Life Among The Dead (50 page)

The door opens. A short old man appears from the darkness aiming a rifle at Dan’s head.
He’s alive.
Dan is relieved. The firearm directed at his face doesn’t worry him as long as the man is breathing. What does worry him is the fact that he has no idea what to say, and making sure he keeps his hands where the old guy can see them.

“
You hot blooded?” The old man asks.

“
Check it and see.” Dan smiles. The rifle isn’t lowered. Dan has to speak his peace. “Sir, we were in the neighborhood, and we were wondering if you would like to join our little survivors’ commune?”

“
I ain’t going nowhere.” The man makes it clear. The weapon is lowered until it is level with Dan’s chest.
Its progress,
Dan thinks.

“
Could we please, possibly borrow a few of your animals then?”

“
Borrow?” The guy asks.

“
We wish to deepen the gene pool of our animals because we want to have a renewable resource…” Dan struggles to explain.

“
Fuck Frank,” Bruce pipes in. “What the kid’s trying to say is: we need to use your animals for their love juice to make more animals. Can we borrow your stud, or at least squeeze some sperm?”

“That you, Bruce?” The old man lowers the gun now so he can lean out into the night to see his friend.

“
Yeah, you old shit. It’s me. How’s Maude?” Bruce asks.

“
Dead.” Frank says.

“
Sorry to hear that. Great gal.” Bruce says with genuine sorrow.

“
I ain't got much reason to leave our home. She passed last night and came back. I had to put a bullet to her. Don’t much feel like living without her. Don’t know how.”

“
You can live with us, Frank.” Dan offers again with hope.

“
Are you stupid? I said I don’t want to live no more. Not with you, not anywhere. I’m sure not leaving the home Maude and I have owned for 52 years.”

“
Well, good luck with that. Keep your sperm.” Dan says departing with a wave.
Does everyone who gets old have a stick up their ass around here?
He wonders. “Great meeting you.”

Dan found Frank’s sentiments about his late wife to be quite touching. He is almost to the car when the old timer exits his house. Frank looks all around as if he expects zombies to come crawling from every angle.

“
I can’t do it myself,” Frank says. “It’s a sin. I know Maude is in heaven. I aims on meeting her there.”

“
I can’t do it, Frank.” Bruce says. He looks to his nephew and shrugs. Dan lowers his head. He knows where this is going.

“
How do you want it, sir?” He asks the man. Bruce walks around the truck to his nephew’s side. His face gets real close.

“
Are you sure about this, kid?” He whispers, seemingly shocked.

“
I’ve shot a lot of people the past couple days, not all of them have been dead.” Dan turns to the house and starts to walk towards it. “At least this one wants to die.”

27

Frank chose to be put down alongside his beloved. He had Dan and Bruce take her body to their marital bed. A pillowcase shrouds her head. A bloodstain has soaked through from where the fabric rested on the entry wound.

The arthritic old man climbs into the antique canopy bed. He kisses his wife through the pillow sham where her lips reside.

“
I’ll see you soon, my dear.” He whispers to her under the fabric. Lying back he looks up at Dan. “I am so sorry, son. I know this must be a hard thing to have to do.”

“
The hard part is how easy it’s getting.” Dan says.

“
In the head, please. The TV said it has to be in the head.” Frank instructs.

“
I know.” Dan tells him. “Believe me, I know.”

“
I’m ready.” Frank says closing his eyes. Bruce leaves the room.

Dan aims the 9mm at Frank’s head. The old man doesn’t so much as flinch when the hammer is pulled back, or when the cold steel touches his temple. Dan is slowly adding pressure to the trigger when the old man sits up suddenly.

“
Wait!” Frank yells.

“
Fuck, Frank! What?” Dan asks, clutching his chest as his heart tries to slow down. The man has startled him so bad he can barely breathe.

“
We never wanted a burial. We always wanted to be cremated.” The man lies back onto his pillow.

“
Fine. Whatever. Can we do this? Please?” Dan is frazzled by the scare Frank gave him. His patience are at their limits.

“
Oh, of course. Sorry.” Frank is once again resting by his wife. He takes her hand and places their entwined digits over his heart. His eyes close again for the last time. Dan gives him a second for any last minute provisos before he fires a single bullet into the man’s skull.

The soldier’s facial expression is blank as he exits the room. Bruce is leaning against the wall.

“
Go down stairs and grab all the supplies you can. Get it all loaded into the truck.” Dan instructs his uncle. “Ammo, guns, food, blankets. If there is anything we can’t take this trip get it out of the house.”

Bruce doesn’t question his nephew. He sees that he is holding an oil lantern and realizes what is about to happen, he gets to work without a word.

Dan can feel the oil sloshing around in the base of the lantern as he removes the glass shield and pulls out the wick. He douses the bodies of the old married couple with the flammable liquid. On the nightstand Dan finds a small picture frame. The black and white photo shows Frank and his wife when they were younger. They smiled happily while the photographer took the still of them, standing on the front steps of this very house. Dan slides it into his pocket, frame and all.

The soldier takes a seat in a worn high back chair, giving his uncle time to gather the supplies down stairs. He lights a cigarette.

The man just sits there in silence, smoking until the tobacco burns away and he can smell the sickly sweet odor of the filter catching fire. He lights another, and then ignites the bed. He bears witness to the dead lovers as they burn. The flames eat away the linens that cover them. The lace canopy above them evaporates from the middle in an expanding circle of ember. The fire devours the bodies as it spreads up the floral wallpaper.

28

Bruce has filled the backseat with canned goods and a few perishables they can use. Together he and Dan wrangle the animals, taking three trips as Bruce had planned. Each time they arrive at the old farmhouse it is more and more engulfed in flames.

