Dead Men (and Women) Walking (26 page)

Ellie felt her face grow
warm with embarrassment. “Shut up!”

“
Yep,” Sam went on. Dad
told me after we broke up. Said he couldn’t understand it,
considering how well we seemed to get on.”

Ellie thought of Neil Clark
again--handsome, a bit flirtatious. Hilarious. Then the image of
his stained teeth parting against Sam’s neck, his jaundice-yellow
eyes rolling back like the eyes of a feeding shark, invaded her
mind. She shook her head quickly, as if that would erase those
thoughts from her mind.

For an instant, lightning
brightened the hazy room and she caught Sam staring at her
dreamily. He was just as cute as he use to be, she thought. She
wondered a moment what if...

She smiled and breathed out
a thin stream of smoke. The smell of the pot disguised the stench
of decay left by the mess that had been Sam‘s father.

“
I suppose it doesn’t
matter how much noise we make now,” she said.

“
I suppose not,” Sam
agreed. He pinched the joint out and left it on the
nightstand.

“
For old time’s sake?” he
asked.

“
For old time’s sake,” she
whispered.

***

Outside the storms
continued. In the dancing light from outside, Ellie looked lovely
as she began to undress. Sam realized he had forgotten what a true
beauty she was.

He smiled up at her, a bit
dazed, a bit stoned. He giggled, unable to help himself.

“
It’s been one fucked up
twenty-four,” he said.

She moved over to the bed
and he slipped his hands around her waist. He took one of her
nipples into his mouth.

“
Mmmm,” she sighed. Then
she shoved him back down onto the bed and climbed on top of
him.

Sex was clumsy and out of
synch, as if they had never been lovers. At one point Sam called
out Katy’s name, then apologized quickly.

“
It’s all right,” Ellie
told him. “Neither of us really want to be here, do we?”

Images of his lost wife and
daughter refused to leave his mind’s eye and he wilted. Ellie
rolled away with a frustrated little groan.

“
Sorry,” he whispered,
pathetically.

She stretched out next to
him and lit the remaining twig of the joint. “It’s no biggie,” she
said.

“
Got that right,” he
attempted to joke.

They lay there in silence,
looking only at the smoke swirling up and up like thin ghosts. Sam
wanted to ask Ellie about her life, but what was the point? Her
life was gone, just as his was.

Guns within reach, they
dozed. At one point, they were startled awake by a loud thump. The
wind had indeed blown the screen door open this time. It banged
angrily back against the house, then closed again.

“
I am so afraid,” Sam
whispered.

“
I am too, Sam,” Ellie
answered in the dark.

Hearts pounding and eyes
roving the darkness for any moving shape, they waited for dawn’s
merciful return.

***

Days passed. The electricity
was sporadic and things in the refrigerator began to spoil. The
entire house carried that same sickly-sweet smell that had been
with Neil Clark. Sam gathered the rotting food into a garbage bag
and took it out back, far from the house. Ellie covered him, her
rifle poised, a scowl on her face against the bright sun. They saw
nothing.

They buried Sam’s father on
the edge of the soybean field beyond the lawn because the earth was
easier to turn there. They said a few words and neither of them
cried. Tears had run dry days ago, replaced by an odd
non-feeling.

That feeling, that numbness
was somehow more frightening than the fear and the
sadness.

Sam found his eyes always
drawn to the soft sloping hills at the horizon, watching for
shuffling, stooped figures coming to find them.

He wondered what had
happened to his mother, but forced himself to think of other
things. The “what-ifs” were too horrible to envision.

Ellie began to have a
cautious sense of safety and she tried to infect him with it. He
wanted to humor her, but he knew things could change
quickly.

Supplies held for the most
part, but Sam was sick of canned vegetables and fruits. The Clarks
considered themselves a frugal pair, and they had visited the
shopper’s clubs often. Sam had always teased their overbuying, but
now he was certainly glad they had. Especially when he went to the
cellar and discovered five cases of imported beer stacked in the
cool darkness.

They passed the time having
sex, getting drunk and listening to music. His parents had one hell
of a jazz collection and they had a constant loop of Coltrane,
Davis, Parker, and an army of others. He had hated that music
growing up, but it was comfort now. They slow danced like they were
anywhere beside an old farmhouse waiting for the world to
end.

Ella Fitzgerald and Billie
Holiday sang them to sleep at night--”Under a Blanket of Blue,” and
“Autumn In New York”--their dreamy voices echoing in through a
tunnel created by paranoia and alcohol.

***

On the tenth day, the cats
began to gather. Sam did not notice anything unusual at first--one
or two cats slinking around. It was farm country, after all. Cats
always hung around and most times his mother or father would end up
feeding them. But by dusk, it had grown to something much more than
just one or two.

The mewling, mournful crying
was suddenly audible even over the music. “What the hell was that?”
Ellie asked.

Sam switched down the volume
and Sarah Vaughn faded into the background for a moment. He peered
out the living room window and could not believe what he saw. There
were a thousand eyes staring back at him. Reflected silver and
ghostly in the moonlight, unblinking. He nearly screamed, then
realized it was only cats.

Only cats.

“
You’re not gonna believe
this,” he said. Ellie came over, put her face next to his and
looked out.

They were everywhere,
crowding the porch railings. The steps. The rocking chairs and the
little side table out there. They paced the lawn, droves of them.
Waiting.

Sam and Ellie could hear
light footfalls on the roof even, pawing at the upstairs windows.
The crying was like that of infants alone and starving.

