Life Among The Dead (Book 3): A Bittersweet Victory (6 page)

No response. Just dead air. He is frustrated
that he must go to the pantry to see what’s going on. It’s the
principle that aggravates him not the trek, since the kitchen is
right through the door he kicks open.

“Hey!” Josh tails him. “I protest the
call!”

“Fuck off,” Trent says. “You’re dead. Deal
with it.”

Refusing to face his fate, Josh ransacks the
kitchen cabinets and drawers. Trent just lets him humor himself,
knowing that he’ll never find the keys in here, just as he doesn’t
find his tech in the pantry.

Josh fingers the drain and feels in all the
spaces between the appliances. “They’re not in here, are they? Tell
me they aren’t in the attic.”

“Why are you still here?” Trent asks. The
kid’s presence only adds to his frustration. Dwayne has gone
missing and the last thing he wants is to be pestered. “There’s a
door right there. Use it. Better luck next time.”

Trent checks the time. Only five minutes
remain before the next batch is admitted. He hates when the rounds
run this long. He loses money when they don’t die off quickly.
Trent goes for the door he had pointed out to the kid to check if
Dwayne has fallen off the wagon and started smoking again. He
recalls when they first started the House of Horrors, back when
Dwayne smoked like a chimney and they’d joke that they’d be able to
use his habit in lieu of a fog machine.

Josh charges Trent while his back is turned,
tackling him. The two topple down a short set of concrete steps and
onto the back patio area. The shock of the sudden assault allows
Josh the opportunity to deliver a few cheap punches into Trent’s
padding. Trent is able to shake his assailant off after many dull
shots to the ribs and retaliate with a jab that stills Josh.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Trent
seethes. “It’s just a game!”

Josh, tasting the blood that flows from his
nose, just lays back and waits for the pain to stop. All around
they hear what they believe to be the stunt zombies moaning. Trent
still sees no sign of his absent technician, and now he worries
that the game has spilled to the lot.
Has
someone
actually
found
them
? he thinks, rushing to the
corner.

Given his chosen profession, Trent should be
ecstatic over what he sees in the parking area. Instead he is
repulsed by the nightmarish scene. Twisted bodies lie crumpled
among thick tire marks. The victims twitch and moan, attempting to
crawl away. Paying customers and his staff alike are just ignoring
the hit and run victims, passing the injured and heading his way.
The mangled people on the asphalt reach to him for help, but he is
too traumatized to comprehend what he is seeing. He tries to
formulate a course of action:
Call
911
,
call
my
lawyer
,
call
the
insurance
company
.
Am
I
liable
for
this
?

His phone shakes in his hands as he tries to
remember how it works. He is so beside himself he doesn’t notice
the bright light behind him that casts his shadow over the carnage
until it is too late, but Dwayne finally finds him.

Dwayne had attempted to muscle his way out of
the lot as the fan boys and girls beat on his car. He just floored
the gas and swerved left, opting for the path of least resistance
and hoping not to hurt too many people. They really left him no
choice. He cruised around the back of the house, running over the
painstakingly fabricated headstones, no longer concerned with
ruining the aesthetics. Blood loss from the wound that just won’t
stop bleeding makes him lightheaded, and he just wants to get to
the hospital. He runs down all in his path on his return trip,
after turning around in the side yard of the house, including his
old boss and one-time friend.

“Good shot, baby!” Brandon cheers Vida on as
they make their way to the main staircase. The crowd below them has
thinned out enough for them to risk pushing towards the finish
line. “I see something moving up ahead.”

Brandon fires at a mass of dark figures
approaching from the other side of the hall so Vida can get to the
stairs. He told her to keep the keys since she was the one to find
them.

One of the shadows ducks and says, “Brandon,
what the crap?”

“Lloyd? Sorry, I thought you were a
zombie.”

“Not yet. I’m dead. You?”

“Not yet.”

The stunt zombies escorting Lloyd and the
blondes move to eliminate Brandon and Vida.

Attempting to aid Brandon, Lloyd’s thick arms
shoot out, creating a barrier that buys the last two members of the
Dogs of War some time. “Go!”

