The Pure: Book Three of the Oz Chronicles (3 page)

Silence. Then I hear the chairs being
pushed back.

“Get your hands off me,” Scoop-face
snarls. “I know the daggum way.”

Now I hear the shuffling of his feet. In
my mind’s eye, I see the doc nervously following him, watching him carefully,
almost willing him to the couch without incident, one hand out to steady him if
Scoop-face should happen to run into some errant piece of furniture.

Scoop-face can feel him there. He grunts
in protest, but knows the doc doesn’t mean anything by it. People do it to him
all the time. They aren’t as concerned about him as they are about themselves
having to witness the possible catastrophe of a bumbling man with no face
crashing to the floor.

I hear the swish of leather as Scoop-face’s
ass hits the couch. Dr. Graham adjusts his chair.

“Are you certain about this?” Dr. Graham
asks.

“I’m on the couch, ain’t I,” Scoop-face
answers. “Do your stuff, Doc.”

I hear the soothing rhythm of the
metronome begin. I breathe deeply as the soft ticking seeps in and fills the
closet.

The doc pulls out his heavy monotone
voice. “Listen to the sound of the metronome. Not just the sound it makes, but
the sounds it doesn’t make. Listen to the soft chorus of its entire existence,
from sound to silence to sound and back to silence. Go beyond listening. Feel
it now. Feel the gentle thumping in your chest. Feel the sound travel through
your nerves and veins. Relax as it takes over your whole body. Relax. Getting
sleepy now. Relax. Sleepier still. Relax.”

He stops talking.

For several seconds there is nothing but
the sound of the metronome.

Softly the doc says. “Where are you,
Archie?”

“The woods. Running. Being chased.”

“By who.”

“Not who. What. Don’t know.” He screams
suddenly. “What?” the doc asks sounding a little more panicked than I imagine
he intends.

“They got Bobby! They got little Bobby!”
His voice is cracking. Mucus is building up in this throat.

“Calm down, Archie. Calm down. Leave
this place. Leave it now. Go somewhere safe. Find someplace safe...”

“Wait! They don’t have him anymore. He
got away. Somebody saved him. Somebody... It’s...”

“Who, Archie? It’s who?”

He sighs deeply. “Lou!”

THREE

“You ain’t never seen nothing like it.
She can fight like nobody’s business. Monster, man, or animal, she can hold her
own with anything or anybody.

“Skinner dead. I see it now. That’s
who’s chasing us through the woods. It’s me, little Bobby Greeley, Tank
Caldwell, and April Nelson. We’re running for our friggin’ lives. The skinner
dead are organized now. They figured out they hunted better in packs than on
their own. They hunt to eat , and they’re always hungry.

“I still got my face at this point. I
don’t mind telling you, I’m a good-looking fella when I got my nose and eyes. I
did all right with the ladies in my day, I tell you what, but that’s the
furthest thing from my simple little mind at the time. I’m just trying not to
be food.

“Skinner dead ain’t your typical
zombies. They move different. I guess cause they been filleted by bugs they get
bug ways in their bones. They can run like men and hop, crawl, and bite like
bugs when they need to. The only thing we got going for us is they think like
bugs, too. They ain’t exactly splittin’ the atom, if you know what I mean.

“One of the skinner dead, used to be an
old lady it looks like, swoops down from a crooked oak and grabs up little
Bobby. You ain’t never heard a scream like that in all your life. The old lady,
her fire-red inner flesh glistening, is cackling with joy because she caught
some food. Bobby’s screeching like a banshee. We all seen the skinner dead eat.
It ain’t pretty.

“Little Bobby, as you can imagine, ain’t
very big. He used to be a jockey when things was normal, before the end of the
world. He used to be strong enough to manhandle a 1200 pound thoroughbred, but
now he’s small and puny. He couldn’t walk a 20-pound dog without pulling his
arm out of its socket. Doing nothing but surviving does that to a man. It cuts
him down to a shell. The muscle and energy gives way to worry and fear. It just
tears him down to nothing but a shadow of the man who used to live in its
place.

“Anyway, there was little Bobby Greeley
squirming under the hold of a skinner dead old lady. She’s crowing and gnashing
her teeth. She’s got dinner. I feel terrible. There’s nothing I can do
because... well there ain’t no way in hell I was going back to help him and become
food myself. There’s brave, and there’s stupid, and I ain’t neither.

“The skinner dead old lady sinks her
teeth into Bobby’s shoulder. He screams bloody murder. The other skinner dead
are on their way to join in on the feast. Although, I can’t imagine he’ll be
more than an appetizer to the group of... four or five.

