The Dead Divide Us (Book 1) (2 page)

Robert had left his front door unlocked, that’s how. When he remembered this, he immediately felt ashamed and angry all at once. It was forgotten when Robert heard the bump sound once again. It wasn’t coming from the kitchen but from the behind the closed bathroom door! Robert looked back to the kitchen, this time allowing his eyes to fully adjust to the darkness. Nothing was there, nothing at all. His mind was playing tricks on him he supposed. Since waking up hungover, he’d taken in a lot of quick and disturbing news. Robert figured that anyone’s mind would be playing some offbeat games at this point.

What on earth was making that racket in the bathroom?
Robert’s thoughts raced. Perhaps something had fallen onto the floor vent next to the toilet. The air trying to push up and out could be making the foreign object thud against the grate. Or sometimes when the wind was really strong you could hear the vent cover rattle.

Robert moved slowly through his dark living room toward the bathroom door. It had been about fifteen seconds since the last bump was heard. Before reaching the bathroom, Robert again glanced quickly over to the kitchen, still no one in there. He couldn’t believe his mind played such a terrible trick on him, especially at a time like this. Robert noticed his toaster sitting on the kitchen counter;
finally, it must be getting lighter outside, h
e concluded.

Suddenly Robert’s bathroom door burst wide open, catching him off guard and almost knocking him over in the process. Out of the darkness of the bathroom stumbled a large shadowy figure. Robert screamed in shock and leaped backward. The figure fixed itself upright and all Robert could see at this point was its silhouette.

“Whoa! Who the hell are you?” Robert screamed, still reeling backward in shock.

The dark figure moved forward, wobbling a little in the process. Robert’s legs bumped into his coffee table, knocking it over, and spilling most of what was left of his Jack Daniels. Robert didn’t even notice.

“Okay, Mister! What are you doing here?” Robert frantically yelled.

The dark figure seemed to stop moving for a brief second to acknowledge him. Robert sensed this in an animalistic kind of way, like how you feel when approaching a dog for the first time. There is a brief second in which you think the dog will turn, get all angry, and try to bite your ass off, but then it turns around with its tail wagging, happy as could be. Robert felt this now for the unknown person in his apartment, except without all the jolly tail wagging and happiness. This person meant to hurt him and he knew it.

So, Robert did one of the few smart things he would end up doing that day; he turned around and ran to his bedroom. The dark figure shambled slowly after him. Robert reached his room quickly and just before he was about to slam the door closed and lock it, he looked back at the dark figure. It passed through a streak of sunlight coming in from between the living room curtains. It was his landlord, Carl Riggins.

“Carl?” Robert said, thinking now that he could reason with the intruder since he recognized him. He was human and not a monster in the flesh as Robert had previously convinced himself.

Robert’s landlord only shambled faster toward him. Robert could hear him making an awful gurgling and moaning sound. It sounded as if Carl was trying to breathe and scream all at once with a gallon of water stuck in his lungs. It was the most horrible thing Robert had ever heard.

Just before Carl reached the bedroom door, Robert could see his eyes. They were cloudy-white, blank, and dead; matching the rest of his face that appeared to be drained of life. It looked like Carl’s face had been flushed of all its fluids and color. The black veins stretching down his neck stood out in stark contrast to the rest of his face. The last thing Robert noticed was the stench coming off Carl and thought if shit had a really bad day, it would still smell better then Carl Riggins’s breath.

Robert slammed his bedroom door shut just as Carl slammed into it. For a second Robert thought that the door was going to snap off its hinges. He locked the door and took a few steps backward while Carl continued to slam against the door. Robert could tell that the door didn’t have much time; Carl’s fat ass would eventually break through.

“Somebody’s got to help me out here,” Robert said to himself.

Given what Paul had told him only a few minutes ago, Robert was pretty damn sure that his landlord Carl was infected by whatever was causing people to go crazy. He went for his cell phone to call for help.

“Shit!” Robert whispered.