“Thank you, Lloyd!” Vida calls, racing down
the stairs with Brandon. At the bottom, in the foyer, they see
Vicky.

“Hey, girl,” Vida says.

“We figured you were out of the game,”
Brandon says.

Their drummer is unusually lazy in her
movements as she nears them. She offers no response other than her
slow steps.

“She must be crashing,” Brandon says. He’s
seen her come down off of her pills before. It’s actually one of
the rare moments the girl sleeps.

Vida takes the hand Vicky reaches out with.
She flashes a concerned look at her boyfriend. “Brandon?”

Vicky tries to ensnare Vida.

“It’s all right,” he says. “She’s just
getting cuddly from exhaustion. We’ll get her into the van. She’ll
sleep well tonight.”

“No. Something’s wrong with her.” Vida evades
Vicky’s toothpick arms.

“We don’t have much time.” Brandon pulls
Vicky away and holds her back to allow Vida room to pass. The dead
are on the stairs, having gotten past Lloyd. “We’ll come back for
her.”

At the door, Brandon grabs his hoodie from
the coat hooks. Vida follows but is still concerned about Vicky.
She had felt the girl’s pulse before in Health class. Her heart
rate normally races a mile a minute. Just now, when she had touched
her cold skin, it was non-existent.

“Hey, Vicky!” Lloyd says as he descends the
stairs with the zombies.

“Take care of her, Lloyd!” Brandon shouts
over his shoulder as he and Vida head for the finish line.

The couple dashes out the door. They have no
idea if they have run out of time or not, but there’s no way
they’re stopping now. They race to the truck as moans and screams
of anguish cut through the night air. There are only a few corpses
in their way, oddly not wearing the protective masks like the dead
inside the house. These dead also don’t fall when they hit them
with a paintball. The blunt ammo doesn’t even faze them.

“What’s the deal?” Vida asks as they near the
blue pickup.

“Probably just some way to make the last
stretch harder,” Brandon says. “Get in the truck.”

Vida opens the passenger door. She’s about to
leap in and finish the game, but hands find her shoulder. Cold
fingers slip into the collar of her thin shirt. She doesn’t stop,
letting the garment tear away as she dives across the bench seat of
the cab. She stabs the key into the ignition and turns it.

“That’s my girl!” Brandon says when the
engine turns over. He is still wrestling with a zombie while the
truck grumbles. “C’mon, man, game over.”

Brandon lets up his resistance on the actor,
proud of their triumph. Having dropped his guard, the zombie bites
him. The dead aren’t giving up on Vida either. Her ankle is still
in the clutches of the one that robbed her of her shirt. She kicks
out and looks behind her to witness Brandon getting mauled by one
of them.

Brandon shoves the over-zealous actor away.
The players are unyielding though the contest is over. Brandon
doesn’t hesitate to bash the next one to approach him with his
paintball gun. Holding a hand over his bleeding wound, he heads for
the truck where Vida calls for him with concern. She sits in the
cab of the pickup in only her bra despite the crisp night air. He
snatches a t-shirt from the toppled concession stand.

Even when both of them are inside the
vehicle, the zombies enclose around them, as if unable to come to
grips with someone finally winning. Brandon hands Vida the shirt.
“Here. You deserve this.”

She accepts the coveted ‘zurvived’ tee with a
smile, then kisses her man and uses the garment as a bandage
against his neck. “I’ll cherish it always. If it’s all over, why
are they still acting like this?”

Over the hood of the idling truck, they watch
more coming their way from the backyard. Brandon sounds the horn in
hopes it will reiterate the fact that the game is over, but the
encircling dead don’t even flinch.

“I don’t know,” he says softly.

He and Vida scan the detailed costumes and
props. Twisted limbs lay on the ground, and they were not there
earlier. The hero character is on the ground, too, his body made to
look as if it’s bent in half while the dead feast on him.

The vacant eyes that stare at Brandon and
Vida all look away in unison, back toward the house. Lloyd appears,
waving to them with the blonde girls. “Hey, Brandon! I think
there’s something wrong with Vicky!”

