Alive in a Dead World Read online

  “There are more candles on the table,” she told him before she opened the shade a bit to get a look out into the night.

  “All the people left on the planet and I get stuck with her, I had more fun by myself last night.” The more he thought about that, the truer it rang. Of course, he had been with half a bottle of pain pills. “Should have saved those for tonight. Might have actually made her worthwhile company.”

  “What are you going on about in there?” Deneaux asked.

  “Just wondered what this peanut butter would taste like on some bread,” Paul said as he ate the thick, rich goodness off a tablespoon. It was the small things that hit the hardest. Paul thought the last time he had fresh bread was the day of the apocalypse. He had gone to a Subway and gotten a six-inch meatball sub. “Should have gotten the damn foot-long,” he said wistfully, popping another spoonful into his mouth.

  “Bitch, where are you!” Paul heard from outside the house.

  Deneaux was standing up by the window now, her half a smoke hanging from her lip. One word emanated resoundingly from her mouth, “Shit.”

  “What’s going on?” Paul said, coming up beside her. He could not help but notice that an ashtray would be offended by her aroma of smoke.

  “It’s Brian.”

  “Brian? You said zombies got him,” Paul said as he got a closer look out the window. The person ambling down the roadway looked somewhat like their traveling companion, but the abundance of blood on his face and clothing made identification almost impossible.

  He did not look so much like he was on death’s door as possibly he had passed over the threshold; and when he realized he had not quite finished his business back in the mortal world, he had come back a step to do so.

  “I’ve seen zombies that look better than him,” Paul added, a little frightened.

  “Bitch!” Brian yelled again. “I know what you did, well I got the best of him, you friggin’ hag! He couldn’t kill me!” Brian yelled, thumping his chest as the blood welled up in his mouth.

  Paul made a move to open the door.

  “Don’t you dare!” Deneaux said as she leveled the rifle on him.

  “What the hell is the matter with you? What did you do?” Paul asked in alarm.

  “He’s a dead man. Look at him.”

  “What is he talking about, Deneaux? You said zombies got him and that he was dead.”

  “Zombies did get him. Can you not see that?” she said defensively.

  “He doesn’t look dead.”

  “He’s a dead man walking,” she added flippantly.

  “I’m going to help him,” Paul said, reaching for the door handle.

  “You open that door and you’ll be joining him.”

  “Fuck you, Deneaux, I’d rather be with a person that’s about to become a zombie than with you anyway.” Paul walked out the door, Brian was still a good fifty feet down the road but immediately saw Paul.

  “Paul?” Brian asked, blood and sweat stinging his eyes and making it difficult to see.

  “Hey, Brian,” Paul said, walking cautiously towards him, not sure if he should be expecting a bullet in his back for his trouble. “Are you alright?”

  “Do I fucking look alright?” he asked heatedly, blood spilling from his nose and ears.

  “No, you don’t, man, I’m sorry.”

  “That bitch set me up,” Brian continued without any prompts from Paul. “I was sleeping and zombies must have been coming or some shit, but she throws a stick at me to wake me up. I look over and she’s hiding behind this small bush, and I’m thinking what is this crazy bitch doing? At first, I thought maybe I had just woken up and caught her taking a piss, but to take a piss, you have to be human!” he yelled the last word. “And I’m not convinced of that. She threw the stick, hoping that I would make a noise or that the noise of the stick hitting the ground would cause the zombie to attack me. It was on me before I could even sit up.”

  Paul couldn’t imagine the horror, the guy was burning up with a fever, probably had the strength of a newborn kitten and a zombie comes and attacks. Guilt began to heft on his shoulders that he had not at least gone back to stand guard duty. He had spent the night getting stoned, staring at candles. Brian was beyond antibiotics at this point, Paul could count at least two bites on Brian’s face alone.

  “I need to kill her,” Brian pleaded.

  Paul pointed to the house he had just come from.

