Life Among The Dead (13 page)

“
I wouldn’t want to be them.” She whispers, considering the people who are in that dwelling. Becka pulls the handle to open her car door.

A loud and irritating tone erupts somewhere close to her. The sudden racket almost gives her a heart attack as she scrambles to figure out what the hell it is so she can choke the living shit out of it. It takes her mere seconds, but feels longer, to discover the sound is being made by her. Her purse is spouting the offensive noise that she realizes is her phone. The device continues to blare its nauseating pop song, which on the quiet street seems ear piercingly loud.

The dead have heard the dinner bell. The zombies heading her way from the East seem to have doubled their pace with lusty eagerness. They aren’t running so much as closing the distance at the speed of a living person’s casual walk, rather than their typical lackadaisical strides. The two who liked her old hatchback are now returning as well. The girl knows it isn’t the car they want this time.

Becka throws open the driver’s door and dives into the seat. For a brief instant she sees herself reflected in the window, her eyes are as wide as saucers. She ignores her phone, which now emits a periodic beep. She slams her door shut and her hand goes to the ignition. It’s empty. There is no key in her hand. She starts patting herself all over in search of them, but finds nothing.

“
Damn it!” She screams realizing she won’t find them in her purse either. She knows exactly where they are. They can be found next to her bottle cap on the island in the kitchen. She had used them to open her beer and must have inadvertently left them behind.

The dead are getting close as she tumbles out of the compact and onto the hard driveway, sprinting to the house. She refuses to trap herself in that crawlspace again. The girl charges through the dining room. The air vibrates with the song of the dead, the pitiful wailings of the deceased.

Becka slams into the swinging door and almost runs into the island. She has to skirt around the white surface, scooping up her keys, heading for the back door. Her feet leave the earth as she lunges off the small patio having no time to bother with stairs. Panic sets in, the dead are in the house and the yard is nothing but flowers and grass. There isn’t a weapon in sight, or even so much as a place to hide.

Her 5 foot 3 frame leaps onto the fence between this yard and the neighbors. Her fingers curl over the top of the rough boards as her body dangles. The moans are getting closer and her phone continues to beep like a homing beacon for the recently deceased.

She kicks her legs trying to gain altitude. The dead bump off of the frail door behind her, their flesh scrapes against the mesh screen making a sickening sound. They can see their prospective meal trying to throw a leg over the top of the fence. The cheerleader is swinging her body desperate to get away though her body painfully rubs against the wood with every pass.

A snap behind her chills her blood and forces her to take a quick glance back. The screen door’s aluminum latch has given way under the strain of the bodies being pressed against it. Mobile corpses spill into the yard in a tangled knot of death.

Becka ignores the splinters buried deep into her skin and gets her ankle hooked over the top of the unforgiving wall. The dead behind her are already regaining their footing, and heading her way. She straddles the fence and drops to the other side without more than a glance down. Becka has no idea what’s in store for her, but figures it can’t get much worse.

17

Dan and Bill lug heavy steel boxes down from the attic. The olive drab crates are carried through the house and out to the garage where they are loaded into a white van. Dan has lost count of how many they have hauled between them, one at a time.

“
Is all of this ammo?” Dan asks Bill while they are in the attic. They have carried so many boxes and still had quite a few to go.

“
Mostly,” Bill responds. “One of them is full of cleaning patches and oil.”

“
How many rounds?”

“
A couple thousand. Give or take.”

Dan would have been impressed if not for the slow rate of fire he expects to get out of the muzzleloaders. The load time has him worried.

While the boys are doing the heavy lifting, Lindsey and Barbara are in the bedroom. Lindsey is trying to find clothes for the little girl to wear. The nightgown won’t be warm enough once night falls; Bill heard a cold snap is on its way tonight.

“
I wore these before I had my first child.” Lindsey tells the young girl who slips into the older woman’s clothes. “I will never be that small again.”

“
Where are your kids?” Barbara asks, cinching up the pair of black slacks Lindsey had offered her with a belt. The end of the belt almost makes it around the child’s waist twice once fastened.

“
Both of my boys are in college. One is in Europe studying art, the other in California studying blondes.” The woman has been trying hard not to worry about her boys, so far from home with all of this going on.

Barbara pulls a gray sweater on over a plain white tee shirt. The sleeves completely cover her hands like Dopey from Snow White. Lindsey forces a smile at the girl. Her question opened up a maternal wound in the middle-aged woman. Lindsey also wonders what happened next door. They had heard a gunshot that morning, then another just a few hours ago. Bill had pulled her aside and told her about Damien’s cradle death. She figures her mom and dad are also gone now,
why else would she be out with a stranger during something like this?
Lindsey figures the girl will talk to her about it in her own time. It’s probably better not to press.

“
You’re practically swimming in that.” Lindsey tells the girl in her old sweater. She vows to herself to stay strong for Barbara’s sake, she always wanted a little girl. “We should make some food for the road.”

Lindsey will do for Barbara what her own mother did for her when her father died. She wasn’t much older than Barbara when it happened. Her mom taught her to provide, to fight for what’s yours, and to be self-reliant. She had also taught her that food can solve most problems, which Lindsey now realizes looking at her old wardrobe is probably why it no longer fits her.

#

All the ammo is loaded into the van. The men are resting, sitting upon the rear bumper with the hatch open. Between the weight of their supplies and the combined weight of the gentlemen, the rear of the vehicle is sagging.

“
Here is my plan.” Bill breaks the silence. “Lindsey will drive, I will load, you will be the shooter. Little Barbara can pass supplies, and be an extra lookout.”

“
You can load fast, right?” Dan asks.

“
I’m all right, I guess.” Bill nods.

