The Dead Life

[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #25 – Aftermath

Day 25

The shattered glass door funneled into a darkened space, blocked off by a hastily assembled barrier of office desks, cabinets, chairs, and whatever else had seemed practical to jam into a pile. There was even a rocking horse, which ultimately would have done nothing to stop a more intelligent invader, but given the lack of sense the dead seemed to show, it was just another defense in the tangle. The rocking horse, upright, rocked as the ghoul on the opposite side of the doorway repeatedly bumped into the waist-high barrier, flailing desiccated arms toward Dani. Periodically, it would slump, not quite falling onto a desk in the barricade but bending over it, scratching at the surface with broken fingertips and slapping at the horse, which would rock silently. The ghoul would pant, moan, and gargle at Dani. It’s dead eyes staring nowhere specifically.

The eyes were unsettling. They were cloudy, and it didn’t seem like these things could actually see through them; the lens was scuffed by dirt, grime, and who knows what else came with the seeming inability to blink. As it flailed, bumped, and tore at the surface of the desk, which was covered in streaks of rancid blood, it did not blink once. The perpetual stare almost seemingly peering at, inside, and past her. There was rapid movement of the eyes themselves, but they were locked at a point she could not comprehend, as though the corpse’s eyes were always fixated on something unknown. The fact that she was in the path was just a result of the body of the dead woman being aimed at her. The motions did not seem personal or of the ghoul itself – it was being driven by some sense or alien force, hijacked by some apocalyptic agent and puppeted in the most grotesque way imaginable.

Dani stared at the ghoul for a few moments before shifting her attention to the lot behind her, noticing the group of ghouls approaching from behind, rocking and swaying as they shuffled to her. She wondered if any governmental remnants or the CDC had any idea what the hell these things actually were – maybe if there was a solution in the works to reclaim the area. All she and the others had was a hope and Sandy’s insistence that her brother would rally a rescue mission and sweep into Emmet, guns blazing and tanks rolling down the central highway. Ooh-fucking-rah.

It’d been weeks since a substantive broadcast from The White House or whatever was there, and most radio now was either emergency broadcasts on loop, mysterious messages from some sources she could not discern, or the obscene and conspiratorial rantings of sovereign citizens. She had borrowed Bob’s ham radio one night a week back to reach out to someone, anyone, but the immediate response was so horrid she never reached out again. At least the ghouls didn’t threaten to rape her or promise to make her a brood wife.

The thought made her shudder, and she was very much aware again of the rifle slung over her shoulder. She would need to be a much better shot in this world. For now, it was just reassurance – or more of a panic button. She felt the reassuring weight of the fireplace poker and stared down the ghoul. It continued the pattern of swiping and nearly falling onto the surface of the desk. Dani took a step toward, still out of reach of the ghoul’s grasping, nubby fingertips. It appeared agitated further. The flurry of outstretched arms finally sent the ghoul tumbling over and slamming down onto the desk, flailing. Dani took the moment to slam the hooked end of her poker into the back of the ghoul’s skull. The ghoul continued to flail, but not in response to Dani’s attack. She grunted as she slid the writhing corpse across the desk, through the doorway, onto the concrete and glass, where it crumpled into a face-down heap. Her foot resting on the undead’s shoulder, Dani ripped the hook from the back of the skull, which again the ghoul did not seem to respond to. Disgusted, she jammed the tip of the poker back into the hole with force until the resistance of the concrete stopped her; for good measure, she began to stir the poker tip inside the skull, and soon the writhing stopped. She drew the poker back with a little resistance on exit and flicked all the brain matter she could from it.

Though now, taking in her current circumstances, Dani was beginning to realize, to a degree, the folly of her impromptu mission. She was opting to walk into a darkened hellmouth, and she wondered what use the walkies were for if she and everyone kept leaving them behind. Next time, she thought, there has gotta be a next time to bring the goddamn walkie.

She climbed over the desk, across the bloody streaks on the surface, and set off into the darkened building. The inside was quiet aside from the whistle of wind coming from the broken door and faint sounds within. The kid had certainly made a choice running from her back into this building, but she was not about to give up on the chance to save his life. As she saw it, he was small and had proved his tenacity so far; as frustrating as it was to try to reason with him given this shit and chaos, she had to press on. But she could not bear to see the child die, or become one of the living dead. 

Dani moved slowly down the short hallway, careful of where she stepped. She glanced back and forth, her eyes adjusting in the dark, scanning ahead between what appeared to be a more open room ahead and the tiled floor, which had been strewn with the detritus of holdouts and the leftovers of survival. Just how many people had been holed up in here, and for how long? She knew of four based on what Edgar had observed, and only one of them was now alive – presumably.

Her head spun with questions about what had happened here in the weeks since the outbreak, though Dani didn’t quite know when it actually started. Had it been New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day? The days after? It didn’t take long for things to really fall apart when they finally, inescapably fell apart. It seemed maybe six days in total, give or take a day or two. How soon did people find themselves hiding in this district office? How many, when the time came, chanced an escape and may have inadvertently gotten others killed? There were so many layers to all of this, and the most frustrating part was never really knowing. Everyone who might have had an answer was probably dead or in a bunker beneath a mountain.

Dani crept toward an open door to her left, which was slightly ajar. She clung to the wall, paused, and listened intently for motion within. Hearing nothing, she whipped her head past the frame, peering into the space that was partially obscured by the door. Inside was an office, ransacked but still filled with sweet, homey decor, reflecting optimism and assertive effort, like that of an H.R. lady. A poster depicting a climber on a rock face read “Keep on Climbing!” and Dani chuckled at it. She’d been to the college counselor once or twice before dropping out and had seen a similar poster – maybe even the same one. It was just vague enough to be considered empowering, technically, but practically useless in any specific context. Cloying bullshit made all the more darkly ironic given the circumstances.

She nudged the door open wider, carefully, wincing at the sustained, slow creak. The rest of the room was a mess; anything seemingly valuable was probably gone. No silent ghoul was lurking within, thankfully, but she wasn’t prepared for a bloody dog bed next to the desk. There were no signs of remains beyond reddish-brown staining on the teal pillow. She winced and closed the door, silently damning the creaking but relieved to shut the image away. Dani noted the placard attached to the door as she pulled it shut – Melissa Gutierrez, Human Resources – and a taped photo of a cocker spaniel, and a nametag stuck to it that read “Homer.”

God-fucking-damn it. 

Dani shook her head. She leaned back against the wall next to the room and stared nowhere in particular, just away from the door. Inevitably, she saw the door directly opposite the H.R. office and noticed the sign – Gary Watts, Requisitions and Warehousing – and several bloody streaks on the door. Dani stepped toward it and, finding a spot not covered in blood, pressed her ear to the door, listening in. Hearing nothing, she tapped at it with the tip of the poker, and after a moment, there was moaning and shuffling, unmistakably that of the living dead. She glanced back toward the way she had come as the group of ghouls from outside collided with the rudimentary barricade, unable to navigate over it. She stepped back from the requisitions door and took one last look at the H.R. door behind her.

Fuck this. Dani pushed deeper into the building, her eyes adjusting to the dim lighting; she was searching for whatever signs she could of the kid as she approached the larger room. She didn’t quite know a name for it – maybe it was an atrium?

The room appeared to be the heart of the building, where the main entrance had been reinforced with a similar pile of furniture to the rear entrance she used. She also noticed bike chains in the darkened room; though the front was mostly glass, it had become grimy and discolored, and the mid-morning sun was not quite at an angle to shine much direct light within. All she had was a yellowish ambience, which rendered everything far more sickly and aged than it technically was. One desk against the glass had piles of papers that had spilled onto the floor in front of it, and dozens of papers pasted to the windows – there had been a plan to cover sightlines, and Dani was not sure if that was a good idea or a bad one.

Dani still had no idea if the ghouls actually saw anything, or what drove them. Instead, staring at the papers, she wondered if the inability to see the ghouls was the actual point. Even back at the storage yard, the group, as exposed to the elements as they were, had reduced sightlines with the exception of gaps they could use. It made sense, in a lot of ways, to keep the terror of the outside world out of sight. The papers on the glass were beginning to make more sense.

The atrium itself wasn’t tremendous. It mostly combined what appeared to be a line to some sort of teller-style window, three hallways, and some seating, which had been shoved toward the glass in the front entrance. The space was mostly devoid of anything comforting, nor did it look like a space where anyone would have spent much time. The amount of exposure from the glass probably had a lot to do with that. 

As she approached the pile against the entrance, she glanced out to see her former apartment complex across the street. She hadn’t noticed it right away, but a ghoul swept into view, wandering on the walkup to the entrance of the district office. Dani flinched whenever it looked in her direction, though it was clear it did not seem to perceive her. The apartment complex across the street stood passively with no sign of motion. She’d considered returning, once or twice, to see what supplies could be rounded up. But there was always a hesitation that always emerged. It wasn’t about the ghouls within – Stephen and Julie’s corpses flashed for an instant in Dani’s mind. She turned from the window and stepped back toward the center of the room.

She peeked in the teller window and saw what seemed to be a former supply hub. Wrappers, cans, and boxes were strewn across the floor or on whatever desk space was available in the small office. The computer – the novelty of computers made Dani feel nostalgic for a moment – sat, covered by a layer of fine dust except for a single smiley face sticker stuck to the powerless screen of the monitor.

It came down to two choices – left or right. She hadn’t been shot at so far by the kid, which was either a good sign or a horrible one. She hoped, desperately, that he was scared and holed up in some office, quietly waiting her out. She could reason with him; she knew it. She could help him get back. He could apologize to Edgar, and they could make a go of it. She just had to figure out how to get the kid to stand down so they could escape together. At the end of the hall from which she had emerged, she saw ghoulish silhouettes framed against daylight, and though their forms were darkened and obscured. She saw they were still trapped by the desks of the makeshift barricade. How these things had managed to decimate so many already confused and frightened her, and she wondered what all this said about humans like her. She did her best to tune the ghouls out, as she listened to ambient noise in the largely quiet building. There was the sound if motion to her left. In lieu of any other evidence, she chose to head that direction.

Peering down the darkened hallway, she could make out four doors on either side, a fire escape door at the very end of the hallway, and a right turn. She tried to make sense of what she saw of this layout with what she observed of the outside of the district office, but gave up, realizing she hadn’t observed much over the years living across from it, or the less-than-an-hour so far rescuing Ed and trying to reach out to the trigger-happy child.

Of the four hallway doors she saw, two of them were open: one to the left, one to the right. She was no Daredevil, with super hearing, but she felt confident there was shuffling from one of the rooms to the left. 

Christ, I’d kill for those billy clubs and ninja training.

She crept down the hall, feeling exposed, taking in everything in front, below, and behind her, wary of any potential movement. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark to the point where she could navigate with relative confidence, but not with enough detail that she could entirely avoid caution, especially across garbage-covered tile. She’d just barely brushed a grocery bag with the tip of her foot and nearly shit herself at the crinkling. The first pair of doors, opposite one another, were now just a couple of feet away. The door to her right was closer, so she shifted gradually toward the wall to the left, tiptoing over soda cans. As she approached, she noticed that this room did not have a solid wall, but rather a large pane of glass from floor to ceiling – maybe like a conference room, but it was hard to tell at this angle. The opposite room looked to be an office, but also a bit smaller, with a similar floor-to-ceiling window. About a foot from the doorway, she paused, holding her breath, and listened.

There was a shuffling of feet on the carpet and the crushing and rattling of things on the floor. The loudest, though, was the telling moans and gargles of the undead. They had been seemingly alerted to something, and Dani wondered if it had been something she had done before realizing more than likely it was the kid running by. Whatever was happening in the room was small; she’d seen these things wander over the past couple of weeks, until something grabbed their attention, they were content – though that word didn’t seem to apply, really – to wander in small, set spaces, waiting for some sort of signal to move.

Dani glanced at the floor, holding her breath as she nudged a can away from the doorway so she could sidle a bit more toward the opening. Content that she had alerted nothing within, she scooted closer so she could crane her head around and look inside. The vision of a ghoul biting at her face and knocking her to the floor worked to caution her from peeking, but she had to press on.

After a deep breath and a silent count to three, she turned her head past the door frame and looked inside. Her view had been immediately obscured by a shambling corpse within a foot of the room, its back to her. She covered her mouth with her forearm to keep from gasping in surprise and did her best to look past the ghoul, realizing she could see at least three others a few feet further. Dani retreated around the doorway and shoved the sleeve of her hoodie even deeper into her face, muffling her panicked breathing as best she could. She listened intently for any change to the ghouls’ movement, but she’d apparently gone unnoticed. There would be no guarantee of that if she tried to cross. There was one thing to do, and if she fucked up, things would be even worse for her and the kid.

With a sharp breath, she stepped into the doorway and kicked the ghoul in the small of the back, sending it stumbling forward just as the other ghouls in the room, seven by her quick count, shrieked and shuddered upon noticing her. She looked to the door and was surprised by what seemed to be a belt tied to the handle. She grabbed the handle at the belt knot and pulled the door shut as she stumbled backward out of the room, sealing it with a click. She continued stumbling backward until she fell against the opposite door, rattling the frame and the glass window next to it. She scrambled to her feet in a panic and then stopped to take a deep breath between the two rooms. The ghouls in the newly closed room pressed themselves against the glass, clearly aware of her. She could swear she heard the strain of the glass under their weight and clumsy slaps. Taking in the whole space, now, the room was a conference room, as she thought, but the number of ghouls did not line up with her admittedly hurried count a second ago. 

She looked into the room behind her, and seeing nothing, was content to move her back to it to take in more of the chamber of horrors she had just closed off. When she had counted, she had just seen bodies and assumed they were the living dead, but now it was clear there were only four of them, with three other corpses in the room – eerily still. Why they had not been turned or consumed was a mystery, but as Dani took in the state of the room, past the writhing clamor of the ghouls against the glass, she saw the room for what it had been: a triage space. It was hard to make out explicit detail between ghouls sliding along the glass, following her motion, but she did see three bodies on the large central table, each covered slightly, with no sign of blood or tampering by the ghouls. It was almost as though the bodies served no interest to them. Nothing made sense anymore, but this seemed to irritate her in particular. Bob had mentioned he’d taken time to observe them, but if they really wanted to understand what they were up against, they’d need to study them. Jimmy agreed with him. But Dani always said that she would just rather kill them off. But it looked like Bob and Jimmy had a point. Maybe there was something up with the bodies that they seemingly hadn’t touched? As Bob had said, “know your enemy.”

As Dani scanned the room for whatever clues were left in such a state, she picked up on something she had not noticed earlier – something large beneath the conference table. She squatted slightly to get a better view of what it was, and she jumped when she saw a ghoul seemingly staring directly at her from under the table. But she could only catch glances because of the tangle of bodies in front of her. She wondered if there was a way to get a better view, and on a whim, she tapped at the door to the side. Sure enough, the four standing ghouls clustered toward the door as Dani held still. She managed to divert them. She slowly crouched down, careful of any sudden moment, eager to get a clearer view beneath the table. As she did so, she studied the ghoul beneath, which wasn’t so much a single ghoul, but a tangle of three or four. Just how many bodies did they shove into this room, she wondered.

It would be hard for her to explain what exactly she was seeing back at camp. There was a central ghoul below the table that seemed to be aware of her presence, staring at her, accusingly. She appeared to be a small woman, and due to decomposition, Dani could not guess at her age – she could have been a teenager, Dani guessed, but there was no way of ever knowing. Besides the disturbing awareness present in her gaze, however, was the fact that three ghouls below the table had her in a sort of embrace. Dani had to count the arms to be sure. The other ghouls seemed to press their bodies into the girl, wrapping her in their spindly arms, shielding her, shying her away from some harm Dani wasn’t sure they could comprehend. It reminded her of sparing someone from the cold, like in a survival movie.

The whole time Dani observed, the ghoulish girl did not take her eyes off her. Periodically, the jaw would shift, and it seemed like the ghoul would murmur in silence. It was the most uncomfortable thing Dani had ever experienced, and she found herself overwhelmed, wretching against the glass. After a few agonizing moments, she wiped the vomit from her mouth on a sleeve – the ghoul hadn’t stopped staring once.

A sudden burst of noise back from where she had entered – she thought – caught her off guard, and she turned to focus on the sound of the clatter and a series of hollow moans. Perhaps one of the ghouls had knocked something loose from the barricade, or even spilled over a desk onto the floor.

She didn’t want to look back in the conference room and the staring ghoul, but some force – a morbid curiosity, perhaps – compelled her to do so. As she shifted her eyes back to beneath the desk, she was alarmed to see the ghoul had retreated further back, and the embrace of the others tightened and obscured her form, except for her gaunt, blank face – her eyes still staring intently at Dani.

Dani scrambled to her feet, terrified, and made her way down the hall past the window, pressing her shoulder against the wall. She felt the world around her spinning violently.

“What the fuck was that?” She gasped. “Jesus. What?”

As she waited to see if the world would stop spinning, like the New Year’s quake weeks ago, she tried to pick a point in the office window across from her, first at a mobile whiteboard with frantic notes, and then began staring at something on a desk. As her senses began to return, she noticed various tools – pliers, scalpels, and other things; she thought of the contents of a doctor’s bag. And then she saw a human head in a pan, jaw moving slightly, dead eyes staring toward nothing.

Dani couldn’t help but yelp.

Her eyes darted, wary of any movement or reaction to her loss of control. There was a seeming response further to her left, down the hall – a moan, but not much beyond. To her right, where the clatter had been, there was the sound of a cluster of hollow exhalations. As she slowed her breathing as best she could, hoping to calm herself, she noticed the door to the office with the severed head. On it as well was a belt tied to the handle, and across the floor, something she’d overlooked with everything going on, were a few other belts. They had been tied from handle to handle as an added measure to keep the doors shut. It seemed that the idea was that some lucky ghoul would not be able to open the door by accident. Dani considered the girl within. She wondered if this group had observed something more alarming.

But the line had been severed. Dani wasn’t sure what it all meant, but a dark thought crossed her mind. Maybe the belt had only recently been severed by the kid, a trap for his pursuer, a trap for her. She wasn’t going to let that theory stop her. She’d club the kid upside the head and drag him back if she had to. There were the living and dead, and from what she had witnessed, precious few of the living.

More clattering from where she had been drove her to her feet. Dani stabilized herself against the drywall and, taking a moment to steel herself, pressed forward, wary of any sound from the kid. Wary of a gunshot. Ahead were two doors on either side, along with the chained-up fire exit. One door had been shut, but the other was open, which led to a breakroom and kitchenette. She didn’t bother with the shut door and kept low as she crossed the frame of the open room; on the counter near a microwave was a carcass – bone and gristle stripped of usable flesh. Dani did not want to dwell on the sight. She took a step back, out of the room, back into the hall. She’d seen enough, including the other doorway; the space would come into view as she rounded the corner of the hallway.

The sound of hushed breathing hit her ears as she approached the corner. Someone was winded and doing their best to keep their breathing muffled. But neither her nor the child had any illusions of successful stealth at this point, as she saw it. Her back to the wall, just at the corner, she held back from peeking around. The boy was near.

Dani tried to keep her voice low, calm, and sweet. “I’m not going-”

There was a small yelp, followed by a wild shot that echoed through the district office and tunneled into the drywall near the fire escape. Moans echoed within the building from dark, unexplored spaces.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Please, we have a safe place, right across the street. I can take you there. Nobody is mad about you shooting our friend. It was a mistake. What’s your name?”

She realized how hurried that had come out as she finished speaking – her attempt at being a soothing presence had given way to panic in the moment. She hoped desperately as she waited in silence, wound tight against the wall.

Dani waited patiently, despite the sound of motion around the corner and increasing sounds from near the atrium.

“They’re gone,” the kid responded, his voice cracked and parched. She wondered when he had last had water.

“I know, Edgar, the big guy, he saw them hurt each other. He tried to stop it. Maybe you saw that and thought he hurt them. He’s a good man. I swear. Please. What is your name?”

Another pause. More noises in the distance. Sniffling and restraining tears.

“Tyler.”

“Tyler, good. I’m Danielle, but my friends call me Dani. If I come around the corner, are you going to hurt me?”

“No.”

“I’m trusting you, Tyler. I want us both to get out of her together. Do you want some food? We can get you food. We’re right across the street. We need to go soon, I think those things are getting in.”

“There’s a door out. I won’t shoot,” he added. There was a quaver in his voice, an uncertainty that Dani could not read.

“Tyler, I am going to come around the corner, now, okay? I am going to trust you, and I hope you can trust me.”

“O-okay.”

Moment of truth, Dani thought. She rounded the corner and stopped, squatting slightly, setting the poker down on the tile floor.

Tyler was young, maybe ten. He was thin – half-starved – based on the fit of the clothes that hung off him. He wore a black shirt with cartoon monsters from a Nickelodeon cartoon, and his jeans were bunched up around his Nikes. He looked worn, and his clothes looked like they had been on him for weeks, maybe since this started. His arms hung slack, and in his right hand was the pistol he’d clipped Edgar with.

