Dead Soil: A Zombie Series (22 page)

“So, did you like being a nurse? When you were one, I mean?” Mitchell stammered out to break the awkward silence.

Lee continued on without looking back or answering.

“Oh right, I forgot. You’re the strong silent type. I get that. That’s me, too. I don’t like people knowing a whole lot about my business either, although there isn’t much business to keep secret lately, is there?” He rambled on as Lee hopped over the counter and dropped to his feet inside the pharmacy.

There were rows of trays with letters stuck to the front of them on over a dozen shelves. Little white bags stuck up in perfect rows, like tombstones in the ground. Lee didn’t hesitate in rifling through them. Occasionally, he ripped one open and stuffed the orange labeled bottle into his bag.

“Is there anything in particular you want me to look for?” Mitchell asked with his shotgun raised as he turned in circles to maintain a three-hundred-and-sixty viewpoint.

“Antibiotics,” was all Lee grumbled through his Irish accent. He disappeared around one of the shelves.

Mitchell walked to the left to start at the beginning of the alphabet and work his way back. As he rounded the corner he saw two feet turned upright sticking out from behind the furthest shelf. He quickly raised the butt of his gun to his shoulder as he held his breath. It slipped. “Shit,” he whispered as he fumbled to put it back into position. He took slow, precise steps until he saw the entire body sprawled out on the white tile floor.

The young man wasn’t moving. Mitchell tapped him on the arm with his foot and immediately jumped back. His gun rattled from the jerky movement, but the young man still didn’t stir. Mitchell couldn’t see any bites on his exposed dark skin from where he stood. “Hey, Lee!” he hissed. His hands began to shake. His eyes blinked rapidly as he tried to keep the sweat from dripping into them. “Lee!”

Lee’s head appeared from around one of the shelves, but he didn’t step out. He stared at Mitchell with several bottles clutched in his hands.

“There’s a body here…not a zombie one.”

It was one of the only times Mitchell could remember ever seeing anything close to an emotion pass over Lee’s face, his eyes widened and his brows raised up an inch.

Lee shoved the bottles he held into his bag and slung it over one of his shoulders as he walked briskly. He didn’t think twice before he dropped to his knees next to the unconscious body and felt for a pulse. The man’s dark, caramel skin was cool to the touch. Lee lowered his ear to the unmoving lips.

The longer Lee stayed hunched over, his pink flesh dangerously close to a mouth that contained strong, white teeth, the harder it became for Mitchell to take a breath. He waited for Lee to say anything to reassure him they weren’t about to be eaten alive by a fresh corpse.

“Go get tha others,” Lee ordered. He kept his eyes focused on the unconscious man.

Mitchell ran off immediately. His tennis shoes pattered on the hard floor.

The sound grew fainter in Lee’s ears the further Mitchell ran. He scanned over the still body while he waited. The man looked to be about twenty-five years old, fit, healthy as far as he could see. Lee grabbed onto a sturdy shoulders and rolled the man towards him and then away. Three packets of pills were flattened underneath his back, all empty. Lee didn’t waste any more time waiting for the others to get there. He swept his finger inside the man’s mouth. There were no pills stuck in his throat. He began CPR.

IX.

Lonnie and Gretchen made a b-line to the pharmacy after Mitchell told them about the unconscious man on the floor. The two stopped short of running into Rowan as he rounded one of the aisles, Gale and Carolyn on his heels. Lonnie pushed his shoulder against Gale’s chest to move her out of the way and continued to sprint so he’d be the first to arrive. When he finally hopped the counter seamlessly he was brought to a skidding halt.

The unconscious man was no longer unconscious. He stood up with the help of Lee and walked clumsily to where the others had gathered by the counter. His dark jeans and red hoodie hung loosely from his thin frame. Sunken and vacant, his brown eyes looked almost black as he struggled to keep them open. They rolled back into his head. Lee gave the young man a quick jerk and brought him back around. His lids flickered open and then closed halfway. His short, wavy dark hair had dirt and broken pieces of leaves and twigs woven into it.