  Deneaux threw the cigarette she had finished onto the floor, grounding it out with her foot. “Son of a bitch,” she said calmly as she lit another coffin nail.

  Brian started walking towards the house. Paul stayed where he was. He wanted to go, but he had only one boot on and no weapon.

  “I really need to think things out before I do them,” he said as he watched Brian approach the house.

  Brian was halfway up the drive when he dropped onto his knees. Crippling stomach cramps hunched him over as his body expelled everything in his stomach. Ropy strings of blood and vomit hung from his chin as he stood back up.

  Brian stood still in the driveway for a second longer; he then turned around to look at Paul.

  “Fuck me,” Paul mumbled. He wasn’t going anywhere fast and now Brian wasn’t Brian anymore. Paul got into a reasonable facsimile of a fighting stance.

  Brian started running full tilt. “I love you, Erin,” Paul said as Brian halved the distance. Bone, blood and brain sprayed across Paul’s face as Brian’s body, sans the head skidded past. Paul had yet to move from his fighting stance.

  “You look like chum for sharks, you should get in here,” Deneaux said from the porch of the small house, her rifle still smoking from the shot she had taken.

  The shock of the event took a while to wear off. It was more the sounds of the dead in the distance that got him moving. It was still a fifty-fifty debate on whether or not to go back into that house or just keep wandering down the road. “I still need my boot,” he said, heading towards the house.

  “What do you think you know?” Deneaux asked Paul as he walked over the threshold to the house.

  Paul noted that she had lit another cigarette and was sitting on the couch, the rifle draped across her lap.

  “I know Brian turned into a zombie and you saved my life by killing him.”

  “That’s all you need to remember,” she said, then taking a large drag from her smoke. He also noted that she had not so much as a quiver in her hand as she did so.

  “You’re one cool customer, aren’t you?”

  “How do you mean?” she asked as she exhaled her smoke.

  “All I’m saying is you put a bullet into the brain of one of our traveling companions and you look as calm as if you were watching Lawrence Welk re-runs.”

  “Oh I loved him.”

  “Brian?”

  “Lawrence Welk, you twit. That was before television began to cater to the masses and we ended up with drivel like Charlie’s Angels.”

  Paul didn’t see the reason to argue the merits of TV, but anything with Farrah Fawcett fueling his young hormones was okay with him.

  “What about Brian?”

  “What about him? He was a zombie. Should I have allowed him to eat you? Would that make you feel better?”

  “No, and thank you for saving my life, but I find your lack of compassion somewhat startling.”

  “I killed a zombie, like I’ve killed a dozen times before. I feel the same as if I killed a pheasant, maybe less. At least we ate those.”

  “I guess I don’t understand it.”

  “Tell me what should I feel?” Deneaux asked coolly taking another drag. “Should I go tell my therapist about my touchy-feely feelings, about how I’m all broken up about Brian’s death? It is a survival-of-the-fittest world out there and he succumbed and now he’s dead; it’s as simple as that.”

  Paul didn’t think it was quite that simple, but she held the gun and he didn’t think she’d have any problem using it on him. “I’m just coming over to get m
y shoe.”

  Mrs. Deneaux tensed her hands on the rifle. “Let’s not have any accidents.”

  Paul couldn’t help himself. “Is that what you’re calling what happened to Brian?”

  “I don’t know what you think you know, but I saw him get bit by a zombie. I didn’t stick around to see the ending to an event I already knew the conclusion of.”

  Paul bent down to grab his shoe. Deneaux was mostly showing indifference, but Paul knew it was an act. And then she struck deeply and cruelly.

  “Maybe if you weren’t so busy being inept and shooting yourself, you would have been able to get back and prevent the whole thing.” Her cold eyes remained on his the whole time.

  “You really are a bitch,” he told her, but her words cut deep. He had been feeling exactly that, but to have them spoken from someone else, even someone he couldn’t stand, hurt.

