Authors: Keith Varney
The Dead Circle (34 page)
“Goo waaa!” He repeats. His body starts to shake in the tentative place between a laugh and a sob. “Goo waa aarrrrreee!”
Charlie does not go away. Chris starts to laugh in earnest.
Fuck you Dad! You didn’t account for feline intervention.
The cat walks up to him and nuzzles his elbow, brushing against the grip of the gun.
Chris stops laughing. The sadness returns, but he is defeated. He lowers the gun and sets it at his side. Charlie climbs into his lap and Chris starts to pet him slowly.
“Go away Charlie.”
*
A day passes. Chris can’t bring himself to even stand up, but he sits in the office with Charlie and forces himself to stay alive at least. He has no desire to keep doing the basic things to sustain life: eating, drinking, sleeping, breathing, but he knows that Sarah would have wanted him to. It’s not enough to get him off the floor, but it’s enough to make him keep taking in oxygen.
He doesn’t bother to look down into the library to check on the Fred and Gingers, he can hear them stumbling around and bumping into each other. He wonders if it might be the tiniest bit quieter down there, but he doesn’t care enough to really think about it.
*
On the second day, Chris wishes he had access to their bathroom. Something about feeling such a basic and banal desire brings the tears back and he spends much of the day alternating between silently and loudly sobbing. The Fred and Gingers are definitely less active. He goes to the railing and looks down to discover that more than a third of them have expired. The floor is covered with a strange granular substance. It drifts in little piles and dustings like sand kicked onto a boardwalk.
The rest of the bodies mill about blindly, walking through their own remains as if they were going for a stroll on the beach. Chris figures, at some point, that sand might be all that is left of the human race. Dust to dust.
*
On the fourth day something truly horrible occurs to him. Even though Sarah got turned, and had probably been trampled by the horde, her body was fresh. It wasn’t going to turn into dry residue or powder; it was still going to be flesh and bone. In time he may be able to dispose of the zombies with a broom and a dustpan, but Sarah’s body was still going to be there. It was going to be mostly human, and even if it was just a bloody pile of tissue, it would still be her.
The instant he has the thought, he vomits up the pack of stale Oreo cookies he had eaten for breakfast.
“I don’t know if I can do this Charlie.”
The kitten doesn’t respond. Charlie seems to have recovered from all of the commotion and has accepted the new reality with the ease of a simpler creature. He cheerily bats a bottle cap across the floor at Chris’ feet.
*
On the fifth day, he begins to brainstorm ways to get the rest of them out of their (his) house. The zombies can’t get to him, but he is trapped in the office. It’s a stalemate and he is tired of waiting. When he investigates the street again, he sees a similar scene to what is playing out in the library on a much larger scale. Hundreds of zombies have fallen and died, while thousands more wade through their half-decomposed companions.
The solution ends up being simple: he needs another diversion. Grimly reminding himself that there are no bonus points for creativity, he decides to set off another car alarm. The noise will draw them out of the library and hopefully away from his block. The problem is he can’t get out of the building to trigger the alarm.
Then, with a hint of embarrassment—because he doesn’t want to remember why he had it out in the first place—he remembers the gun
. I can just shoot a car. That should set it off. I wonder how far a bullet can go?
Chris knows nothing about guns and when he stands on the roof and selects an Audi parked a block and a half away, he’s not sure what to do.
I know there’s a safety on it somewhere… Probably this switch here?
When he flips the switch he thinks is the safety, the ammunition cartridge drops out of the grip and clatters at his feet.
“Shit!”
He jumps back as if it might bite him, but nothing happens. When he retrieves the cartridge and collects himself he is able to giggle at his own fear of the gun.
“Well at least I know it’s loaded.”
He eventually figures out how to reload the pistol and release the safety. He takes it in both hands and aims it at the car. He is well aware that he has almost no chance of hitting the car he is aiming at, but he hopes he will get close enough to hit one of the cars on the street. Any alarm will do. He winces and pulls the trigger.
It’s loud, but he expected it to be deafening. He missed the Audi, but had at least fired the gun safely. Heartened, he takes aim and shoots again. It takes five shots, but eventually he hears the wail of a protesting alarm. He knows he won’t be able to turn it off, but he is beyond caring.
