Plague of the Undead (33 page)

Without realizing it she had assumed the awkward shuffle of the dead. Her bare feet, no longer sensitive to heat or ice or even broken glass, slid across the cracked and weedy pavement as though on autopilot.

She tried to turn off her mind as well, but she found that much harder.

She kept thinking of Kevin.

What, exactly, had happened last night?

Not
what
. Not really. She knew
what
had happened. That had actually been quite pleasant. Better than she remembered it, anyway.

No, what she really wanted to know was
why
. And why
now
? She’d seen others before him. She knew they weren’t the only ones. She suspected—and she believed this without reservation—that there were more normal people out there than she’d seen. There had to be. The world couldn’t simply be empty. That wasn’t possible.

But none of the others had managed to arouse her pity. She’d watched them die, and in some cases rise again, and she’d felt nothing.

And then . . . Kevin.

He’d told her his stupid jokes. He’d offered her a place to stay, all the food he had, even a warm bath. In the few days since she’d first seen him she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Before him, walking around being dead was no trouble at all. She could go days at a time without a single thought passing through her mind. The world was one unending parade of nothingness.

And then he came along, and she couldn’t take three steps without falling out of character, without thinking of the life they’d once shared.

That’s what it was, she told herself. He was a window to the world that used to be, a shipwreck from her past that had mysteriously surfaced to haunt her mind. There was nothing more to it than that. He was nothing but a ghost, and she was merely lonely.

But a voice at the back of her mind kept prodding, questioning.

What if this was more than just two people feeling lonely and desperate at the end of the world?

What if this was . . . love?

Maybe, she thought. It was Christmas Day, after all. Christmas had a way of warming even the coldest heart.

Wasn’t that the secret to Scrooge’s redemption? She’d never paid much attention to books in school, but she thought she remembered that much. For Scrooge, it hadn’t been fear of the grave, but fear that the heart would no longer love again that made it possible for him to accept the spirit of Christmas into his life.

She stopped then, a sudden alarm causing her pulse to quicken.

She had fallen out of character again. She’d stopped walking like the dead. Like her mind, her feet had started to wander. If she’d happened upon one of the dead while walking like that, they’d have torn her to ribbons.

But, for now, she was alone on the street.

Turning, she happened to see her reflection in a shop window. And at first, that one quick glance threatened to send her over the edge of reason. She looked horrible. In a word, she looked dead. And she played the part well. Her hair was stiff with mud and probably blood, too. Her face, which hadn’t been that bad back in the day, was discolored with God knows what; attractive, it seemed, only to flies. Her body was a bony jangle of sticks. She looked like a crack whore, though she imagined that even the crack whores of the world gone by had more self-respect than she did at that moment.

She had nothing.

But then her gaze shifted beyond her reflection in the window, to the Sexy Elf costume in the display. For a moment she experienced an odd sense of displacement. It was her face, her gaunt, exhausted face, but her body was draped in the red velvety finery of the elf costume. Her fingers reached for, and could almost feel, the cotton candy fringe at the edge of the playfully short skirt.

She smiled.

Kevin O’Brien, you wonderful bastard. I’m gonna blow your mind.

 

 

It was Christmas morning.

He had hoped to wake up late and spend the day with her, hopefully draw her out little by little. The two of them had been pretty good, he thought, back in the day. And they were certainly good last night. When they were good, it seemed, they were really good. He’d hoped it could be that way again.

But she’d left him sometime in the night.

His attempts to draw her into his world weren’t fair, he supposed. Why would she want to join him anyway? Hadn’t she found him out? She knew he was faking it. He knew he was faking it.

And he was tired of faking it.

The choice, once he’d given it voice, was surprisingly easy to make. The only hard part had been accepting
that
as an option. But once he opened his mind to it, it actually made a lot of sense.

He went to the billboard and spray-painted a message for her.

Then he went down to the street and climbed on top of a brick wall and waited for one of the dead to come along.

He thought he’d be scared, but for the first time in a long time, he felt relaxed, at ease with himself and the world in which he lived. You can settle in quite comfortably to even the most horrific of circumstances, he thought, given enough exposure to it. All horrors lose their immediacy, their nastiness, sooner or later. The nerves can only be slashed and cut and shredded so many times before they deaden to the pain.

