Sixteen Small Deaths (13 page)

“Thanks,” was I all could muster. Mandy hid behind me like a schoolgirl afraid of thunder, chin barely touching the tip of my sweating shoulder. “What’s going on out there?”

Jimmy chuckled. “You haven’t been awake very long, have you?”

I curled my lips into an angry pout. “No.”

He shook his head and wiped his face with the back of his hand. He walked over to the basement window, slid a finger against the dusty pane. “The world’s gone mad…that’s what’s happened.”

I nodded once, heart beating more slowly than before the horde attacked us. I gripped Mandy’s hand with mine and kissed her on the forehead. “You should sit down for a while.”

“No.” Jimmy turned to us, smile now faded from his face like he was a completely different man. “We can’t stay here. You guys are lucky it was this house I stopped at for supplies. You’d both be – a…”

“Dead.” I clenched my teeth so hard I could taste the blood rushing to my gums. “I get it.”

“Where are we going to go?” Mandy asked, leaning against the basement wall. It was hard not to see the beauty and hope in
her face, long strands of blonde hair falling over her forehead like golden ice.

Jimmy pointed the gun in the air, one eye closed. “I live about twenty minutes from here. My basement is a lot sturdier than this. And I probably have enough food and water down there to last us a couple weeks.” The smile returned to his face.

“Can I pack anything?” Mandy inched forward, eyelashes hiding only the hints of terror in her mind. “There’s so much stuff I should bring…”

Jimmy nodded. “I’ll lead you guys upstairs. Be careful and stay behind me. Those fucking things are everywhere.” He placed his boot on the edge of the first stair. “And it’s not going to be easy as it was here to get rid of them.”

#

Jimmy stood at the edge of the bedroom doorway, back to us and fingers gripping his gun. I had only known him for about fifteen minutes and already he made me feel safe. Mandy and I quickly packed a single duffel bag with some t-shirts, jeans and toiletries. She picked up her watch from the dresser and the look on her face told me that if she could, she would have packed the entire house as to not leave any memories lingering behind.

“Let’s get moving, guys,” Jimmy said, ice cold stare planted on his face.

We followed him down the stairs and through the kitchen. He flipped his car keys out of his leather jacket and threw them at me. I caught them in mid-air and tilted my head. “Someone’s gotta drive…and someone’s gotta shoot,” he said.

We ran out of the house, red streaks on his black Camaro a sweet sign of immediate comfort. The only thing I noticed before hopping into the front seat of the car was the new odor gripping my nostrils. It wasn’t the smell of death, like it was in our basement. Syrupy dew stuck to the fog, a scent reminiscent of
saffron. I took a moment to inhale before Jimmy screamed at me to get into the car.

Mandy slammed the backseat door at the same moment I fired up the ignition. The engine purred with delight, the sounds of a dying world buried beneath the moaning vehicle. We could see the lingering figures stumbling about the neighborhood, some running after the remaining living and others dragging their lifeless limbs behind them in some sort of death march. In the rearview mirror, Mandy’s eyes were glued to the sky above.

“The clouds,” she said, “they’re so beautiful.”

Jimmy stuck his head out of the open passenger side window and slowly brought it back in. “They’re…purple,” he whispered to himself.

I stopped the car in the middle of the road, the only walking corpse now hundreds of yards behind us. I shifted the car into park and looked out the window and up at the sky. Mandy was right; the clouds were beautiful. Fair streaks of black and green dressed each steel-colored cloud, bright blue of the morning sky replaced with an endless wash of green. It were almost as if a painter dipped the earth into a bucket of mixed paint and shook the globe until the colors ran and dripped down the sides.

“Kal, please get back in the car. We’re wasting time.” Jimmy did not look at me as he said the words, only stared straight ahead.

I took a final look at the sky and remembered that if anything, this was a nightmare in which I might never awake.

#

The day’s events never fully entered my mind until five minutes into our drive. The flesh-eating figure across the street, the explosions, the attack, even the goddamn sky…none of it had pierced the sticky viscera around my tired brain. It was only when we passed the wreckage of a plane did it all fully sink in. I slowed the
car to only ten miles per hour, eyes glued to the mangled metal laid out in front of us. Limbs were scattered about, portions of plaid seat cushions and jumbled planks of steel resting as if they had been there for a lifetime.