On his left forearm was a bloody gash, and in that moment, Dani’s heart sank.

There was something in the bites. She learned that with Stephen and Julie, hadn’t she? Everyone back at camp had a story about bites. Whatever this plague, disease, or virus actually was had been connected to the bites. Maybe it was a sickness or an infection. Maybe fluids. But there were bites or scratches. Always.

“Sweetie, what happened to your arm, there?”

Tyler looked down, seemingly surprised at what he saw. “I think when I was trying to close the trailer outside, one of the people bit me, but I don’t feel it.”

Dani kept staring at the wound, and Tyler stood there, awkward and frightened. She was desperate enough to ignore it. They weren’t sure it was the bites – not really. But everyone else at camp…

Dani glanced at the poker on the floor. Fuck. The grief took her as she looked at the small, half-starved face of the boy named Tyler. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he shook – he hadn’t noticed, but Dani did. A fever would eventually take him.

She calmly, or as calmly as she could make it sound, asked a question. “Is that the exit behind you?”

Tyler glanced back and nodded. He looked back at Dani, and a faint smile crossed his lips. “One way. Mom and Dad… we didn’t need to do anything. No handle outside, and those sick people can’t get it. Most of them.”

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Dani swallowed. She crouched down to pick up the fireplace poker. It felt heavier than it had in a long time. She turned her head as she heard noises from behind her. She saw the first of the ghouls step into the large room at the end of the hall. There would be no going back.

Tyler was at the door, ready to push it outward. Dani stepped forward, silently, and Tyler’s expression soured upon seeing the poker in her hand. Dani felt herself fidgeting with it. He turned back to the door, ready to go.

“Tyler. I’m sorry.”

Dani took two huge lurching steps toward him, poker raised for an overhead swing. He turned back in time to see her approach, screamed, and threw his weight against the door, swinging it open and stumbling into the late morning sunlight. He drew the gun as he stumbled back and fired a shot, just hitting the door as it began to swing shut, missing Dani by inches, and she pushed her way through, horrified and frenzied and damned.

Tyler scrambled backward, sobbing, his gun hand shaking. “Stop! Leave me alone!”

As Dani moved to clear the distance between them, a sudden motion from her left caught her off guard, and she watched Tyler’s head cave in – a bloody implosion where his face had once been. Dani froze at the sudden violence. Her ears rang, and the world began to spin again. Her poker slipped from her grasp as she stumbled backward. She looked up at the figure who had swept in with such violence.

Alicia stood, panting, wide-eyed. She held a bloody baseball bat outward and away, shaking, staring down at Tyler’s body. Alicia glanced at Dani, and Dani said nothing, turning her gaze back to Tyler.

Tyler took in a sharp, gagging breath. Soon after, he began to gargle and choke on blood and teeth.

“He had a gun.” Alicia’s voice was distant.

The ringing in Dani’s ears continued as she grabbed the bat from Alicia and began to smash it at Tyler’s broken head.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #24 – Lost Child

Day 25

As Dani passed through the open gate, past the disabled bus, she was confronted with far more ghouls than had been there just minutes ago. She couldn’t be sure there wasn’t another entrance on the distant end of the district campus. The kid’s shots had drawn roving dead toward his presumed position, and Dani began to approach, fireplace poker at the ready.

From what she could tell, the ghouls had begun clustering around the far end of the lot opposite from her, toward a small pair of trailer offices. She couldn’t make out the kid’s position in the area. She had kept herself to a sort of hunched crouch, aiming to make herself less noticeable without sacrificing mobility. She did her best to keep completely silent so as not to alert any of the undead ahead of her. The idea, as far as she had considered any sort of plan at this point, was to get a sense of where exactly the child was. From there, she would alert the ghouls to her position and give him a window to run across the street, where she would meet him afterward. But that all depended on where the child even was, and what his condition was. It wasn’t much of a plan, she would be the first to admit, but she was running on adrenaline and chance.

Dani began to close the gap between her and the stragglers of the pack. By her count, there were twelve of them between herself and the trailers. About eight were immediately surrounding the rightmost trailer from her perspective, clawing and slapping at the siding with discolored, wet hands and broken fingertips. That left four of them that were slowly lumbering toward the rest of the group. They were being drawn, but it wasn’t clear how it all worked.

But what it told her is that the kid was likely in that trailer. That meant he could be safe, but he just as easily might have accidentally let one in, and he was now dead, or even undead. It was a box of suck she was hesitant to open, but if there was a chance she could help him, she had to. These past couple of weeks of fear and sadness, of not being able to do enough for Julie, her neighbor. She had heard the struggle next door and did not intervene. She sat in fear in her apartment as Julie and her boyfriend suffered, died, and returned as inhuman things.

And Dani sat there. Alone. Afraid. Was it possible she could have helped? She didn’t know. She never would, not really. But fuck, she could have tried. 

She could have tried.

Dani kept her even pace and approached the back of the closest ghoul. It had not noticed her, still slowly stumbling toward the trailer. She looked the ghoul over and noticed it had been hobbled. The foot had bent in completely sideways at the ankle, and each step ground down the ankle more and more.  As the ankle raised from the ground, blood and bits of flesh would sluice off in ribbons, attached and tearing off from the asphalt. The foot was less a foot now and more a foot-like hunk of flesh, flopping uselessly every time the ankle hit the asphalt.

She rolled the fireplace poker in her hand, swung her arm outward, and swung in, aiming the hooked end right above the top of the torn ear of the ghoul with the ground-down ankle. The poker connected with an audible crunch as the ghoul lifted off the ground, collapsing onto its side with a thump on the asphalt. The impact point, covered in closely cropped brown hair, began to leak brownish blood, and small chips of bone carried by the pooling of blood slipped through thin, broken skin.

The ghoul was thrashing violently. Was it in pain? Was it just some rudimentary nervous system response?

It didn’t matter, really. The ghoul began to moan, but Dani thwacked it twice more in the same spot, leaving a sizable crater in the side of the skull. After the first hit, the ghoul had stopped thrashing. But the second hit made the body shudder slightly, and she thought for a second that maybe it wasn’t quite gone as it twitched.

The closest ghoul had apparently heard nothing and continued moving forward. It piled into the crowd, reaching and grasping between the tangle of bodies, trying to find some kind of hold on the trailer.

The sound was maddening. The strange, airy moans punctuated by pounding and scratching of the siding – relentless with no pattern. An hour of hearing that from inside the trailer would drive anyone crazy. She had to get him out.

Dani crouched and tried to listen for another sound. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear from the kid. IF he was smart, he was quiet. Maybe she wanted to hear him scream or cry, just as a sign he was still kicking. Something that justified what she was about to do. But there was nothing but the chaotic cacophony of the risen dead against the box that held something they wanted.

Dani sighed as she rose from her crouch. She glanced behind her and took several paces back. One thing she had learned about herself in the days since she had settled in at the storage yard was that she was dogshit with guns. Bob had told her as much. But she didn’t have to be good here, just distracting.

She slipped the poker into the pseudo-holster she’d made on her belt. It was a temporary solution and wasn’t designed for anything beyond brute-force functionality. It was just meant to give her a free hand without setting the poker down. As far as she was concerned, it would be best to have a hand on it at all times. The solution was simple: a slit in the belt wide enough for the hooked end of the poker to slip through, but not open enough for the handle to slip through easily.

She unshouldered Bob’s rifle and aimed. Her hands were shaking in her agitation and hurry, and she had to pause. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, feeling more control flow into her grasp. She did her best to line up a shot, and much to her surprise, when she pulled the trigger, she had dropped one of the ghouls instantly, watching a puff of gross spray emerge from the back of the head out of a flap of flesh and bone. The ghoul collapsed so fast it took her a moment to take in the luck here. Of course, Bob didn’t see that one.

But the noise, bright and sharp against the dull moans, hoarse groans, scratches, and slaps, did what it was meant to do, and now the ghouls had begun to turn toward Dani – their attention no longer on the potential prize within the trailer.

Dani took a breath and looked down the sights. She had lined up a shot and fired just as the ghoul had tripped over the recently fallen companion. The ghoul hit the ground hard, and the bullet hit the trailer.

“Shit! Sorry!”

She paused and took a breath. She lined up another shot as the ghoul on the ground struggled to find some footing. It had tripped in her direction, and its crown was mercifully pointed right at her. She fired – another puff of gore, and then a collapse.

The remaining ghouls were well aware of her presence and seemed to pick up their pace, reaching toward her. Their gaits were still stiff and mostly lumbering, but there was a frenzy to it. It was an urgency she had only seen in apparent excitement, a burst of energy as their target was in reach. Nine rotting killers were converging on her, but that’s what she wanted, as fucked as that notion was. They were clearing away from the trailer.

“Kid, if you’re in there, I’m clearing a path! Run!”

She did her best to listen for something from inside the trailer over the gargles and moans of the approaching undead, but it was too much to filter through. She took another couple of steps back and lined up a shot on one of the two closest to her position. This ghoul had once been a young man, maybe a teenager. His left arm was broken, and she wasn’t sure if it was something he’d had before he turned or not. It was impossible not to think of what they once were. As much as she wanted to see them as monsters, she kept finding herself sucked into the speculation of it all. 

She pulled the trigger.

Whoever they once were was gone, and their shadow now, too. It was the only thing she and the others could do for them now.

As the ghoul fell forward onto the asphalt, another chorus of wheezing gasps erupted from the companions. For the slightest second, Dani wondered if they were shocked or mourning their fallen companion. She shook her head, shoving that thought as far back as she could, not willing to entertain the notion. It was just the frenzy.

As she began to aim again, the trailer door swung open and slammed into the railing of the access ramp with a clang. The kid emerged, a boy. He couldn’t have been older than twelve. She locked eyes with him – it was hard not to – they were so wide and white, contrasting with dirty and bloodied skin. The kid was a mess, and she had no idea what his condition was besides alive, and for now, that was all that mattered. She did her best to smile at him, an attempt to put him at ease, but a pair of the ghouls had already begun to turn toward his position, alerted to the sound of the door. Breathless shrieks erupted, and she watched their bodies shudder as they caught on to the kid’s presence. The kid scanned the ghouls nervously, his gaze rapidly shifting between them and the stranger with a gun.

“Run to the storage place across the street, you’ll be safe! We’re safe!”

The boy said nothing as he bolted. He swung down beneath the railing and dodged the two ghouls. He began to run from them as fast as he could despite obvious exhaustion. Dani began to follow, but his path seemed strange, as though he was running from her.

“Head right, out that entrance! Near that bus!”

“Leave me alone! Go away!”

Dani skid-stopped as she saw the kid run into the trashed entrance of the district building. She watched him climb over stacked desks and shelves, into the darkness of the building.

“Shit.” She groaned.

The kid was frightened of her. It was understandable why; companions gone, ghouls everywhere, and a pursuing stranger who had been coming directly for him. From what Edgar had said, the kid seemed to think Edgar had killed the others. How could he not think she was here to finish the job?

Dani glanced behind her, back toward the trailers. The nearest of the remaining ghouls was a good thirty feet away from her position, but that, she figured, was close enough for them to see her enter the building. They might struggle with the pile of office furniture in the doorway, but that was in no way an impenetrable barrier. The darkened entrance made her nervous. She’d be entering a dark place, with no sense of the layout, pursuing ghouls, and a scared kid with a gun. It was hard not to spiral out, thinking of all the bad things that could happen. But he was just a kid, and he needed the help.

Dani’s cuts on the top of her thigh began to throb, and she rubbed at them with the butt of Bob’s rifle. She thought back to Julie and her boyfriend in the apartment next door. Dani could have reached out earlier or been proactive. She knew that.

It was like a damn breaking. Steven. His name was Steven. Why had she forgotten? She knew. She knew the whole time. Steven and Julie. She’d known him well enough to fuck him once, when Julie was at work. She wasn’t sure who had initiated it, nor did it matter. It had happened once. Nothing about that mattered now. All she knew now was she’d pushed his name away in guilt and shame. She’d displaced the tangle of that life and cut and tied around it, like an old net with some shitty repairs just to wring out a little more life from something that didn’t need to eb around anymore. But the damage was still there. 

Steven had volunteered to check the neighboring apartments for some food for the three of them. Dani could have gone too. But it was too awkward, knowing what she had done with Steven. And poor, cute Julie, not knowing what had happened. So he went by himself, climbing down from the demolished stairs. And she and Julie pretended to be good neighbors in the apocalypse, making idle chatter as Dani kept a secret from before the world ended. And then Steven came back, a bite on his arm, and they all thought it was so strange that these sick people were biting one another. It had been nearly two weeks of lockdown. They laughed it off and split their share of the food he’d brought back. She could have helped him gather it, even if she’d fucked him once, and it would have been awkward to be around him.

Dani hadn’t mentioned the broadcast to them the next day – they’d been so limited and so low quality, most had been nothing of note. She was sure it was some doomsday jockey ranting into his private radio. But the man, whomever he was, warned about the bites. The broadcast was less than a minute, but it was so important. She listened to it and then said nothing. The pain of being around them with what she did before, it didn’t matter, but it also did, then, and Dani said nothing, staying in her apartment. She locked herself away as she heard panic and fighting through the dryway behind her couch, listening to Julie’s updates on Steven.

“He’s not looking good. His breathing is laboured. I’m scared. Dani, help.” All the markers of the infection were behind the drywall. And yet the shame was too much. Dani sat by herself, knowing deep down what she was hearing and what it meant. And in time, Steven turned. Then Julie turned. And Dani was alone.

One of her cuts had opened again, and she felt warm and sticky blood seep from the broken skin. She glanced down, seeing the small red blotches spreading on her blue jeans.

The ghouls behind her were clearing the distance. Ahead was the entrance to that district office. Inside was the scared kid who shot big Edgar. 

The rifle’s weight was reassuring, and for a moment, she entertained the thought of turning the gun around on herself. The world was hard enough before it fell apart. She considered checking out back then – what kept her going now? She waited for an answer to emerge. Some sign that there was a reason to keep at any of this. All she received was a stench on the wind, of death and smoke, and the caws of crows.

The wind also carried the coolness of the January air, and she felt a chill. Maybe it was warmer inside the district office?

She sighed, shouldered the rifle, and drew the fireplace poker from the slit in her belt. She marched to the entrance and began to climb into the dark.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #23 – We Care for Our Own

Day 25

Bob had scarcely picked up his rifle, which he had leaning by the side of the RV door, when he noticed that Dani had already cleared the parked car and was in the outer lot, running toward the commotion.

“Dani! Fuck, wait for me!”

Bob was still a pretty spry man, given he was mid-60s, but he felt the years catching up the moment he had begun to climb over the hood and past the open gate; he could not scramble or crawl, and instead belly-dragged himself slowly across the cadillac, losing momentum in the pause to pivot so he could throw his legs over the other side of the car, escaping the makeshift barricade. Dani, in her youthful fucking exhuberance, pressed on, leaving him behind. Goddamn kid.

By the time Bob’s sneakers hit the asphalt again, a pair of ghouls had already emerged from around the corner of the front office building and had taken notice. The closest one moaned out of a slackened jaw; the jaw hung limply, not due to death, but rather it was only tethered in position by a few strings of cheek muscle holding it aloft along the right side of the ghoul’s face. It couldn’t be helped, as Bob watched the ghoul emerge and approach, he watched the jaw dangle like a cat’s toy on a string – possibly at any second, tearing completely, leaving a limp mandible swaying. The ghoul, who was nude from the waist down, no longer appeared to have genitals that Bob could identify. He shuddered at the sight of the dark brown gash of rotting meat that had dripped dark fluid that ran down thin, bare legs.

The other ghoul, by comparison, appeared untouched beyond some superficial rot. That was until its outstretched grasp revealed a hand torn down the center, down to the wrist, between the middle and ring fingers. It was like the poor woman’s hand had been the Thanksgiving wishbone, greedily tugged at by overzealous children. Two loose fingers and a chunk of the rest of the hand hung off the palm loosely, almost unmoving beyond the bounce of motion. The other three fingers wiggled wildly at Bob’s presence.

Dani was out of sight completely by now. Bob’s lungs were itching. There wasn’t a fire in them yet.

Bob drew his rifle into position, something instinctual, a muscle memory still very much sharpened from three decades of living with wholesale slaughter. He never believed in the cause, but he did his duty. Everything expected of him. Everything. 

His reward was shitty lungs and a skull full of bad thoughts. From Viet Cong to the living dead; more faces for haunting the quiet hours.

But he tried not to dwell on them.

The first shot was perfect; the round drilled into the temple of the closest ghoul as it wobbled-walked on unsteady feet, swaying in wide arcs. The ghoul had dropped instantly, and its companion, the woman with the split hand, had not acknowledged its fall, still pushing forward. The ring and pinky fingers, along with their respective fleshy metacarpals, continued to bounce passively.

He couldn’t stand to see the things. He drew his rifle again, just as the ghoul approached the remains of its companion. Not looking, she took a wrong step and collapsed right onto the parking space in front of the body. Bob watched silently as the ghoul fell on an outstretched arm and watched it break. The arm did not reduce the impact, as the ghoul smashed face-first into oil-stained asphalt – a crunch and pooling of blood marking the violence.

And yet, the ghoul stirred. Bob didn’t know if these things could be disoriented, but it had trouble getting up. It may have been more from the broken arm not bearing weight, but he wondered if the dead could also be rattled like he could after a fall.

But, he supposed, it didn’t really matter. He began approaching the commotion, hip-firing into the ghoul’s skull, and making his way to where Dani had run off to. He scratched at the center of his chest – the itch was still there. Always there.

As he walked, Jimmy jogged up from behind him, a golf putter in hand; Jimmy only hung around for a moment to confirm where the commotion was, and sped past.

“I’m not that old,” Bob muttered. He started to jog, eyes darting around, wary of movement. 

He caught up with them. Dani and Jimmy had settled into crouches, covering Edgar, who was on the ground, belly-down, wrenched back, trying to apply some sort of pressure to the back of his leg. It looked to be near the knee.

“Bob, watch out! Someone has a gun!” Dani shouted.

Bob ducked down just off to the side of a thinning brown hedge that ran along the metal-barred gate that encircled whatever this school district building was. Any ghouls on the street outside were a good distance away, and none had managed to wander over toward the storage yard’s gate. Even then, the parked car would provide an obstacle, but Bob wondered if maybe he should have stayed there and held down the entrance for the return of the youngsters.

“IT WAS A FUCKING KID. A GODDAMN KID SHOT ME.”

Bob whirled around. He hadn’t heard that high of a tone out of Edgar and was caught off guard, more so by the delivery than the words themselves.

“What do you mean you were shot by a kid?” Jimmy asked.

A shot rang out and hit the bus. Everyone flinched. It was a wild shot, but in their direction. The kid must have had some training – most panic fire came off in bursts. This was a single shot, and while the shot was off the mark, it was not quite off the mark. The bus was covering Bob and the others.

“That little fuck shot me as I was trying to get away from all those dead shits. There was some kind of fight that broke ou-OWWW!”

Edgar stared at Dani, who was checking his leg by unflexing it to get a better sense of the wound. 

“Sorry,” she said. She pulled his leg back further and gingerly felt around the injury. “Bob?”

“Looks like a .22,” he added. Could have been much worse, he thought.

Dani continued. “They missed your knee, thank god, this is just at the top of the calf. Looks like it hurts.”

“IT FUCKING HURTS,” Edgar shouted. “I got clipped by a fucking fifth grader.”

Bob chimed in. “You said you were running from the dead – where is the kid?”

“Still back there, I didn’t get a good look at him,” Edgar grunted. “I saw three people spill out of a building trying to kill one another, and they got overrun. He must have been with that group. Maybe he thought I killed them or something?”

He paused.

“I… put them down after they’d been attacked. They weren’t gonna make it. She… one of them, her face had been bashed in, and she was drowning in her own blood. I couldn’t…” Edgar stopped as Jimmy gripped his shoulder.

Bob nodded at Edgar, and he kept his expression flat. “Makes sense. Though maybe the kid didn’t understand it. You did what you could to help.”

Dani, still crouched, duck-walked toward the front of the bus. Bob watched her take a couple of quick breaths and glance past the front before he could tell her no.

After a couple of seconds, she pulled back, and then the sound of another shot followed. Another hit to the bus.

“Goddamn it, Danielle.”

Again, the kid appeared to be a good shot. Whomever he had been with had taught him some trigger discipline.

“I don’t see him, but there are a lot of dead things moving toward a spot. I think he might get overrun if we don’t help him.”

Bob said nothing, still thinking about the kid’s aim. Jimmy and Edgar were trying to get Edgar to his feet. Jimmy was having a tough go of it due to Edgar’s heft.

“Guys, that kid is going to get overrun. We need to-”

Jimmy cut Dani off. “We need to get Edgar back to safety first and figure out a plan. We need to remove the bullet.”