No, he was far beyond horror now. What he was feeling now was far worse than that. In the time before he found her again, his world had been filled with zombies. The horror they represented was a shallow, fast-moving river that beat him down and cut him on its jagged rocks.

What he was feeling now, though, made horror seem small.

Here, in this world that suddenly included Mindy in it, the waters ran far slower, but they were deep, endlessly deep, and what lurked down there was something he could not fight.

For what lurked down there was love.

A zombie was at the base of the wall, its hands clumsily scratching at the bricks just below Kevin. Kevin stared into the thing’s eyes and saw the emptiness he’d fought against for so long, but had never truly understood. That would all change now. He had tried to get Mindy to live in his world, and that had failed. So now, he would live in hers.

And only love could allow him to do that.

He jammed his left hand down into the zombie’s face. It shook its head, as though to shoo away an insect, and then realized what was in front of it.

The zombie grabbed Kevin’s forearm and clamped its teeth down on his wrist.

“Mother fu—”

Kevin pulled his hand away, holding his wounded wrist in his right hand while blood oozed between his fingers. It hurt so badly he nearly rolled off the top of the wall. Already he could feel the virus creeping through his bloodstream, racing for his heart. It felt like somebody was jamming a red-hot copper wire up his veins.

He didn’t have much time. Maybe thirty minutes, but probably less.

Kevin rolled off the wall and trotted back to his apartment. Once inside, he washed the wound with hot water and wrapped it in a towel. It was already starting to smell like death. His head was soupy and walking to the chair in the center of the room was hard.

But he made it.

He dropped down into the chair and turned it to face the door and waited for the pain to stop.

 

 

This felt absolutely glorious.

Mindy had spent the day cleaning herself up, scouring off the stain of more than a year of living down among the dead. Now, her hair was washed and brushed. Her legs were shaved, her skin soft and fragrant from cocoa butter, still a little pink from her hot bath. The Sexy Elf costume showed a lot of leg, and a lot of bruises and cuts, but those would heal. If her heart could heal, her legs certainly would.

She felt better than she had felt in a very long time. She couldn’t remember a time she’d felt this good, even before the world died. Mindy Matheson had come back from the dead, and love had done it for her.

And it was glorious.

Now, she picked her way carefully through the rubble-strewn streets. The dead were out—the dead were always out—but there weren’t many of them around at the moment.

Then she saw the sign, and she smiled.

 

IT’S ALL FOR YOU, MINDY MATHESON.
I LOVE YOU.
I WANT TO BE WITH YOU FOREVER.

 

She couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She sprinted up the stairs and down the hall to his door.

Slightly out of breath, she knocked on the door.

No response.

Maybe he was out getting stuff, she thought. More candles, maybe. Or, God help her, even a bottle of wine. Wouldn’t that be great? And heaven help him if he got her drunk. She’d make his toes curl for sure.

With a huge grin on her face she turned the knob and swung the door in slowly.

“Kevin?”

Bury My Heart at Marvin Gardens

Jon rolls double fours. He lifts his marker, the old shoe, his favorite, from GO and drops it onto . . .

 

 

. . . Vermont Avenue, where the zombies are drifting thick as fog through the cracked and weedy streets, picking their way through the rusting hulks of abandoned cars, searching, always searching, for food. The mother catches sight of one in particular, broken arms swinging limply at his sides, ribs showing through tatters of decomposing flesh, flies swarming about its head, and she’s worried. She’s seen these before, the wounded ones. The ones that can get around more or less on their own power are predictable. They come straight for you, attack without strategy. But the wounded ones, like this one, are far more dangerous. They hide. They wait. They become part of this desiccated world, one of its hidden dangers. She knows if she loses sight of it, it will surface again when she least expects it.

She sets the wheelbarrow down quietly and finds her daughter’s hand. She gives the girl’s hand a squeeze, just to let her know everything is going to be okay. She doesn’t believe this, but she knows she has to be strong, for the child’s sake, and so she squeezes encouragement.