The odd hum of the stars above us, I pushed down on the gas pedal just as fast as my heart could start beating again.

#

We pulled in front of Jimmy’s house and quickly followed him inside. I was surprised that there were no signs of struggle at this place, no signs of the rotting figures trying to break in. He slid the key into the door in a matter of seconds, the alluring smell of
home
the first thing that greeted us. Jimmy locked the door behind us, eye glued to the peephole. He sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m not taking my chances on the first floor,” he said. “The basement entrance is down the hall. You and Mandy head down there and wait for me. I need to grab a few things before we settle in.”

I nodded and gripped Mandy’s hand. We jogged to the basement door, pulled it open and flung the duffel bag. It struck the ground before I could flip on the light switch. Mandy hurried down the stairs and I followed her, breaths absent of grace and chest as tight as the ringing in my ears.

We sat on the dusty leather sofa below the lone basement window. Mandy rested her head on my shoulder and before long I could hear her breaths crawl to the pace of slumber. Even Jimmy’s slamming of the basement door couldn’t wake her. I stared at her cheeks, which were Christmas red. I imagined that she was dreaming about better days.

I left her on the couch and followed Jimmy to the corner of the basement. He handed me a gun and took a deep breath. “It’s about survival now. For the past few hours I’ve barely thought clearly, like maybe I was hallucinating all of this.”

I knew the feeling. “What are we going to do?”

Jimmy shook his head, peppered stubble curled into a frown. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“How did all of this start?”

Jimmy sat on a barstool that could have been made before I was born. “I heard a few minutes of someone on the radio before all communication went dead. They saw the same things we saw: planes dropping like flies, explosions in the sky…and the rising dead.”

“Jesus.” I took a deep breath, tried to picture my life before this.

“This is it for us, humans,” Jimmy said. “These are the final days. The end of times.”

All I could do was nod, hints of weariness pinching at the back of my mind. I joined Mandy on the couch and in only a few minutes, I was dreaming of the same things as she.

#

I twinkled my nose, remembered the smell. A loud crash, then Jimmy screaming. Gunshots fired and one of the light bulbs burst. The night bled dark into terror, and soon enough the stench was familiar. I jumped off the couch and grabbed Mandy, who shouted at the sight of at least four figures. I couldn’t believe that not one of us had heard them bust into the house, even bust down the basement door. They crept onto us like the shadows of the dead, the lost souls that reinvigorated every rotting corpse in every swollen graveyard.

The closest one to Jimmy easily overpowered him, grabbing his throat with one hand and piercing the aging flesh of his forehead with its sharp teeth. The bulbous mass that was Jimmy’s eyeball pulsated with a final twitch before ounces of crimson goop spilled from the socket. Another pounced on his falling body, mess of black greasy hair hiding the feeding. It raised its
head, skeletal face wriggling with strands of fresh pink flesh.

I fired a shot at one of them, the bullet catching the figure in the head and sending it to the ground. Its fellow corpse immediately ran after me, bits of Jimmy’s face wriggling in its gaping mouth. Another gunshot and it slowed, stray bullet connecting with the figure’s shoulder. Mandy shouted from behind me and I turned to protect her, tried to drag her into the corner with me. Two more shots fired and one more went down, with the other two leering just a few inches from us, eager gray faces pure representations of Hell.

I didn’t expect to feel the first bite, or even feel the horrible sting of its claws upon my forearm. The gun fell from my hands and as I drooped over to shove the corpse away, Mandy’s scream reverberated in my bones, the faint traces of hope dissipating from her lungs like a million dead flies flapping away into the night. I turned to see her fall to the ground, flailing arms trying to swat away the figure’s angry attack. She was helpless from its aggression, crooked yellow teeth sinking into her flesh as if her skin were as soft as vanilla cake. My heart sunk in my chest and just as I freed myself from the corpse’s grasp, the shape lurched itself upon her again, tearing away the lining of flesh along her neck. I reached for the gun, felt its cool metal handle in my hands as I fired off a single shot into the figure’s head, explosion of bone and brain splattering against the concrete wall. I kicked my attacker in the chest, sending it to the ground with a lengthy groan. One bullet was all I needed to end its hungry assail.