Without even noticing, he’d lost the cell phone. He must have dropped it when he hit the coffee table. After realizing this, he also remembered that his laptop computer was out in the living room too, resting closed on his lazy boy recliner.

“Fuck!” Robert said, a little louder now.

Carl slammed harder on the door causing Robert to think that Carl could hear him just fine in there.

“Yeah, that’s right Carl. Fuck you! You got what was coming to you, you greedy asshole!” Robert yelled back, feeling somewhat better despite his dire situation. Robert was not the biggest fan of his landlord Carl Riggins. He moved into his apartment five years ago, which was shortly after he was hired at the chemical company. The place was cheap and that was what Robert was looking for, but what Robert
wasn’t
looking for was a “cheap as balls” landlord who wouldn’t even fork out the cash to fix a broken furnace three winters ago. Robert remembered Carl telling him that it would be a few days until the heat would be restored. Robert could deal with that; he had a few electric space heaters set up around his place. But Wynona, the ninety-two year old woman with crippling arthritis who lived on the first floor, could not deal with that. She had next to no money and no space heaters. How could you expect an old woman to live in the dead of winter with no heat?

Robert overheard Carl ordering Wynona to go stay with family for a few days, because the heat wasn’t going to be fixed right away. Robert knew that she didn’t have any family left in the immediate area; they had all moved down south to escape these bitter cold winters. Fairly ironic.

So for those two days without heat, Robert had Wynona up to the second floor with him. It wasn’t all that bad really. Wynona told him stories about war time and her family. She talked about her late husband, how they’d lost a child to leukemia early on, and never wanted to try again with another baby. That experience came with a pain that should never be felt; once was enough. She talked about Catholic schools, social dances, and her love for John Wayne films. In two days Wynona had just about retold her entire life to Robert, all while sitting next to a cranked up space heater and sipping on hot tea. It was Wynona who got Robert hooked on her all time favorite television show,
Happy Days
.

Wynona died a little over a year prior; her downstairs apartment still vacant. Robert was sad to see her pass on, but he was even sadder to see how hardly anyone showed up to her funeral.

Robert’s memory was cut short by Carl slamming against the bedroom door again, splintering off a piece of the door frame in the process. The room was now fairly lit from the early morning light. Robert was startled again, but now enraged. If the news was true; the fat bastard that wouldn’t pay to get an emergency maintenance service on the furnace during the dead of winter was now infected with a killer virus that seemed to be spreading.

Robert thought about what Paul had said, “You’ve got to get to Mom and Dad’s. Make sure they’re okay."

Carl slammed against the door again. This time a top corner of the door broke off and almost hit Robert. He could hear Carl’s ghastly moans, no longer muffled by the door and completely sickening.

“Alright, fuck this,” Robert said.

He grabbed his truck keys from off of his dresser, slid on a pair of jeans, and yanked on his work boots. He took a hooded sweatshirt from the foot of his bed and put that on too. Robert looked at the bedroom door as Carl slammed on it again. He then looked to the corner of his room, spotting his trusty thirty-four inch aluminum softball bat leaning against the wall.

“You’re dead, fucker,” Robert said grabbing his bat and squeezing it tight.

3

There are many ways to kill a person. Over the years, Robert had thought of a lot of ways to kill his landlord Carl. But that was all in his head you know, just imaging how fun it would be to off your piece-of-shit landlord. Now though, it was very real.

Carl had been slamming himself against the thin plywood door for almost ten minutes straight. Thinking back, Robert found it very odd that when Carl first shambled out of the bathroom he was relatively calm, but once Carl had set his eyes on Robert it was like a jolt of raw power and rage that suddenly surged through his body. And Carl did not seem like he was going to be letting up anytime soon.

A huge crack was heard and splintered wood exploded as Carl’s left arm and upper body smashed through the door. Carl was now momentarily stuck in the door. He was reaching out toward Robert, clawing at the air, and moaning that sick wet sound. Robert briefly looked over Carl’s face again. He still couldn’t believe what a grotesque being Carl had become. He was somehow worse than he was before. Robert couldn’t believe that either.