  The fight was out of Paul and she knew it, she focused her attention away and to somewhere deep within her own dark thoughts.

  “I’m going to try and find Mike.”

  “Not with this rifle,” she told him.

  “It’s mine, Deneaux.”

  “It was, but it belongs in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.”

  “Whatever. Keep it, I hope you shoot yourself with it,” Paul said angrily.

  “Oh sweetie, I’m not you,” Deneaux laughed as Paul pulled the front door shut behind him.

  He hobbled to the driveway, sprained ankle, shot foot and no weapon, but he liked his odds more now than he did inside the house.

  Chapter Seventeen – Mike Journal Entry 10

  As worked up as BT was, he still fell asleep rather easily. His legs were hanging off the large couch, but he didn’t seem to mind too much. I had gone outside to pull the dead zombies around Mary’s house away. I was pulling the last disgusting wretch away when Gary showed up beside me.

  “Need some help?” he asked.

  “How long you been watching?” I asked.

  “About half an hour.”

  “Nice. I think I can finish this off on my own.”

  “Did you hear that?” Gary asked as the body I was pulling was making excessively loud squishy noises. I did not dwell on what could be causing it.

  I stood up straight, I wanted to cup my ear to get a better grasp on any incoming sound, but I’d be damned if I was bringing those gloves anywhere near my head.

  “I didn’t hear anything. What was it?”

  “Gunshot.”

  “Just one?”

  “That’s all I heard, but it was impossible to hear much beyond your bellyaching about moving these zombies.”

  “You could have helped.”

  “Could have.”

  “Fine, smart-ass, any idea which direction the shot came from?”

  “Best guess is back that way,” Gary said, pointing to the side and back of Mary’s backyard.

  “You think it’s Paul and them?” I asked, hoping, although how would he know?

  “My guess is probably. Haven’t heard much of anything since we pulled into this town and now a gunshot.”

  “I’m going to check it out.” I had made the decision there and then.

  “Well, let me get some stuff.”

  “I didn’t mean to volunteer you too.”

  “That’s alright. I feel like doing something.”

  “Helping me move all these zombies would have been helpful.”

  “Probably would have,” Gary said as he headed back to the house to go and grab a few supplies.

  I dropped the gloves on top of the last zombie I moved. I swear I could feel microbes crawling around on top of my skin, looking for a particularly large pore to gain access into my system so that they could wreak their havoc. Nothing short of a bath in bleach was going to make me feel any better.

  “You alright?” Gary asked, coming back a few moments later.

  He handed me a bottle of liquid, anti-bacterial hand soap. I contemplated kissing him.

  “I’m with you if you want to go, but are you so sure this is a good idea?” Gary asked.

  I knew what he meant, we were low on ammo, it was nighttime and we weren’t really sure what we were walking towards. “Nothing else going on.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said sarcastically. “Why did BT think staying with you was a good idea?”

  “Beats me. Let’s go and be careful.”

  “Did you really think you needed to add that last part? Were you afraid I might start singing or something?”

  “Sorry, it’s just something I added with the kids all the time, it’s second nature, kind of like saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Gary said huffily. “It was commonly believed in the middle ages that when a person sneezed that they could potentially let a demon into their body and corrupt their soul, that was why people responded with God bless you. It would keep the demons from taking hold inside.”

  “Okay,” I answered confusedly. Gary still looked peeved. “You still believe in the demons part?” I asked him cautiously.

  “It was rooted in some truth!” he said heatedly.

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Can we go check the noise out now?”

  “Just make sure you say God bless you and not just bless you or you are not conveying the true meaning of the message. That shit really infuriates me.”

  “And yet I’m labeled as the crazy one. I demand a recount.”

  “Just go. I told Josh I’d read him a story when we got back.”

  “He’s a good kid,” I said absently.

  “So’s his mom,” Gary said.

  “A good kid?” I asked, turning to face him as we came to the end of Mary’s backyard.

  “I meant good person.”