“
Please, just tell me you can load fast.” Dan says to the man. He doesn’t know if he would care if he lied, just as long as he told him he could load fast.

“
Bill won second place in a speed loading competition.” Lindsey says as she carries a large blue cooler out from the kitchen. “3 years in a row.”

“
Just second?” Dan asks.

“
We’ll be fine.” Bill stands putting a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. The van rises slightly when he removes his girth from its shocks. “If anyone needs to pee before we go, do it now. And, Lindsey could you grab the ice cream on your way back please. No sense letting it go to waste.”

Lindsey and Barbara take Bill’s suggestion and excuse themselves to the restroom. Dan is nervous about their departure. He paces around the two-stall garage while Bill struggles with something inside the van, talking about the ice cream. Apparently, Lindsey makes it herself and ‘it’s the best in the world’ according to Bill.

The garage is very tidy. The plain cement floor is clean and actually looks like it has been swept recently. There are tools along the walls on steel shelves as well as on pegboards. The tools have been outlined with permanent marker so anyone borrowing a hammer will know exactly where to put it back. There is a large, black pick-up truck parked in the second space next to the white family vehicle.

Dan concludes his tour ending up by Bill again. The man is kneeling on the floor leaning into the van’s sliding right side door. The soldier can see he is trying to remove one of the seats.

“
It sounded like such an impressive feature when we bought it.” Bill grunts as he tries to pull the release lever. “We just never used it.”

Dan is about to offer some assistance, but the lever finally gives and Bill lets out a triumphant sigh.

“
This’ll give us more room to maneuver inside.” He hands the seat to Dan and starts on the next one. Dan carries the car seat to the back wall and sets it down; Bill already has another one waiting for him. The van is rocking as the man moves the supplies around inside, trying to get everything organized. He left two seats for them inside behind the driver’s side of the vehicle. The right side is now reserved for ammunition.

Lindsey and Barbara return from the restroom and immediately board. The cooler is placed up front with the young girl who rests her feet upon it.
They seem so calm,
Dan observes. He wishes he was, the idea of going back out there made his stomach hurt. He knows he has to if he wants to get to Heather.

Bill pops up through the van’s sunroof.
That must be where I’ll shoot from,
Dan realizes. He had been wondering about that.

“
You can hand them down, and I will hand them up.” Bill explains. The soldier is about to enter the vehicle until Bill rushes past him. “I just need something from my truck.” He tells the group.

“
What do you need?” Dan asks.

“
Hunting supplies.” He says simply.

“
Oh no, Bill. Not hunting supplies.” Lindsey says from her open window. Dan wonders what the big deal is, hunting supplies sound like a good thing to take along.

The soldier looks around while he waits for Bill to return. He doesn’t want to get in just yet, knowing that once he is in they will be departing. He spots an item that may prove useful. A little red jug with a spout marked gas. He picks it up and feels that it is pretty much full. The plastic container is slid into the hold of the vehicle and pushed towards the back.

Bill rifles through his enormous truck, kicking himself for not cleaning it out since his last hunting excursion. Everything is a mess and there is junk in his way. He locates his toolbox in the behemoth vehicle’s extended cab. He flips the top open and pushes away objects until he finds several small packages, each containing two green earplugs. Beneath the plugs he uncovers a box of 12 gauge shells.

“
Must be Buck’s.” He mutters. Buck is Barbara’s dad. The man wonders what had happened over there. He knows Damien died, but what became of his hunting buddy and his wife?
For Barb to be out with a stranger, something bad must have gone down
. He leaves the shells since he didn’t have Buck’s gun to fire them from anyway.

From the glove box Bill retrieves another important piece of hunting equipment, a bottle of Wild Turkey.

“
It’s kinda like hunting honey, only we are the prey.” He says to himself, practicing for when Lindsey finds out. She only let him drink when he went hunting. She will be mad and make that clicking sound with her tongue. Bill hates that sound.

“
If I am to become a zombie, I want to be three sheets to the wind.” He states to himself as he returns to the white van of survivors.

“
Oh Bill, you don’t need that.” Lindsey tells her husband, finishing the statement with a click of her tongue.

“
Disinfecting wounds, dear.” He responds to her scolding, forgetting his rehearsed line. He takes his seat inside right behind his wife.

Here we go again.
Dan thinks, putting one foot inside the vehicle. Bill holds up a hand to stop him.

“
The power is out, soldier.” The man points towards the large sectional door at the front of the garage. “We have to open it manually.”

Dan’s eyes must have given away his shock over this new information. Bill opens his door.

“
I can do it if you want, son.” The man offers in a calming tone.

“
No, I got it.” Dan responds and heads to the retractable door. “Just cover me.”

Dan looks through the small windows and sees the dead are still searching the area. Zombies pace the street and loiter on the front lawn. There are a few occupying the driveway. The soldier crouches to grasp the handle at the base. He holds one of the long rifles in his right hand. The butt of the bulky weapon rests on the cement floor with its muzzle pointed in the air. Dan takes a preparatory breath and lets the door fly up before he loses his nerve.

The door makes a lot of noise as it glides on its rollers and bounces back and forth becoming the ceiling. The dead outside look at the occurrence for a few seconds. The sudden action has them stunned, almost in awe. Their brains slowly register what they are witnessing before heading towards the promise of food.

Dan scrambles around the van and almost falls, clumsy from haste and fear. Passing the workbench, an unseen hand snags his flak jacket. The man recoils, slamming his back against the side of the van. He is paralyzed with panic until he sees that it is just the claw end of a hammer that has caught him. The tool hangs from the folds of his jacket. He resumes his journey into the sliding door and closes it, disregarding the stowaway still dangling from his flak.