The little girl meets her mother’s gaze and smiles. It’s a pretty smile, lots of healthy teeth. She’s a pretty girl, too good for this world.

The mother surveys their surroundings and shudders. Everywhere she looks she sees a world in ruins. So many buildings have been reduced to rubble. But where the walls still stand, she sees exposed lath and standing garbage and doorways without doors. Not a window has gone unbroken.

A sign that reads
PEDESTRIAN CROSSING
has been bent over and nearly flattened by an out-of-control vehicle, which still rests within the ruins of a dress shop, busted glass all around it, catching the oranges and scarlet reds of morning light like an explosion frozen in time. Inside the car is a corpse, motionless and decomposed, but probably only dormant. Given a reason, it could walk again.

In the wheelbarrow is the body of the woman’s dead husband. The woman, on the night the man died, went to great trouble jamming an ice pick up the dead man’s nose to make sure he wouldn’t come back as one of them. It was an agreement between them, something she never wanted to think about, let alone do, but did anyway when the time came because she loved the man with a love so deep it made her ache inside. She still aches. She aches all the time. Even when she’s numb, she aches. She’s told the daughter none of this and has no intention of doing so. She’s told the girl only of the dead man’s enigmatic wish to have his heart buried at Marvin Gardens; though now, as she looks around at the wasted landscape that is Atlantic City, and watches as the dead man with the broken arms and the flies swarming about his head wanders off, she wonders why.

Why this place?

Jon buys Vermont Avenue. At $100, it’s a no-brainer. The cheap properties on the first leg of the square are good buys. Purchase cheap, build hotels, gouge your opponent later. They are investments in the future. It is the strategy of a man who thinks long thoughts, who goes deep into the future of things.

That’s Jon, the studied approach. The logical approach.

I am different. I am the wild scramble opponent, the one who buys, buys, buys, and worries about building hotels later, once I see what I’ve got to work with.

We have never decided who is right, Jon and I.

He rolls a puny two-one combo, but it is enough to skip over Jail and land him at . . .

 

 

. . . St. Charles Place, where the weeds grow up through the sidewalks and the streets have buckled and blistered in the endless cycle of seasons since the world gave way to zombies.

There are no apartments here, no casinos, no hotels. This is an urban wasteland of vacant lots and mounds of trash and the occasional dog sniffing out a rat among the piles of lumber and brick dotting the landscape.

Nothing of any substance grows here.

Only grass and weeds.

And the woman carrying the wheelbarrow and the mysteries of good men dead and the little girl with her hand clasped tightly around her belt can only stare around in wonder and confusion and bootless anger at the injustice of it all.

Why here? she asks the corpse in front of her.

Why, for the love of God, here?

The game is just part of the reason I’ve asked Jon over here. I’m a little worried about my kids. They fight with each other constantly. Jon, he’s a wizard at things like this. The man has a way of getting to the heart of things. He’s made it his life’s work, understanding people, and especially kids.

It’s nothing serious, I tell him, nothing bad. They don’t do drugs. They don’t try to hurt themselves. Nothing like that.

“They’re just little kids,” I say. “I know that. But damn it, they fight like two little beta fish. Put ’em next to each other and the next thing you know they’re trying to claw each other’s eyes out.”

“Exactly,” Jon says, and meets my questioning gaze and won’t look away.

“Huh?” I say.

“Exactly,” he repeats. “It’s nothing like that.”

I shake my head. I know he’s parroting what I’ve just said, like any good psychologist, but I don’t understand.

“It’s nothing like that,” he repeats. “Not at all. They’re good girls. They’re your girls, part of you. They love you, and you love them.”

“Yes . . . ?” I agree, but with the hope that he’ll explain more.

“Remember that. Even when you’re mad. Even when you feel like you’re not getting through. They are part of you and you are part of them. You may not think you’re getting through, but you’re imprinting yourself on them. Years from now, they won’t remember why they fought, or even that they fought at all, but they will remember you. It’s pretty simple, when you boil it down to what really matters.”

I don’t have an immediate response. It’s true, every word. Everything he’s said is right on the money. But it’s a hard thing to remember when you’re mad.

“It’s your turn,” I say.

