Stay Dead 2: The Dead and The Dying (9 page)

Jeff couldn’t help but smile at
that.

“
I’m okay. I think I might
be getting a bit stir crazy, though.”

“
You can always go for a
jog.”

“
Mr. Funny guy
tonight.”

“
Yeah, you know
it.”

“
How ‘bout you? How are you
doing?”

“
I’m just worried about the
kids. I can take care of myself, I think Maria would do okay, but
if the shit got heavy and we had to get out of here? I’m terrified
one of those things would get ahold of one of the kids.”

“
You can’t think about
that.”

“
Easier said than done, but
shut it, here comes the boss.”

Maria came back from the
kitchen.

Barbara asked, “Well?”

“
Not too good.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Well, we have plenty of
stuff to eat and drink, but there’s just too many of us for it to
last long. There’s a lot of us.”

“
Give us some
numbers.”

“
Eight cases of water. Six
gallons of water. Four bottles of Ginger Ale. Two cases of Hi-C,
plus all the water we bottled and filled the tubs with, which I
have no idea how to count, but if we get to that level I’m sure
it’s going to be gross.”

“
Well, that gives us a
week, right?”

“
Not if we use some of it
to cook with.”

“
But we still have running
water.”

“
Today we do.
Tomorrow…?”

“
No variables, please.
Food?”

“
Food we’re pretty good on
I think. We have those two metal pantries full of canned foods and
boxed pasta. I’d say at least three weeks till were down to
nothing. Of course, that’s eating mac & cheese and plain
spaghetti.”

“
We don’t need
gourmet.”

“
We can always start
scouting for food from the neighbors that have taken
off.”

“
Barbie the
scavenger.”

“
Fuck, bro, I’m being
serious.”

“
I know, and it’s a good
idea. If we can, we should start tomorrow.”

“
Are you
serious?”

“
Sadly yes. I know how my
kids eat, and if we are that low on water we might as well strike
now before things get any worse.”

“
Dad’s going to want to
weigh in on that one.”

“
I’m sure he will, and I’m
sure he’ll agree.”

“
Yeah, probably…anything
else Mar?”

“
Well if you guys are going
to visit the neighbors things like toilet paper, soap, and coffee
couldn’t hurt.”

“
Noted.”

“
Hey, where’s your
dad?”

Barbara smirked, “Alone
time.”

“
Don’t be gross,
sis.”

“
Me?”

11 ONLY IN
DREAMS

(back to
top)

The convoy moved along the road
swiftly. They were fortunate enough to hit a decent stretch of
road, where congestion had broken up and accidents were minimal.
Abandoned cars were fewer and fewer and therefore the convoy was
able to move quicker. Jon-Jon stayed focused on driving. His
eyelids were heavy and he badly wanted to sleep, but he was able to
push it aside and continue driving.

Dawn on the other hand had fallen
asleep and her cheek rested on the window, leaving a greasy spot as
her face moved up and down along with the rhythm of the van. Her
sleep was full of dreams—intermingled memories cutting across the
movie screen of her mind with every vivid color and detail usually
reserved for reality.

She was at her father’s wake; standing
at her mother’s side, staring at the sleek black coffin that
snuggly fit her father’s large frame. Beautifully arranged flowers
were scattered all over the room, desperately trying to remind
people that life was full of wonder and color and beauty—not just
black suits and black dresses and pale faced widows with weeping
daughters.

Dawn held her mother’s hand. It was
cold and dry, but it squeezed back with all the strength it could.
Her father looked asleep, almost like he was smiling. Dawn saw that
smile on her father’s face so often. Usually as he slept on the
couch after a few beers on the weekends when he wasn’t
working.

She approached the casket. Light
glistened on its black surface like the nighttime surf of the
ocean. Gentle rippling waves crashing against the smooth sand. This
wasn’t her father. It couldn’t be. The gentle waves grew
rough…

…
and now she was standing
on the beach. Her father was walking away into the water. The
coffin stuck in the sand like an abandoned boat in some painter’s
vision of a lighthouse scene. Her father wasn’t alone. There were
hundreds—thousands—of other people walking into the water. The surf
grew rougher still and storm clouds filled the sky. Thunder and
lightning rolled out from inside of them and lightning slashed away
the darkness in a frenzied brush stroke. More lightning…

…
and then nothing.
White.

Dawn is standing in a field of
flowers—the same flowers from her father’s wake—she’s pregnant and
rubbing her swollen belly in what can only be described as bliss.
Her mother is smiling at her. The father is nowhere to be found,
but it doesn’t matter, the best thing he can offer her is to leave
and have no hand in raising the child. More storm clouds. The
thunder and lightning return.

She’s driving. It’s raining. The sky
is bleeding purple and red. The car is swerving. She can’t see.
It’s spinning. She’s screaming. There’s an impact. She smacks her
head and her vision goes black as lighting strikes across her
eyes.

She awakes and knows something is
wrong. She’s back at the beach, staring at her father who is now
standing knee deep in the ocean holding a baby—her baby. She feels
her stomach, but it feels hollow with only the faintest trace of a
ghost.

She walks toward the water but with
each step the ocean recedes. She tries to run to it, to feel the
water swallow her feet, but despite her best attempts the ocean is
no closer. A message in a bottle is at her feet and it’s a suicide
note from her mother that goes on seemingly forever. She drank
herself to death, and the bottle in Dawn’s hands was the very
bottle she was found clutching, empty of everything but regrets.
The regrets were hastily jotted down on the note.

Lightning.

