Life Among The Dead (60 page)

“
He ‘saved’ us when we showed up in his town. He covered us while we ran into his bakery. He gave us muffins he had made. I thought he was very nice and cute. He turned out to be like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, fattening us up before…” The girl starts to cry.

Bruce was never good with people. He has no idea what to say when a girl starts crying. Her friend was just slain; he feels he has to say something.

“
Like I said before, I’m Bruce.” He re-introduces himself.
That’s stupid,
he thinks.

“
I’m Rash.” She says with a sniff.

“
I hope that’s a nickname given for your impetuous nature, and not something more… Contagious.”
What the hell is wrong with me?

She exhales a brief chuckle.
That’s progress,
Bruce thinks.

“
I’m sorry… I wish I had gotten there sooner.” He shakes his head with remorse.

“
My name is short for Rashida. Rashida Steele.” She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands. Her face is still stained with her friend’s blood. “So, we’re going to New Hampshire?”

“
Holy shit! Are you psychic?”

“
I found this.” She reaches into her shirt and pulls out a hard cover notebook entitled the King of the Road. She thinks it’s what he was looking for earlier. “Your diary, right?”

“
Diary? What’re you nuts?” He denies while taking the book from her and tucking it under his leg. “What kind of grown ass man keeps a diary? Yeah, we’re going to New Hampshire, Vermelho to be exact.”

“
Can we make a stop first?” She asks.

“
What did you leave the oven on or something?”

“
No.” She laughs a little. She feels guilty for laughing when her friend has just died, but she finds Bruce to be funny. “My friend and I had a deal. We’d check one more military base before settling somewhere. Fort Eagle rock and Fort Scott are both dead zones.”

“
Yeah, sure.” He says looking at his wrist, which holds no watch. “I’m making great time. It’s amazing how far you can get when you don’t have a pesky speed limit to adhere to. We have plenty of time for sightseeing.”

Bruce appraises his new companion.
She sure will make this trek easier
, he thinks
. She’s as cute as a button, if you can look past all the blood on her face.
He isn’t sure if it’s too soon to offer her something to eat or not. He grabs a can of soda for her so she can at least get the taste of her meal’s return trip out of her mouth.

“
Thank you.” She says.

“
Let me know if you get hungry. We have plenty of sandwiches, like I said before. There’s also chips and candy when you’re ready. I guess we can have squab for dinner.”

“
Why are you traveling with pigeons?”

“
So I can send word back home from the road. What do you use them for?” He is able to pull another laugh out of her.

“
Are they homing pigeons, or carriers?” Rash asks

“
Both actually,” Bruce explains. “A carrier pigeon is just a homing pigeon with shit to do.”

“
How do they know where to go?” She lays her head on the headrest and looks at him while he drives.

“
They have natural magnets in their beaks that help them navigate like GPS. They just follow their noses like the bird on the cereal commercials.”

“
And, your home is New Castle, where you are the king?” She smiles.

“
My legend precedes me.” He sits up straighter, raising an eyebrow to his majestic glory.

“
I read your diary, remember?”

“
And, as I remember, I told you it wasn’t mine. Some kid must’ve left it in here. You sure ask a lot of questions. Do you have any more?”

“
Can I see your locket?”

“
The fucking kid musta left that too.” He fishes the plastic bauble out of his pocket and hands it to her. She opens the charm with her thumbnail and makes that aw sound that all women tend to make when opening such trinkets.

“
The young ones are Vincent and Jack. The woman is Heather my… What is my nephew’s wife to me?”

“
Your nephew’s wife." Rash replies.

“
Heather, my nephew’s wife. And, for some reason she settled for my nephew Dan.” Up ahead Bruce sees a sign for the turn to Fort Breyers. “It’s Breyers, right?”

“
Yup.” She keeps looking at the happy family. “That rifle that belongs to your nephew is military issue. He’s a deserter?”

“
Look here,” Bruce takes the locket from her and closes it with a snap. “He did what he had to do to get his wife and kid out of a bad spot; he got a lot of people out of a bad spot. Have you ever been to Waterloo? It wasn’t the safest place to be even before the dead started running amok. He may have more balls than brains at times, but he’s a damned hero in my book. There wouldn’t be a New Castle without him.”

“
I didn’t mean anything by that.” Rash says apologetically. “I’ve been wanting to leave the regiment for months now myself.”

“
Sorry for my outburst. I thought you were bad mouthing him. No one badmouths a Williamson, but a Williamson.”

The road to the fort is bumpy and dusty. They bounce along in silence until Bruce thinks of something to ask his passenger.

“
So this whole plague thing. What started it?” He asks.

“
I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “Nobody does. They tried to find the root of it all through experiments and testing on the dead, and came up with nothing.”

“
Is it just the Midwest, or has it spread further?”

“
It’s coast to coast. We don’t know where it started either. We had contact with other bases via radio, one by one they disappeared. We know Canada and Mexico are gone as well. Rumor has it all of North and South America are one big lost cause.”

“
What about across the pond?” Bruce asks.

“
Some say it’s isolated to the west. Others say the zombies have overrun the entire world. It’s all conjecture though. I imagine the top brass might know, but who knows if they’re still around.”

“
Even if the world is lost, my kingdom will stand strong.” Bruce is nodding his head. “We’ll take it back, inch by inch like ants building an ant hill. I bet my little brother, Wallace, has a settlement out East in Vermelho. Probably not as nice as mine, but quaint just the same.”

Rash lays her head on her window and listens to the man talk with her eyes closed.