“I can get back myself,” Edgar added. He was sweating, doing as much as he could to not put so much weight on Jimmy, but it wouldn’t last. Bob could see the man was tapped out. He was big and strong, but now he came off as helpless.

“Danielle, Dani. We need to get Edgar looked at. We can regroup there and figure something out,” Bob added.

Dani looked up at Bob, who had already risen to his feet, hunched just behind the hedge. He looked back at her, trying to convey that he understood her thinking. And he did, but the kid was too accurate a shot to do this safely with an injured man.

“It’s just a kid,” she pleaded.

“With a goddamn gun,” Edgar added.  Bob sensed the bitter tone. “He’s in a panic, and you’re gonna get shot if you approach him.”

Bob took a couple of steps toward her. “I don’t like it either, Dani, but we need to get out of here. The kid has a gun and a chance. We need to get Edgar to safety and not risk this injury getting worse. We’re not trading a man for the chance of a kid. We care for our own.”

The itching in his chest had grown more intense. He felt the start of a cough but stifled it by clearing his throat.

“I can go by myself,” she pleaded.

“Goddamn it. Dani, it’s gonna take all of us to get Edgar out of here. He’s too big for just Jimmy to support him, and we need someone on point for the way back.”

Edgar chuckled, out of breath. “Fuck you, Bob.”

Bob flipped Edgar off and flashed the man a smile. Edgar nodded. He was still sweating but seemed to be less panicked.

Dani said nothing, turning from the men, staring toward the front of the bus. Bob wondered if she was planning a path and if she would bolt forward. He hoped not. She sighed. She turned back, clearly pissed.

“Shit. Alright, let’s get this done.” She swept over to Edgar’s left and positioned herself under his armpit, bearing as much of his weight as she could, and Jimmy focused on the side with the wounded leg.

“Bob, keep the path clear,” Jimmy said.

Bob, still hunched, moved into the street and straightened his back, rifle drawn. His chest began to burn; the stifled cough was seeking its vengeance. 

As he could make out, there were three ghouls on North Lyon, two coming up from South Lyon. He took up a position in the middle of the street and aimed at the closest of the northern group. He glanced back at the storage yard, wary of motion outside of the rest of his unit.

A sudden coughing fit sent his shot veering off into the top of the ghoul’s chest, sending it stumbling back a step or two, but otherwise did not cut the momentum.

“Shit,” Bob continued coughing. “Move!”

He did his best to suppress the cough as Dani and Jimmy, supporting Edgar, came up behind him. With them behind, he was free to shoot again. This time, his mark was felled, and he watched the ghoul collapse onto the street. The two companions noticed nothing about their third, only moaning as they became aware of Bob’s position. They were still a distance off, far enough that there would be time to get to the gate. It was better to be reactive than aggressive, here.

He also hoped that maybe his shot had alerted the ghouls across the street. He hadn’t heard anything there. Maybe the kid had managed to run in the moment.

He turned to see Dani and Jimmy struggle under the weight of Edgar’s body on their own from his one-legged hops, like they were stakes to be driven into the asphalt. Both of them were puffing nearly as much as Edgar was.

He whirled south and observed that the other two ghouls had cleared the distance surprisingly fast. He took a few steps back, following his companions, observing them. They didn’t seem that fast – he wasn’t sure how they’d gotten so close.

His chest still burned, but the cough had seemed to clear out most of the tension. He wanted desperately to rub his chest, to soothe it as best he could, but he didn’t loosen his grip on the rifle.

As Bob and the others made their way into the small outer lot of the Storage Yard, he took point again, waiting for Edgar to crawl over the hood of the car.

Sure enough, the pair from the south rounded past the fence. They looked “fresher” for lack of a better term, and he wondered how recently they had been living people. Their bodies were still fleshy, and there was no sign of bones just beneath the skin being drawn too tight.

One ghoul’s neck had jagged tears, and the blood was not merely a brown stain, but looked tacky. Maybe a couple of hours old. The other ghoul had a similar, tacky stain around its mouth. Where had this drama played out?

But that was a question for another time.

Bob held his breath, lungs burning. He fired off a shot, hitting the ghoul with the neck injury in the throat. He swore under his breath, took aim, and fired again, this time sending the ghoul reeling back, red blood arcing as it fell back.

Edgar had managed to slide off the hood of the Cadillac and collapsed within the safety of the storage yard. Bob glanced over his shoulder as he watched Sandy march up to the man, simply staring from a yard away from him. He turned back to the ghouls as Jimmy began scrambling over the hood.

“Fuck, Sandy, go grab our aid kit,” Jimmy shouted.

Bob steeled himself as Dani approached and stood next to him. He took aim and fired, dropping the second of the South Lyon ghouls. He began to cough again.

Dani placed her hand on the rifle.

“Got two more coming from the north,” he said.

“Bob, you need to get over the car. It’ll take you longer. I can handle this.”

“Take me longer?”

Dani said nothing, glancing away from Bob, awkwardly. She didn’t want to say it. 

“How old do you think I am?” he pressed.

“Eighty?”

Bob began coughing again, and he tugged back the rifle. “I’m 64, kid. I’m not that fucking old.”

“Just get inside.” She snatched the rifle from him. “You’ve been coughing. Go. I’ve got them.”

Bob sputtered between coughs, “Alright, but you follow right after, got it?”

Dani nodded and took a firing stance.

“‘Eighty’ my ass,” Bob muttered as he approached the gate. He glanced back to see the first of the two North Lyon ghouls round the corner of the storage office.

Bob began to climb the hood of the car and belly crawl back into the yard. As he slid over, he watched Alicia approach, carrying a duffel bag. In the distance, he saw Sandy wheeling around in a golf cart, heading toward the RV where Mary and Alicia had been staying.

“I’ve got the bag, Jimmy, here!” Alicia tossed the bag toward the front of the car. Jimmy caught it and unzipped it, dipping into the supplies with what appeared to be a practiced hand. Alicia continued speaking as she jogged toward them. “Ms. Gunderson is picking up my mom. She used to work at a clinic. She can help!”

Alicia came to a stop in front of Bob and stared down at Edgar, who was on his side, breathing heavily. His brow was furrowed; he was concentrating on anything but his injury.

“Face down, bitch,” Jimmy told him. Edgar glanced back at him and grunted, doing what he was told. He lay on his stomach.

“Alicia, help me down.” Bob outstretched his arm, and she took it, helping guide him off the Cadillac. His feet had clipped Edgar in the head during the dismount.

“Cuídate, estúpido,” Edgar muttered.

“Cállate,” Bob added, winded. His chest was still hurting. He was breathing fire.

Alicia stared out the gate, toward where Bob had left Dani. “Holy shit.”

Bob glanced up over the hood of the car and saw Dani, standing over two crumbled ghouls. She hadn’t fired a shot. She had just finished dislodging her fireplace poker from the skull of one of them, with the rifle strapped over her shoulder. The poker’s hooked end was caked in gore, and the ghouls at her feet looked as though their heads had been bashed in, and the asphalt was covered in a browning slurry with spacklings of white and grey.

“Jesus, kid.”

A distant shot rang out. It had to be the kid again. He was on his own for sure, now. Still measured, still dangerous.

Dani looked toward the direction of the sound – across the street. She looked back at Bob, her eyes wide. Her mouth had been drawn tight. 

Bob remembered that look from Quý on a joint patrol along the Song Gu Via in ‘71. He’d heard a distress call and walked into a trap, quite literally. Bob had never seen a man skewered so thoroughly.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Dani!” Bob shouted.

Dani said nothing. She whirled away from the gate and ran off, toward the sound of the gunshot.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #22 - Shit Happens

Day 25

The worst part of the morning for everyone at the camp was the morning constitutional. Unfortunately, with no running water or indoor plumbing, the bathroom arrangement was a horrid shock to the system and probably one of the things Dani hated most about the apocalypse.

Aside from the ravenous cannibalistic corpses, of course.

The camp’s bathroom setup was simple enough: the survivors had cleared out one of the units, and some shelving and boxes enclosed the entrance, with some shower curtains strung across for some privacy. From there, everyone would do their business in an individual bucket that they’d have to empty later through a gap in the fencing at the western end of the lot.

It was the return of the chamberpot. Things really had regressed.

The closed curtain with a hanging air freshener on display indicated occupied space. For good measure, Bob had found a “Pawdon My Mess” sign out of some grandmother’s unit and hung it inside the unit. Dani had begun to despise the cloyingly sweet puppy on the placard. Everyone gave one another a wide berth when it came to ‘shit-central’ as Bob had taken to calling it.

Water was rare. Thankfully, sanitizer and toilet paper were comparatively less rare than water. The group had managed well enough, but soon they would need water beyond what they’d scavenged. Nobody had bathed in weeks; it had been at least a month since any rain had crossed the sky, and there was no luck with water catches beyond the promise they would eventually work when the weather would finally be on their side.

Dani stepped out from shit-central, holding the bucket away from her, glancing around. She hated this. Even worse, however, was the makeshift latrine on the other side of the fence, right next to Bob’s trailer. He’d been kind enough to avert his eyes as she approached with the bucket; she disappeared behind a pair of shelves he had set up as a privacy marker.

She drained the bucket down the pipe that drained into the caustic pit. As the shame sluiced through the pipe, landing with an audible plop, she gazed across the street. Thankfully, the lone ghoul she had spied hadn’t seemed to notice her. She watched it stumble aimlessly across the road. The last thing she wanted was a walking dead man falling into a pit of shit. It would be too much to bear.

“The pool chemicals have helped out quite a bit, keeping the rankness down,” Bob said as she stepped out, bucket lighter but no less traumatizing. “I wish we could have dug a bigger latrine, though,” he added.

Dani placed her bucket on the ground behind the shelf and glanced at the old man. “Please never talk to me if you see me using this spot. Please.”

He saluted her and turned his attention back to his book.

“Doesn’t the smell get to you?” She asked.

“It beats the dead.”

He had a point. Maybe.

“Tell you what, though, there is a reason I don’t open the back window of the trailer.”

Bob’s trailer, the one he lived in as the “security” of the storage business, illegally before the end of the world, had been parked against the metal-barred fence to shore up a portion of it. He hadn’t objected to the decision to dig the latrine next to him.

Hell, he helped dig the thing over the course of a day, dodging ghouls and taking shifts with Dani, Jimmy, and Edgar.

“Danielle. You got nothin’ to worry about. I don’t mind being here at this spot. It’s where all my books are.” 

Dani glanced at the bookshelves he had erected for a privacy wall, and sure enough, he seemed to have added to his library, somehow. The shelves rested comfortably beneath the pop-up he designated as a library. 

“Truth be told,” he rose from a salvaged recliner, “I have an idea and could use some help with this situation…” 

Dani reflexively nudged the bucket further back with her foot as he approached.

Bob put his hands on his hips and stared at his feet, a frequent gesture he made when working toward something. Generally, his instincts were good, and she was already intrigued.

“I didn’t find a shed or nothin’ in any of these units. I know it was a long shot, but I had hoped maybe some taxman or someone had bought one and never assembled it. If I had a shed, I could rig us up an actual head.”

“Head?”

Bob laughed.

“Sorry, old habits. Bathroom. I could rig us up a bathroom that can work with that latrine, especially if we dig it further and get some more of those pool chemicals.”

“No more shit-central?”

“Baby girl, we’re talkin’ shit-palace.”

Dani and Bob laughed a bit at this.

“If you can get me something from the Hardware Depot down the road… one of those sheds, I can repurpose that toilet we found last week, the one that was still boxed up.”

Bob paused and coughed a bit. It was deep and rattling, less of a sign of imminent danger or illness and more of his general age.

“Excuse me. I’d also need some pipes and all the plastic bins we can get our hands on, but… well… I think everyone would feel a hell of a lot better, and once the rains kick in, I think we could be doing pretty well for ourselves.”

Dani nodded. “That sounds doable. We’ll see when Edgar gets back about arranging a trip down the road.”

“Edgar is still out?”

“Yeah, scouting that place across the street.”

“He seems like a good guy. I hope he’s being careful.”

“Me, too. Though…”

“If you’re gonna say something about him having that gun on him, I get it, kid. I do. But you gotta also think about it from his perspective. Most of us here know nothing about one another.”

“I know, and you’re right. That’s why I am not making a big deal of it.” Dani reached into her left pocket and pulled out the copy of Dracula. “By the way, the kid is done with Dracula and wants to borrow something else.”

“Oh god, yeah, absolutely. Has she read The Hobbit?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Well, take it to her.” Bob walked over to the shelving and scanned the rows until he found a small, silver-colored paperback featuring a mist-shrouded mountain on the cover. He handed it to Dani.

“Thanks, I am sure she’ll love it.”

“You know, you can take a book, too. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you only either working or hiding in that Airstream for the past week.”

Dani took that in for a moment, not registering it entirely until she replayed what he had said. She suddenly found herself on the back foot. It was a sudden, uncomfortable shift to be chastised for not reading given the circumstances, but self-consciousness won out, and she wheeled for an excuse. 

“I’ve never been much of a reader.”

“I can’t think of a better time to start. No more Simpsons.”

Dani sighed. “Yeah, okay. What do you recommend?” She paused, then continued, “And if you say anything Amy Tan, I’ll feed you to one of those dead things on the streets.”

“Not a fan?”

“No, just… had a teacher at community college in an English class who kept saying that I was going to love the book, and it was very relatable. Didn’t even understand I was fucking Korean. It was embarrassing.” “Gotcha.” Bob scanned the shelves and, after a few moments, added, “Okay, well, how about this?”

Dani took the book from Bob. The cover was faded, torn in a corner, and the spine was so cracked that any of the text was now illegible. 

She scanned the cover. “Shane? Is this a western?”

“Yeah, not a fan?”

“Didn’t say that… I used to watch True Grit with my dad. A lot of John Wayne movies, actually. He was obsessed with the guy.”

“Yeah, we talked about The Green Berets a few times. Your dad was – is – a good man.”

“Yeah, pretty sure he is dead, honestly,” she replied, almost reflexively.

They were both silent after that. All that broke that stillness was an occasional caw of a carrion bird. They’d been so active the past few weeks, and it wasn’t pleasant to consider why. 

“Dani, it’s only been a month.”

“And look how bad things are, everyone is dead, in hiding, or is fucking with everyone else. I know my mom and dad. They wouldn’t make it. He was too trusting of everyone.”

“He was a good man.”

“So are you, but you can be a son of a bitch when you need to, Bob. He never could. Mom walked over him. I got away with all sorts of bad shit. I loved him, loved them, but I’m not holding out hope.”

“I’m sorry, kid; you’re probably right, but damn, I don’t like you going there so easily. The minute you’re broken, I think we’re all screwed.”

She took in a sharp, quick breath. How could she tell Bob that she had been broken before the end of the world? She was relieved to have that AirStream with that locking door so that she could just get away from everyone.

Everyone listened to her, spoke to her, but she refused to speak about what was going on in her head. She didn’t like that so many decisions about the camp had fallen to her when she wasn’t even sure she’d have a reason for living in a state of perpetual fear for much longer.

“I’m fine, really,” she replied.

The scars on her thighs throbbed – a brief instant of dull pain that ebbed into a dopamine flow of some sense of control, albeit briefly. She’d started cutting again; it had started up the day when she had to club her undead neighbors to pulp.

“Well, just give the book a try, okay?”

“Sure.” She wasn’t sure if she would.

A sharp burst of static made her jump, and she looked to the walkie-talkie that Bob had set on a box near his chair. Alicia’s voice rang out, “Dani, are you there? My mom’s leg is really hurting again, and I am not sure what to do.”

Dani walked over and picked up the walkie. “Sure thing. I’ll be there in a moment, okay?”

Another crackle, and Sandy’s voice came through: “I thought these were for emergencies?”

Dani couldn’t help herself. “Yes, we’re dealing with an injury, you’re just being annoying. Over and out.”

Bob snorted.

They’d managed to find four of the devices, and they had been very careful about using them. Come to think of it, Dani remembered, the fourth handset was in her trailer.

“I wasn’t aware Alicia had one. Did Edgar ask for one earlier?”

Bob had slumped down into his chair. 

“He didn’t, he said the sound might draw too much attention as he was scouting the place.”

Dani didn’t like that. She had already felt foolish for not using the walkies effectively days ago when Edgar had to make the pied piper run around the block to divert the ghouls. Nobody had remembered that they had them as they waited out the moment, and it was a complete shitshow. Since then, they’d been strategic about who had them… mostly. Sandy protested not having one, so she was ostensibly a “scout” in the second-story apartment above the office.

“He should have taken one. He could have taken mine.”

“Hey, I told him to grab one, and he said he wouldn’t want to risk it.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Dani shook her head and began to walk toward the back of the yard. Still a shitshow. A shitshow she had been seemingly pushed into managing. She felt lacking.

As though it were a reminder, the couple of spots on her thigh throbbed again. She embraced the pain, briefly, until the sound of three sudden pops in the air caught her attention. Gunfire.

She had turned and seen Bob scramble to his feet, craning his neck to look through holes in the fencing to get an idea of what had happened. Dani jogged up.

“Across the street,” he said. “Sounded like gunshots, right?”

The sounds had erupted across the street where Edgar had been scouting.

“Sounds like he might have found somethin’, Danielle.”

Learn more at the website!

[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #21 – Stepping into a Private Drama

Day 25

Edgar had been scouting the school district office for a couple of days now. His shifts at the Kim Family Storage rooftop perch across the street had allowed him to take in the layout and observe the local ghouls and their aimless wanderings.

The entire grounds seemed locked up – all gates had been padlocked shut in a hurry, except for one rolling gate that had nearly been demolished by a school bus that had burst through at some point during the chaos of the first few days of the dead. Now up close to that very same rolling gate, Edgar saw that the bus tires were shredded. Unmistakable brown trails of dried blood marked the dusty yellow surface on the outside and the windows from the inside. Behind one of the brown streaks, there was motion… one of the dead was still wandering around within, seemingly pacing up and down the aisle, content with a small domain.

Despite his size, he had managed to stay low on foot, crouching and crawling between vantage points around the block and always warily shifting his gaze around. When these creatures were not alert and moaning, they ran eerily silent. He had nearly had a close call as he crawled past the front office of the storage yard and did not see a ghoul walk out from between a pair of abandoned sedans in the road. That had been the first day of scouting, and it had rattled him so much that he shouted and alerted a few more in the area. He had fled back to the storage lot for safety, and he and Bob had picked up the trio of stragglers that had followed from behind the safety of the metal gate.

Edgar would not make such a mistake again.

Based on Edgar’s observation, the only point in and out that was walkable was the busted rolling gate, but that area also had a pair of nearby wandering ghouls in addition to the ghoul within the bus.

It was manageable, but what concerned him most were the sounds he had heard from inside the district office, echoing out between the buildings of the district campus. Periodically, there was shouting and the clanging of pipes and slamming doors, punctuated by a series of moans from the ghouls. He hadn’t heard these things until he had begun poking at the perimeter, and even then, it all sounded so faint.

Edgar was unsure of the disposition of the survivors, if he was hearing what he thought he was, but the clamor was great. He was sure it was more unknown people than he was willing to deal with on his own, especially given the incident with the police car. He’d been lucky with Bob and Dani, and lucky again with the new ones, Mary and Alicia. Sooner or later, luck would run out.

The good news was that the patterns the ghouls seemed to follow were aimless but also felt almost regular, as though they would reach some boundary, invisible or not, and reverse course. Today would be the day he would test that and work his way into the district grounds to see what he could find.

There was no rush. He wouldn’t push it. He wasn’t in a hurry to die. He woke up with a start more than once these past few days, remembering the swarm of ghouls clinging to his car a week ago – remembering the back seat of the car and the condition of the woman he was sure he’d known.

Edgar came in low, practically on his hands and knees, following along the side of the bus, out of sight of the closest ghoul ahead. When he was close enough, he squeezed himself under the bus. If it hadn’t been due to consistent starvation, he would have been unable to do that. The most fucked of blessings. He was still the biggest person in the camp, but he felt smaller than he had been before everything changed. 

He shuffled quietly on his belly under the bus and toward the front. Pausing, he watched desiccated feet shuffle back and forth; the sticklike legs were in tattered slacks, and one foot was socked but without a shoe.

He watched the ghoul’s motion until it came close enough. He pulled a small camping hatchet from the back of his pants and grabbed at one of the legs, tugging hard. Instead of dragging it under, the leg snapped off, and the ghoul fell to the ground. Black blood splattered, and Edgar quickly tossed the broken leg away.

“Fuck,” he whispered. He scrambled out from under the bus and grappled the waist and back of the ghoul as it thrashed. With an overhead swing, he brought the blade to the back of the skull with a sickening thwack, cracking the rotting skull open before the ghoul even made a sound. Pausing for a second to see if it was done thrashing, he scrambled to his feet to the other side of the bus, peeking out from the front, wary of any movement.

That hadn’t gone as planned. Edgar glanced down at a bus tire, noticing it was so shredded that it could not be an easy fix. He wondered about possibly replacing it, but realized where he was in relation to the bus. Sure enough, Edgar stood in front of the open door. He crouched and held silent for a moment. The ghoul inside must have been in the back because there was no sign of it.