They’ll probably destroy it soon enough.
When he returns to the library, the Fred and Gingers are already heading for the exit. They clumsily bump into the walls and each other in search of the noise, but they eventually start finding their way out. Chris hears thump after thump as one by one they fall into hallway.
*
On the sixth day, Chris wakes with a strong desire to clean himself up. He smells terrible and is covered with dust, sweat and tears. Snot from crying had formed a crust over his unshaven beard. For whatever reason, this morning he feels that it is time to start taking care of himself. He takes a bottle of water and washes as well as he can. Most of his clothes had been in their bedroom on the ground floor but he finds a fresh t-shirt that had been drying on the balcony when they were overrun.
He looks over the railing again to check on the Fred and Gingers and finds them pretty much finished. They’re mostly either gone or dead. One Fred is still alive, but has fallen down and slumped against the wall. The only motion Chris sees is his jaw dryly opening and closing and an occasional tired twitch. His legs have already begun breaking down, melting back into the earth, a sand castle slowly being eroded by the tide.
He is no longer a threat.
Chris realizes he doesn’t have a way down to the library floor. The wooden ladder that used to be attached to the balcony sits a story below him in a pile of zombie dust. Then he remembers the curtains. If they held the weight of the boy zombie, then it might hold his. He yanks one of them down from the window and ties it to the railing. Steeling himself for what he is going to find, he tucks his trusty hockey stick under his arm, and awkwardly climbs down the thick fabric to the floor below.
He surveys the devastation in the room. Almost everything is destroyed—their furniture, their keepsakes. He can’t bring himself to inspect the piano too closely.
The sound of the dusty remains under his feet sends a chill up his spine. It makes a crisp crunchy noise when he steps on it that reminds him more of dry arctic snow than beach sand. He dispatches the last Fred with the end of his stick, breaking through the skull as easily as if he were poking through a snowman.
“Ick.”
He knows he has to muster the courage to look down the empty stairway into the kitchen. He doesn’t want to go anywhere near it, but he must face Sarah’s remains. She deserves more than rotting in pieces on their kitchen floor. As he approaches the edge, he feels his stomach lurch, he really doesn’t want to see this. He looks anyway.
To his surprise he doesn’t see a huge pool of blood in the center of the room. He doesn’t see her body anywhere. He wonders if she was trampled into so many pieces that she might not be recognizable. With a revolted sadness he thinks that maybe their dusty remains could have acted like the sawdust a janitor puts on puke in an elementary school.
“Oh Sarah. I’m sorry.”
He tosses the rope ladder down and descends into the kitchen below. It would have been pitch black in there, but since the windows and doors had blown wide open, he can see well enough to search. With a shudder of disgust he wades through three feet of human snowdrifts that accumulated where the stairs would have been, and reluctantly continues searching for what remains of Sarah.
Thump.
Chris jumps backward in surprise. He hadn’t realized that there were any zombies still down there. He whirls around holding his hockey stick in front of him. He doesn’t see anything moving.
Thump.
It’s coming from the basement. Behind the thick wooden door, something is moving. Chris runs through all of the possibilities in his mind. It could be a Fred or Ginger that got pushed down there by the horde. The door could easily have been slammed shut in all of the chaos and trapped one of them in the basement.
Then another idea occurs to him.
Maybe Sarah’s body ended up in there.
Could the zombie version of her have been trapped in the basement and now is trying to get to the circle? Chris is not sure if he can face seeing her like that, but what choice did he have?
Thump.
“Oh God. Sarah…” tears start falling again. This is the hardest thing he’s ever imagined doing. With a sob, he opens the door. It creeks and shudders in his hands—which are already shaking—and he steels himself for the grim reality behind it.
The sound is almost inaudible. Out of the pitch darkness, comes a dry desperate whisper, more croaked than spoken.
“What… took you so long… husband?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith Varney is primarily a writer of musical theater including the musicals I GOT FIRED, ELWAY: THE MUSICAL, THE OTHER SEX, JOSHUA: THE MUSICAL & PIE EATER. He has a degree in classical voice from the Eastman School of Music. He lives in Astoria, NY with his wife Jillian. For more information, please visit www.keithvarneywriter.com
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