The Dead Live On (17 page)

      
He held his hand out to show her, the little cut was an angry red. Sadness and fear washed over her, she felt as if an ice cold bucket of water had been dumped over her head. Without thinking, she neared him with her arms outstretched to hug him but he pushed her away.

      
“You know that if anything of me gets on you, it’s over. I don’t know how long I’ve got but it can’t be a long time. Take this, ” he removed the cross from around his neck and laid it on the edge of the sink.   “Get some tissue to wrap it up until you can find a way to wash it off. Keep it for me, please. It means a lot to me, my mother gave it to me. I want you to get them and get out of here. Father Barrett is not right in the head.” Kate cried harder than she had ever in her life. He is her friend and it hurt to know there was nothing she could do to help him.

      
“Dave, what are we gonna do? There’s still time I’m sure!”

      
“Time for what, Kate?” He yelled. “Nothing…there’s no time for anything,” he quieted, not wanting to alarm the others. “My main concern is you and Angel. I care about the others, but you have to be safe. Angel is important, I can see that. Can’t you?” Kate was beginning to feel the same way but was unsure how a little girl could be of any importance to the situation she just knew that she had to keep her safe. But Kate didn’t want to leave her old friend to suffer alone.

     
“I’ll stay with you, and then I’ll do it for you.”

     
“No, I’ll do it myself; at the right time. I have a feeling something will go down and I need to be ready when it does. Maybe because I’m dying I can feel the tension better than anyone else, but we have to go back out there and pretend for a while. If I turn, then do what you have to do. If I don’t, then just take it as it comes. Okay?”

     
Kate was so distraught over his coming death and didn’t care about anything else at that moment. She nodded her head, grabbed some tissue, folded the necklace into the tissue and turned to leave the bathroom.

    
“Kate,” Dave said just before she could exit the bathroom and she turned back around to face him. “You’ve been a great friend. You’re a great soldier and I am proud to have known you.” A flood of tears ran down her face, she wanted so bad to hug him and say goodbye.

    
“Shouldn’t I be the one to say those things to you?” She sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes, and tried to gather herself together before she went back out. “So, the feelings are mutual my old friend.” she said. “Just know that I am hugging you, in my heart.” She walked back out to join the rest of them, her heart in her throat. Dave came out of the bathroom behind her and went straight to the back pew that he had been sitting in before.

     
Angel sat in the floor in front of the alter with Teddy in her hands and was speaking in a voice so low, that they couldn’t hear what she was saying. Kimmy sat on the front pew looking bored. Kate guessed it was because she didn’t have anything left to torture. She began to eyeball Teddy.

Kate was very un
comfortable with the fact that the dead were just a few feet away, held back by a weak, old wooden door, started to approach Angel to  take her into the another room to get away from it all. Just as she reached Angel, a little, multicolored bird flew out from behind Jesus’s head and landed on Angel’s right foot. She giggled and stretched forward to pet it. The bird hopped forward so Angel could reach it. If you were to ask them later about what had happened next, they would say that the next ten minutes contained the neatest, strangest and meanest things they had ever seen in all their lives.

Chapter Twenty Three

    
All at once, several more birds swooped down from the ceiling. The flutter of their wings created a cool breeze that circled throughout the room. Many different kinds of birds and they all sat on or near Angel. It was a spectacular sight, they were stricken with awe. There were probably a hundred or more. Everyone laughed and giggled as well, as the birds frolicked around Angel. They were lifting her hair in places and a few of them rubbed their faces on her cheek. She laughed joyously and played along with them. It was like watching an urban rendition of Snow White.