I dropped to Mandy’s side, watched the most striking woman in the world bleed out in my arms. Long, chunky bits of blood adorned her hair. Her breaths slowed to a crawl and before I could utter the three words she needed to hear, the life drifted from her eyes like a ghost floating to the sky.

#

I sit here with the gun in my hand and wonder if any more of them will creep down the staircase, the fervent hunger glowing in their jet black eyes. Blood sloshes through my veins with a slight chug and at any second my heart might give out. After Mandy passed, I turned on the radio hidden atop one of the many shelves in the basement. The crackling voice faded in and out, infinite array of static and black noise a deranged sonata in my weary mind.

The voice said something about the sun, something about an endless winter. It spoke of death and destruction, the demise of mankind. The voice soon dropped out and I was left with only my own thoughts and a thousand bittersweet memories.

I walk over what’s left of Jimmy’s body, hope that some living character somewhere will say a silent prayer for him and my dead wife. Resting my arms on the windowpane, I stare into the black of day and wonder if the sun is really gone. Even if I don’t pull the trigger on myself, even if those things don’t tear my flesh from the bone…there’s nothing worth living for.

I take a deep breath and slide down the concrete wall until I’m sitting on the ground. The gun to my head, I think of Mandy. I think of yesterday morning and the hours curled up in bed, warmth of her soul swimming through the bedsheets. Finger kisses the trigger and the gun doesn’t feel so heavy anymore.

I only hope that when the metal pierces my skull I’ll wake from the nightmare with her sleeping next to me, the gentle breeze of another day floating above our bodies like the spirits of the dead.

When I was a child, I’d often close my eyes and feel solace and safety in the darkness of my mind. There were times when I could sit on the plushy sofa next to the living room’s window, my eyes closed tightly, blocking out the world around me. The wind attacking the window pane, whipping at the glass, bits of sand and dirt trying to break through.

I must have been close to eleven years old the last time I had done this. My father’s funeral finally over, I sat on the purple sofa, fingering the golden trim around the arm. I couldn’t hear my relatives talking about how good of a man he was, how much of a provider he had been for his family. All I heard were those tiny bits of sand and dirt being tossed at the window.

Twenty years later, I’m sitting here again. The sofa envelops my body and I’m at ease. Aunt Judi on her deathbed two floors above, the feeling of loss had already gripped the entire house. Put an ear to the chipped paint of the hallway walls, and you could hear the whispers of the dead. My mother used to always say that having a nun in the family was like having God that much closer to us all. “His gentle touch comes through your aunt, Castor. Listen to her,” she would always tell me as a child.

I never agreed, as Judi never embodied anything ‘gentle’ in the slightest sense. My fondest memories of her include a bony finger pressed into my chest, her raspy words being preached into my face. Now, the cancer eating away at her body, she laid two floors above, ready for whatever her maker has planned for her.

Night had fallen and my mother was making dinner in the kitchen. Her brother had just arrived, my cousins unpacking their luggage in the two guest rooms upstairs. No one was comfortable enough to take the second flight of stairs to Judi’s room. My mother was the only one brave enough to visit, along
with the nurse, who would come by three times a day. Outside, the spring rain attacked, coming down hours at a time. Gregory and J.C. sat on the couch across from me in silence, casually taking deep breaths and looking outside at the downpour.

My uncle Harold paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. My mother sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her, today’s newspaper unread. I had been back home for two days, and I was still the only one to sit on the purple sofa next to the window.

“Castor, can you make sure that Judi’s window is closed in her room?” My mother was beginning to flip through the newspaper.

“Sure.”

When Judi was first taken to the house from St. Mary’s Church last week, the convent requested to put her in the guest room on the third floor, which only had a small bathroom and a single window.

They didn’t give us a reason why.

My mother had joked, “She’ll want to spend her final days as close to Heaven as possible.” There was nothing heavenly about the woman.