“They were just twenty feet away or so
when Lou swung out of the trees. She actually swung down on a vine like Tarzan.
It was right out of the movies. She went feet first into the skinner dead old
lady. Knocked the old hag into that crooked oak, snapped her ribs like
matchsticks.

“But that kind of thing don’t have much
effect on the dead. The old lady leapt forward, little Bobby’s flesh still
stuck between her rotten teeth and tackled Lou to the ground. Lou stood and
pulled a sword from a sheath around her waist. She swung, wildly at first,
missing the old lady more than hitting her, but her frenzied ballet of slashes
and grunts kept the other skinner dead at bay. They watched, clearly confused
by the chaotic action, and waited for a lull in the combat to leap forward and
take Lou down.

“She never gave them that lull. The old
lady was cut to pieces and Lou advanced on the other skinner dead without
missing a beat.

“‘C’mon!’ she screamed.

“‘We’s so hungry,’ one of the skinner
dead bellowed through shredded vocal chords. ‘Please.’

“‘The little one,’ another one cried.
‘That’s all we need. We eats him up , and you go. We leave your yummy flesh
be.’

“Me, Tank and April slowly move up and
flank Lou. She turns and gives us a scolding stare. She wasn’t happy we took so
long to back her up.

“‘Leave or I’ll chop you to pieces like
your friend here.’

“The skinner dead look at their fallen
comrade. One scoops up a piece of the rotten skinless flesh and sniffs it.
‘Bad, not for eats.’

“‘Leave now,’ Lou insisted.

“‘Hungry,’ the skinner dead closest to
her said. It slowly crawls foreword.

“Lou stepped towards it. She let out a
warrior cry like you’ve never heard. Ear piercing, frightening, thunderous. The
skinner dead knew to the depths of their decaying bones that she was capable of
anything, a kind of madness they could have never imagined.

“They huffed one by one and disappeared
into the thick canopy of the forest. Their vanishing trick was unsettling. We
sat in wait, sure that they would reappear as quickly as they’d disappeared,
but as the minutes passed we realized they were really gone. Beaten back by one
of the greatest warriors I have ever seen.”

***

“‘That was incredible.’

“We sat around a freshly built fire.
April tended to little Bobby’s wounded shoulder. Tank and I sat in awe of Lou
as she cleaned her sword.

“I cleared my throat. ‘I said that was
incredible.’

“She snickered. ‘You mean the way you
deserted your buddy?’

“Tank, a thick hairy man in his
twenties, held his big hands up to the fire. ‘He was paying you a compliment...
miss.’

“‘Relax, Tank,’ I said. ‘She’s right.’

“Flush faced, he turned to me prepared
to defend his honor, but in the split second it took him to turn to me, he must
have run the events over in his head and realized she was right. He simply nodded.

“‘We ain’t heros,’ I said. ‘Hell, a
couple of years ago, I was in my first semester at a technical college in
Birmingham. I was going to be an electrician. I didn’t sign up for this.’

“She laughed. ‘Nobody signed up for
this, genius.’

“‘You got a smart mouth on you,’ Tank
barked. ‘What are you anyway, thirteen... fourteen?’

“She shrugged. ‘Something like that,’
she said examining the now shiny blade of her sword. ‘I stopped counting a
while back. Seemed pointless.’

“‘Well, you’re just a kid, anyhow,’ Tank
grunted. ‘A little respect would be nice.’

“‘Respect?’ she laughed.

“‘You alone?’ I interrupted. Tank was
about to start an argument he couldn’t win. I didn’t want to make an enemy of
this girl.

“She stared at Tank. Disgust in her
eyes. She was covered in mud and skinner dead blood, but even so I could see a
delicate beauty underneath it all. Her hair, although a little matted and
tangled, had the potential to be a sparkling chestnut mane. There was a distant
look in her eyes that I’d seen a thousand times since this whole thing... the
end of the world, but hers was different in a way I couldn’t define or
describe. We had all lost something. Some of us were more wounded by that fact
than others. Some of us were even glad to have lost our old lives. Looking at
this girl, this warrior, I sensed that in some ways, her life didn’t begin
until the world ended.

“‘I’m meeting up with some friends a few
clicks to the north.’ She laid the sword down on the ground in front of her.

“‘Bobby’s in bad shape,’ April said
stroking his forehead. The once plump sorority girl had administered all the
first aid she knew. ‘We need something to clean the wound.’ She brushed back
her dirty blonde hair with the back of her hand. ‘Plus, doesn’t this mean he’ll
be a zombie now?’

“Tank snorted. ‘You watched too many
George Romero movies.’

