I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 (11 page)

Lying beside her, I ran my fingertips down the curves of her back, tightly grabbing her waist, wrapping my hand over her soft stomach and over the trails of scars. I pulled her closer, gently, sinking my teeth and lips into the back of her neck, tasting her until she turned to me doing the same.

Her cool baby blues became stormy and sinister. In that moment, with that look, she changed from being a mousy weakling to a domineering vixen.
What the…?
The way she looked at me said, “Yeah –I’M GOING TO FUCK YOUR BRAINS OUT.” I wasn’t sure if I was in trouble or in for the ride of my life.

She straddled my lap and pinned my wrists to the bed.
Now we’re talkin’.

When she kissed my mouth, I could feel the warmth between her thighs on my groin as I fought the urge of exploding in my boxers.
Oh yeah, that’s it, that’s the stuff
. She went down on me, kissing and playfully biting my stomach making her way below when…

We both heard Dusty hollering like a lunatic downstairs.

Leaping out of bed, Jane and I raced to the stairs where we found Dusty with his head caught in the banister and kicking Cooper away from his defenseless naked ankles.

“How’d he get out?” I said, investigating the baby gate and the doorway to his bedroom.

“Charlie, really?  He’s  four  feet  tall,” Jane grumbled, wrapping herself in a robe.

“
Oh, no, why are you putting clothes on
?”

“You can’t leave him there, do something.”

“Oh, come on….right now?” I protested. “Okay, I’m not going to leave him, I just…but…no sex?”

Jane stood with her arms crossed and slowly shook her head.

Cock blocked. Thank you, Dusty.

Alpo’s Sirloin Steak smudged his face as Cooper tugged and bit at his pajama leg to get at the empty can of dog food. The words “no,” “mine,” and “shit” flew from his mouth.

He didn’t care if he was about to behead himself in the death grip of the wooden bars. He must have really hated SPAM and potato chips that much.

“No, Dusty! Wait, were you eating dog food?” I couldn’t believe it. He could be onto something here.

I didn’t know if I should have been worried, fall over with laughter, or cry from the swelling pain of blue balls surging in my shorts.

“Hold still, you little shit! How the fu–” I yelled, pulling on his little shoulders and adjusting myself because I was still at half-staff. The only way I could have gotten him out was to get the
Jaws of Life
from the shed in the back. I tried twisting and easing him out just to avoid going back in to the shed with Peter’s dead body, but nothing I did was working—not even pushing his thick skull back from the other end.

When the pain in my balls started setting in all I wanted to do was strangle the little bastard. “I should leave you here—this way you learn!”

RED HANDED

Friday, January 24
^th
, 2014

I’ve never been a good liar. I’m not good at telling the truth either, for that matter. I have an inability to mask my emotions to thank for that.

When my mother asked the 12-year-old me what “these” were—referring to the stack of wrinkled porno magazines stashed away beneath my mattress—“I don’t know” was the best I could do.

When Morgan found the stash of narcotics in my sock drawer 22 years later, “I don’t know” still didn’t cut it, and she left me.

Jane had no idea what she was walking into when she opened the door and found me in the shed looking for tools with Peter’s rancid body mangled on top of my table saw. The way she looked at Peter—“I don’t know” was the only logical thought that came to mind.

Jane turned white as a ghost, and though she looked like she wanted to scream, nothing came out of her but choked air. I reached for her, but she pulled away and ran back into the house, locking herself in the bathroom upstairs.

I followed her up the stairs, stepped over Dusty, and sat outside the bathroom door trying to find something to say. How could I explain myself without sounding ridiculous?

“It’s not what you think!” I told her.
“You’re not going to believe this.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but there are these creatures that look like deranged monkeys, and they’ve taken over our city, and the government isn’t doing shit about it…which is why I’m a hermit living with a kid I found on the street and my dead friend’s dog. At night, these creatures come to the house, which is why my home looks like a bomb shelter and the reason I had to bludgeon someone to death with a hammer. But everything is fine and—that’s the truth.”