  “Oh no, you’re falling in love. I’ve seen that look before, we’ve known them less than two days.”

  “The heart cares not for such trivial matters as time.”

  “Gary, her ex-husband could still be alive and even if he is zombie chow, he’s only been gone a few months.”

  “Time is less significant now, Mike. Nobody’s planning their summer vacations anymore, they’re planning out how to get their next meal or where the safest place to sleep is. Nobody gives a shit about the Monday morning commute anymore. It’s all about the basest of all human instincts.”

  “Sex?” I asked.

  “Survival,” he corrected. “Could you please get your thoughts to a loftier perch?”

  “But our survival depends on sex, procreation.”

  “What possessed Mom to have a fifth kid?” Gary asked the heavens. “How can you take something so beautiful as love and debase it?”

  “You’re like the sister I never had,” I told him. “You can cook AND you have feelings.”

  “Feel this,” he said as he smacked me upside the head.

  “Can we maybe get going again?” I asked as I rubbed my head. “You even hit like a girl.”

  We crossed through Mary’s neighbor to the back and then through their yard and onto the street.

  “It was further away,” Gary said as I turned to him.

  “Man, it’s quiet,” I said, turning back around. “I wish we could hear gunshots. At least, we’d know where to go.”

  “Or where to avoid,” Gary added more prudently.

  “Or that,” I said to him, not really agreeing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Paul slowly moved down the roadway, constantly weighing his decision. More than once he had stopped and pondered going back.

  “How dangerous is she really?” Paul asked himself on more than one occasion. “She saved my life. But she shot Brian and somehow got him bitten. She’s a snake that lies in the grass, waiting to strike her unsuspecting victims.” That was usually enough to get him moving.

  Mrs. Deneaux was not worried in the least about her secret getting out. Paul was a dead man stumbling, she thought. She even allowed herself a laugh at her pun. Still, she was not
fond of loose ends. More than once, they had come back in her long and storied life to add some disruption to her plans. She reasoned with herself that she was down to four rounds and why waste one on him when the zombies or something equally as deadly would save her the much-needed bullet. “A ferocious hamster could take him out right now.” She laughed again, and long-buried, stale lung smoke ventured out her nose as she chortled.

  Chapter Nineteen – Mike Journal Entry 11

  “It couldn’t have been much further than this,” Gary said as we came to our fifth street.

  “You know the way back?” I asked, just now thinking about that small fact.

  “I’ve been leaving bread crumbs,” he answered quickly.

  “Okay, Hansel.”

  “Don’t worry, I know the way.”

  “I was more concerned with me. If we have to run, I want to know which way to go because you obviously won’t be able to keep up.”

  “I guess you’d just better not leave me behind this time.”

  We had been walking up the road, my guess would have been in a northerly direction, but that would have been merely a guess. I always feel like whichever direction I’m walking is north. When we saw a bloody body in the road, Gary grabbed my shoulder to keep me from getting closer.

  “That’s probably what I heard,” Gary whispered.

  My heart was sinking, the clothing looked familiar. We were edging closer, keeping a close lookout for the shooter.

  Gary had stopped his forward progress.

  “What’s up?” I asked him softly, looking around. We were both in crouched positions, trying to make ourselves as small a target as possible. But we were in the middle of the road, so we were pretty much fair game if someone were so inclined.

  “I think that’s Brian,” Gary said trying to suppress some gagging.

  “I think you’re right. Stay here and cover my back.”

  Gary nodded, his mouth closed tightly.

  I moved closer, trying to get into as small a ball of humanity as possible. I could see the bullet’s entry into the base of the skull. I dreaded what I had to do next. I mean the body had, I think, the same clothes on as Brian, but I wasn’t completely sure. It’s just not something I pay all that much attention to. I placed my boot under his left hip and kept my rifle aimed at his head. I then turned the body over. The left side of Brian’s face was missing, the only way I knew it was Brian was because the right side was in remarkably good shape.