All eyes were
glued to the spot watching this when Kimmy angrily got up out of the pew,  ran over, screamed and stomped her feet trying to scatter them. She pointed her finger at the birds and yelled, “GO AWAY!” One tiny lavender bird flew right up in her face, making Kimmy go cockeyed to look at it. It pecked her very hard on the tip of her nose and a small dot of blood welled up from the spot. Kimmys face grew beet red with anger and faster than anyone could ever imagine a child moving, she snatched the little bird out of the air and slammed it on the floor of the church. Then, without hesitation, she smashed its tiny head in with the heel of her black Mary Jane. Everyone stared in shock. They knew she enjoyed destroying things, but had never thought that she was capable of murdering anything that was truly alive.

    
The birds grew eerily silent and not a one of those who watched made a sound. Every bird in the place turned to look at Kimmy and cocked their little heads from side to side. Two of the birds closest to their fallen feathered friend hopped over to inspect it. The other birds waited in silence. It was so still in the church that you could hear a pin drop. Even the undead had quelled their lamentations. Both birds nudged the fallen bird with their heads and tweeted angrily. Without warning every single one of the birds screeched flew directly at Kimmy.

   
Their little beaks pecked at her legs, arms, face and pulled her hair. Little drops of blood welled up everywhere that they pecked her. She flailed her arms, trying to beat them away and screamed so loud. The birds had her completely covered and only the cries of the birds could be heard. The dead in the room behind her grew excited and shoved against the door again and gain. The wood cracked and splintered at the handles, causing them to fall to the floor with the chain still intact.

    
Dave ran up behind Kate and threw Tank’s jacket over Angel, scooped her up, and everyone broke free of their trance.  Tisha grabbed Allen and ran to John. Kate screamed for Tank to grab the keys from the alter and Father Barrett sat praying, making no attempt to move. The doors were broken open and the dead spilled out of the room. The birds continued to attack Kimmy, backed her into the crowd of dead and her screams grew deafening as they fell upon her, devouring her in a macabre feast. The birds, satisfied that Kimmy was being punished, flew to the ceiling and disappeared in an instant.

   
Kate turned around to see where everyone else went, saw Angel’s Teddy was still sitting in the floor facing Kimmy, as she was being consumed, with a perpetual smile on his face. Kate picked him up and scanned the room. Dave was by the hall that led to the side door holding Angel and waiting for her. Father Barrett was being attacked by who she hoped was Diane. They both deserved their fate for being so selfish. Kate ran to Dave and he handed Angel to her.

   
“They’re all outside, now go! I’ll get your bags and toss them out this door. I won’t be coming back out.”

“Dave, they’re behind you,” he pushed her out the door and pulled it shut. She ran to the red mustang and gave Angel to Allen, who was sitting in the back. Tank already had fired up the engine. Kate looked back to see Dave had thrown her bags out the door. She ran to pick them up and just as she snatched the straps and began to take off toward the car, the windows of the church blew out behind her and she realized that Dave had set off the grenades that he’d been carrying the whole time. She had forgotten that he had them. She dropped to the ground on her stomach and covered her head to shield it from debris. When she looked up through the smoke she could see the Ohio license plate on the cherry mustang. XCAP4U. What a coincidence. Kate pulled herself up and ran toward the car, threw the extra bag in through the window and Tisha tried to open the door to let her in. Kate pushed it shut.

    
“There’s no room for me. You guys go on.”

    
“I’m not leaving you, Kate,” Tank said.

    
“Yes, you are. I’m going to try to catch up to Dave and we’ll be fine,” she winked at Angel.      “Take care of my girl. I’ll be along sometime.”

     
Tank smiled sadly and said, “I’ll be waiting on you.” With that he drove off the lot and turned left straight onto I-75. The birds flew high above them, as if they were leading the way.

Chapter Twenty Four

Kimmy had stolen the pretty little purple heart from Angel’s pocket as she lay sleeping in the booth. She had seen it while they were in the van.  It was peeking from Angel’s pocket and she couldn’t wait to get ahold of it. She didn’t want to ask for it, afraid that Angel would say no. Once she had gotten it, she stared at it for long periods of time when no one was paying attention. The pretty little heart was a light in the darkness for her. She only showed it to Kate because she had wanted Kate to chase her and play with her. No one seemed to want to play anymore because Kate did not come after her.