On Illinois Avenue the mother has to move quickly.

Screams, the sound of fighting, fill the air.

She pushes the wheelbarrow between two ruined cars and pulls her child underneath the lead vehicle. From their hiding spot, they can see the street, smell the tinge of death on the morning breeze.

Soon the screams of rage and desperation turn to panic.

Whoever they are about to meet is close.

Very close.

A young woman, her left arm limp at her side and blood running down her body, runs into the street. Three men, zombies, stagger out of an alley behind her. These men have fresh blood running from their mouths and the mother knows they have just fed. They’ll be strong. But they’ll also be focused on the young woman.

The mother’s heart is a good one, and it’s telling her to go help the woman.

But she’s smart, and her head is telling her to stay down, stay quiet, keep the child quiet. She has responsibilities, and they extend far beyond this moment.

The child whimpers as the zombies fall upon the woman.

The young woman’s screams seem louder than any human could possibly make, and they go on and on and on. The mother can only put her face in the dust and hold her baby and tell herself that there must be a reason, there has to be a reason.

Or else nothing in life makes sense.

And it has to make sense.

It has to.

 

 

Jon buys Illinois Avenue for $240, looks at me, and smiles.

“You bastard,” I say. He has just secured two-thirds of the board.

He raises his eyebrow, like Spock, only it’s not a casual sign of surprise that the universe is not as logical as it should be, but a smug, self-satisfied gesture that denotes imminent victory.

He knows he has me.

“You bastard,” I say.

“Your turn,” he says.

 

 

Jon has me over a barrel. He has both Boardwalk and Park Place, and I have surprisingly little. Not for the first time I wonder about the fickleness of luck.

“Damn it,” I say. “I surrender.”

He nods. He’s not above enjoying a victory.

“A pity, though,” he says.

“What?”

He nods at the board. “Nobody got Marvin Gardens. I’ve always wondered about that place.”

 

 

The mother has studied this place, she knows the history of Illinois Avenue, because this isn’t the first time she’s wondered about her husband’s fascination with Atlantic City. She knows how the city started as a dream, a conversation among wealthy investors and railroad tycoons on a lonely, windswept beach, and how it ended as a nightmare.

Like the rest of the world.

Like her own life.

She knows that the city died long before the rest of the world fell beneath the relentless tread of the walking dead. The zombies are really only an afterthought to this place. They are the symbols of a world that has moved on, but they are redundant here. This place needs no reminder of the glory of the past, or of the wasteland that is the modern age.

She looks down at the body in the wheelbarrow, the man whose eyes had shown such surprise, such fear, such unknowable depth, at the time of his passing, and which were now closed against all time, and she wondered what was in his mind when he asked to be buried at Marvin Gardens.

Did he see the old-world splendor that R. B. Osborne saw back in 1852 when he glibly described his vision to his investors, his pen scribbling out the names of the streets to be—Oriental Avenue, States Avenue, Tennessee Avenue, New York Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue. Or did he see the world of Charles B. Darrow, who stole the game of Monopoly from Lizzie Magie, daughter of the prophet of the single tax theory?

It is hard to tell, for her husband, who was so kind, so intelligent, so impossibly giving, was also—sometimes frustratingly so—an enigma to her.

She looks at the only map of the city she has, an old Monopoly game board, and doesn’t understand. She wonders if she ever will.

Why this place?

Why would he want his heart buried at Marvin Gardens?

 

 

The crowd of zombies seems to materialize out of nowhere. One moment, the mother is putting on her brave face for her daughter, telling her how they are going to bury Daddy in his favorite place, and the next she is ducking for cover, pulling her daughter close to her breast.

She’d been forced to leave the wheelbarrow out in the open, and that made her mad. It seemed like a failure somehow, like leaving him was a weakness on her part, something she didn’t do right. But the zombies don’t like dead flesh. They rarely touch a corpse, even a fresh one, and so it’s a chance she feels she can take.

The zombies pass the wheelbarrow by. They hardly seem to notice it. One by one, they shuffle past it, dragging their feet, pulling their weight endlessly through a world without meaning, without purpose, without even the hint of redemption. Even the grave is an empty promise for these dead ones.