I could hear her sobbing again. “Oh, my God, there’s a dead guy in your shed! You’ve been lying to me!” she accused from behind the door.

I hadn’t lied. I just didn’t tell her the truth so she wouldn’t leave me.

I’d forgotten that Dusty’s head was still stuck in the banister—he shouted words he should’ve never heard me say in the first place. I kicked in about four pegs from the banister and freed him so I could return to Jane.

After a few minutes, Jane calmed down. She accused me of taking advantage of her and called me an asshole.

I did what now?
I never took advantage of her. She didn’t magically appear in the middle of the street by me snapping my fingers. She’s out of her mind. Screw her. How could I take advantage of someone’s condition when I don’t even know what the condition is?

I give up.
I gave her the choice of leaving, but where was she going to go? She has no identity. I still don’t know who she is after God knows how many weeks of her being here. She has no clothes, no money, and no clue to where she even is on the map. If she isn’t going to trust me, then I have no right to keep her here. She’s free to go if that’s what she wants.

I sat in my bedroom after leaving clothes for her at the bottom of the stairs. A few moments later, the front door slammed, and she left without saying goodbye.

That sucked.

I thought maybe I should‘ve kept Jane here in the house against her will. She had a better chance of surviving me than the outside. She won’t last the night out there. I know it. I give it a mile before she’s dead. I give her ten minutes before she’s food. She was a pain in my ass anyways.

I caved.

I grabbed the gun from underneath my bed and got to the foot of the stairs before Jane stopped me in my tracks coming out of the bathroom.

“Jane?”

“Charlie?”

I was glad to see she didn’t leave, but on second thought
I guess I really wasn’t
.

I know I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but if Jane was in the bathroom the entire time, that would mean she never left. If she never left, then who unfastened the latches on the door?

I think Jane knew just by looking at my face that this was bad.

“Where’s Dusty?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t confirm what I already knew.

The last time I saw the boy, he was kicking and screaming with his big head stuck in the stairs. The way Cooper whimpered at the door, something told me I was a hair away from being very unhappy.

“Dusty?”

He must have heard us fighting and gotten upset enough to want to leave. Leave? I turn my back for one second…and who taught him how to open the goddamn door anyways?

Jane and I spent a good number of hours outside looking for him, combing every street, corner, and crevice. We raced against the clock and the sun, but Dusty vanished, and it was getting dark.

STRAYS

Saturday, January 25
^th
, 2014

I’ve never been the one to say, “I told you so.”

As Jane and I set out on our quest to find Dusty the following morning, there was nothing I could’ve said to prepare her for what she was about to see with her own eyes—
the worst
. The virus and the Deviants reduced our world to ruins, and we are weary.

Those who we’ve met along the way—survivors along the roads and the communes—still have no explanation for what happened months ago when the tornadoes touched down and the Deviants inherited the land. All we can do is continue to fight for one more day.

My name is Charles Dudley. I will not die out here in the badlands.

It’s 12:45 p.m., and Jane, Cooper, and I are sitting together in the abandoned and dirty
Dave’s Diner
in downtown Flushing, watching the rain as it falls and sweeps across the pavement and the parking lot. I used to come here for lunch with my family every Sunday afternoon after church. I would order a cheeseburger deluxe and milkshake, and my father would yell at me for getting food on my tie. Stewart would get whacked upside the head for sticking straws up his nose and flicking the ends out at the family beside us. The pastry display had fresh lemon bunts.

I am ALIVE, but the man covered in flies, sitting in the furthest booth in the corner over there with the trucker hat, mirrored sunglasses, and now moldy-cheese skin hasn’t moved since the last time I was here.

Jane knows all there is to know about me now. Well—not everything. Not yet.

Jane and I have our own paths to follow, this is certain, but from this moment, moving forward, we have each other. She and I exchanged glances and knew it was time to get going.