    
Yes, Kimmy was a bad little girl in their eyes, but down inside she had just wanted someone to talk to her without being mean, someone to hold her with love instead of restraint. So, no matter how bad Kimmy was, she was not a demon spawn after all. In fact, if you had known her before all the problems at home began, you would have said she was a sweet tempered, beautiful child. She washed her hands before and after every meal, said please and thank you, and said her prayers every night at bedtime.

     She could not help that her world was turned upside down when her father lost his job. He drank heavily and abused her mother relentlessly. Her mother, being a weak and spineless woman, let it go on and in turn, took her frustrations out on the only thing that her husband loved.
Kimmy.

Every time her husband beat her, she would wait until he left to take it out on the innocent child that she hated with a passion that no mother should be able to possess for her child. The last time she exploded on the poor girl; she had taken scissors t
o Kimmys long, black wavy hair. Her father had never allowed it to be cut, he wanted it to grow long and beautiful, and so it did.  Her mother did not see the beauty of her child, though. She saw only the man that abused her and ruined her life, every time she looked at her because Kimmy looked just like her father. Deep black hair and even deeper brown eyes, except Kimmys irises were insanely large. Even through extensive testing the doctors could not determine the cause. Her mother thought it creepy and called her evil. 

    
Besides the crude hacking job she did to Kimmys beautiful tresses, she had also blacked both of her eyes and bloodied her lips. Poor Kimmy did not understand what she had done wrong and did not allow herself to cry. She took her beating in silence.

    On his way home from the local pub, her father had already been contemplating what he could come up with as an excuse to beat her mother for this time. Entering the house and seeing the condition his little Kimmy was in, he had found his reason and it was a perfectly good one. He
beat her mother relentlessly until the screams ceased and she lie motionless with her eyes open and staring accusingly, at Kimmy. The sight frightened her terribly but she was not afraid of her father. He walked over and picked her up to hug her and remained that way until the police showed up to take him away.

   
The State social services were called in to take custody of Kimmy for she had no next of kin to be released to.  Miss Blake had fallen in love with Kimmy immediately and understood why she behaved so aggressively. She continued to show her love and kindness through all her temper- tantrums and let the child mutilate as many Barbie’s as she wanted to. She figured that if Kimmy could take it out on the dolls, then she will have gotten over the anger and violence by the time she reached her preteens. Too bad Miss Blake didn’t make it. To others, it had seemed that Kimmy had been laughing at Miss Blake’s demise, but she was not. She was crying in the only way she knew how.

    
No matter how rotten of a child she had become in the span of her short, sad and lonely life…she had died a death she did not deserve. Kimmy had been left with people that had misunderstood her, had thought she was a demon, and had allowed her to be attacked by a flock of birds and eaten by ghastly creatures. No, she wasn’t a demon child at all, but she was now a part of the ever growing population of undead. Her face and hair is partly melted away from the fires in the church. There are hundreds of little holes covering her body from the pecking of the birds. She sat in the street, Indian style, gnawing on the fresh corpse of a cat that had wandered across her path. She had no thoughts or memories, luckily for her. She only knew that she was hungry and the cat had filled the void. So, she continued feeding.

Chapter Twenty Five

Dave could not believe that he had mustered up the strength to scale the wall into the cemetery, only to find the gates were less than a hundred feet away, and unlocked. He sat back against the large oak tree that hid him from view and pulled Allen’s iPod from his front jacket pocket. He found it on one of the pews and had meant to give it to him; but everything happened so fast that he had forgotten about it, until now. It was still working and he had looked through the playlist. There were several great songs downloaded onto the device; he wouldn’t mind hearing a few of them. He inserted the ear phones and hit play. Buried Alive by Avenged Sevenfold began its melodic guitar intro and he could not help but cry.