The others looked at him as if he were one of the undead. Lonnie took a few steps back as Lee dragged him forward. Rowan did a double-take and noticed Lonnie wasn’t beside him any longer. He scrambled backward to stand next to him again. His chest puffed out to model Lonnie’s once his feet were planted at the kid’s side.

Gale, Carolyn, and Gretchen were rooted outside the pharmacy counter. They each inwardly squirmed at the sight of someone new. It had been over two weeks since they’d seen the smallest sign of anyone else alive, the last one a smoldering abandoned fire. A couple times Gretchen thought she saw a woman hiding in the bushes or perched up in the trees, but decided it was nothing when the woman in question never revealed herself.

The thin black man doubled over, his knees buckling, but Lee caught him by his shirt before he hit the ground in a fit of coughing.

“What’s wrong with him?” Gretchen asked. She bit her lip and looked on with soft blue eyes and raised, contorted eyebrows.

“He overdosed on sleepin’ pills,” Lee said as he pushed the halfway comatose man down into a discarded plastic chair.

Gale clucked her tongue and shook her head at her tennis shoes. “Damn shame.”

“So, the sorry bastard tried to off himself, is that it?” Lonnie chuckled as he shifted his gun from his left shoulder to his right. The barbed wire tattoo around his bicep waved as his muscles flexed and released.

“Have some compassion,” Gretchen snapped at him. “He almost died.”

“And we should have let him,” Lonnie barked back. “He obviously doesn’t wanna live or he wouldn’t of downed all those pills. Let’s just get back to gathering supplies and get the fuck out of here like we planned.”

“We can’t just leave him here!” Gretchen said in a shaky voice. “He needs our help.”

Something changed in Lonnie. His eyes were overtaken by that wild, crazed look again. “People who
want
to die can’t be helped!” he yelled from deep within his chest. It caught everyone off guard as his voice echoed throughout the vast, empty store. “So do yourself a favor and fucking forget about him!”

Gretchen’s mouth hung open as she looked at Lonnie, tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. He turned and walked off to leave the group staring in bewilderment. Gretchen looked to Gale, but all Gale did was shrug.

“Wonder what that was all about,” Mitchell said in his awkward, fast way of talking that made him stumble over his words.

He said what everyone else had thought silently to themselves and it made Gretchen roll her misty eyes. They’d obviously pushed a button for Lonnie, one of his many, but a deeply rooted and highly sensitive one. Gretchen’s mind wandered away from the dark scene in the small enclosure of the Wal-Mart pharmacy and over to the brooding man in the distance, ready to disappear into the shadows of the empty aisles.

For the first time, she thought of Lonnie as more than the asshole who appointed himself God and leader of the group. He wasn’t simply put on Earth to take zombies down and boss people around. He had a history before the dead destroyed everything—a life, a home, a family—and for some reason, she desperately wanted to know what it was.

Mitchell spoke again to everyone’s dismay. “Is there like a history of suicide in his family or something? Did he know someone or…”

“Just shut up already,” Rowan grumbled as his almond eyes narrowed.

“Got it. Sorry,” Mitchel stammered and backed away.

Lee knelt down in front of the man in the chair and tipped back a water bottle to his dry lips. Somewhere in the foggy unconscious of the man’s mind, he was grateful. Luke warm water dripped down his chin and neck.

The cool sensation seemed to revive him. His dark eyes opened fully and began to dart back and forth. He jumped back, scooting the chair away from the broad, muscle-toned Irishman in front of him. His hazy gratitude quickly transformed into enraged paranoia.

“What the fuck? Who the fuck are you people?” he rambled off, panic-stricken. “I don’t have anything, I swear.” His breathing sped up until it wheezed in his chest. He coughed intensely.

Lee held out a hand to him, but the man flinched away from it. “It’s all right,” Lee said, reaching out again. “Nobody is going ta hurt ya.”

The man couldn’t keep his eyes still for more than a second. When he saw Lonnie double back around with a determined stride and red face, they widened until they were ready to pop out of their sockets.