She hits her head against the window
and wakes up. For a minute she’s not sure where she is but hopes
she’s still pregnant and is able to stop the car from spinning out
of control but then she looks over and sees Jon-Jon and knows that
the damage is done and the dream is over.

“
Hey sleepy-head. Feel
refreshed?”

“
Uh…not at all. My neck is
killing me. How long was I out?”

“
I dunno, maybe like an
hour, hour and a half.”

“
Damn. Are we there
yet?”

“
Not you too. It’s bad
enough I have to hear it from these dicks in the back and now
you?”

“
Relax.”

In the back of the van Chung-Hee sat
squished next to Chuck. They were both fairly small men, but with
so many people in so little space everywhere was tight. He leaned
away from him as best he could but with every bounce on the road he
just ended up bouncing right back into him.

When the van grew silent—as it often
did—Chung-Hee’s mind drifted to thoughts of Naraka. This was far
from what he imagined the underworld to be, but what this was
certainly wasn’t the world he remembered. Naraka is a place where
the souls of the sinful are sent for expiation of sins. For
redemption—reconciliation, even forgiveness. Chung-Hee could think
of nothing in his life that would secure him such a fate. He was
never able to live up to his parent’s expectations, true, but
neither was he the bane of their existence. From what he could tell
he was a hard-working man, more so than his peers. Everything he
owned he worked for. He was given nothing in this life other than
the necessities he needed, the love he warranted, and the
expectations to live up to—or at least strive for.

Naraka is supposed to be a place of
justice. Not a place like this—a place of torment, of suffering
unwarranted. Chung-Hee considered the possibility that he was dead.
He was dead and unaware of his demise or sins and as he came closer
to righting his wrongs a sense of clarity would overcome him. And
if that were the case then he could think of nothing he did that
would lead him toward any sort of reconciliation. He was simply
trying to survive—as were the rest of the people in his
group.

How he could atone for a sin he didn’t
know he committed was beyond him. All he could do was what he
thought was right, which is what he’s been doing all along. In his
mind, Naraka was a terrible place full of terrible people having
unthinkable things being done to them for the sake of penance. He
envisioned people being boiled, skinned, beaten, raped, and even
eaten. Naraka was a land that was ruled by darkness to bring about
light, full of evil, vile, punishments for those that deserved such
a fate. It was no place for children—what could they have done? And
yet, they were here too.

Chung-Hee shook it from his mind,
though he knew he would eventually drift there again. Naraka was a
place for the dead and for the wicked—not a place for him, and not
a place for the people he had come to travel with. They were good
people—he was a good person—Naraka was not for them.

He opened his eyes and watched the
world go by as they drove down the road. Every now and again he
would catch a glimpse of one the lumbering dead that stumbled about
in search of flesh. What sins did they make, he wondered. What did
they do that deserved their unnatural return from
oblivion?

Chuck stared straight ahead, but he
wasn’t looking at anything. He was deep in thought about nothing.
He was thinking of the beach. The sand between his toes, the sea
breeze rustling his hair, and the women. Good golly Miss Molly was
he thinking about those Florida women. The Beach Boys always seemed
to favor the California women, and Chuck couldn’t fault them, they
were just fine as well, but for Chuck, the women back home were the
only women for him. Sanibel, Bonita Springs, and Marco Island were
some of his favorite places to visit and even further north at
Cedar Key would be great this time of year. Most of the college
kids and hipsters would be heading out to Key West, or—God
forbid—Miami, but there were plenty of places in Florida that
suited Chuck just fine. Full of the slow-paced, relaxing qualities
that kept him down south for so long.

Marco Island was full of great times
just a few months ago. He fell in lust with a freckle-faced woman
name Maggie. She had an old lady’s name, but a college girl’s face
and a tennis player’s body. Her hair was auburn and seemed to
radiate in the sun. They spent a lot of time together and ended it
amicably, though Chuck would often think of her. He wondered why
they quit each other so quick and tried not to think of it. It was
fun while it lasted, and he hoped she was safe. He thought of being
there now, sitting outside on her deck looking out on the water. He
could taste the fresh Cubano sandwiches she loved to make and the
Mango Mamma wine they loved to wash it down with.

Luckily for Chuck, before the thoughts
had time to depress him, Joseph hollered from behind him, “We there
yet?”

“
It’s getting really
fucking old, man.”

There were a few chuckles, and then
the sounds of introspection.

12 IMPULSES

(back to
top)

Jim had packed the few belongings he
cared about enough to lug around and the clothes he knew he’d get
the most wear out of as well as all of his socks and underwear. He
wished he was going on vacation, but knew that it would be anything
but. Regardless he needed to get the hell out of his home. He was
developing a nasty case of cabin fever and if he didn’t take this
chance to get out now he knew he would end up running out of the
house screaming nonsense in the buff. He might drive himself insane
enough to run into the loving embrace of one of the
dead.

He crept over to Sarah after putting
his bags next to the door downstairs. She looked so peaceful. The
little bit of sleep she was getting had already managed to soften
the hard lines that only moments ago were etched into her face. She
was attractive, and the longer he looked at her sleeping form, the
more he realized this. He lingered, and his mind ran through some
deviant ideas. His heart raced. She moaned in her sleep, and
shifted. Jim decided to turn away and walk out as briskly as he
could. He returned to his room and stared out the
window.

Sarah continued sleeping, and Jim knew
he should’ve woken her but the little nasty fantasies brewing in
his mind had the very good possibility of becoming
reality.

He looked out the window and the few
dead things that roamed seemingly aimlessly about the streets soon
staggered out of view, and for a moment things looked normal, but
then a staggering ghoul moved into view once again.