“
We’ll connect our realms straight across America. Just wall up all this unused land and put it to good use.” He looks out his windows into the dusk at the empty fields that surround them. He points out his vision for the future of society. “I’ll put a casino there. Some strips clubs along there. I can see adult bookstores sprinkled throughout along with a bordello, or two. We can put a playground right there for the kids. You know, I’d like to keep it a family place.”

Troubled thoughts erase the slight smile Rash wears. “Do you know what I think it is?” She asks in a voice that is low and sad.

“
Preservatives?”

“
It’s Mother Nature telling us all to fuck off. She’s telling us our time on this planet is over; we’ve over stayed our welcome. You can’t really blame her, just look at us. Look at what we did to one another before the plague. Even after the most catastrophic event in our history, we’re still nasty creatures, no better than the zombies themselves.”

Bruce runs her theory through his head. It blows his out of the water. He lets her words sink in before casting them out, not wanting to think too deeply about it.

“
Do you like Queen?” He asks while slipping a CD into the player. “I don’t care how gay they were. Queen is the best rock band ever.”

#

Bruce keeps his music low so the girl can drift off to sleep. The sky is dark and all that is left of the world is what his headlights illuminate, an old chattered road of compacted dirt.

Eventually, his lights show him the gates to a military base. They have arrived at Breyers. He hadn’t seen the place until he was right up to it. There are no lights evident anywhere beyond the walls. He takes that as a bad sign.

Bruce is tired. He figures whatever the status of the place, it will be the same in the morning. He reverses his truck a few yards before killing the lights and the engine.

Rash wakes up and tells him that she is hungry. The old man roasts the bodies of his pigeons on an open flame. The night is quiet beneath the crackle of the gasoline accelerated barbecue pit he dug.

Rash drifts back to sleep. Bruce will follow soon. He pulls out his journal and a small flashlight. He has been given a lot to write about today.

#

Log entry 2

I now know how we can advertise New Castle. I have a slogan that will really bring the tourists in. New Castle: We won’t eat you.

I found a small town today that had the opposite business strategy. A little place called Sinclair. Don’t bother to come out and see it. I actually closed the place to tourists. By now all the fine old cannibals of Sinclair should be zombies. I realize there is only a subtle distinction, but I like my cannibals the way Mother Nature intended. Dead.

Maybe I’m just getting old, does anyone else find it a might soon for people to leap to the unthinkable? They were about to munch on this adorable soldier girl named Rash. I know. Don’t worry it’s just a nickname. I can’t say I blame them. I have the urge to munch on her myself. Of course that’s in a good wholesome way.

She’s joining me on my adventure and then back home. I have put a lot of thought into taking a queen. I may let Rash apply for the position, if she survives the strenuous audition process.

We just had a romantic squab dinner, perfectly seared. Now we’re sleeping together. Yeah, I know it’s a little soon for that being only our first date. What can I say? I’m irresistible.

My new girlfriend and I had talked about the plague. As I suspected the military has no clue what’s going on. She says it’s coast to coast and may stretch from Alaska all the way to… Whatever the southernmost country is. Whether it’s a complete international incident or not is anybody’s guess.

She has a theory that it’s some form of natural selection. I hate to say it, but she may be right. I read somewhere that if all the honeybees died the human race would follow in about four years’ time. The same can be said for every species except for one. Us.

Humans are the only animal that can be lifted out of the ecosystem and actually make the planet better. It’s a sad fact, and honestly one I choose to ignore.

Fuck Mother Nature. That bitch can suck it. We won’t go out like that, a bunch of honeybees. New Castle will spread out like a cancer to take it all back. It’ll take time, but I can see the Earth returning to its former glory of Cadillacs, porno, and the American way.

10

The sun’s rays shine down in the early morning. They gently enter the Road Master to greet its occupants and start them on their day.

“
It’s fucking morning already?” Bruce yawns. His bunkmate is awake and just stares out through the windshield, looking at the gate. Her hands are laid on the dash. Bruce realizes that it’s been a long time since he has awoken next to a beautiful woman. He can get used to this. “What do you see out there?”

“
Death.” She states simply. She had wanted to find this place a lost cause before they had found Sinclair. Last night, however, out of her love for Zee, she wished to find a thriving base. She wonders if the cannibals knew the fort was overrun.
Why else would they decide to eat us instead of being saved?

Bruce can see undead soldiers wandering behind the gates. They limp aimlessly, trapped within the walls. Rash leaps out and is running towards the gate screaming.

“
Why do the cute ones always have issues?” Bruce asks himself as he follows her. He stops to grab a rifle from behind the seat. She hadn’t taken one, and he isn’t about to let her go uncovered.

Rash strips off her camouflage blouse and hurls it at the gate. Bruce can’t make out her unintelligible screams. She falls to the dirt crying. Her head is down and her shoulders are hunched in her white tank top.

Come on, Bruce say something,
the old man thinks of the right thing. He isn’t good at all with this sort of thing.

“
Aren’t those pants military issue?” Bruce
‘more balls than brains’
Williamson says. He walks towards her, hoping he can console her in some way. The distraught soldier stands up before he reaches her. The morning air is chilly and he can’t help but notice she didn’t have anything on under her wife beater. Her nipples poke through the thin, white fabric as she walks past him back to the truck.

“
You might want the shirt if it gets cold.” He calls to her. She doesn’t answer him and just climbs aboard the black pickup. The dead behind the bars are staring out. Their faces are pressed against the steel, reaching for the humans. Rash’s shirt is at their feet and Bruce isn’t about to get it.

“
Are you looking at my girl?” He asks the corpses. “Show some respect.”