“‘Who?’

“‘Romero. Night of the Living Dead. Dawn
of the Dead.’

“‘I thought it was Shaun of the Dead.’

“‘What?’ Tank growled.

“‘Tank,’ I said. ‘Calm down.’

“‘I can’t take it anymore, Archie!’ he
shouted. ‘She’s wearing on my last nerve!’

“‘I’m wearing on your last nerve?’ she
shouted back. ‘You’re the biggest oaf left on the planet, and I’m wearing on
your last nerve?’

“‘This isn’t doing us any good,’ I said.

“‘All I said is that when people are bit
by zombies they turn into zombies. Just like in that movie Shaun of the Dead.’
April was screaming without restraint.

“‘You ignorant little...’ Tank said as
he stood. ‘Ahhhh, it’s Dawn of the Dead. George Romero invented the friggin
zombie genre...’

“Tank stopped mid dissertation when he
heard a snort of laughter. His face twisted into an expression of bewilderment
when he saw Lou chuckling at his expense. ‘What’s so funny?’

“Lou struggled to speak through the sobs
of laughter. ‘How are you people not dead? This has got to be the dumbest
argument I have ever heard.’

“We watched her laugh for about a minute
before we joined her. It was dumb. Even Bobby managed to smile.

“‘Seriously,’ April said as she struggled
to catch her breath. ‘Is Bobby going to become a zombie?’

“Lou let out one last breathy sigh of
amusement and nonchalantly said, ‘I don’t know.’

“Our laugh fest was abruptly cut short.

“‘What?’ April asked.

“‘Don’t know,’ Lou answered. ‘I’ve never
seen them leave a body behind much less leave someone alive. They usually eat
everything.’

“There was a long silence after Lou
spoke, too long. Her statement hung in the air like an invisible wind chime.
Every once in a while, after the wind blew, you could hear the last sentence
repeated. ‘They usually eat everything.’

“‘What are you saying?’ Tank grumbled.
‘Bobby could become a zombie?’

“‘That’s about the long and short of
it,’ Lou said standing. ‘I guess you folks will know soon enough. He doesn’t
look too good.’

“She had taken three steps towards the
woods before any of use moved. We were all shocked by the possibility that
little Bobby could be a walking corpse at any moment.

“‘Wait a minute,’ I said chasing after
her. ‘Where you going?’ “‘To join my friends,’ she said without slowing down.

“I turned and looked at the others. They
were thinking the same thing I was. ‘Can we come with you?’

“‘No,’ she said. No explanation. No
apology. Nothing. “‘Why?’

“She stopped. Back to us, her shoulders
sank. She stood there. Motionless. Without turning she said, ‘You’ll slow me
down.’

“I laughed. I’m not sure why. It was a
reflex I guess. I didn’t stop to analyze it at the moment. I just laughed and
laughed and laughed. I couldn’t stop myself.

“She finally turned. ‘What’s so funny?’

“‘Slow you down?’ I said still chuckling
like a lunatic. ‘Slow you down?’

“‘That’s what I said.’

“‘Please tell me what you’re late for.’
I shook my head. ‘Are you late for school? Work? What?’ I waved her off. ‘In
case you haven’t noticed, it ain’t exactly possible to be late for anything
because there ain’t nothing left to be late for.’

“‘My friends will start to worry,’ she
said sounding like her young age for the first time. ‘They’ve been through
enough.’

“‘Fine,’ I shouted. ‘Go! We’ll be fine
here watching Bobby turn into the undead.’

“April gulped. She nervously scooted
away from Bobby. ‘I don’t want to see that,’ she said.

“Lou scanned our feeble group of
survivors. She looked up at the purple and black sky. I have no idea what was
going through her mind. She struck me as a person who had learned to survive on
instinct and her instinct was telling her to leave us behind and not give us a
second thought.

“‘The big one carries Bobby,’ she said
pointing at Tank. ‘Find a weapon, and keep quiet. There’s more than the skinner
dead to worry about out there. We’ve got a lot of woods to go through before we
get to a safe point. I’ve got bigger things to do than save you people. If we
run into trouble, you fight. I don’t fight for you. We clear?’

“‘Why do I have to carry Bobby?’ Tank
protested.

“I swatted a hand in his direction
signaling him to stop complaining and do as she said.

“He grunted and picked up Bobby in a
fireman’s carry. ‘Just cause I’m big,’ he said. ‘It ain’t fair. That’s all I’m saying.’

“Tight-lipped, Lou cocked her head and
gave Tank the evil eye. He quit moaning instantly. She turned, and we followed.
It wouldn’t be the last time she would lead us.”