She excused herself to wash up in the bathroom, and I collected our things to leave as the bell tower began to sound at St. Peter’s cathedral across the street. I turned to see the old man in the suit standing beneath the cross that hung above the threshold of the cathedral doors tinkering with his pocket watch again.

He directed his shimmering blue eyes at me; raising the pinwheel I had given to Dusty and grinned.

Then he was gone—just like
that
.

INTERMISSION

SKIP

STORM RADIUS

1

November 23rd, 2013

Downtown Flushing – Dynasty Bar

5:00 p.m.

“Cigarette?” Samson asks waving a nearly empty pack of cigarettes in front of Freddie’s face. “I quit two months ago,” Freddie answers, but Samson helps himself to one anyway and lights up—sometimes sucking up three packs a day.

“Of course…can I offer you anything else? Beer? Tea?”

Freddie declines, “I’m okay, water’s fine.” On second thought, one swig from the warm tap water nearly turned Freddie’s stomach. It took minutes before the stale peanuts diminished the metallic swill and replaced it with a bitter aftertaste more bark-like than nutty.

Freddie ignored the gyrating go-go dancer circling a stripper pole, not much thinner than she was, on the stage across the room. She was wearing gold pasties over her flat breasts, dancing out of sync with the droning techno-music and awful flashing disco lights hanging from the ceiling above her. A stoned face customer watched from below, haphazardly nursing a beer, with four singles fanned out across the bar.

“I understand. Try loosening up, huh. You are too tense. Want a back massage from Fei Yen, on the house?” Samson asks, snapping his fingers at the waitress.

“No thanks. You know, the last time I saw you; you were sitting in that chair with the same blank expression on your face, smoking a cigarette without a care in the world. Since then, you’ve been investigated for the hit on Billy Bao and seven of his men at his nightclub—among other things. Today, you remain in the same chair; cool as a morning breeze, as if what is happening outside doesn’t even matter. I doubt me being here, of all things, makes
you
nervous.”

Samson nods. “No—but it does them. They don’t trust you after you made the jump to task force. You were one of
us
when you were a kid, don’t you forget,” Samson said waving his finger in Freddie’s nose then motioning to his three underlings anxiously defending the doors with semi-automatic weapons.

—One of them, he said. That’s funny.
Freddie thought.
I’m better than them.

Samson calls out orders, in Cantonese, to Fei Yen, the middle-aged bartender lazily smoking a cigarette behind the bar.

(Translation: Hey, fat ass. I don’t pay you to stand around. If I wanted a statue, I’d buy one. Come on, get moving!)

Fei Yen moves swiftly and awkwardly in her bulging plastic mini skirt and fish net stockings, yanking beer bottles out from the cooler, preparing a tray with shot glasses and napkins.

Samson leans into the table, discretely gripping his chest in pain. Freddie surveys Samson’s face as he tries to downplay his illnesses, but tries not to show any concern.

The man’s getting old, death is just turning the corner when you become this sick, this fast
, Freddie sensed,
but the King’s too vain to show he’s lost a step among his soldiers.

These punks would eat him up alive if they had the chance
.
Little does Samson know that some of his boys were doing side jobs for Bao before Samson killed him.

Freddie wonders if the old man would request to wear his gold trimmed sunglasses at his funeral while his failing pancreas or heart gave out.

Samson never removes his glasses in front of company and has only one eye, but not everyone knows that, not that it matters—Samson has eyes everywhere in this town. The dark glasses just added to the mystique of the aging Chinatown crime boss who’s been called the “Moshu shi”, or
The Magician
because of how easily he made
things
disappear,
making him one of the most notorious men in Chinatown.

Legend has it, a smart mouthed wannabe gangster named Lee Cong gauged Samson’s left eye out in a knife fight back in ‘78—a dispute over a shipment of young women who had just arrived in New York from Macau, China, to work in an escort ring. It ended in a bloodbath that solidified Samson’s place in the Fang crime syndicate.