The October Light of August (2 page)

They estimated they might have another two hours of daylight left, and carefully made their way down the stairwell to the main floor.

They had peeked into the café before heading up, noted it was much the same as before – looted and trashed. Now they stood in the doorway and peered around the room. The plate glass on the outside wall had been smashed out long ago, and the floor was littered with accumulated filth. All food items had been taken, the cash register smashed in a corner.  A lone bar stool still stood upright behind the front counter.  The older sister didn’t know what they were supposed to be looking for, and she felt mild irritation creeping towards frustration. She was used to looking for something they could use to defend themselves. Shelter themselves. Feed themselves. Not much else mattered these days. She supposed the chrome bar stool would be handy to smash –

“There,” said her sister, and pointed to the back counter. Wedged between a mangled espresso machine and an empty desert display was a gallon-sized freezer bag that had two University Notebook writing tablets tucked inside. Each tablet was marked numerically – a big “1” on the top tablet, the other sporting a “2”.

Digging them out of the plastic bag, the older sister flipped through the first book, fascinated despite her earlier exasperation. She moved on to the second volume, and noticed how the handwriting grew increasingly erratic.

“Jesus – I think these are his
memoirs
or something,” she whispered.

Her sister considered it, and then said brightly, “Hey – maybe
we’re
in there!”

The optimistic tone of that made her heart clench and her eyes tear up. It had sounded so much like something her sister would have said back before the world went nuts. She quickly turned away so her sister wouldn’t see that she wasn’t as big of a  bad-ass as she appeared to be, and noticed a third volume laying on the floor behind the counter. It was a bit waterlogged and filthy from all the debris, but still readable. Doodles and sketches began to fill many of the pages – crows and dead people, for the most part. But some looked like valiant heroes with swords or ray-guns fighting all sorts of monsters and villains. The drawings weren't that good, but had a sincere quality to them that she liked. What looked like dried blood spots dotted some of the final pages, and that made her pause in her examination.

Aw, crap,
she thought.
If we got the fever from any smear of blood we ever got near we would be one of the dead by now.
Still, you couldn't help but be a
little
nervous, and she would be cautious. She started to flip to the last entry, and then shut the notebook with a sharp clap.

Damn it
, she thought.
We could use a bit of a diversion for a change! Let’s not spoil the ending…

She looked at her sister and smiled. “What do you say we make camp up on the roof, and do some reading in the morning?”

I hated the guy on sight. The bastard had me cornered!  True, he didn’t know it. Not yet at least. And he was one of
those
– 'the warrior.' You know the type – even before the world went to hell you would see him with a damned knife strapped to his belt, wearing baggy shorts with a camo jacket, along with romper-stomper boots. Had a tattoo that he’d tell you meant he was in 'special forces' once and couldn’t say anything else about it. The pony tail was to show you he didn’t work for the government anymore, the aviator sunglasses let you know he was cool. And the thought of the world ending just greased his zipper. Now he was living the dream.

I didn’t see them as much as I used to – at least they didn’t tend to make it up here to the north side as often anymore. But occasionally they did. Not many came in from the north as far as I knew. Anyone up there was still hunkered down and defending the home front, I bet. And anyone coming down from Canada? I can’t imagine that. Still, there were those girls from Oregon I met, so you never knew. He
might
have been scouting for anyone on the south side of the river. But really? After all this time, I still had no idea what was going on over
there
.

It didn’t matter. He was here now, and I just knew he would be causing trouble. He had a gun – of course he did! Guns, actually. I wouldn’t know a Glock from a Walther PPK, but he had a handgun in his fist, an assault rifle across his back along with his customized killing tool of choice. Usually they were machetes with God knows what welded together to be the ultimate dead killing tool.  He had all manner of knives strapped within easy reach. I suppose that wasn’t as dumb as his pony tail (too easy to grab), but I preferred to keep my distance than resort to knives – at least with the dead. I figure if it came down to me in a knife fight with the living I wouldn’t do so well anyway.

I was crouched behind a dumpster – one of those industrial-sized monstrosities that several businesses shared. It was shoved into the corner of the back parking lot, hemmed in by an L-shaped wooden fence that separated the lot from the residential neighborhood. I didn’t like the idea of hiding behind the dumpster with my back to the fence, but it was the best I could do until the guy either went into or around the office building. I was just lucky he hadn’t spotted me. It wasn’t like me to have my guard down, but… I guess I had my guard down. Look, I’m probably lucky to have lived as long as I have. When both the living
and
the dead were after you, I think dodging them for a year and a half is pretty impressive shit. Especially when you aren’t freakin’ Rambo. And when it came down to it, the dead were easier to avoid these days – unless some jackass showed up looking to pump a few rounds into them and stir things up. Hell, they would sooner shoot a live person than a dead one, it seemed. 

Oh, some of them might try to convince you they were your best buddy at first – it all depended on your appearance. If you looked pretty healthy and clean, they assumed you had a nice stash in a safe place. If you were stupid enough to pal up with them and make the mistake of leading them to your stash, then it wasn't long before you got a slit throat or a bullet in the back of the head. If you looked ratty and malnourished, they might make it a sport of rooting you out and hunting you down. The warrior type was vicious, mean, and cruel, and he took joy in righting the perceived wrongs of the past. Killing the living was more fun than taking out the miserable, shuffling bodies that were the dead.

The guy was being sensible. The rear exit door had been removed some time ago – probably taken to be used as armor for one of those rolling fortresses that were popular early on. He was letting his eyes adjust to the interior of the building, occasionally doing a quick check behind him. But the empty lot gave him a clear field of view for a good fifty feet behind him and he could probably see right down the hallway - from the back doorway to the busted-out windows and into the front parking lot.

