: suicide, do nothing and let the dead feast on them, or
lock themselves into one of the holding cells.

They ran inside the cell, barely having time
to do anything else. Davis slammed the door shut and heard the
clink of the lock. They sat against the wall as the dead hands
reached in between the cold cell bars. They grasped at the air.
Their retched lifeless growls and grunts bounced off the cool brick
wall and nested inside the cotton-filled ears of the prisoners.

Danni stood up, lining the barrel of her gun
up with one of the deader’s heads. His nose looked like small lumpy
potato and his face like burnt cheese. She pulled the trigger. Her
ears filled with still more cotton. The dead man fell slumped to
the ground, the contents of his head spilling onto the floor.

“Save your bullets,” Davis suggested, “we
might just need them for ourselves.”

They watched the blood slowly pool around the
dead man’s body, amazed at how much blood was left.

CHAPTER
29: And Hell followed
with

Jon-Jon led the way out of New Haven, with
Scott and Judy in tow, and Abdul behind them. The convoy was
smaller now, all the hangers-on had left in a hurry. They weren’t
missed and considering their new plan of action it may have
ultimately been for the better. The trek north would certainly be a
challenge, but if Jon-Jon was right with his assumptions the dead
wouldn’t be able to fair the weather as well as the living. He just
hoped he was right and not risking everyone’s lives for a pipe
dream.

On their way out of town they past the ‘You
are now leaving New Haven, Come again soon!’ sign and the half-dug
ditches by the side of the road. The bodies of the dead had become
nothing more than part of the worlds new nightmarish landscape, and
as commonplace as road signs.

Alexis told the kids not to look at the
bodies, but they didn’t seem to be bothered by them anymore. In the
short time since the world came to an end they had all grown
desensitized and callous, perhaps a necessity to survive. Alexis
wondered what the coming days would bring and shuddered at the
possibilities. They were all bleak, but she had hope and she had a
purpose; she had the kids, and they were all reunited again. And
she and her friends had each other. She supposed she’d get to know
Abdul and Carrie, though she seemed more trouble than she was
worth. But maybe she would snap out of it?