They work in complete silence, putting the final beast away back at the ranch, Bruce finally breaks into conversation.

“
That’s all we can hold I guess. It should be enough. Tomorrow, if you’re up to it, we can go and get any crops they might have left in their fields. Like me, they only grow heirlooms. It means we can save the seeds, and actually plant them again. Unlike the bioengineered atrocities you get at the store. Plant a seed from one of them and you might just grow an orangutan.” Bruce is prattling on about stuff, not mentioning Frank.

“
Sounds good. What are those?” Dan asks, pointing to a few cages that Bruce had pulled out of the barn.

“
Pigeons.” He explains. “Your dad and I wanted a new hobby so we decided we would raise these to send back and forth. Just a couple of old guys needing shit to do I suppose.”

“
Did you guys ever do it?” Dan asks.

“
No, the plan never got off the ground. No pun intended. I guess you have to train them to know home and release them elsewhere.” Bruce shakes his head.

Dan yawns as they carry the coops to the house. Bruce plans on keeping them in his study during the winter.

“
I know you must be tired, I was wondering if you might want to play a game of chess with me in my study before you turn in.” Bruce asks.

“
Sure.” Dan says a little bewildered by the request. Only his father is allowed in there.

“
You get washed up. Meet in there when you’re done.” Bruce tells him.

29

The study was always off limits to everyone but Bruce and Wall. Dan remembers trying to peek inside when the adults opened the door. He has always wanted to go in there.

Dan stands at the door, reticent to knock. From what he was told the study used to be the office when the house was an inn. The door is in two sections so you could open the top and still leave the bottom secured. He takes a breath and knocks.

“
Come in.” He hears from the other side.

Dan enters the room. It looks like a log cabin inside. Everything is made of wood from the ceiling to the floor. One wall is lined with bookshelves. A fire burns in a large wood stove. Dan finds Bruce next to the bar.

The old man has his shirt off and his arms extended outward. In each hand he holds a milk jug full of water. Dan remembers his dad used to do this all the time too. He never asked why. He always figured it was just an exercise old people do.

The jugs don’t waver a bit as Bruce makes his arms form a perfect forty-five degree angle. He looks from one cap to the other and nods to Dan.

“
Just a second. I am almost done.” Bruce tells him.

For a 53-year-old guy, Bruce is in really good shape. He and his brother, Wallace, have always been built that way. Dan always felt out of place when around them since he is cursed to be skinny forever, and not through a lack of trying. He worked out a lot in the past and never saw results.

He enters the room, looking around like a child who has just ventured into some forbidden place. He passes a large oak desk where all of his guns are laid upon, the ammunition is organized. His M-16 leans against it as well. Among the firepower, a picture frame displays an old photo of Bruce and Wallace Williamson dressed in fishing gear when they were about Dan’s age. He peers at the picture and sees his own features in their young faces.

Dan takes a seat near the stove. He admires the furniture. He is resting in a chair that was once the trunk of a tree. It’s a round log that had been carved so someone could sit in it. It has a mate on the other side of a coffee table that was also once an entire section of tree. Dan can count the growth rings under the thick layer of smooth lacquer.

“
This thing must weigh a ton.” He remarks about the table.

“
Just about.” Bruce is now raising the jugs one at a time, and then both together. He has his arms pointed in a different location every time the water jugs come up. “It was a bitch to get in here. Make sure you use a coaster, I worked hard on that.”

“
You made this?” Dan inspects the piece even closer.

“
No, but I worked hard to make the money to have it made.” Bruce explains from the bar. “Same thing.”

Dan’s uncle brings over two short, fat glasses and a bottle of scotch. He sits in the chair opposite to Dan and opens a drawer in the tree trunk coffee table that Dan hadn’t even noticed. The old man pulls out an all-wood chess set; instead of the typical black and white the squares are dark brown and light tan. The pieces match, each looks as if it had been hand carved.

“
I remember my dad doing that same thing with the milk jugs.” Dan tells his uncle.

“
Did he ever tell you why?” Bruce asks before taking a sip from his glass.

“
No.” Dan shakes his head and waits. This should be the part where the old man explains it to him, but he just changes the subject.

“
I know what I want for Christmas,” Bruce says as he pours Dan a drink. The glass is placed on a coaster and slid across the table.

“
What’s that?” Dan asks.

“
New Castle.” The old man answers plainly. “I want to take it back. Put a wall around her, rebuild a society.”

“
There’s plenty of guns and ammo.”

“
Yeah, town like this even the bookstore sells bullets.”

“
It’s cold enough to make them extremely slow. It shouldn’t be too much trouble.” Dan sips his drink. He already has a few ideas about how to go about the mission.

“
I see your wheels turning, what are you thinking?”

“
Just a few tricks that might help us. We should call a meeting to enlist volunteers.”

“
Tomorrow, we’ll get the crops from Frank’s, then call everyone together.”

“
What about the other farms around here? There’s more animals we could use, right?” Dan asks.

“
Sure are, we just have no place to put them.”

“
Why not leave them. If the people in the houses are dead, we could still take care of the animals where they are.”

“
That’s good.” Bruce smiles, he hadn’t thought of that. “Plus, I’d wager that by this time next year there’ll be a boom in the wildlife population since there’ll be no hunters out there, except us.”

“
Food isn’t a problem.” Dan says as the two clink glasses.

They play their game in silence for a few minutes. Neither one is thinking much about chess. They are contemplating tomorrow, and all there is to do. Dan never was any good at chess, but he loves to play. He just likes to move the pieces.

“
We should send a scout.” Bruce breaks the silence.