The crisp fall morning was silent and calm, and the crows were pretty quiet too. I could see one on the fence, eying the guy across the lot. Soon, another flapped in and sat alongside it and cawed softly once, but the guy didn't bother to look – he just moved one foot into the doorway, and across the lot I heard him whistle sharply through his teeth.

Oh, for fuck's sake - do your sweep and get the hell out,
I thought. I was frustrated and feeling territorial.

The office building had been ransacked ages ago, and it wouldn't take long for the warrior to figure that out. The dead didn't wander into it much anymore – it was finally off their radar, so to speak. I had one regular that I didn’t mind at all, and there were some that made repeated rounds of the area. I had no idea how far they would range – perhaps, like me, they liked the area because it was familiar. The building was primarily an obstacle to them now. The dead seemed disinclined to climb stairs (they would of course if they thought they would take them up to a meal), but couldn't resist a shut door. They still had the instinct to turn handles and knobs. An open doorway seemed much less enticing to the dead than a shut door. Perhaps for many of them the last days of their lives had been holed up behind shut doors - their last desperate thoughts of keeping something between themselves and the hungry monsters. And perhaps those last thoughts were trapped in what was left of the shattered mind that propelled them. Or maybe they just weren't as dumb as everyone thought.

What I
was
sure of was that they didn't have any super-human abilities. They didn't see any better in the dark, or day, than the living – maybe worse. The same with their hearing. And I can’t believe they could smell much beyond their own stinking bodies. So how did they know you were living flesh - hot blood coursing through your veins? You couldn't fool them by trying to act like one – I’d seen that end in disaster for a lot of people in the early days of the pandemic. I believe it’s partly body heat that clues them in. Countless times I’ve seen lone dead spotting each other and moving in, only to break off disinterested once they got within several feet of each other. Maybe they were so cold any living thing radiated heat like a furnace to them? Perhaps it was just a combination of things that shouted “alive” and the dead could read it. Whatever it was, it was best to just not get noticed.

The crows on the fence began to shift their feet anxiously, and then one took off and shot over the office building. Soon, it gave out two quick calls, and the remaining crow looked over to me with a speculative turn of its head.

Aw, crap
, I thought. Sighing, I prayed that Pink wasn't wandering close. I think the crows knew that I left her alone, but the two-faced bastards would have no problem selling her out to this jackass.

The warrior still had not paid any attention to the cries of the crow, and moved another foot into the building. Soon more crows began to circle over the building, and around the south corner the dead man shambled into view.

And it had been such a quiet morning. Shit. I fought the urge to bang my head against the dumpster.

The warrior hadn't survived this long by being stupid, or ignorant of his surroundings. Whether he finally registered the cawing of the crows as something different in his environment, or it was just intuition, I would never know. But the guy stepped back into the daylight, his boots crunching in the dusty asphalt as he pivoted towards the dead man. The warrior had plenty of time to decide how to defend himself, and I imagined him running through his options.

The dead man had lost his pants some time ago. Or never had them – at any rate, he staggered forward in stained boxers and dress shirt and tie, sock-covered feet pigeon-toeing across the ground. His emaciated face was peculiarly intact for being one of the dead. Gore stained to be sure, but whole. There were still some white collar dead around, and I was pretty sure I had seen this one before. I didn’t recognize it by his face alone – my preferred method of approaching them was from behind, of course – but I thought this was the one I had mentally cataloged as “Shitty-Shorts” several weeks ago.

The warrior gave a broad grin and cocked his head as the dead man finally noticed him. While they were supposed to be devoid of higher thought and emotion, sometimes a look of shock or even elation could flash across the features of the dead when they stumbled onto a meal. This one's eyes widened and his mouth began to work, jerking the stiffness in his jaw loose as flakes of dried blood and clumps of flesh dropped free. He tightened his arc around the building towards the living flesh that was irresistible. Was it a vital need for the dead? I don't know if anyone has ever figured that out. 

“Well aren't you an eager one?” the man laughed, and pointed the pistol towards the dead man.

I wondered how often the guy had used that line before – they
all
seemed so damned eager. The warrior leveled his gun, aiming at the dead man's forehead and waited for the sure shot. When it got to within ten feet of him, I could see the index finger flinch but I couldn't hear the dry click as the gun refused to fire. I was as astounded as the warrior was – I imagined the man religiously caring for his firearms. Surely he loved them more than life itself?

The warrior’s squint transformed into a stupid grin - as if there was a shared joke between himself and the dead guy. He then began shifting to his right and back-pedaling into the parking lot towards the dumpster - and me. Anger flared up in me, white hot and irrational. I was tired of hiding. I was tired of the dead. And more than anything, I was sick and God damned tired of the warrior wannabes.

I stood and moved from behind the dumpster, dropped a ball bearing into the pocket of the Wrist-Rocket, pulled the tubing taught, sighted along my thumb and let go as if the ball was suddenly on fire. As soon as it was gone, I loaded another in the pocket. I had aimed for the head of the warrior. But the man had been twisting to grab at another weapon at his left hip, and the ball hit the side of his neck.

Shit.

Still, the impact had made him stumble forward and into the arms of the dead man.

Shit!

The dead man, never used to having its prey come
towards
him, didn't register the fact that he had his meal already and was still driving forward towards me with the man in his grasp. I darted to the left, and the two slammed into the dumpster. The warrior began to scramble madly, and the dead man finally realized he had something to bite and sank his teeth into the warrior's hand. The guy could only cough and gag and thrash until a sizable chunk was ripped out from the heel of his thumb.

I fired another ball bearing, but my hands were shaking terribly and the ball only nailed the guy in the small of his back right next to the rifle's stock. The warrior fell to his knees, between the legs of the dead man. I grabbed the hammer dangling from my back-pack, and before the dead guy could register what was happening I stepped in and slammed him between the eyes with it.