“Lloyd, get outta here!” Brandon shouts, but
is too late. The zombie actors move toward Lloyd and the
blondes.

“We’ve already been bitten,” Lloyd tells the
zombies closing in. “They got us inside, and then my friend got me
for real.”

The stunt zombies had cast Lloyd and the
girls out of the house, telling them that security would be called
to deal with Vicky, who apparently had gone berserk and bitten a
few of them, Lloyd included. Ever the loyal friend, Lloyd refused
to leave Vicky at first, despite being told of all the liability
concerns. But the stunt zombies forced him out the door.

The approaching mob fall on Lloyd and the
girls and they scream as they are torn apart. What started out as a
game has turned into the real thing.

###

Try as they do to shut out the gore, the
sickening sounds of the feasting drive Brandon and Vida mad. Vida
attempted to drive them out of the lot, but apparently the truck
was only filled with enough gas to start and sit idle for a few
minutes to prevent a winner from speeding away with the truck in
lieu of the money and the shirt. After a single jolt in reverse,
the engine died.

Now the berserk horde is all around them,
beating on the glass and fenders. Judging from the bite wounds, the
vacant stares, and the shared singular obsession, they are
witnessing actual zombies.

Through the cluster of corpses that engulf
them, they witness the blondes trying to get to their feet, but
they haven’t enough muscle left on their arms to move them. All
they can do is shift their weight and roll over into new positions
to perform the task.

Lloyd has been pretty well picked over. The
muscles he spent so much time developing have been torn away down
to the bone. Brandon had suggested that he start working out back
in middle school, since Lloyd hadn’t much going on upstairs. Being
bitten himself, Brandon wonders how much time he has left.
Lloyd
hasn’t
risen
yet
, he notices, and
wonders if a person’s fitness level plays a part in the
phenomenon.

He and Vida sit in silence, wallowing hand in
hand. It’s all they can do. Brandon insisted Vida put on the
t-shirt to abate her shivering. He also gave her his thin
sweatshirt.

After carefully thinking about how to word
all he needs to say, he clears his throat. “You know I love horror
fiction… before this anyway… I often thought, like most fans must,
‘If it really happened, could I survive?’ I would wonder who I’d
like to be trapped with during a zombie apocalypse, and what CD
would I want if I could only have one. I’m glad it’s you. You’re
the only one I’d want to be with during this. I know I haven’t been
the best boyfriend…”

“We’ve only been going out for seven
months.”

“Seven of the best months. You are the one
person I’d choose to spend the rest of my life with. I knew it the
first time I heard you play guitar.”

Vida laughs. “The first thing you heard me
play was La Cucaracha.”

“It was beautiful. The way you get lost in a
piece, even one you’ve probably played a million times. It’s
amazing.”

He trails off, looking away from her eyes
because he doesn’t want her to see his tears.

Eyes glazed with remorse, Brandon says, “I
wish I could stay, Vida. I love you.” It is the first time either
has said those words to the other.

“Brandon?”

“I don’t know what this is, but the bite is
certainly what causes someone to… turn into one of them,” He
regards the slack faces. Beyond them, Lloyd is twitching. “I’m not
going to become one of them around you.”

There is no room to argue his conclusion; the
evidence is far too great. Especially now that Lloyd slithers along
the ground with skeletal limbs, joining the horde.

She looks into Brandon’s eyes. “I love you
too.”

“My keys are in the pocket,” he tells her.
“I’m going to lure them away. You need to get to the van and go
someplace safe.”

“Please don’t leave me,” she whispers against
his cheek.

“I have to. Promise me you’ll get to
someplace safe.”

“I promise.”

“Find the police, or go home. Your dad has a
gun. I remember he showed it to me the first time I picked you
up.”

Neither wishes to severe their final embrace,
but Brandon knows he has to if he wants her to live on. He puts his
palm against the sliding back window of the pickup.

“As soon as I’m out, you need to shut this
then get down.”

They repeat those three words again that mean
so much, that hold magic and power, yet not enough to keep them
together. “I love you.”