Sam’s father had always kept
a big bag of Kitty Chow in the garage, to feed those slinking
visitors and he ran out to get it.

“
Are you sure that’s a good
idea?” Ellie wanted to know.

“
We can’t let them starve
to death.”

When he opened the front
door, the cats scattered like roaches in the light. He emptied the
bag on the front walkway, fifteen pounds at least.

The cats stampeded back and
Sam rushed back into the house, surprised and startled. Ellie
slammed the door behind him.

“
So, what happens when they
eat that up?” Ellie asked. She had never liked cats, and Sam could
see she was not thrilled with a herd of them just outside the
door.

It did not take long to find
out what would happen when the food was gone. It was a gruesome
scene as they began to tear into one another. The smaller ones went
down first, torn apart by the bigger ones. Sam watched the
nightmare out the window, his hand nervously rubbing his beard
roughened jaw. “I can’t believe I caused this,” he whispered,
although in the grand scheme of things, he knew a bunch of cats
were insignificant.

Ellie pulled him away from
the window by the hand and then she switched the music back up,
even louder than before, to mask the growls and cries
outside.

***

He had lost count of the
days, but he knew it had been more than a week since the cat
incident. It was more the stink of the cat carcasses rotting
outside that kept them indoors than the fear of one of the infected
paying a visit.

They grew bored and both
began to wonder what if anything was left outside the valley. Food
was dwindling down. The beer was nearly gone. Sam longed for the
ocean and the sun and began to consider returning to the coast. He
would ask Ellie to go with him, he decided. Of course, if she did
not want to go there, he would stay with her. The idea of being so
totally alone scared the hell out of him.

Ellie began to show signs of
infection on a Tuesday evening, shortly after an ill attempted
venture to some of the neighboring houses. Their only encounter
with anyone was with a guy they had known back in grade school.
Peter. Peter-somebody.

Pete had always been a bit
off and when they discovered him, he was sitting crossed-legged on
the floor in a pool of his own waste. The stench was tremendous. It
had soaked into his jeans and up the hem of his t-shirt, some caked
and dry, some quite fresh. He had devoured his left foot to the
bone.

He seemed to be completely
unaware of their presence in the house.

“
Shoot him,” Ellie
said.

“
He’s not doing anything,
Ellie,” Sam protested. “Let’s just leave him. He’ll be dead soon
enough.”

“
He’s dead now. Do it. He
knows we‘re here--”

“
You can’t really believe
that. He hasn’t even moved.”

“
Look, you go into the
kitchen and see if you can find anything we can use. I’ll watch
him.”

Sam shrugged and went to
search the cupboards. It was only a few moments it seemed, before
he heard a scuffle, then the shots. He jumped, heart thundering,
dropping cans of food onto the floor.

“
Ellie!”

He found her sitting on the
floor grasping her calf. Peter-somebody was sprawled on the floor,
his rotting brains spilling all over the rug. His legs still
twitched slightly.

“
I told you,
Sam!”

“
What the
hell--”

“
He fucking bit
me.”

“
Here, let me see.” He took
her hand and pulled away. Blood jetted from the ragged wound and he
nearly fainted dead away. He took a deep breath and pressed her
hand back over it. “I’ll find some gauze or something.”

“
Fucking lot of help that
is,” Ellie muttered. “Cut my leg off, Sam. Maybe it’s not in my
bloodstream yet.”

Sam pretended not to hear
her and fled to the bathroom in search of a first aid
kit.

She was showing signs of
infection before the night was over. Very soon he would be alone
again.

***

Now he sat, waiting, back
against his bedroom door, Ellie‘s rifle lying on the floor next to
him. She had gone crazy an hour ago, tore up his room, then went
into a rant about how fucking weak he was. How stunted. How
sniveling. She screamed through the door that she had dumped him on
her own; not because of the constant prodding from her family. He
was weak and most times she only stayed with him because she had
pitied him. She cursed him with language saved for sailors and
death row inmates. She clawed at the door furiously and he could
imagine her nails splintering and peeling back from the ends of her
fingers.

She begged him for death,
before things went even further south. He promised over and over
again that he would.

He lied. He’d always been
able to spit out a lie as easily as the truth. He could smell the
death stink coming under the door. He could hear her breath against
the wood, almost as if it were on the back of his neck.

“
I’ll break through this
fucking door, Sam. I will take you down with me for doing this,”
she whispered, wet and slurred. “I will take you down and you will
hurt like I hurt right now.”

Sam reasoned that surely
there were others out there that were not infected, but those
thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of being the only one
left. Was there a reason to go on, if he was to be all alone?
Besides, did he actually think he could survive long enough to find
others?

Ellie was right, just like
Katy. He was weak. He was an overgrown little boy.

His little daughter had been
devoured right before his eyes. His mother, who had coddled him and
his father, who had doted on him were gone, too. Everyone who loved
him was gone.

His world was as good as
gone.

He sat as the sun began to
sink and the hallway became dark. Ellie had grown quiet again and
he knew she was waiting as well.

Finally he sighed and
reached up. He unlocked the bedroom door then he picked up the
rifle. He moved across the hallway, opposite the door and placed
the gun across his knees.

“
I’m waiting, Ellie,” he
said quietly. “I’m waiting.”

By Tanya
Nehmelman

“
Emma Help!” Eva
cried.

“
Eva where are you?” Emma
frantically screamed as she searched the murky lake water. In the
distance Emma saw her sister bobbing up and down. Emma swam as fast
as she could to get to Eva in time. It wasn’t fast enough. By the
time Emma got there Eva was completely submerged under the
water.