He took his hatchet and flicked away some blood. He tapped the handle at the first step, crouching against the side of the bus. The wait was agonizingly long for the ghoul to spill forth, enticed by the sound. When the creature arrived, it tripped down the stairs, crumbling into a dusty, rotten heap. Edgar pinned it down on the ground with his knee on its back and gave it a couple of violent thwacks with the blade. All that was left of his handiwork was a oozy dark puddle and rubbery nuggets of brain matter, looking like the world’s worst plate of scrambled eggs.

He glanced around, and the other ghouls who “patrolled” this space had wandered off. There was a gap if he wanted to push.

The facility would take a long time to clear at this rate. With no ghouls in sight, and his exit seemingly opened behind him, he pushed forward, taking a low run toward the first building, which appeared to be the school bus depot.

The building was a small outbuilding combined with what appeared to be a large carport meant for bus maintenance. There was no sign of wanderers, so he ducked into the small office that seemed to operate as a dispatching area. The place was a wreck, but there were no signs of life except for some smears of blood on a table. Peering out of the office, he saw the school buses that occupied the large parking lot. There were three parked in the large lot, and a lone bus in the bay that appeared to be mid-repair. Other buses had been out on the job when the place had gone into lockdown, Edgar figured. But the remaining three were just what he was hoping to find – if they were still operational.

He turned his attention back to the small room. There were a couple of computers on desks, a couple of phones, a small table, and some chairs. Little else, beyond, but he checked behind the desks anyway. He was surprised to catch sight of a minifridge, but then realized what was in there had probably become little more than sludge.

Curiosity won out, however, and he crouched down, opening the door. The scent of rot punched him in the face, nearly knocking him onto his ass, but the sight of a sealed can of cola won out. He snatched the can up and slammed the refrigerator shut, gagging all the while.

After a few moments where he could collect himself, he studied his can of cola. It had picked up a little odor from the fridge’s contents, and he ineffectually attempted to wipe away any grime on his pant leg.

He turned the can over and saw it was a diet soda. He grimaced at the idea of a diet soda, but also realized there wasn’t much of the stuff left in the world in the long run. Sugar was sugar.

He checked the date on the label, and sure enough, it was good. Worried about what the can may have picked up from the condition of the minifridge, Edgar spat on the rim and then whipped the can as cleanly as he could with a corner of his shirt. He cracked the tab and took a sip of the sickeningly sweet cola. Content, he took it down in a couple of huge gulps.

He finished the last sips and set the can beside him. All this time, there had been no sound coming from anywhere outside of the office. He rose to his feet, glanced out the door, and turned his attention to the bus in the bay.

From what he could tell, the tires appeared fine. He saw the engine hatch was open and couldn’t eyeball much regarding the engine’s status right now. He made his way to the side of the bus with the door and nearly shit himself when he saw a body hanging down over the stairs.

If it had been a ghoul, it would have moved – but it was just a body. Was it the driver? Or was he a mechanic? Leaning in, Edgar saw that the man appeared to be neither. He wore what used to be a pale green dress shirt and a tie with brown slacks. The man didn’t strike Edgar as someone who actually had much to do with the maintenance or operation of buses. Based on the computers in the room, Edgar figured that the man had a dispatcher.

What was the story here? Edgar had been thinking a lot about the ghouls and bodies he’d seen, wondering about past lives and final moments. He knew why. That car had rattled him in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Since then, he couldn’t help but consider stories.

The body did not appear to have any major wounds from behind. Curiosity gave way, and Edgar grabbed the shirt at the collar and pulled the corpse from the doorway. He turned the body as best he could, and caught a leathery face frozen in shock and fear. He also saw a screwdriver jammed into the chest.

Edgar’s head spun with theories, but he settled on the story that maybe the dispatcher and the mechanic were fighting about something in the chaos. Maybe the mechanic ended it.

Edgar just wanted things to have some kind of reason.

Edgar plucked the screwdriver free and flicked the gunk from it. It was a longer piece of kit, and he figured it would be worth holding onto. Inside the bus, it was relatively clean, beyond the exposure to open doors and windows.

Yet, there were still no signs of what was wrong with the bus, if anything. The keys were in the ignition, but there was no clear way out without moving the bus from the gate or opening another gate. For now, he’d let this one sit in silence, but took the keys with him. It was lucky that the driver hadn’t taken the keys with him.

Edgar made his way to the closest building, which seemed to be some sort of administrative spot. The lot was dotted with other cars, which might be useful – he clocked each one and added it to the mental inventory he had been taking. He kept his creeping, crouched movements, ducking past wandering dead, and made his way to a glass doorway. 

The doorway itself was in good condition, but he noticed that things had been piled up against it on the other side, serving as a makeshift barricade. He saw some desks, chairs, and boxes. The handles of the doors had been lashed by what looked like a belt and jacket.

The barrier was just about waist-high, and fabric had been strung across to hide anything within, outside of the small slivers of space between the barricade and the fabric. Edgar wasn’t sure if the ghouls could see anything, but he understood the impulse. He’d considered lining the fencing with cardboard back in the storage yard.

Realizing he’d come this far already, Edgar kept out of sight and approached the door, placing his ear to it.

Sure enough, there were voices. 

Raised voices. 

Shouting.

Gunshots.

“Fuck, fuck.” Edgar scrambled away from the door, falling over a couple of times, dashing his way back toward the garage area, keeping as low a profile as possible. It was amazing he hadn’t drawn any ghoulish attention in the scramble so far. 

Sure enough, dreadful moans seemed to echo all around, and the sound of muffled gunfire from inside continued to pick up. He ducked around the corner into one of the bays and watched as shattering glass scattered over the walkway where he had just been, and office furniture and boxes tumbled out with a pair of people.

Edgar watched the two run for their lives, a man and a woman. Both were thin. The man, already bloodied and clutching an arm, seemed to shield the woman’s body. The woman’s shirt was torn, a breast exposed.

A third man spilled out of the same doorway and fruitlessly pulled a revolver trigger over and over. His face was covered in blood, and his steps were lurching. Out of ammo, he picked up his pace like a crazed beast, striking the first man on the head. He overtook the woman, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her to the ground.

Edgar saw him climb on top of her and club her with the revolver; the other man, who had been brained, quickly tackled the man with the revolver, clubbing at him.

Edgar threw himself out from behind the wall of the garage and ran toward the scene as the two men struggled over the woman, but four ghouls had begun approaching them from behind some parked cars.

“Watch out!”

Edgar waved and cried at them, but the two men played out their drama, ignorant of him. It was too late; the ghouls converged and fell upon the struggling men, tearing them apart.

Edgar watched in horror as greasy fingertips slashed at the gunman’s neck, and hot blood burst forth. In a second, another pair of hands grabbed at his scalp and began pulling out clumps of bloody hair. The gunman hadn’t been as fortunate with two ghouls falling upon him and sinking rotten, yellow teeth deep into the neck and shoulder. Edgar was shocked at how strong and quick the monsters moved at the prospect of fresh flesh.

Each man was stripped of skin and tissue by teeth and fingertips. He’d watch a ghoul take a bite and tear strips and ribbons of flesh free, only to see flesh roll out of open mouths, where the ghouls would then go back, sinking in their teeth even deeper. Edgar had never seen the things feed so directly. He felt like he was about to vomit, but Edgar swallowed down the acidic bile that rose in his throat and cautiously approached the group to see if he could at least help the woman.

The ghouls were distracted by their eating frenzy, and the sounds of the men’s screams masked Edgar’s heavy steps. As he was within a few feet of the gruesome scene, he noticed the woman moving. Her face, however, told a different story and amounted to little more than a bloody bowl – he swore he could see white teeth in a puddle of flesh where a face used to exist. The gunman’s revolver had smashed her nose and teeth, and she was drowning in her blood. Her gargles terrified Edgar.

He closed the gap between them and, tears in his eyes, brought the ax’s blade down on her face, smashing what was left of her head into three wet chunks. He cried as he put her out of her misery and, when finished, whirled around and smashed at the skull of the closest ghoul. His swing was wild and glanced off bone. He doubled down and struck again, sinking the blade deep into the ghoul’s temple.

Edgar flew into a rage, striking any head he saw in a pile, and after a few moments and a couple of near bites, had brained every single one of the ghouls and the men for good measure. He instinctively grabbed the revolver and absentmindedly pulled the trigger a half dozen times, hoping at least a single shot was left.

There was nothing there. He knew that.

But the compulsion was too great. 

He tucked the gun into his pants and noticed the commotion had begun to pull in a few stragglers. How had there been even more of these fuckers hidden away? He grabbed the long screwdriver from his belt loop and clumsily rose to his feet, winded.

This scouting trip had become a catastrophe. He wouldn’t chance the district office. It was time to leave.

Learn more at the website!

[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #20 – Home Away from Home

Day 25

It had been more than a week of relative calm for the residents of the Kim Family Storage – at least, by Dani’s count. The calendar that sat in the office was already a year old, and she had to maintain her own count until they found a 2000 calendar. From there, time was in their care. 

Since the police car, the group had kept a tight watch from the roof directly on the corner of Lyon and Acacia, careful of ghoul movements. Beyond small clusters, the streets had been relatively silent. Dani, Jimmy, and Edgar had managed to stack some boxes and some sideways shelves up top to keep anyone on scout duty out of direct view. 

It had been a pain in the ass to get that stuff out there, but it would work well enough for the ghouls. The problem was that any people who might see the strange stacks on the roof would probably get a sense of what was up. Bob and Jimmy had planned to create a small wall running along the perimeter in the future. Nothing much but something that would allow for crouched movement, and more to the point, a little protection from any trigger-happy passerby. But that was one of several projects that emerged as everyone decided it was time to settle in for safety.

Not just safety from the dead, either. The cruiser was a grim reminder that they were not alone.

The drug store raid had been a success, and the supplies had helped ease their minds and filled their bellies – at least relatively. Another run, this time to the dollar mart a couple of days prior, had borne a decent supply of canned goods. Best of all, the trip went on without a hitch. So much so that Dani and Edgar had even managed to fill some bags with supplies they couldn’t carry back then and hid them out of sight for a supply run that they had planned for tomorrow.

As for Dani, now, she sat in her trailer, enjoying the reprieve of privacy. In the time she’d been here with the others, there were several swaps and trades regarding the on-site RVs. With the arrival of Mary and her daughter, Alica, Dani had given them the larger one she had been staying in, opting for an old Airstream. Dani wasn’t much for comforts these days. A door and a mattress were about as much as she needed. And a door lock.

Her trailer was tucked just in front of one of the indoor storage areas, which was little more than a concrete structure with several small, closet-sized units. This was where the residents had kept the supplies, and Dani held the key and the watch. The decision to lock them away was not popular, but everyone accepted it.

Accepted by most, anyway. Sandy Gunderson had voiced her concerns over the lock for the past two days. Everyone knew Sandy had snuck a bag of goods while unloading the last supply run, but everyone kept silent. The less she had to complain about and the more time she spent in the apartment above the rental office, the better. Her contributions to the camp were frequent anxiety at best, sprinkled with offers to pray with anyone who would wold accept it. If Dani was feeling generous, she could maybe see Sandy as a camp cook, but Dani suspected that it was more out of Sandy’s perceived necessity for “non-ethnic” food.

It was not lost on Dani, and clearly not on Sandy, that except for Jimmy, their group was not very white. Dani remembered when she was a kid that Sandy had called her a “slant-eyed monster” when she’d accidentally knocked over some paperwork in the office. Mom and Dad had not been there to hear it, and it was something that Dani carried with her going forward.

Dani thought about this little wound and picked at it enough to let out some tension. “Man, fuck that bitch.” 

She shook her head and rose to her feet.

Dani stepped outside of her trailer. The Airstream was planted firmly against the concrete wall along the eastern half of the lot. She had mounted a pop-up canopy over the entrance and braced it with a chest of drawers, a cabinet, and a bucket of nails. Some lawn furniture and a ratty roll of astroturf turned it into a rudimentary outdoor room. It wasn’t much to look at, but the shade was nice. It could be a little too comfortable at times. She’d accidentally taken a nap in the lawnchair and hadn’t allowed herself that since. There always needed to be a lock between her and the monsters – she needed to be sure of that.

From her “covered porch,” she could see Mary and Alicia’s trailer, a couple of dozen feet ahead, parked much like her trailer against the wall. Alicia Macias was sitting on the RV’s roof, reading a book. She saw Dani and waved to her, and Dani responded in kind. 

She liked the kid. Mary, though, was out of sight, likely inside. The broken leg from the drug store was a mess. They had done as much for her as possible. Dani would check in later.

She wasn’t quite sure how to deal with Mary; her recovery was a source of frustration, and more than once, Dani had seen her looking, for lack of a better term, shellshocked and unwilling to state much about life before the day everything fell apart. As open as Alicia was, there wasn’t much there. What was clear was a missing father, and that could be for so many reasons.

But as Dani took in what she could, the reason was appearing more and more obvious, day by day.

Directly across from the Macias’ “residence” was one of the clusters of units where the shitty brown Cadillac of Jimmy DeWitt and Edgar Rosas usually sat. They had opted to claim six units for their own needs in that row. They had also found an additional awning and erected it in front of where the car was normally parked to provide a little outdoor cover.

Dani made her way toward Jimmy’s cluster but was caught off guard by how quickly Alicia had climbed down from the RV. The kid was agile.

“Ms. Kim, I saw a big crowd of those things in the neighborhood behind us.”

“How big of a crowd?”

“It was tough to count them all, but I saw at least ten on the street, between the houses. Not counting the ones in the windows. It’s so weird seeing them up in those rooms like that.”

“Good eye. I am glad you’re keeping an eye on this side of the place. I know Bob appreciates the help.”

“Oh, speaking of Mr. Clark, could you take this book back to him? I’m done with it, and I don’t want to get too far away from my mom right now.”

Dani took the book from Alicia. She flipped it over in her hands and noticed it was a torn and stained copy of Dracula. Well loved.

Alicia was staring at the book. “I liked it, but the vampire felt a bit too… well, real. You know?” She looked up at Dani.

Dani nodded. “Will you be borrowing a new one from him later?”

“Could you pick for me?”

Dani smiled. “Sure, I’ll pick up a repair manual.”

“Hah.”

The two stood in silence. The sounds of birds and insects brought a sense of calm with chirps and clicks on the light breeze. The January mornings were cold, but Emmet was very much a town in a desert in many respects, no matter how many orange groves had been there 80 years ago. It was a California cold, which was largely pleasant.

“Alicia. How is your mom?”

“Her leg is still pretty fucked up.”

Dani’s eyes widened.

Alicia shrugged. “I’m 14.”

Dani laughed. “I know. I know. Sorry. I was just thinking about how my parents would have flipped had I dropped the ‘f-word’ on them.”

“You can’t even say it now, Ms. Kim.”

“Fuck off, smartass.”

They both burst into laughter. After a few moments, Dani sent Alicia off. “Go ahead and check in on your mom, Alicia. Let her know I am gonna come by in a bit to see how she is doing.”

Alicia nodded and, after a brief moment, gave Dani a small hug. Dani initially felt surprised but returned the gesture by squeezing the girl’s elbow. She was a good kid.

Alicia wandered off, gesturing with a wave as she approached her and her mother’s trailer. Dani turned her attention back to the units claimed by Jimmy and Edgar. 

Jimmy and Edgar had opened four this morning. She saw that they had removed various boxes, which had been torn open. The contents had been strewn about in multiple piles, the two still obviously sorting through them. 

The presence of an overly furry lady’s coat on a coat rack caught her eye for a moment. She had no idea what animal it once was, but the fact that Jimmy or Edgar had perceived enough value to hang the coat up was pretty funny. From what she had learned about them, she expected that it was a Jimmy gesture, the more reflective of the two.

She made her way down the row, the main row that ran toward the front gate. Sure enough, she saw Jimmy, the slighter of the pair, standing at the front entrance. His hair had grown a bit longer, and he had a tangle of red curls starting to form. He was in sweatpants and a t-shirt salvaged from one of the boxes. As she approached, she noticed the neon-colored graphic of a boat with “Catalina Open ‘92” in stylized letters on the back.

She presumed nobody in their sanctuary had ever been to Catalina before.

“Where is Edgar?” she asked as she approached.

Jimmy looked back; his hands were on his hips, intently studying the buildings across the street. He pointed to them.

“Edgar is scouting that building, so we’re keeping the gate open when he gets back. I’ve got the car parked there so he can climb over. The dead aren’t great at hauling themselves over things, and Bob and I have our eyes on it.”

“Edgar is there by himself?”

“Believe it or not, that giant is very quiet.”

Giant didn’t even begin to describe Edgar. While only about 5’9”, by most estimations, he was thick, a seeming combination of muscle and fat. Edgar was like a wall. Dani was glad to have him around.

Jimmy was different. He was skinny, and his muscles were ropey. He looked underfed, and his unruly red hair had not only grown longer at the top of his head, but he was beginning to develop a rat nest for a beard. Dani would need to get him something to trim it next time they were on a supply run.

He was pretty wiry-looking when he first came to the storage yard, but since then, he seemed to have mellowed out. He had been enthused about the company and things to do. He was one of the hardest-working people she had met, always up to something to make the location more livable, and the first to assist in projects.

He didn’t even bother hiding his track marks lately. Dani had been puzzling out how long ago he’d kicked his habit and if the work helped him manage. Dani had also been sweating whether this would be a problem down the line. By Sandy’s pointed comments, it already was – for her – but Jimmy had been graceful in feigning ignorance.

“Any idea what he’s looking for over there?”

Jimmy scratched his chin vigorously, and Dani could hear the rustling of hair. “We saw that it’s a school district facility or something. I think they make food there, school lunches and shit… and there could be buses.”

Dani used to live around the corner, right across from the district buildings. She hadn’t paid attention to it at the time. But thinking back, she did recall a colorful mural on one of the walls – some design based on the work of a kid. She always just thought it was ugly and weird. 

She supposed she saw some buses there from time to time as well. It was shocking how disconnected she felt from the location across from her apartment of two years.

“Why are we interested in buses, Jimmy?”

He smiled. “Well, if we can hotwire them, we can take a couple of them and build a wall around the parking lot in front of us.”

Dani looked at the lot; they hadn’t been able to use it due to the necessity of fixing the broken gate.

“We could find a way to make another gate and have two layers of protection here,” she added.

“Yep. Maybe even park a couple of cars or a truck for supply runs.”

“It could also give us a chance to fix the gate. Really fix it.”

“Yeah. I feel really shitty about breaking it. I swear I’ll fix it.”

Dani took a few steps forward toward the rolling gate and shrugged. “You didn’t know anyone was here, and you’re doing what you can to help. Nobody is mad.”

Jimmy pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his sweats’ pocket and a book of matches from the other. He lit up and began to puff away. Dani watched him for a moment, and soon enough, he nodded at her, plucking the cigarette from his lips and offering her a puff. She enjoyed it. She handed it back.

“Is he going to be okay by himself?”

“If it were me, you’d be right to be worried. Edgar, though, fucker is built different. He won’t be long. Besides, I really, really want to get to the parking lot.”

“We have plenty of parking here for now; it’s a good idea, but we basically have all the time in the world now.”

“It’s the grass in between the parking and the sidewalk. The soil. I think I can get a garden going.”

Dani’s eyes narrowed. “No shit?”

“No shit. I was in 4-H in high school, and my parents shipped me off to a boy’s ranch as a kid. I picked up the knack for growing.”

Dani thought back to the day Jimmy and Edgar had crashed the gate of the storage yard. Dani and Bob had found marijuana packed up in one of the units belonging to Jimmy.

“So that weed was homegrown, I assume?”

“I can grow potatoes too.”

“I’m sure you can.”

Jimmy took a couple more puffs and handed the cigarette back to Dani.

“I have some ideas, though, I see it, but I need the supplies.”

“Do tell,” Dani urged.

“Well, I can build some garden boxes. We can plant anywhere with those in a pinch. But I need wood, wire, liners… soil bags… seeds; it’s a lot.”

Dani handed the cigarette back to Jimmy. “Hence, starting with that patch of grass to get something going,” he added.

“Makes sense,” she added, “thinking of loading up one of the buses?”

Jimmy looked over at the truck still parked against the front office’s windows.

“That moving truck would have been perfect. I hope we can salvage that if we close the lot.” He began to hand the cigarette over to Dani, but paused and took another puff with a faraway look. “I am thinking about a lot of supplies because I have a much bigger idea.”

He paused for a moment, perhaps worried he was going to sound crazy or something. He looked at her, his eyes a little wide and his eyebrows sloping outward, concerned.

“Dani, do you know what is next to us?” He gestured behind them as he spoke, back toward the southern part of the storage yard, “That area between us at the houses?”

“Not really. Just some dirt, right?”

“A drainage ditch for one, and a dirt alley with the railroad tracks.”