“Now’s my chance,” he told himself.

Robert ran up to his bedroom door with his softball bat held high in the air, ready to swing down on Carl’s face. If everything that his brother Paul told him was true, then putting Carl of out his misery was necessary. Necessary because that meant Carl intended to kill Robert and Robert never knew his brother to be a liar.

Robert was a fraction of a second from swinging downward onto Carl’s forehead when the bedroom door completely broke open. Carl, along with the door, crashed directly into Robert. Robert was much too close and it happened far too quickly for him to get out of the way. Both parties hit the floor. Robert cracked his head on the wooden floor boards of his bedroom and was now wedged underneath Carl with the bedroom door between them. The doorknob punched into Robert’s crotch and for a moment he saw stars. Regardless, he was extremely thankful for that door between them, because Carl’s face was three inches from his own and violently snapping his teeth at him. If it hadn’t been for that door, Robert’s face would have been torn to shreds.

“Holy shit, Carl’s trying to fucking
bite
me!” Robert thought, in a moment that felt like an eternity. He had managed to wedge his bat between himself and Carl while falling down and used all the strength in his upper body to raise Carl and the door up and away from him. This was no easy task either due to the gluttonous mass that was Carl Riggins. Carl continued to snap his teeth at Robert. The smell of his breath was powerful enough to knock a person unconscious and Robert had to turn his head away, seeking fresh air from the dusty wooden floor.

“Get…off… me…you fat piece of shit!” Robert said through clenched teeth.

The moans coming of out Carl were getting worse too, Robert could almost hear the sound of water or some rancid liquid being sloshed around deep inside Carl’s body. Focusing on those sounds even closer, Robert was sure it sounded like Carl was gagging or dry heaving while also trying to bite the skin off of Robert’s face.

Robert had enough; he slid his back to the right and pushed Carl off to the left. It worked; Robert had just enough room to move around and get up. His left foot was still caught underneath the door though. He had to yank it up quickly before Carl changed his position.

Robert had just gained his balance when Carl started to vomit all over the floor. Carl was sprawled out, face down, and still tangled in the door as black and green viscous fluids ran out of his mouth, hitting the hardwood floor with a ferocious splash. Robert turned the other way and ran to the other side of his bed. Any smell that bothered Robert before was absolutely nothing compared to this.

“Carl. What the fuck, man?” Robert said with a hand over his mouth.

Robert heard Carl cough up the last of this sickly stomach stew and then the room fell oddly silent. From Robert’s new vantage point on the other side of the bed, he wasn’t able to see Carl lying on the floor. Robert gripped his bat again, ready to swing, as he slowly crept around the corner of the bed. Robert looked at his bedroom doorway; the path to freedom was completely open. So he decided to make a run for it.

Robert only took two steps before Carl jutted out in front of him. He was kneeling now and trying to stand up. And he was back to moaning again.

“Carl. Listen, back the fuck off man. I don’t know what virus or whatever shit has gotten into you. But I will beat you with this bat! You need help!” Robert screamed at Carl in a pleading manner.

To Robert’s dismay Carl just continued to squirm toward him, reaching out with pale dirty hands. It was too much for Robert, he knew more than ever that he had to get to his parents' house and soon. If there were more people out there as fucked up as Carl, God help them all.

Robert took aim and held up his aluminum bat. An old memory came flooding back to him; while learning to play baseball at the age of seven, both Paul and their father had taught him how to swing. It was three easy steps: keep your eye on the ball, step forward, and follow through.

Well, Robert had hit plenty of baseballs in his youth, but not once did he ever have to swing his bat at a person. Robert closed his eyes and swung hard at Carl, hitting his outstretched left hand. Robert could hear a few bones snap as his bat connected. He opened his eyes to see that Carl’s left hand was badly mangled and blood ran down his arm in large dark spots. His pinkie, ring, and middle finger were crushed inward toward his palm. It looked grossly impossible and extremely painful. To Robert’s surprise, when he looked at Carl, there was absolutely no change in his behavior. Carl just kept coming toward him.