“What’s your name? Where are you from?” Lonnie demanded as he stood over the hunched, frail man.

Wheezing turned to sobbing. The black man lowered his elbows to his knees and rested his head in his hands. He didn’t hold back as his entire body shook up and down. Tears and spit covered his palms. He shook his head. “Why didn’t you just let me die?” His voice was muffled through his hands. When no one answered he shouted again. “Why didn’t you let me die!”

Lonnie bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees, gun slung around his back, so that his face was level with the scared young man’s. “What. Is. Your. Name?” Lonnie demanded.

The man peeled himself away from his hands. His red-rimmed eyes looked up at Lonnie as he tried to catch his breath. “Dan…” he said in between sobs. “Anderson…Dan Anderson from Chicago.”

X.

The group gathered in one corner of the pharmacy while Dan Anderson sat in the other.

“We should leave him,” Lonnie stuck to his guns. “Someone like that is only going to slow us down, drain us of supplies, and get us killed.”

“How can you be so heartless?” Gretchen whispered so Dan couldn’t hear. “He’s obviously been through a lot. He doesn’t
really
want to die. No one wants that for themselves. He just thinks he had no other option.”
              “How can you know that?” Rowan asked with his hands on his hips, his thumb flicking his belt loop. “I mean, he looks pretty miserable to me.”

“Look, we’re all miserable,” Gale said with her hand thrust out, as if to display the sad bunch of misfits, poster children for the definition of wretched, pathetic, and miserable. “But that doesn’t mean we should abandon someone when there are so few people left in the world.”

“I don’t know,” Carolyn said slowly. “How’d he get all the way here from Chicago? And why? Just to off himself? It’s weird, don’t you think?”

Lonnie sighed. He turned away and then turned back again as if he was trying to keep a tally in his head of everyone’s misguided votes. He rubbed at the back of his thick neck. So far it was Gretchen and Gale yay, Carolyn and himself nay. Rowan would do whatever he said. Lee probably wouldn’t answer either way. He couldn’t care less about anything except his medical supplies. If the Irishman wasn’t such an intimidating figure who watched the group’s back vigilantly, Lonnie would have left him for dead long ago. That meant Mitchell was the only one left to voice his opinion.

              “What do you think, dipshit?” Lonnie asked the kid.

“Uh…” Mitchell stalled as he looked around at the group, their faces long and withered from the harshness of their new way of life. “I think you talk a lot about preserving humanity and repopulation and it’d be counter intuitive of you to left him here to die.”

Mitchell made a valid point, but something still didn’t feel right deep in Lonnie’s gut. If the new guy was bad news, he could end up killing someone in the group—multiple people, in fact.
That
would be even more counter intuitive, or whatever Mitchell said. “I still think we should get what we need and go.” His face was solid, like his stance, his gunned gripped firmly in his hands.

A collective sigh rose to the ceiling.

“Well, I’m not leaving without him,” Gretchen said as she crossed her arms and planted her feet.

Lonnie closed his eyes, turned his face upwards, and took a calming breath. “Gretch, you’re killing me,” he whined.

When he opened his eyes again she was still standing firmly next to the lip balm and condoms. Her pink lips were puckered together in the cutest pouty face Lonnie had ever seen. “Fine,” he gave in quickly. “But I’m not babysitting suicidal Dan, over there. That’s going to be your job and fucking Green Giant’s. Got it?” His thumb was hitched over his shoulder at Lee, who was leaning against one of the white pharmacy shelves with his arms folded.

Gretchen didn’t smile with relief or thank Lonnie for his decision. She didn’t even move.

“But the kid’s on a fucking trial run,” Lonnie called over his shoulder as he walked away. “If he tries anything stupid or attempts to off himself again, we leave him behind. That’s it.”

“Whatever,” Gretchen exhaled.

She relaxed her stance once Lonnie and Rowan disappeared to ransack what was left in the aisles to the right of the pharmacy, which were the over-the-counter drugs, home and garden, and toys. She heard his faint voice ask his companion if Play-Doh was edible and shook her head. “Idiot,” she breathed.