Dani remembered that a railway, long since abandoned, had run through part of Emmett for nearly 60 years. The railway was mostly something used back in the early 1930s, as much as she knew. Maybe it went back to the town’s founding. The tracks were an artifact of the day when the town was known for its orange groves. She saw where he was going with this.

“You want to seal the place up and grow back there?” she asked.

“It’d give us a lot more room than some boxes and a strip of grass in front of the office. We could line the road with a wall that could give us a direct path rather than needing to climb up and over a unit to get there. There may be enough buses to do that with one or two for us to use as transport.”

It was a good idea, but the project seemed like a massive pain in the ass, especially given the need to secure the area and move the goods. She understood why Jimmy and Edgar were interested in the buses. This was workable, but would take some doing.

“The problem is,” Jimmy continued, “that we can’t risk losing that truck in front of the office yet because we can’t reinforce the window frame. We don’t have anything else that can work to haul around the supplies I need.”

Dani thought about it for a moment. Jimmy offered her the last few puffs of the cigarette, but she politely waved it off, deep in thought. She thought back to the area around them and where they had been the past few weeks.

She remembered something about her flight from the apartments where she had lived before the bullshit went down. The place was around the corner and seemed so much further away when she first escaped. Now it offered a tantalizingly close solution.

“I know where we can find a moving truck.”

Jimmy’s eyebrow raised, intrigued. He dropped the cigarette butt and mashed it with the toe of his sneaker.

“Hell yes.” He beamed. “Fuck yes.”

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #19 – Behind the Gate

Day 17

The cruiser screamed past the corner where they had paused. Dani had no way of knowing if the driver had seen her group. She felt uncomfortable about someone knowing where she was… someone she didn’t know.

The moans behind the party had grown louder in the ghouls’ approach. Edgar had slowed to a crawl at this point to keep the ghouls on the Cadillac. Now the car was practically swarmed. Dani couldn’t make out how many ghouls had begun to scramble over the surface. All she saw was a tangle of gooey, flailing limbs.

Jimmy had already begun to dash across the street. His gaze was planted to his left, down the street, toward the other group of ghouls converging on their location. Dani pushed her cart forward toward the side gate of the Family Storage – home. She just pulled up after Jimmy had already begun pounding on the gate.

“Bob! Bob, hurry up!”

Bob was rattling the chains that held the gate shut. “Hey Jim, what the hell was that? Was that a fuckin’ cop car?”

Jimmy stood at the cart, his knuckles white from his grip on the bar. Bob was still fumbling with the lock and chain. Jimmy rocked the cart back and forth, ready to charge the instant there was clearance.

“Yeah, guy buzzed us twice, and we’re pulling deadies. We gotta get Edgar in quickly with the car.”

“It’s really close, Bob,” Dani added.

The chain came loose, and the gate began to open slowly. Jimmy stepped away from the cart and pulled hard to assist Bob. Dani had already rolled her cart inside and to the right, just past Sandy.

“Where’s the car? Did you lose the car?” she asked.

Dani rolled the cart forward and ran back to the gate, pushing Jimmy’s cart in as he finished moving the gate back. Sandy had approached and glanced out toward the street, looking worried.

“Where’s the car?”

Jimmy snapped, “It’s coming along with a dozen of those dead fucks.”

Sandy glared at him for a second and then took several steps back, creating distance between herself and the gate.

Dani stepped back out onto the sidewalk and waved down Edgar. He accelerated slightly, shaking loose a group of the ghouls, who tumbled onto the ground like sacks of meat from a refrigerator shelf. Edgar turned the Cadillac to drive into the storage facility, but Dani stepped right in front of him, slapping the car’s hood. She felt uncomfortably close to the ghouls that were limping toward them.

She glanced at the two groups rounding the corner.

“Ed… you gotta lead them away.” 

Edgar threw his heavy frame through the driver’s side window and glared at her. “What? You’re kidding…”

Dani shook her head and slapped the hood again, pointing at the growing crowd. “That cruiser screwed us. There are too many for this gate.”

Edgar grunted and then slapped the roof of the car. “Shit. Fine. Stay low.”

He reversed the car and began the slow drive down the road. Dani dashed back past the gate and helped Jimmy slam it shut. She threw on the chain and closed the padlock.

Dani and Jimmy stood away from the gate. Jimmy turned to Sandy and Bob and gestured at them to stay quiet.

The ghouls began to pass in front of the gate as they followed the car. The gate, thankfully, had a green screen of woven plastic fiber to keep the group out of sight.

A couple of the ghouls, the closest ones, had slapped and rattled the gate, but the distant sound of Edgar’s horn pulled them away.

…

The wait was tense. The last of the ghouls, the ones from the second group, had finally wandered by after what seemed like forty minutes.

Sandy was the first to say anything. “They’re gone, now, right?”

Dani shrugged. “Seems like it.”

Bob was sitting in a lawn chair a few units down, reading a book. Jimmy paced back and forth between periodically unloading goods from the shopping carts. All the while, Dani had been at the fence, breathlessly observing the undead stragglers in silence. Their movements were clear, even seen obscured by the green fabric – jerky, uncoordinated, unnatural.

What were they?

…

Dani had lost track of time. The ghouls were long gone except for a few stragglers along the street. They’d managed to slide the gate open enough for her to squeeze out and peek up and down the street. She also had taken advantage of one of the nearby ladders after they’d closed the gate again. There was no sign of Edgar, Mary, and Alicia last time she had climbed up to the roof of a row of units. She was worried.

She had found another lawn chair and set it up near the gate. Jimmy was still messing with supplies, arranging them into different piles and groups. Bob continued to read. Sandy had wandered off to another unit and was going through boxes of clothing.

The sound of an approaching car echoed in the concrete canyon of the storage units. Dani rose to her feet and peeked out through a small gap between the fence and gate, and saw the Cadillac.

“Hey, let us in,” Edgar yelled, “I couldn’t shake them all.”

Jimmy had already dashed away from his piles of supplies and was unwrapping the chain from the gate. Dani helped him slide the gate open.

The car rolled in, stained with grimy, bloody marks from ghoulish hands, but all the passengers intact. Dani felt a sense of relief, but lost it the moment she spied a group of the approaching undead. It seemed to be about ten or so stragglers who fell out of sync with the roving horde earlier. 

Dani pushed the rolling gate with all her strength as Jimmy pulled at it. Within moments, the gate rattled shut against the pole, and Jimmy looped the chain around it as quickly as possible, slamming the padlock shut.

Dani and Jimmy both stumbled back as the first crash of the ghouls smashed against the fence, rattling it. Torn fingers wrapped around the exposed metal rods, and through the green woven plastic, dark red blotches spread unevenly across the surface.

In moments, the gore had washed over the green cover with a sickly brown color.

Bob was already helping Mary out of the car into his golf cart. Each of her steps was labored. Sandy stood by awkwardly, not helping, as was her typical state. 

Alicia came stumbling out of the back seat and moved close to her mother. Dani noticed a slight sneer on Sandy’s face, no doubt annoyed and having strangers in her midst again. And a child no less, Dani thought in mock horror.

Dani felt Jimmy grab her hand and pull her to the side, away from the gate and into one of the open units. She glanced at him, and he nodded toward the Cadillac, which Edgar began wheeling into position in front of the gate, backing into the open unit. Jimmy pulled away his hand quickly.

“Sorry.”

Dani shrugged.

After the car was parked in front of the gate, Edgar stepped out, his gun wedged into the band of his pants. Dani walked out of the unit and gave him a knowing look. Jimmy followed along. Edgar shrugged and handed the gun over.

“Sorry… must have slipped my mind that I had it on me.”

Dani smirked. Edgar smiled back. She turned to Jimmy, who looked nervous, still.

She tucked the gun into the back of her pants and walked toward Bob and Mary in the cart. The moans of the ghouls were heavy in the air.

“Hey, Bob. Sandy. Meet Mary and Alicia.”

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #18 – Chekhov’s Gun

Day 17

By the time Dani’s cart had clattered onto the asphalt, her forearms were aching from having avoided the cart spilling over down the embankment. It took so much of her strength to keep the cart from tilting over. She rolled the cart forward, just off the curb, and in that moment, her hands loosened from the handle. The cart slammed into the Cadillac with a heavy crash. A rush of blood began to circulate in her now slack arms, and she nearly yelped from the sudden pain.

“Damn it. Sorry,” she groaned.

Edgar was idling nearby, having turned the car around. He rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned out as the cart bounced back from the impact. “You two start going. We’ll ride behind you and give you some cover.”

Dani glanced at Jimmy. He had already begun to push one of the carts down the street, which rattled terribly. The siren was long gone, so the loudest things around were the shopping carts and the Cadillac.

Goddamn it, she thought.

Dani grimaced and pushed her cart forward. She pushed herself to catch up to Jimmy. He began to pick up the pace, not quite a jog, but close enough. Dani picked up her pace, too. Edgar pulled the car out of park, and it began to roll forward, slowly, giving them a little distance, but still at a steady pace.

It was one block, but to their right was a trailer park, to their left was a back alley to a business park, and who knew if any ghouls had made their way to the crossing of Lyon and Acacia. Would they arrive at the cross street only to have that cruiser scream by their base?

Dani glanced behind her, just past the Cadillac, towards Orange Ave. Sure enough, dozens of ghouls had begun to converge on their position, hellish moans carrying on rotting, stinking wind. She gagged at the smell, pausing slightly to fight off nausea.

The pace felt glacial. Dani knew, logically, that she and Jimmy were pushing their carts as fast as they possibly could. But between weaving through debris, abandoned cars, and the consistent creep of Edgar’s Cadillac, things felt as though they dragged on. Their lives were dependent on Bob being able to get the gate open so everyone could get behind the safety of the storage yard’s walls, just before the crush of undead bodies arrived.

…

They had cleared about half of the block when the ghouls caught up to the Cadillac. The car bought Edgar, Mary, and Alicia protection, but greasy, shredded fingertips would slap and break on contact with the car’s body and windows. Even as the ghouls fell to pieces from violently ripping at the car, they were relentless, and in time enough of them could find some kind of handhold, or pile onto the car itself. Even if they could not get in, they could trap those inside. And who knew if the windows could stand up to a dozen flailing limbs indefinitely.

Edgar watched. Dani and Jimmy were pushing their carts as quickly as they could, but the ghouls were surprisingly fast now, as though the stimulation whipped them into a frenzy. He was worried their pace wouldn’t be enough. He did not want to be stuck in a car, covered in corpses.

Edgar glanced into the rearview mirror, past the exhausted Mary and her daughter, out to the street behind him. The bulk of the ghouls were far enough behind that it wouldn’t be a problem. The ghouls that had cut across the parking lot, however, had managed to stumble onto a shortcut. By Edgar’s count, he had about four ghouls right on top of his car. They couldn’t get in, and the windows were rolled up. He and the others were fine inside, but until he could lose the dead, he didn’t want to risk them coming close to the shopping carts.

Edgar dug around with a free hand at the back of his pants and drew the Glock he had hidden on him. He hadn’t separated from it since he and Jimmy had joined the group at the storage yard. He wouldn’t give up his gun for anything. He was thankful for that now.

He placed the Glock on the passenger seat and glanced back. The girl – Alicia, was it? – hadn’t noticed, warily eying the rear passenger window. She flinched when an oozing palm slapped at the glass. Edgar flinched, too.

He would need to pick the ghouls off, somehow, but he couldn’t drive and shoot. He looked through the rearview mirror and watched two of the ghouls fall to the ground. Now there were three immediately surrounding the rolling car.

Edgar couldn’t help but laugh a bit at the sight of the falling ghouls. He quickly turned his attention back to Dani and Jimmy ahead of him. Out of impulse, he scanned the area, a habit from driving back when the world had traffic.

Dani and Jimmy had passed an access road – a narrow lane between a building and a mobile home park with cracked asphalt full of potholes. Edgar glanced down the lane and saw a pair of ghouls stumble out – Dani and Jimmy hadn’t seen them. The ghouls stumbled toward the Cadillac.

“God damn it,” Edgar muttered.

Edgar cranked down the window, not all the way, but enough that he could fit his Glock and heavy hand outside. The two ghouls that had crept out from behind the building moved toward Dani and Jimmy. Edgar tapped the horn lightly, warning the pair. Jimmy glanced backward, puzzled. Dani pointed toward her left, and Jimmy turned to see the two undead wobbling down the sidewalk and nearly collapsing off the curb.

The ghouls seemed to regain their footing and continued their march. Edgar honked again, and the rotting chasers turned their attention to the Cadillac. They stumbled toward the driver’s side door with lurching, clumsy steps.

…

Jimmy wasn’t sure what the best course of action was. Their group was more than halfway home by now, but they were trailing walking corpses, and one pair arrived a little too close for comfort. Edgar has been riding slowly enough to keep the horde as a whole in check, but the other two made him wary. Where else might they emerge?

For a moment, he thought of shredded, oozing arms reaching out from a storm drain. Gnashing teeth from skull-like faces lolling out from hedges. He thought of broken fingertips digging into his arm from an abandoned car he hadn’t cleared. He thought of Dani being dragged around a corner by a tidal swell of rotting bodies. He thought of Edgar opening a door and some floor-bound monstrosity grabbing an ankle and sinking their broken teeth into Edgar’s leg.

He shuddered. They’d been unprepared for this supply run. Arrogant, even. The plan made sense, but the preparation was not adequate. He shook his head to clear it. No time now. He could evaluate everything that needed to be done once they were safe.

If safety was in the cards. He wasn’t sure yet.

Dani picked up her pace, and Jimmy followed suit. The sound of a gunshot ripped through the air.

Jimmy whirled around to see that Edgar had fired at one of the ghouls. A chorus of wild groaning followed from the trail behind the car.

Dani had turned back just as Edgar had taken aim and fired at the other attacker at the passenger side.

“What the fuck, where did he get the gun?” she asked.

Jimmy said nothing.

What could he say? Edgar had kept his gun hidden on him since they’d arrived at the Family Storage. Jimmy had said nothing. Safety first.

He snapped at Danielle, grabbing her attention. “Doesn’t matter right now, we’re almost there.”

Dani glanced between Jimmy and the Cadillac. She furrowed her brow. “A fucking secret gun? The whole time?”

Jimmy grunted and turned his attention back to his cart. This would complicate their stay. He had to think of something.

“Hey, we’ll have Ed lead them away for a bit and come back around, alright, when we get to the gate?” he asked.

Jimmy had hoped he wasn’t too obvious in giving himself time to smooth things over.

Dani cast a harsh glance and shrugged as she focused on the shopping cart. “Sounds like a plan.”

Jimmy slowed down slightly, just getting in range ahead of the front bumper of the car. “Ed, when we get to the gate, we’ll get Mary out – can you lead them away in the car and come back around?”

Edgar honked with the briefest of taps.

Jimmy jogged back toward Dani’s position, pushing the cart along. Dani seemed exhausted. He was fine with the weight; He’d worked on a ranch. As for the plan, it would need to work for now. He’d need to smooth everything over.

They were almost on Acacia, where they would need to make a turn. Dani and Jimmy began shifting their carts to the left, and Edgar slowed the Cadillac down a bit to give them room. Hungry corpses continued to moan and stumble after them all.

The whirr of the siren ripped through the air again, and Jimmy and Dani stared down the cross street on the right. The car was fast enough that trying to cross the street now would be dangerous. All they could do was helplessly watch the police cruiser approach their position with a trail of shambling, human shapes in its wake.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #17 – The Bull in the China Shop

Day 17

The sound of the police siren was the loudest thing Dani had heard in weeks, louder than Jimmy and Edgar’s clumsy attempt to break down the rolling gate just days ago. She stood in shock – unable to wrap her mind around what she was hearing. She felt a pain in her ears.

The world now was oppressively silent, only populated by a few hushed voices. Bob had called it “noise discipline” at the storage units. Dani had gotten so used to being quiet. She even cried quietly within her trailer, terrified that if she were just loud enough, errant, shambling corpses would be at her door.

Now there was this fucker in the cop car. They split the air with thunderous whoo-whoops, and every goddamn ghoul within a few blocks would be drawn to the noise. She couldn’t even laugh as loudly as she wanted at a dumb joke out of overwhelming caution.

She wanted to shoot the driver, whoever they were.

She glanced around at Jimmy, Edgar, Mary, and Alicia; they were also still, staring in the direction of the sound. The police car swerved into view, dodging abandoned cars along Orange Ave. It made no effort to slow down, and Dani assumed the driver had not seen them. She and the others probably looked like dead-eyed ghouls to the person speeding by at a reckless pace.

Dani felt her heart pound, and her stomach tighten. The ghouls in the area had turned to track the car that had sped through. She watched the dead bastards make awkward, lurching motions toward the intersection – despite the car being out of sight and the siren fading as it drove east.

But going east put Dani and the others in the path of the ghouls that were following the sound.

Jimmy glanced at Dani, his eyes wide. Edgar looked puzzled, having popped up, hand resting on the car’s hood. Alicia had partially leaned out of the car. She stared in the direction from which the cruiser had come.

Dani had already crept toward the street to get a look around the wall that divided the Walman’s shopping center from a bank next door. It was instinctual curiosity she had no control over, eager to get a glimpse of the fucking cop car. The weight of the iron poker in her hands did little to reassure her as she moved to gaze further down the road, where the car had been headed.

She stopped just short of the street and took a breath. She approached the wall and leaned against it. After a moment to steel herself, she leaned forward enough to look down the city’s main thoroughfare. Orange Rd. was actually a named portion of Highway 74 that ran to the mountains. The street was wide and wouldn’t afford much cover to anyone walking or driving down it.

She took a small step out onto the sidewalk, where the wall came to a cruel and sudden stop. An immediate stench wafted, and she was ready to move.

A ghoul swiped at her with a flailing stick-and-tissue arm from just around the other side of the wall. Dani dodged it and brought her fireplace poker down on the spindly limb, shattering it. It hung loosely, a bundle of rotting bone and meat, connected by a thin casing of leathery skin. The ghoul stumbled forward from the weight of the blow, and Dani quickly drew her arm back and down again, crushing the skull.

Her fears had been confirmed. A trail of ghouls was making its way down the street in the cruiser’s wake. This one had been pulled toward the street from the bank. Dani caught the last second as the cruiser had turned at another intersection. Dani looked back west at a mass of bodies moving in lurching, irregular steps down the road, toward the only other living people she knew. The fucker could have been dragging them for miles, now.

“Jesus.”

A pair of the undead, stumbling out of an enclosed motel courtyard, noticed her dispatching one of their own – maybe. She didn’t know if their brains worked that way, and she didn’t want to stick around to confirm it, either. All she noticed were shadowed, thin faces with open mouths and hoarse moans bellowing from between rotten teeth.

Dani turned around and started waving the rest of the group off. Her hand made wild arcs forward, pushing them on. She didn’t say anything, not wanting to attract more attention. She noticed one of the carts was already gone, and Jimmy was darting back up the embankment. She had been in the zone so much that she hadn’t heard the clattering cart.

Jimmy was already pushing the second cart down the embankment onto the street. Meanwhile, Edgar had climbed over to the driver’s side seat and was waving at Dani. His meaty hand slapped at the roof. “Vámonos!”

No sense in playing it quiet now. If she ever figured out who the asshole was in the cruiser, she’d crush his head beneath the wheel of their own car.

Dani nearly tackled the remaining cart and began wheeling it down the embankment as Edgar turned the engine. Jimmy had slammed the trunk, only managing to throw in the contents of one of the carts. They had to hurry. No time to pack

They’d need to push the remaining carts back to the storage unit.

Exposed, noisy, and pursued by dozens of greasy undead hands.

Was that even a real cop, anyway?

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #16 – The Siren

Day 17

Edgar entered the stockroom, following the girl who had been pushing the empty cart. The stockroom was darker than the store was, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust as he stepped into the darkness. When he finally could discern anything, he noticed Dani standing, supporting the weight of a woman who had a limp, bruised, and battered left leg.

The teenage girl rolled the cart over to the other women, and Dani glanced up at Edgar expectantly.

“Can you carry her?”

“Sure. Who are these two?”

Edgar shrugged and made his way to Dani and the woman. Dani turned her face to the woman she had been bearing the weight of.

“Mary, this is Edgar. He is with me, he’s going to carry you, okay?”

Mary seemed apprehensive – likely alarmed by Edgar’s size – from what he could tell. She nodded. 

“Alright. But what about my leg?”

Dani shook her head. “It’s really going to fucking hurt when it dangles. I will splint it when we get back to our camp. It’ll be safer there.”

“Dani’s right. I am seeing a few of those dead guys wandering out there. Makes me nervous,” Edgar added.

Mary grit her teeth and nodded rapidly. Edgar stepped behind Dani and lifted Mary’s arm over his shoulder and the back of his neck and, with a sudden motion, scooped the woman into his arms. Mary let out a sudden scream, but covered her mouth with her free hand. 

“Sorry,” Edgar said as gently and apologetically as he could. 

Dani took a few steps back and turned to the teenager.

“Alicia, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to push that shopping cart in front of the door back there.”

Alicia looked puzzled. “I thought this was to carry mom?”

“We need to come back to this place… I want to block off any of the doors with carts, so we know if something or someone came in here later.”

“Someone?”

Dani didn’t say anything further. Alicia shrugged and rolled the cart to the back door as she was told. 

Edgar began carrying Mary out of the stockroom. “Ms. Mary, we’ll get that leg looked at soon.”

“Thank you.” She winced. “Hurts like a motherfucker.”

Edgar snorted at that.

Dani hung back so Alicia wouldn’t get separated from the group. Edgar noticed Mary fidgeting and paused for a moment, allowing Mary to track her daughter as she did her task.

As Alicia rested the cart in front of the door next to the sliding loading door, it began to rattle violently. As the metal shook, a muffled moan could be heard from outside. She yelped and darted back toward the rest of the group as the door continued to shake.

Edgar watched this and had hoped the ghoul wouldn’t be smart enough to move around to the other side of the building.

…

The group of four made their way to the front of the store, where Jimmy was waiting, somewhat agitated, by two shopping carts of salvaged supplies. Dani noticed the nervous tapping of his right foot.

He spun around, shocked to see the group had grown by two more.

“Alright, so this is not what I expected out of a supply run,” he said. He adjusted a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose. He looked good, complete. Dani noticed four other pairs hanging from the neck of his shirt. He looked like a dork, now that she thought of it.

Dani made the introductions. “Edgar, Jimmy, this is Mary and her daughter Alicia. They were trapped in the stock room. They were here maybe about an hour before we showed up.”

Dani grabbed a walkie-talkie from the cart and handed one to Alicia. “Found a couple of these; they have chargers, but I think they have battery backups, too.”

“Cool,” Alicia added, studying the new gear. She clipped it to a belt loop on her hip.

Jimmy looked the two new survivors over and turned his attention toward Mary’s bruised leg. He glanced at Dani and was about to say something, but she cut him off. “It’s a break, a nasty one, but we should be able to set it. No cuts or anything.” 

She made sure to emphasize the “anything” as she spoke – no need to worry about an infection just yet. Jimmy shrugged, seemingly convinced for the moment. Dani shoved a walkie-talkie at him as well. He nearly dropped it at first, but bounced it between his hands, juggling it for a few moments until he caught a good grip, drawing it to his chest.

Jimmy turned back and gestured to the carts – they weren’t exactly full, but it was still a rather nice haul. “I think we’ve done pretty well… we can stretch this. I am worried about getting back, though.” 

He pointed across the street, and Dani glared into the distance. Six ghouls were wandering in a parking lot. Right between them and Dani’s position was their car… right in the middle of the street.

She’d wondered how good their hearing was. She had thought about the noise she had made in the storeroom, and she wondered whether it had carried somehow. A low, steady moan echoed from the other side of the Walman’s building, and Dani realized it was the ghoul that was at the other end of the loading door. At least a ghoul – singular. She was not sure if there were more clawing at the door back there or wandering between the building and the wall that separated the different business parks.

Jimmy continued, “I think if we are very, very quiet, we can get this stuff loaded into the trunk. It’ll be a tight fit in the seats, but-“

Edgar shifted Mary’s weight in his arms, and she yelped as pain shot through her leg. Everyone shuddered and glanced back at her, alarmed by the sudden jolt of noise.

“It’s gonna be harder with Edgar having his hands full…” Alicia whispered.

Jimmy turned to the teen and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“Sorry,” Mary said sweetly.

Dani shook her head and looked at her, “It’s nothing to apologize for. We just need to think this over. Also, take this,” Dani handed over another walkie-talkie, “just in case.”

Mary nodded and clutched the walkie.

Dani weighed their options for a moment. The six ghouls in the parking lot were toward the far end of the strip mall, near a clothing store. A couple of ghouls could also be seen at the gas station kitty-corner to the drugstore. That was eight. Another small cluster across the street to her right had motion in the window of a liquor store. No telling how many lurked there.

Dani turned back to the group. “I think what we need to do is head out there quietly and open the doors and trunk. We can then have Edgar take Mary and Alicia to the cab, and then Jimmy and I can run the carts out and dump everything into the trunk as fast as possible. Scramble.”

Edgar shrugged his shoulders, but the motion moved Mary in his arms, and she grimaced from the pain that shot through her leg. He looked at her with a furrowed brow. “Sorry, Miss.” 

He turned his gaze to Dani and Jimmy. “That should work,” he added. “But there are three carts. You’ll need to rush a second trip. Or have me run back to do it.”

Alicia crept toward the entrance. “I can open the doors, if that will help?”

Mary glared at her. “Absolutely not!”

Everyone cast a hard gaze at Mary, chiding her for the sudden burst in volume. She flinched but continued, “I don’t want you out there by yourself.”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Keys?” she asked, looking to Dani’s crew. “We need to hurry.”

“The doors are unlocked already,” Jimmy said. He tossed her the keys. “You just need to get the trunk.”

Alicia smiled and crept out the door. Mary began to wriggle in Edgar’s arms, but he held onto her tightly.

“Easy, Mary. Easy. We’ll keep her safe.”

Mary relented and fell limp. Dani and Jimmy rolled the carts into position as the girl made her way down the dried grass embankment. Within moments, she had opened the rear passenger door and then, climbing back out, moved to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk, ducking back out of sight from the ghouls wandering the lot across the street. She scanned the area quietly and waved Edgar over.

Edgar, ducking slightly to no effect given his size, carried Mary as quickly and gingerly as he could across the parking lot of the drug store and down the embankment. With Alicia’s help, he managed to load Mary into the back seat, but the process was painful and far from silent. Dani and Jimmy heard her whimpers and yelps all the way back at the Walman’s entrance, and stared at one another nervously.

Mary was finally loaded into the back seat, along with Alicia, after a few minutes had passed. Now, Edgar had crouched near the front of the passenger side. He scanned the area and nodded at Dani and Jimmy. He edged toward the front of the Cadillac, still crouched, his hand resting on the hood.

Dani saw him perk up and shift his gaze over the hood, west. Something nearby was making noise; he was the first to notice, then her. It was hard to tell what the sound was at first. It grew closer as she and Jimmy began to roll their carts out from under the drug store awning. Several high-pitched whoops echoed between the various plazas at the intersection where their drama was playing out.

The sudden sound of a police siren tearing through the air changed everything.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #15 – Manager on Duty

Day 17

The “office” was just a small box of a room, not built into the original construction of the pharmacy, but rather a prefabricated addition. It was ugly, too; the walls were made of plywood treated to look like they were made of higher quality wooden boards, smeared with greyish paint, and the frames were exposed metal. It was a cramped, thin-walled cube slapped into a corner of a musty warehouse.

There was no sound beyond the clatter of the delivery door as Dani had approached the office, and she had begun to grow nervous. Had the ghoul wandered out into the store, or was it lying in wait? What about the delivery door out to the back alley? Had it pushed its way through, somehow? It was so goddamn dark, even though her eyes had adjusted to not having much in the way of electric lights for weeks now. The lack of knowledge irked her. The lack of control quickly became the worst part of the apocalypse. Too many ways for chance to fuck her over. She hated it.

She paused at the door of the office. Things were quiet, and the inside was darkened to the point where she would need to get closer to see inside. The door was ajar, slightly, and a foul stench wafted out from the crack of the door and the frame. She nearly fell back at the odor. She didn’t approach closer or dare put her face near enough to look through.

“Is it in there?”

The quiet voice of the teenager behind her made Dani jump out of her skin. She whirled around and saw the teen standing there, only a few feet behind, cringing slightly. Dani furrowed her brow and wildly waved her free hand to shoo the girl away. The girl acquiesced, her eyes wide, staring at the door to the office.

Dani took a step closer to the door and rested the point of the fireplace poker against it. She gave it a brief shove with the iron tip, but the door didn’t move inward much. Something was blocking it.

Shit. Shit.

She tried again, giving it a harder push, but the resistance was so great that the tip of the poker slid across the plywood and hit the frame with a clang. Dani retracted her weapon and took a step back, listening. Something began to move inside, and within a moment the door clicked shut.

“Did it just close the fucking door?” the girl asked.

Dani turned back at the girl. She shook her head. “Not on purpose… these things are dumb. Really dumb.”

“So it can’t get out?”

Dani shrugged as she gazed at the office. “Probably not, but I still need to get in there,” she turned back to the stranger. “Might be keys, walkies, maybe a gun.” 

As for the girl, she was a teen, probably no more than 14 or 15. Dani looked back toward her. 

“You should keep an eye on your mom for a few minutes. I’ll take care of this.”

The girl trudged away as Dani turned her attention toward the office. The first step was to open the door, but now there was definite shuffling going on behind it. She stepped over to the office window out front, away from the door, and within an instant, a bloody and rotted hand slapped against the thin pane of reinforced plastic that served as a window, and then the rest of the ghoul rolled into view from the gloom.

It was thin… most of these things were. Sallow skin hung loosely from its torso. The shirt was once a white button-up, but now it was mostly dull and grey with deep brown stains down the neck and chest. A moldy green and brown striped tie hung loosely from the creature’s neck. The face, or at least what hadn’t slid off from the skull, had the faintest trace of a mustache and the top of the head had thin patches of hair. On the hip was a walkie-talkie in a holster.

The ghoul was far enough from the door that she could open it and then step back to regroup. She ducked low, just below the window, and edged her way toward the door around the corner. She grabbed the doorknob and gave it a turn, only for it to rattle ineffectively. The office was locked. Of course. 

What were the options? She stepped back in view, and she watched the ghoul trace her movements at the window. It slapped at the plastic, which rattled loudly given the quiet of the storeroom. It wasn’t strong plastic at all, but breaking it down would be noisy. She scanned the area for a key but saw nothing. There was no choice in the matter.

That is when she heard the click of the doorknob.

The ghoul was still at the window, far enough away from opening the door, but somehow the knob had turned. Not missing a moment, Dani dashed over and kicked the door open. The plywood door slammed against the wall and the ghoul, who had been tethered to the knob by a lanyard and keyring on his hip, flew back into a filing cabinet and collapsed into a heap. Dani took two huge steps into the darkened office and put all her weight into driving the poker deep into the ghoul’s exposed eye socket. The ghoul flailed a bit as the poker stirred the brain matter within the skull, and after a few moments of vigorous stirring, it was now completely still. Gunk frothed from the socket.

Dani dutifully pulled at the poker from inside the skull, but it became wedged on bone, likely the orbital of the skull. She gave it another tug, but still no motion. Annoyed, she placed a foot on the former manager’s chest and grabbed the handle with both hands. After a mental count of three and a deep breath, she pulled with all her might.

The poker ripped free from the skull, arcing a trail of blood. brain and shards of bone in the air as she lost her balance. She herself only remained aloft because he foot had smashed through the ghoul’s chest cavity. The poker traveled full speed back behind her and rattled the tiny office’s window. Noisy vibration echoed in the storeroom. The poker’s hook lodged itself on the frame and rocked violently before clattering on the plywood floor. Dani studied the window, and just beyond, she saw the teen who was overlooking the chaos. Gore dripped down the plastic window frame in large, blobby chunks. Little ribbons of white matter trailed in the sloppy mix.

“Gross,” the teen said.

…

Edgar stood near the front entrance of the store, hanging back under the awning, staring out at the parking lot. His cart was as full as he could arrange. Anything that seemed edible or not damaged beyond being safe to eat was piled in. There was no order to the stacks, and he’d considered going through and making his assemblage less chaotic. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. That could be done from the safety of the storage unit.

Beyond the parking lot, he noticed a gas station on the opposite corner from the pharmacy. Survivors had clearly hit the place for whatever gas they could find. Was there any more left? He wondered. 

What had really caught his attention, however, was the sight of a ghoul tangled up in a seatbelt, attempting to escape the opened door of a sedan. The bastard didn’t have enough sense to unbuckle the belt or even twist its own body in such a way that it could free itself. It simply would extend itself and the belt as far as it could go before the belt automatically retracted, pulling it back into the car, violently. Each time a limb or its head would bash against the frame, at least from what Edgar could see from across the street.

Eventually, Edgar figured, the thing would eventually see itself free from the car, from the constant friction of the belt. Maybe it would saw through part of its torso.

“Fuckin’ crazy,” he mumbled.

“What is?”

Jimmy rolled his cart toward the door, not full, but still, a fair amount of medical supplies rattled inside. Edgar saw some prescription drugs in the mix as well. Interesting.

Edgar’s grip was firmly on his cart, so he nodded his head across the street. “Those things. I’ve been watching this dumb dude across the street trying to get out of a car.”

Jimmy set his cart aside and squinted into the distance. “How the hell are your eyes so good?”

Edgar shrugged. “How are yours so goddamn bad?”

“You saw my glasses got smashed, right, asshole?”

Edgar smirked. Jimmy paused a moment, staring into the distance, and then huffed. Jimmy paused for a second. He realized an opportunity.

“Fuck it. Gonna grab some pairs from the pharmacy, I think there may be a couple left.” He whirled around and made his way from the front entrance, “Be back in a minute. Watch my shit.”

“Make sure they look good, some nice bifocals, maybe,” Edgar said.

He turned to see Jimmy walking into the darkness, his arms raised above his head, his middle fingers raised higher still. Jimmy vanished into an aisle. Edgar turned his back to the entrance and continued to watch the ghoul. It snapped back again, the back of its head smashing into the door frame in what seemed like a puff of black mist. It slumped behind the door for a moment. There was no movement and Edgar wondered if it had finally bashed its own brains in.

A moment later, it rose from behind the door, wriggling and thrashing. After some struggle, it finally untangled itself from the seatbelt, taking strained, wobbling steps from the car door.

“There you go, good job,” Edgar muttered.

The ghoul hit the curb of the gas mart and smashed into a wall, scrunching up like a sack of rotten meat and sliding down the surface of the stucco.

“Hey, are you Edgar?” asked a whispered voice.

He glanced to his side at a teenage girl, whose brown hair was a tangled mess. She looked at him and shrugged. She made her way to one of the shopping carts in the corral and started to pull it loose from the others.

“Dani said you can help carry my mom to the car.”

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #14 – Shelf Stable

Day 17

The darkness within the building, even with the daylight pouring in through the windows in dusty beams, broken or otherwise, was intimidating. It was that strange adjustment between light and dark, when passing from one into the other, where one’s eyes needed to adjust. It was a momentary lapse in vision, and it made Edgar nervous.

Edgar took point, carefully stepping on the layer of broken glass at the building’s entrance in an attempt to muffle as much of the crunching as he could. There was little to be done, and he paused, frustrated. He finally gave up and made his way in toward the carpeted floor, wincing at the steady cacophony of glass beneath his feet.

The store had the overwhelming scent of mold and mildew. Presumably, the store had been open to the elements for only a couple of weeks, but decay had settled in quickly. Edgar watched a light cloud of spores and dust puff into the air as he stepped onto the carpet. Dani and Jimmy entered, and the three of them overlooked the darkened aisles and endcaps. Many of the shelves were bare from a combination of looting and spillage onto the aisles. The signs of wild animals were pretty clear, too. Dani swore she saw shining eyes in the darkness, forcing Edgar to crane his neck trying to observe them. He saw nothing.

That didn’t mean there was nothing there, though.

Jimmy grabbed one of the carts and wriggled it from the collection between the entrance and exit doors. The sound of clashing metal gave everyone pause. They all held their breath, wary of any telltale moans of the undead, but heard nothing in response. Jimmy shrugged and grabbed another two carts from the tangled rows.

“I figure we can load up everything we can, fill the car, and then stash these elsewhere for another time. Sound good?”

“That can work. Just grab anything helpful,” Dani added. 

She glanced around, seeing shelves just behind one of the checkouts near the entrance. She leaned over the counter, sat on it, and swung her feet over. From behind the counter, she grabbed a couple of boxes and waved them at her companions, who had been watching in silence.

“Does anyone smoke?”

She shook two cartons of cigarettes that made a satisfying, thunky rattle – the boxes were a bit dusty, but still full. 

She smiled. Jimmy smiled. Edgar smiled. If there were a ghoul here, they probably would have smiled too.

Dani began stacking whatever boxes and packs she could find on the counter. “I’ll grab anything I can find here.”

Jimmy grinned at Edgar. He looked like a fucking dork. Edgar couldn’t help but laugh to himself as he grabbed one of the shopping carts, which looked overly small compared to him. Not that he was incredibly tall, but his thick frame tended to dwarf anything near him. He suddenly had a picture in his mind of a Shriner in a little car and smiled at the image.

He began to wheel his cart away, but turned back to Dani and Jimmy. “I’m going to hit the food aisles. See what canned stuff is left.”

Jimmy nodded. “I’ll go to the pharmacy and grab everything I possibly can – whatever prescriptions are there.”

Dani began to toss boxes and packs of cigarettes into her cart. She nodded to the other end of the building. “I’m going to poke around in the stockroom, then. Maybe that didn’t get hit as hard by scavengers.”

“Wish we had some walkies or something,” Edgar added.

Dani nodded as she dropped an armful of stuff into her cart. “There may be some in the back. We’ll see.”

The three survivors wheeled off in search of supplies.

…

Jimmy grabbed everything he felt was potentially useful from the shelves leading toward the pharmacy itself. Mostly off-the-shelf supplies and medications. He weighed the importance of antacids in his mind, shrugged, and threw the few remaining bottles into the cart. Why not? Cough drops, too. Cartoon vitamin chewables were fair game. He even snatched up several bottles of fish oil pills. You never know… Hell, he even kept a lookout for the horny goat weed.

No signs of condoms. The “Jimmy hats,” as Dad used to say. Jimmy hated that – his dad always saying Jimmy was named for them after getting through one of them. Asshole. Those were probably near the front, at the checkout. It was the most embarrassing place he could think of. Back when you had to ask for the prophylactics from some teen or old lady working minimum wage at a job they hated.

He didn’t have plans for the condoms. Though at that notion, Dani’s ass resting on the checkout counter flashed in his mind. Well… you never know, he thought to himself.

He had also found a pair of canvas totes in the seasonal aisle on the way and had them slung over his shoulder. He could stand to carry a couple of bags of goods if the cart proved too full.

Given the state of the store, that was highly unlikely. Pickings were slim. Bandages, cough medicine, and typical medicine cabinet supplies were certainly diminished. Painkillers were virtually non-existent. He did manage to find a couple of bottles of aspirin and some ointments. Anything, at this point, was a stroke of luck.

What Jimmy hoped was that he could convince Edgar of the plan to stay in Emmett. The idea of heading to San Diego was a lost cause. It had to be.

He stopped pushing the cart when the wheel hit a metal shelf that had been pried from the shelving frame. The clang made him wince, but he heard nothing after. He bent down to clear the shelf and caught a glimpse of a feral cat resting further along the bottom shelf in the aisle, hiding between a couple of bottles of hydrogen peroxide.

“Hey, how are you, little guy? Little lady? Can’t ask to see if you got balls, that’d be rude, right?”

He set the loose shelf against the unit and turned his attention back to the cat.

“You gonna help me out? Got a place to stay?”

The cat’s eyes were wide and scared. Clearly, the world had not been kind to it since the dead rose. Jimmy wondered if the ghouls were eating animals. He hadn’t seen anything like that yet, but it was always possible. They didn’t seem particularly picky. He felt sick to his stomach for the cat.

Then it got worse. He thought of his sister. He shook his head. He didn’t want to consider it further.

He thought for a moment about trying to take the cat with him. There was no point, not now. Maybe he’d bring a towel and a plastic carrier from the storage units next time he came back to the store.

Not that there’d be a guarantee the cat would be there, though.

He sighed, clicked his tongue, and gently reached for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. The cat yelped and hissed, swiping at his hand but missing. Jimmy instinctively retracted his hand. There was no sense in dipping into the peroxide, yet. 

He extended his sneaker out toward the bottle and knocked it onto the ground. The cat leapt out from the shelf and darted down the aisle with a dramatic howl, knocking down a wire rack as it rounded a corner. The rack clattered loudly as it hit a shelf and then the floor.

“Goddamn it.”

He shrugged and grabbed the peroxide bottles, placing them in the cart.

He wondered what goodies awaited behind the pharmacy counter.

…

Edgar dutifully grabbed whatever non-dented canned good he could find. He remembered something about dents spoiling the food from his Abuela. Any box, or plastic, crinkling package, or aluminum case found its way into his cart – provided it looked potentially edible. And yet his cart was maybe a third full by an optimistic estimate.

Still, it was more food he had seen in days, and if most of it was good, they’d eat well with a little rationing. Not that he had intended to stay all that long. He considered the dented cans once again, but stood by his original decision to leave them be. If they were good, they would keep for next time.

Edgar had already gathered that Jimmy was adamant about sticking around town; San Diego was a “killbox,” he argued. Edgar wondered what the skinny redheaded fuck knew about “killboxes.” Edgar’s Papá had been in Desert Storm. He’d seen some real shit, Edgar knew more about the idea of a killbox second-hand than his little tweaker friend ever did.

Edgar peered down at a burn-mark on his hand. He knew a lot about the results of a killbox. His Papá’s anger was ever-present.

That was why San Diego was important. Papá was there, with Mamá, Tía, Abuela, Angel, Mari, María… La familia. They were around. Papá had to keep them safe. He was a tough son of a bitch. Tough, but he loved his family and would protect them, even if he had to force them with a strong hand. That’s why Edgar was as tough as he was.

Edgar grabbed a couple of likely stale single-serving bags of tortilla chips from a pile of broken bags and loose chips. A nearby rat squeaked as he ripped the bag away. Edgar snorted.

“Good times for you, eh?”

The rat did not respond.

He wheeled his cart further into the next aisle, which seemed to formerly hold all sorts of sodas and drinks. There weren’t many cases and bottles left. He prayed a silent prayer for beer.

Edgar agreed that there was some sense in Jimmy’s plan. The Family Storage had proven pretty safe, and there was certainly room for them. The plan to reinforce it, based on some of Dani’s talk, also seemed like a good idea. But that was fine for everyone else. They didn’t have their own people waiting for them.

Edgar paused for a moment, staring at a can of soda that was standing alone on a shelf, a thin layer of dust dulling the shiny aluminum top. What was it about the soda? He stared at the can a moment longer and realized he had seen it just a few minutes ago in the car. It had tumbled out of the bag in the passenger seat and onto the floorboard. It remained there, undisturbed for weeks, next to the thrashing, undead mother.

He thought about the car, what the woman’s final moments must have been like. He thought about the baby in the back. He could have sworn he’d seen something move under the overturned child’s seat.

Edgar’s breath caught in his throat for a moment, and he let out an ugly, half-choked gasp. He felt tears coming on and quickly wiped his eyes with his massive forearm. He punched himself in the side of his head for good measure.

“No llorar.”

After a brief sniffle, he glanced ahead, his eye caught but the most glorious sight he could ask for. There was beer afterall.

“Amén.”

…

The stockroom seemed mostly untouched. Most of what was inside was still packaged as it had been when it had arrived. Dani was excited about the potential of it all. Perhaps they could bring back a moving truck and fill it later on.

It seemed in the panic, people grabbed at the shelves but didn’t think to pry away the shrink wrap and tear into the cardboard. Their loss.

The small forklift in the stockroom also seemed promising. Maybe that could be useful back at home. She had no idea if it ran on gas or electricity, but the ability to move large things around might make it easier to build a reinforced wall at the storage yard.

This trip turned out to be a lot more successful than she had hoped. It was just a matter of planning and-

The thunk of a cardboard box onto the concrete floor broke Dani’s concentration. She spied the box, slightly bent and battered, and looked up the high shelves that made up the wall of the storeroom. On the second tier, maybe about eight feet from the ground, she spied the source of the disturbance. 

A wide-eyed woman and a teenage girl stared at her. The girl’s brow was furrowed in concern while the mother’s eyes were shockingly wide and bloodshot.

Dani took a step back, taking in the scene. “Holy shit, are you two… okay?”

Neither responded. Dani looked into the mother’s eyes and tried to follow her gaze. Dani hadn’t noticed anything alarming until she felt the weight of the fireplace poker in her own hand.

“Oh, right,” she whispered.

Dani bent down, placing the poker on the ground and scooting it ahead of her with her foot. The scraping of the metal on the concrete was uncomfortable in the echoing stockroom.

“Look, I am just here on a supply run. Do you need help? Do you have someplace to go? My name is Danielle, but you can call me Dani.”

Dani waited for a response. The girl looked at her mother for a moment, who sighed and finally blinked.

The girl spoke first, her voice was low and hoarse.

“We’re trapped here. There’s one of those things in the store, and my mom’s leg is really hurt.”

Dani glanced around the stockroom.

“I haven’t seen anything? Maybe it wandered off? How long have you two been in here?”

“I think about an hour,” the woman replied.

Shit, Dani thought. Something could still be here.

Dani kept her distance, not wanting to intimidate them. She raised her hands in an open gesture like she was surrendering.

“Where did you last see it?”

“There’s an office around the corner,” the girl whispered.

Dani peered behind her and saw the corner that led to the presumed office. She turned back to the two women and held her finger to her lips to signal them to keep quiet. She picked up the poker from the concrete as carefully as she could.

She was worried about the noise that she had already made. Surely if something was there, it would have been alerted by now. It could lumber out at any second.

She sighed and started toward the corner. The loading doors ahead rattled slightly, probably from the wind. Or maybe a ravenous ghoul just on the other side.

It was hard to tell these days.

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The Dead Life #13 – Detritus

Day 17

The drive to Walman’s Pharmacy was quiet, uneventful, and eerie. The street was littered with debris and a couple of abandoned cars, but no ghouls appeared in the immediate area. Whatever instincts motivated the ghouls to wander in and out of a given area Dani had no clue about, but she was thankful it had worked in the supply run’s favor. Looking down Lyon Avenue, past the highway that served as the main street through Emmett, she could make out movement – distant idle wanderings. As long as she and the guys kept the noise low and got in and out, then there wouldn’t be a need to worry about the living dead, at least on the street.

The turn into the parking lot of the pharmacy was cut off by two cars that had collided. Jimmy braked and looked it over. The small strip mall looked abandoned, and none of the businesses appeared to have any movement within. As for the pharmacy, it faced the highway, so there was no telling what the condition was within.

“Maybe we can squeeze in beside them?”

Edgar shook his head. “Just go over the fucking curb, man.”

Jimmy thought about it for a second. “Let’s just try around the corner.”

Jimmy stepped off the brake, and the car crept forward.

Dani leaned over to the middle of the space between the front seats, eyes scanning the area. “I don’t think we should move any closer to Orange than we are now. I see some of those things down the road ahead. Who knows how many may be on the main street here that we cannot see.”

“Do you want to get out and move the cars?” Edgar snorted.

“No, I think we should just park right here. Put some distance between us and the shop if anything goes wrong.”

Jimmy parked the car. The brakes squealed, and Dani winced. They’d need to find something quieter down the line. 

“Good idea. We won’t be stuck in a parking lot if shit goes south.”

Edgar opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Alright. Let’s get going.”

Dani and Jimmy hopped out and grabbed some weapons from the back seat. Jimmy had found a heavy wrench in a storage unit. He handed Edgar an aluminum bat. Dani had grabbed an old fireplace poker and had her gun tucked into an inner pocket of her jacket. She didn’t want to risk calling anything over with a gun if she could help it. Dani had her screwdriver, too. Jimmy had picked up a dulled army knife from one of the units and kept it tucked into his belt.

The trio stepped away from the car and onto the grassy divider between the sidewalk and the parking lot. It had already been a little over two weeks without consistent water, and the lawn had rapidly dried up. Emmett sat in Jacinto County, a desert, technically. Dead grass was everywhere. Dani heard crunching with each step they took.

Water was going to be something important to consider for the long term, she thought. She’d already begun collecting buckets and basins from around the units for a rain catch, but that still depended on the rain. She didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Not anymore.

Dani and Jimmy were already a few feet from the smashed-in front door of the pharmacy when they noticed Edgar had not kept up with them. He was hard to miss, given his size.

They saw Edgar staring into a car that was parked in the lot. The window remained rolled up, but the movement inside the car seemed loud given how quiet the streets were. Dani saw thrashing through dirty windows.

Jimmy called back, “Edgar, man, what’s up?”

Edgar stood near the car, watching a ghoul slap at the driver’s side window; it rattled with each strike.

Edgar looked over to Jimmy and Dani, still standing right at the driver’s side door. The ghoul continued to thrash.

“I think she went to my high school…” His voice started loud but trailed off at the end of the implication.

Dani glanced over at Jimmy. His brow furrowed, and he walked over to Edgar. She stood near the entrance, peering around, wary of any other motion. Nothing inside, yet.

The entrance consisted of three doors: the one-way entry, the one-way exit, and a doorway that was used for the shopping carts. The glass across all three doors had been shattered, and well-trod shards littered the tiled entryway inside. This place had been hit before, she reasoned. Probably during the initial panic when everyone knew shit had hit the wall.

Daylight was still bright enough that the interior was illuminated, but just barely. She saw no movement inside, but that didn’t mean the pharmacy was empty. She also saw empty shelves and began to worry.

It’d be risky. Anything was risky anymore.

…

Jimmy had stepped up to Edgar and the parked car.

“You good, man?”

Edgar sighed and looked back at Jimmy. Edgar shrugged.

“I mean, it’s hard to tell because that was a few years ago and she’s dead, but… yeah. I fucked her once, and now she’s just… dead, but not. What the fuck.”

Jimmy peered inside the car. The ghoul was at one point a blonde woman with delicate features. Now her skin was leathery and sliding off in places, discolored with rot and moisture from the inside of the car, a small hatchback. He glanced down and noticed a pool of gunk had been seeping into the fabric of the seat, and the floorboards were slick with something that probably smelled foul. He gagged, almost smelling it here in the crisp January air.

She was held in place by a belt, but her repeated motions ended up dragging the fabric deep enough into her flesh that her torso seemed to have deep, bloody grooves that bled through her worn clothes. She had died wearing a black tank top with sparkling stones that had spelled something at one point, now dulled by rot and grime. Some of the fake stones had rubbed off the shirt from the belt. A large chunk of her right arm seemed to be missing near the elbow.

As near as Jimmy could figure, it was a bite. Black putrescence ringed a crater of gooey, wiry flesh.

Jimmy looked through the rest of the car. It wasn’t packed with supplies or any sign of an escape attempt. There was a bag in the passenger’s seat. It was unclear what was in it. She must have been attacked early on, maybe just after New Year’s. He wondered what the scene had been like when it happened.

The ghoulish moaning continued as the woman rocked in her seat. But motion from the back seat, a subtle motion, drew Jimmy’s eyes.

In the back, he saw a baby seat, stained brown, and a thin, discolored blanket draped over it. The seat looked like it had been pried from where it was meant to be, and it had fallen to its side. A tiny, desiccated hand peeked out from under the blanket and twitched slightly.

At least what seemed to be left of a hand.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

Edgar looked over at him and followed his gaze.

“Fuck.”

The two men stood in silence. What could be done? Jimmy put a hand on Edgar’s shoulder and tilted his head toward the store. It was time to move.

“Should we… I dunno. Handle them?”

Jimmy shook his head. “They’re… fine where they’re at. We need to get the stuff and get out of here.”

Edgar looked at his friend, Jimmy thought he looked a little more tired than usual – almost pained.

“But leave her like that, man? She deserves better…”

“Everyone did. Everyone.”

Edgar trudged away from the car. Jimmy took a position just behind him.

…

Dani watched the men approach. Edgar’s eyes were wide and red, as though he were holding back tears. Jimmy glanced back at the car, shook his head, and locked his eyes on the back of Edgar’s shaved head.

“What was it?” she asked.

Edgar shrugged.  “Thought I knew her… in the car.”

Jimmy said nothing.

Edgar stepped up to the entrance of the pharmacy, swinging the baseball bat over his shoulder.

“It’s not us. Let’s keep that up,” he said.

And that was that.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #12 – Hunger Pangs

Day 17

Lunch consisted of a single loaf of canned meat split five ways, a box of crumbled crackers, and some sun-brewed tea. This was the most any of them had eaten in what seemed like days.

They sat in silence for a while, in the “conference” room. It wasn’t much more than an office with a large table located just behind the front counter of the main office. Once upon a time, it had served as a meeting place for the employees, back when Dani’s parents were still in California. Since then, it had become a storage room, and since the arrival of Jimmy and Edgar, it had become a dining room, of sorts. The room took on new life after the death of the world. The irony was not lost on Dani.

Sandy broke the silence.

“Does anyone want another glass?”

Edgar looked up from his crumbs. He had wet his thumb to pick up the stray remains of crackers. He held out his glass. “Please,” he replied.

Sandy took his paper cup and filled it with the last of the tea.

“I have a couple more brewing. The last of my mix.”

Edgar took the small cup and took a large gulp from it. Jimmy sipped at his tea, contemplating.

Bob wasn’t at the table. Instead, he was near the door, seated in an office chair, carefully looking over the makeshift repairs on the front door. Only one of the two doors had shattered, but that was still a large hole to fill. A couple of bookshelves laden with heavy boxes of books had done a lot to reinforce the cardboard and plywood. With the moving truck parked just in front of the door, there was little chance of a ghoul having enough leverage to push inside.

In truth, it was mostly cardboard, and Dani knew it made Bob nervous. He’d said as much, several times today. The moving truck in front of the entrance was an extra layer of protection, sure, but what he needed was plywood, maybe more shelves, and boxes, too. “For his peace of mind,” he’d said again, several times today.

Dani sat at the table, finishing up the last bite of cold Spam. She’d taken small bites, hoping to make the meager meal last. She stared at her now-empty plate, still hungry, still miserable. Had it been worth it to stick around? There was safety here, sure, but it was all relative, and safety seemed like a secondary concern when the hunger pangs started. They needed food. Now.

She coughed, something between a tired cough and seeking attention. She spoke. “I think we need to go on a supply run.”

Bob turned his gaze toward her and nodded. He rose from his seat near the door and took a seat at the table.

“I think you’re right. We should do it today. We still got light out there,” he added.

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let me help. Saw a couple of stores nearby. We can check them out.”

Dani shook her head.

“It’s too risky to hit multiple places right now. We’re in no big hurry. We need to get the most out of one place and then regroup.”

“What do you think?” Bob asked.

Dani wiped at her forehead with the heel of her palm, a habit she’d inherited from her dad. There were a number of options all within a couple of blocks. There was a Market Bros. just down Acacia, and down Lyon, there was a drug store, one of the huge chains that had a little bit of everything.

Dani looked over at Sandy. She seemed lost in thought.

“How are we for medication?” Dani asked.

Sandy peered around for a moment and shook her head slightly, aware enough to answer the question.

“We don’t have a whole lot. We only had a basic first aid kit here, and even that was mostly empty. Other than that, Bob and I have our prescriptions and personal medications, I assume.”

Edgar lit a blunt. “Don’t forget about all that dope you got from us.”

“I don’t smoke that garbage,” Sandy sneered.

Edgar shrugged. “Your loss.”

Sandy glared at Edgar, who was nearly twice her size by weight alone. Jimmy punched Edgar on his arm, making him drop his blunt.

“Hijo de puta.”

“Respect, Edgar. We’re guests.”

Edgar picked up his joint from the table and took a big drag. “My apologies.”

Dani grabbed a legal pad that sat at the center of the table and began scrawling some notes. She thought out loud as she wrote.

“I think Jimmy, Edgar, and me -”

“I,” Jimmy added. “The pronoun you would use for the sentence if it were just you would be the one that comes at the end of the list.”

Dani cast a furtive glance at him and grunted. “I didn’t finish the sentence.” She continued, “Anyway, we can hit the Walman’s about a block down. Provided the place hasn’t been cleaned out, we should be able to get food and medication there.”

Dani glanced at Jimmy. He smirked at her.

Sandy coughed. She looked at the trio, eyes darting between Dani, Edgar, and Jimmy. She then gave Dani a pointed gaze, a warning gaze.

“Are you sure, Danielle?”

Dani didn’t have time for Sandy’s paranoia.

“I’m sure. We’d better get going now.”

She rose to her feet, and Jimmy stood up nearly as quickly. Edgar rolled his eyes, took a huge drag off his blunt, and begrudgingly rose to follow as the other two stepped away.

Dani handed Bob the legal pad as she passed by his side of the table. He placed his hand on her hand as he grabbed the pad. It was a reassuring gesture, and Dani squeezed Bob’s hand.

“What’s this, kid?”

“Some rough plans. You’ll keep watch?”

“We’ll keep watch,” Bob nodded. He looked over at Sandy.

Edgar stepped toward Bob and passed him the joint. Bob nodded and took a drag, following behind the other three.

Sandy looked miserable at the idea of leaving the relative safety of the building. Regardless, she trudged out the door after everyone else.

… 

The rattle of the side gate as Bob dragged it open was like a sudden and furious thunderstorm. Everything was so quiet now out in the world that the sound of the gate probably carried a significant distance. Maybe blocks away. Ghouls would be attracted to the sound, he figured.

Gate open, Bob stepped aside as the Cadillac drove through. Dani sat in the back seat and gave Bob a short wave. He was glad he’d had her tuck another gun into her jacket. He wasn’t suspicious of the two men beyond inherent reason, but he also knew better than to be unarmed in any situation. He’d learned that much in ‘Nam. The two dead guerrillas that tried to catch him unawares as he took a piss had been a hard, but important lesson.

The Cadillac drove into the street and made a left. They were on their own now.

Bob slid the gate shut and took a length of chain and a padlock to it. Content with the security measures, he stepped into the nearest unit on the lot and took a seat in one of the salvaged lawn chairs. Sandy sat impatiently in the golf cart, stewing.

Bob placed the legal pad on the TV-tray next to his chair. He looked it over and noticed there were a lot of notes in tiny, cramped handwriting. He’d expected Danielle’s writing to be tidy. Why he expected that, he didn’t know. He’d just assumed.

The notes seemed scattered, but he saw where she was heading with them. There were some good ideas. He’d need to talk them over when she got back. Maybe over some beers. He’d asked her to grab him a six-pack if she could.

God, he hoped she could.

He leaned back in the chair and stared out of the unit and down toward the other end of the property. He was already feeling tired, but didn’t want to risk sleeping and being caught off guard.

“What do you think these things are, Sandy?” He tried to fight the fatigue with conversation.

Sandy glanced and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe some kind of mutant or something?”

“Like those old sci-fi movies?”

“I guess. I don’t know. I generally don’t believe in that stuff, but God works in mysterious ways.”

Bob leaned forward in his chair. Now this was interesting.

“Y’all still believe in God after all this?”

Sandy smiled, albeit faintly. She looked a little sad, but there was an air of resolve to her as well.

“Of course I do. God is why I’ve survived.”

Bob scratched his chin with a chipped thumbnail. He hadn’t really considered the existence of God much, at least since his late twenties, which were spent knee-deep in rice paddies and being shot at by the Vietnamese. Sandy was maybe thirty years younger than him and hadn’t had the pleasure of such experiences. Her position made a bit more sense, taking that into account.

“Y’know, it’s probably some sort of chemical thing,” he suggested. ”Lotta weird stuff tested by the government over the years. My uncle was one of those who was caught up in that secret syphilis thing back in the fifties – that thing Clinton mentioned a couple of years back. Probably some experiment gone wrong. Bringing back the dead like that. Spook shit.”

Sandy shook her head.

“They’re not dead.”

“Excuse me?”

“The only way the dead could rise is at God’s hand, and I don’t see God in any of this. They’re sick with something. They’re crazy. But only one man ever truly rose from the dead. It was Jesus Christ.” She locked eyes with Bob, and after a moment, averted her gaze to the gate.

Bob rolled his eyes. Of course, she was a zealot. Fuck.

…

Sandy stepped off the cart and began to pace a bit. She didn’t seem to enjoy being idle here in the open. She was on the wrong end of 50, now, and her curled hair had gone unmanaged for weeks. She still carried a little bit of that middle-aged spread, but even that was now receding. She was noticeably beginning to shrink in other places, though. Though perhaps she had always been small and he’d failed to notice.

Bob leaned back in his chair.

“These things, they remind me of a movie I saw when I was on leave. Might have been ‘68? I was home for a bit, and I had no girlfriend, no real family besides a drunk-ass daddy, and I had money to burn.”

Sandy stopped pacing.

“Anyway, so I could have done something really damn stupid with that government money, but I just decided to go to the movies, right? I was back in New York, and there was a theater that ran a few movies together for one price. You go there and spend hours watching shit and eating popcorn. Good times. A lot of horror flicks, sometimes a nudie stitched in.”

“What was the movie?” she asked.

“I don’t remember the name, but it was something with Vincent Price as the last man in a world surrounded by these vampire freaks. They were smarter than these dead shits we are dealing with, but I definitely see some similarities now that I think about it.”

“How did the movie end?”

“Vincent Price died. I guess that’s the only ending that would make sense.”

Sandy took a seat in the golf cart. She leaned over the steering wheel.

“No more happy endings,” she muttered.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #11 – Stay A While, Think It Over

Day 17

Dani watched carefully as Jimmy rattled the sliding gate. The two of them had managed to get the crooked and bent gate back fully onto the track, but it was uneven and rattled terribly. The metal was fatigued and out of balance. The supports were heavily bent by the front fender of the Cadillac the day before.

“Can we fix the frame?” she asked hopefully.

Jimmy took a step back to study the entirety of the gate mechanism. His red hair and scruff of a beard were looking particularly vibrant in the morning sun. It was amazing what a solid night’s rest could do for anyone’s appearance, even if they were still covered in filth from who knows how many days on the run. Then again, the chance to get some rest without the fear of being eaten by the living dead seemed to be as good as it got these days.

“Imagine that a year ago, everyone was worried about the goddamn computers not working anymore. Then again, everyone was kind of right in a wrong kinda way. Now here we are, and it’s the gates that crashed.” He laughed to himself. Dani shrugged as he looked back at her with a dopey expression on his face. His grin dropped.

“Gates, Windows. You get it, right?”

Dani shrugged noncommittally.

Jimmy grunted, “damn,” and turned back to the gate.

“Okay. Well, if we could dismount the entire sliding section and set it on the concrete, I think we could at least make it a little less… shitty.” He turned and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, this was our fault. I really shouldn’t be joking.”

Dani shrugged. “Sure, but I don’t blame you two. I don’t know about Bob, though. You guys had no way of knowing anyone was here. What were the odds?” 

She tapped the box of padlocks with the toe of her sneakers. She watched the locks shift slightly.

Jimmy took another step back and scratched at his semi-beard. 

“Well, I think this gate is too risky to use right now. I’d really like to brace it. At least you have that side entrance. Chain this gate up as much as possible, too.”

Dani peered into the parking lot that sat outside the gate. The moving truck was parked tightly against the front office’s glass door. There was glass everywhere, and she has still not finished reinforcing the temporary barrier to her liking. Now she had the front gate to contend with as well. So far, staying here had proven to be one setback after another in the worst possible time in history for setbacks.

She sighed.

“I had a thought on that, actually.” Dani pointed to the parking spots inside the facility, just to the left of the gate. Another moving truck was parked there. Her own car, the Focus, was parked next to it. “I’m not planning to go anywhere immediately, maybe we can chain the gate up in a couple more spots and use my car to brace it. At least for now.”

“What about the truck?” he asked. “That’d be a bit sturdier, right?”

Dani shook her head. “I’d rather save the truck for a possible run on supplies later, you know?”

Jimmy nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. That truck could hold a whole hell of a lot.” She could see the gears were turning in his head. “Let’s focus on the gate for now. We’ll see what Edgar and Bob bring back.”

As though they were summoned, the golf cart rounded the corner from between the E and I rows of the facility, dragging behind it a small trailer. Edgar pulled up and parked the cart just off to the side of the entrance. Bob rose from the passenger seat and made his way to the trailer.

“Me n’ Edgar here combed through that contractor’s unit. Got some materials,” Bob wheezed.

“Any chains?”

“Got evening plans, chica?” Edgar smirked.

Dani extended a middle finger.

“Gonna pretend you didn’t say that there, Big Ed,” Bob growled.

“Just joking, man,” Edgar shrugged. 

“Big Ed” was apt. Edgar was a tall man and heavyset, but not quite fat. He was a burly Latino in his early 30s. His head was clearly normally shaved, but given the light growth of hair on his scalp now, he was unable to keep up with it. Dani understood why.

Bob’s wrinkled hands dug into the trailer and pulled out a couple of lengths of chain. 

“These good enough, kiddo?”

“Perfect, we’re gonna need to chain this gate up nice and tight for now.” 

She took a chain from Bob and handed it to Jimmy. He started wrapping it around the bottom corner of the entrance slider and the frame.

“I was planning on moving my car here to block it off a bit,” she added.

Jimmy had finished wrapping a second chain and fished for a padlock from the box Dani had brought out. He locked up the gate and stood back up.

“Edgar and I can move the Caddie over to the exit gate, here,” he said as he approached the trailer.

“The fuck we are,” Edgar interjected, “why would we do that? We’re outta here in a bit.”

Jimmy shook his head. “We owe them, man.”

“And we’re fuckin’ helping them.”

“Look, Dani and I talked it over, and I was thinking we could stay-”

Dani raised an eyebrow. “When did we talk about this?”

“I was just about to bring it up,” Jimmy beamed.

“You makin’ plans without me, Jimmy?” Edgar sounded indignant.

Bob had already taken a seat in the golf cart again, as though he expected a long discussion.

Edgar stepped closer to Jimmy. He was a head shorter than Jimmy, who was strikingly tall, but Edgar was most definitely more solid. They were an odd pair. She wondered how they came into each other’s lives.

“Look, Red,” Edgar started, tightening his fists to his side and tensing his arms, “we had a plan. We’d get the weed and head to San Diego. I already gave up some to pay them back.”

“It’s good stuff,” Bob chimed in.

Edgar stared daggers at the old man in the cart. He turned back to Jimmy. “Why do you want to stay here? Got a crush on Lucy Liu over there?”

“Fuck off,” Dani snarled.

Jimmy turned to Dani and gestured toward her with his shoulders raised and hands pointing to his friend. He shrugged. Dani shook her head. He turned back to Edgar.

“Look, dude. You saw how many of those things were just around here, how many d’you think are gonna be on the fuckin’ way south? The freeway down there goes through some goddamn mountains or whatever. It’s a funnel. Plus, think of the cars.”

Jimmy scratched the back of his head. “It’s a goddamn deathtrap in there,” he muttered.

Bob seemed to take notice of Jimmy’s choice of words because he had turned around in his seat to stare at the tall redheaded man. He said nothing, but watched with interest.

“Yeah, but we had a plan, man,” Edgar almost sounded upset.

“The plan was shit, dude. I’m sorry. But look at what we’ve seen already.”

Edgar dropped the tension in his arms and shoulders and slumped slightly. After a moment, he crossed his arms and set his eyes across the street, not looking at his friend.

“You fuckin’ know why I want to get out of here, man. Don’t make me go by myself. Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”

“We could be safe here, man.” Jimmy spread his arms and twisted his body to point out the area with a sweeping back and forth motion. “This place has some nice walls and we wouldn’t be… alone.”

Edgar still didn’t look at Jimmy.

“You don’t even know if we can even stay here, man,” Edgar said quietly.

“As long as Dani and Sandy are good with it I am too,” Bob chimed in again from the cart.

Jimmy smiled and lightly punched his friend in the shoulder. “See, man, this is where you gotta be charming. We gotta win ‘em over, and you bein’ a big ass bitch ain’t gonna help.”

Dani shook her head. “There is a woman right here, asshole.”

Bob laughed. Jimmy didn’t respond. He just stared at Edgar. Finally, Edgar turned his attention to Jimmy, uncrossed his arms, and shrugged.

“If they’re cool, I guess we can stay for a bit and draw up some plans or whatever, man.”

Jimmy turned to Dani and Bob and threw them a cheesy grin and a thumbs-up.

“Fuck yeah.”

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #10 - Strange Company

Day 16

As the last of the ghouls had begun to round the corner, Edgar and Jimmy dropped low to the roof, out of sight of the stragglers. From their vantage, the two men could see the rooftops of a nearby RV park. Aside from the sound of scuffling feet and low moans, the area was silent.

Jimmy hadn’t gotten used to the silence yet. He doubted he ever would. He came from a loud home before all this shit. 

Violently loud.

“Christ, these things are dumb. I’ve had dogs smarter than them” Edgar whispered.

Jimmy shrugged. True, the ghouls had no real smarts, as far as he could tell. They just kind of wandered toward whatever caught their attention. But they were still winning when he thought about it. That was the fucked up part of all this. There was something in the way they would ebb and flow when little groups came together. It reminded him of ants, honestly.

Ants who ran the show, now. 

“Let’s get back down,” Jimmy whispered.

…

“Yo, old man… What’s going on with the ladder situation” Jimmy whispered. He’d begun to shout but quickly stopped himself.

The old man looked up at the two men on the roof of the row of units. “The name’s Bob and I want to be sure you’re cool.”

The asian girl who went by Dani leaned on the cinderblock and concrete frame of another row of units across the lane, along with the ladder leaning up against the structure. She was clearly observing the situation with caution. Bob’s play was risky. She had her gun on hand, hanging, as she had her arms folded across her chest. Casually brandishing it but appearing as nonchalant as she could.

“What the hell? Know what’s not cool, Bob? This.” Edgar gestured to the edge of the roof with a flailing, heavy arm “Not fucking cool, Bob.”

Dani chimed in. “We just want to know why you were trying to break down our gate, that’s all.”

Edgar looked dumbfounded. Jimmy stepped forward, closer to the edge of the unit. Maybe he could land without fucking up an ankle or knee, but Edgar certainly could not. That would have been a lot of flesh hitting concrete.

“Edgar had a unit here, we just wanted to grab something. We didn’t know anyone was still here. I mean most people probably would have found a grocery store or something. Not a bunch of storage units…”

“What unit?” Bob stepped forward, “what unit was your unit, Edgar?”

Edgar stepped closer to the edge of the unit. Jimmy winced at his friend’s gigantic body so close to the edge.

Edgar stared directly at the old black man below. “Don’t see how that’s any business of yours, Bob.”

Jimmy watched Edgar step closer to the edge and reach his right arm behind his back. His fingers grazed the pistol tucked into his waistband.

Shit.

Jimmy made his way over to Edgar and placed the back of his hand against Edgar’s chest, gently pushing him back. Not that he could physically move the gigantic man, but the push made the point. Jimmy glanced at Edgar and pleaded with his eyes, shaking his head slightly. Too slight for the two people below to notice, he hoped.

“Let’s be honest with them, man.”

Edgar’s brow furrowed.

“Nobody needs to die today,” Jimmy whispered.

Edgar raised both his hands, an open gesture of trust. “K34. That’s the unit. It has our dope. We were going to haul it out and use it to negotiate for some supplies elsewhere.” Edgar paused and sighed, “We’ll trade you some for the trouble.”

Bob nodded. “S’fair, but we cleared this place and locked it down. You nearly cost us our safety.”

“Sorry about that.” Edgar stepped forward. “Like we said, we didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Most people would have found a police station or something,” Jimmy added. “Whose first impulse is to hole up in a storage place?”

The girl named Dani coughed and turned her head from Jimmy and Edgar’s direction.

After a moment, an older woman wandered out of the office and stood near the door, eyeing the scene with caution. She clutched a kitchen knife.

“We seem to be good, Sandy,” Bob said to the woman clutching the knife.

Bob gestured to Dani. She carried the ladder over. She leaned it against the units and Jimmy and Edgar began to climb down.

Bob tucked his revolver into his pants. He glanced over at Sandy who practically flinched as the large latino man stepped from the ladder to the ground. She scowled and stepped back into the office.

Jimmy followed after Edgar as the four of them looked at the office where Sandy had retreated.

“What’s her problem?” Jimmy asked.

…

Dani stood outside the unit and Edgar and Bob negotiated over the marijuana bundles. Jimmy stood just inside the entrance.

“How long have you been here?” Jimmy asked.

“Me? Just a couple days. Bob and Sandy have been here since the start.”

“What, like, you just joined up with them?”

“I was isolated in my apartment for a couple weeks, and had to leave when…”

…

Dani’s undead neighbors flashed before her and she felt slightly disoriented. She shut her eyes tight and took a sudden sharp breath. She recalled each bite mark she saw on their bodies, festering divots of rot and blackened, sticky blood. She heard the buzzing of flies around her ear, unsure if they were real or a memory.

…

“You okay?” Jimmy asked. The sudden thousand yard stare of the girl alarmed him.

Dani rubbed the back of her neck with her wrist. She glanced over at Jimmy. “I’m fine. Sorry, not sleeping much lately.”

“No shit,” he laughed. He knew how that was. Sharing a car with Edgar at the end of the world didn’t make for the most comfortable sleep. “Edgar’s snores like a chainsaw.”

Dani smirked. She walked a bit closer to the unit’s entrance, leaning on the frame. “Anyway, I, uh, ran out of supplies. Came here because my Dad kept a gun here when he was running it.”

“Oh shit, this place is yours?” That was certainly an interesting development, he figured.

Dani shrugged. “I mean, not really? Not sure what good owning a business does for you these days. He paid the bills. Paid for Bob and Sandy to work here. I haven’t really been here in… god, like, two years?”

Dani looked at Bob and Edgar. Bob appeared to be haggling over a second plastic-wrapped bundle.

“If anything, the place is Bob and Sandy’s. They’re just kind enough to let me stay. I dunno how long I’ll be staying, though.”

“Seems like a pretty good place, honestly.” Jimmy sighed. He kicked at a cinderblock corner and glanced back toward the direction of the gate he and Edgar had nearly smashed. “Edgar and I were trying to find a larger pool of people somewhere, maybe closer to San Diego. Figured we could barter some essentials with some dope, y’know?”

Dani sat on a cardboard box. She appeared to weigh little, or the box was filled to capacity. It barely shifted under her. “A sound plan as any right now I guess.”

“Is it?” Jimmy asked. He went silent, thinking about how today had gone. The last survivors he had run into had tried to kill him. Edgar got to them first. Now he was having a genial conversation. What the fuck even was this?

After a few moments, Bob and Edgar shook hands. It seemed like the trade was done.

Edgar glanced back to Jimmy and huffed. “Yo, Jimmy. Let’s get going.”

Jimmy scratched at the patch of red hair on his chin. It was a weak growth. He hated that he couldn’t quite get a full beard. Whenever he tried he ended up looking like some red-headed, mutton-chopped civil war soldier, complete with mustache and a weak chin growth.

He looked to his friend. “Actually, I’m thinking maybe we ask to stay here a bit, to just kind of rest up?” He glanced back at Dani.

She shrugged. He knew she could see it wasn’t the craziest idea. “Fine by me, at least.”

Bob stepped forward, rubbing his chin. “How long are you thinking, kid?”

“Honestly, could we just stay like – the night?” Jimmy gestured over to the fence that they had hit repeatedly with Edgar’s Cadillac. “I’d be happy to help you reinforce the gate tomorrow before we leave.”

Edgar brushed past Jimmy. “Dude, are you kidding me with this shit? What about San Diego?”

Jimmy shrugged. Edgar looked angry.

“Look, man, we had a plan,” Edgar said. “We can get down there and find someone to exchange with.” He held up one of the six packages he was holding and waved it in front of his friend. “We had a plan.”

Jimmy looked around the storage facility. The grey concrete had begun to take on an orange hue from the encroaching sunset.

“I… don’t think San Diego is worth it, man. All those things… the city would be full of them, right?”

“That’s a solid point,” Bob said. “We got nearly overrun with the handful here. Imagine a big city.”

Edgar opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then said nothing. His jaw tightened and he rubbed at his forehead with his thumbnail, likely recognizing the man’s point.

After a few moments, Dani stepped forward. “You two can take an RV for the night if you want. That’s fair, right, Bob?”

“Can’t imagine Sandy is going to be thrilled, but I don’t mind if we’re all cool about it. We could smoke a bit and talk about San Diego.”

Dani started off toward the RV area.

“You two coming?”

Jimmy and Edgar stared at each other, shrugged, and followed, with Bob right behind them. The old man took a huge sniff from one of the two bundles he’d finessed and chuckled softly to himself.

…

Sandy wasn’t happy about the strangers staying the night, but she was outvoted. How she was outvoted in her own home was beyond her. She wasn’t sure why Danielle had any sort of say. She was leaving soon, anyway.

She sat in her chair in the living room. She had turned it toward the window to keep an eye on the world outside. There was smoke in the far distance. Maybe it was a wildfire. Maybe it was something else. People, maybe. People who would come to take what she had.

The knife rested on her lap.

She sipped her tea. She was running low on the mix. She wasn’t a fan of cold tea, but heating anything had been a problem, so all her tea was at room temperature. She hated that there was still no power. Bob had been stingy with the generator and she wasn’t about to light a fire outside. 

Too many strangers.

She thought of the smoke outside. She ran a finger along the flat side of the blade.

Bob suggested the power might never come back. Sandy was not so sure. She had a brother in the military – a career man, he’d done logistics. Surely he and a whole platoon would be on their way to save her. It made sense.

She just had to stay safe until order was restored.

The apartment was dark and there was no glare on the window. She could sit comfortably in her seat and stare out the window toward the hills in the west, past the outskirts of Emmett.

In the distance, she saw what looked to be some sort of light flashing. She approached the window, setting down her glass of tea. After a brief time, the lights faded.

How odd, she thought. I hope they don’t come this way.

Her grip tightened on the handle of the knife.

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[deadlifenovel]

The Dead Life #9 – Rooftop

Day 16

Dani stepped toward the gate, gun drawn and peering through a gap in the sheet metal. There was some motion from something, but it wasn’t quite clear how many instances of something it actually was. She took a step back, looked over the gate, and turned her attention to Jimmy and Edgar, both looking slightly winded and panicked. Edgar puffed. Jimmy rubbed the top of his head, fingers rustling through his curly red hair. He had been wearing a Dodger blue cap which now was clutched in his other hand.

“Guys, get in the car.” 

The three darted over to the Cadillac. Dani threw herself behind Edgar, the driver. The car smelled heavily of hash and body odor. The air within felt oppressively stale.

“Gotcha,” Edgar said. He turned the ignition. She winced at how loud the Cadillac was.

Dani tapped on the back of Edgar’s seat a little forcefully and pointed behind them as he glanced at her from the rearview mirror. “

You need to come along the side here. We can’t let these things see us through the fence near the office.”

The Cadillac reversed and made a three-point turn down the outermost alley of the Family Storage. After a few moments they approached the office, out of view from ghouls thanks to the solid concrete of the storage units on the northern side of the yard. She saw that Bob had laid a ladder against the unit. He waved them over.

The trio stepped out of the car. Bob pulled a wrinkled finger to his lips and Edgar cut the ignition.

“Dani,” Bob gestured with a thumb over his shoulder, his voice cracked in a hoarse whisper, “take a look. Just don’t step into the open.”

Dani made her way toward the door of the office that opened into the storage yard and peeked around the corner. She could see several of the undead who were now reaching through the fencing. Their groans echoed loudly and she wondered how they could project as much as they did. She watched one ghoul’s arm begin to deglove as it got caught on an angled piece of the fencing. Shredded chunks of skin hung from the arm and others plopped onto the concrete. It reminded her of loose chicken skin. She felt sick to her stomach. The ghoul continued to wave his arm, not noticing the skin sluicing off their forearm at the elbow.

“How many?” Jimmy asked.

Bob leaned against the concrete frame of one of the units. “Sandy counted twelve. Got her watching upstairs.”

“Three at the gate right now,” Dani added.

Dani turned back to the men. She approached the ladder and looked it over. “What is the plan, Bob?”

“Well, we can get a couple of us up on that roof to make some noise and be in view of those things.”

Dani nodded. “We can then pull them around the corner.”

Edgar chimed in, nodding; “That’d pull them off that front gate. These things are really fucking dumb, we can just send them walking.”

The small man, Jimmy, said nothing. He appeared rattled and glanced nervously. He kept looking toward the units to the south.

Bob continued, “since I need her here with me to coordinate, you two guys… I want you up on that roof.”

Jimmy took a step back as his attention shifted to Bob. “Why us?”

Dani crossed her arms. “Because this is your goddamn fault.”

Edgar held the flat of his hand toward Jimmy in a calming gesture. Jimmy glanced down and nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.

Bob and Dani held the ladder steady for Jimmy and Edgar. Once the pair were on the roof, Bob gave them a thumbs up. “Be nice and loud.”

The two men began to shout and wave their arms on the roof of the row of units. Dani edged toward the fence and watched as a pair of ghouls took notice and moved toward the noise.

The ghoul with the shredded arm turned from the gate. She watched as chunks of skin and muscles tore away and dark, rancid blood poured out. The arm, or what was left of it, hung limply, seemingly dislocated from the sudden turning and yanking from between the bars. Blood trailed as it wandered from the gate toward the side of the building where Jimmy and Edgar had been making noise.

…

“This is fucked, man” Jimmy whined. He had a bad feeling about this whole thing. There weren’t supposed to be people here. How was it that the only people alive they’d seen in a week would be in a storage facility, of all places.

“Just do it, we’ll get our shit later and we’ll go,” Edgar said, flapping his arms. He came off as a harried, overfed chicken in panic.

Jimmy shouted a couple times and waved his arms above his head. He saw glassy, dead eyes pointed up at them. Then a moan erupted from one with a knife that was stuck in its chest. A splatter of dark blood ringing the wound. He shuddered and turned his attention back to Edgar.

“Dude, they have this place locked down.” Jimmy glanced back behind him, not seeing the old man or the Asian chick. “What if they found it?” 

“It’s my unit, they can’t take my stuff. That’s against the law.”

Edgar continued shouting and stomping, pulling the undead along the side of the facility. He punctuated these moments with a periodic “Pendejos!”

Jimmy did the same. 

“I don’t think those rules apply anymore” he muttered to nobody in particular. Edgar continued to insult the ghouls in Spanish.

…

Bob looked up toward the kitchen window on the upstairs apartment and saw the whiteboard. Sandy has scrawled a large number three.

The remaining three had passed beneath the window facing the street.

He could work with that.

“Danielle, help me move this ladder.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know what these guys want. We can isolate them and get to why they were trying to break down the gate.”

Dani grabbed one side of the ladder.

“You think this has to do with the drugs we found. Their car smelled like my old dealer’s place.”

Bob glanced at her and said nothing.

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