The Dead Live On (11 page)

      
“I was locking up! The back door was open. That must be how they got in. I locked all the doors and blocked the main entry with the sofa. I covered the windows with blankets I found in a small laundry room under the stairs. The only other rooms are a kitchen, large living room, a half bath. There’s a full bathroom just outside the door to the room below us and another bedroom beside it that’s about the same size and it’s clear.”  Kate smiled broadly and Preston realized why she was smiling.

“As if I have to explain anything to you.” he said sarcastically with knitted brows. “Thanks for locking up. So please, just go away now,” she told him. He began to stomp away but then so suddenly and loudly, startling Kate, “Hey! Would you look at that?”

He was smiling as big and goofy as a kid in a candy store. “It’s my lucky day.” He picked up a marijuana cigarette that was lying amidst the contents of an emptied purse that had been scattered in the floor. He put it in his mouth and took a lighter out of his pocket and Kate slapped it out of his mouth just before the flame hit it.

     “What is your fucking problem, Roland!?”  He said clenching his teeth and balled his fists; he bent to pick it up the joint and feigned dusting it off. “You,” she screamed at him. “You’re my fucking problem asshole! Flex your jaws all you want, Preston. Take that shit somewhere else and smoke it, I don’t want to smell it. And by the way, getting high right now is the worst mistake you can make. You’re not sitting at home playing fucking Resident Evil, Asshole! I shouldn’t have to tell you that. I don’t know where your head is at, you don’t make any sense. I wish we would have never met you.” She put her hand over her eyes and rubbed her temples, he was giving her a migraine. “I can’t wait to get away from you,” she said with much less anger than she felt. “Fuck you.” he said and stormed off taking the marijuana cigarette with him.

     
Kate stood and stared at the bodies for a few more moments and scanned the floor. She saw a pen and pad of paper about ten feet to the right of the bodies. The pen didn’t seem to have anything on it, but she rolled it off of the paper with her boot anyway and picked up the pad of paper with a handkerchief that she pulled from her back pocket. She moved a little closer to the little window that faced the street; daylight illuminated the page so she could make out the words.

I’m not really sure how I should start this out; I’ve never been much of a writer. But I’m stuck here and have only two bullets left which are reserved for use in the very near future, I might as well start with the beginning of the events that led us here.

The time on the paper said that it was 12:34 AM.  It was 10:54 A.M. by her watch. It was written less than twenty-four hours before. She flipped through the pad and saw that there were many, many pages. Kate sighed and folded it over in her hands, and bent down to pick up two of the several lighters that were also scattered across the floor and Kate wondered why they had needed so many. There was a comforter lying on the floor under Jillian’s feet, the missing blanket. She picked it up, draped it over their bodies and proceeded to go back downstairs. Her boot caught on a nail sticking up that had the majority of the hatch cord wrapped around it. So that’s how she kept them out of there so long. Kate had wondered where she got all that time to write.

Downstairs, Preston was kicked back in a recliner smoking the joint that he had found, making the room smoky and smelled like a dead skunk. He deliberately smoked it to piss Kate off but she was too tired to give in to her anger at that point. She only mumbled just loud enough for him to hear her. “You’re an i
diot.” He gave her the finger.  Kate stepped over the body of the Infected that tried to attack her and went into the kitchen with Dave, who was already eating a ration of pork and drinking bottled water. He threw her one and she caught it as she sat her backpack and the papers she had found upstairs onto the table. Kate drank the water in two big swallows.

“What’s that?” he asked motioning to the paper with his head. She slid it across the table to him and began rifling through her bag to see what she had to eat. Several granola bars, an apple, an orange and a couple rations of pork and beef.
She settled for a granola bar. Dave quickly flipped through the pages and slid it back to her. “Let me know how it ends,” he said sarcastically.

Chapter Fifteen

“Oh, my head...what is that smell? It’s so dark… “
Jillian sat up and the blanket that Kate had thrown over them fell away.
“Wait a minute….where…I’m still in the attic. I’m not dead…”
She looked down at her hands and could see they were bluish and swollen; globs of bloody flesh fell off of her face and chest to land in her lap.
“Eww…”

Her first reaction was to fling the carnage off of her, but her hand had reached for it with eerie speed and she was unsure at that moment if she had popped it in her mouth or chucked it somewhere behind her, she really didn't want to know. She tried to lift her arms with her own will and her body would not respond. She tried to talk aloud and could only hear
a low growl emit from her lips.

“
Oh… I’m dead all right… just not as dead as I should be. FUCK! Am I really still thinking?! Oh, this is so much worse than I thought it was going to be…I can’t feel my face, I can’t feel anything! I can’t speak. I can’t move my arms at will... But I can think, and taste and…whatever is in my mouth is bitter and oddly sweet at the same time, but it feels nasty… Eww... it's probably that thing I... eeeww! Don’t think about it, don’t think about it! I don’t want to know! I don’t want to know! What the fuck it that SMELL?”

Jillian saw Evan’s bound feet and her gaze swept up h
is body to his shattered face.
Oh, Evan…I’m so sorry.
She was sobbing inside, she bent to kiss his arm, but her body didn’t react quite as she had planned.
“Oh, God, I bit him! Please…I don’t want to! I DON’T WANT TO BE THIS! I do NOT want to be this! I know now that Evan had the intention to kiss me but could only do what his body commanded. He bit me. I knew he would, I had planned on it. But I didn’t plan on waking up dead. God… I have believed in you all my life and tried hard to do better! Please don’t let me be this, take my soul and throw it in the fiery pits of Hell! ANYTHING BUT THIS! Why can’t I shut it out?!!... This is so bad…”
She could hear herself moaning now, but in her mind screaming and crying harder than she had ever done before.

“
This is one hell of a curse, to leave the conscience in the decaying body so we could watch our flesh rot away, right before our eyes! You really meant it when you said that we would seek death and wouldn’t find it. REALLY!!?? DID WE REALLY FUCKING DESERVE THIS?! HOW ABOUT THAT LITTLE GIRL, WHO ATE A FUCKIN BABY!? DID SHE DESERVE THIS?!! DID THAT POOR LITTLE BABY DESERVE THIS?!!!! THANK YOU! THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR BELIEVING IN YOU ALL MY LIFE???!! JUST WHAT WE FUCKING ASKED FOR! Jillian screamed in her head. Well I am definitely seeking death now! Can I go down stairs? Can I get up, to do that?”
She stood up and slowly walked toward the hatch.

   
“YES! Yes, I can! I hope I can find something sharp to try to slam my head into, maybe the corner of the table… HA! Fat chance, getting that lucky… They can think, taste and smell. Walk and see what’s going on around them! And no one knows… And guess what? What? It’s not they anymore, it’s us… it’s fucking ME!!”

She tried to scream aloud and still nothing but gurgling moans escaped her lips.

“
And FUCK that smell is so strong…!”

Chapter Sixteen

 
“So!” Preston barged into the kitchen in his usual loud and obnoxious manner. “I’m going to take the second bedroom, and you two can fight over who’s gonna have first watch; unless you want to follow me up, Roland. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a tall, curvy True Red in my bed.” he said while winking at Kate and grinding his hips. Kate shivered as goose bumps covered her entire body while he confirmed her suspicions of why he had been standing over her the other night. She was sure he would have tried to rape her had Dave not been there. She remained calm, even though she wanted to slap the grin off of his face; instead she rolled her eyes and asked “What makes you think that I would follow you to bed?”

       
“I see the way you look at me, you want me,” he replied as he ran his hand through his hair and flashed his biggest, brightest crooked smile. “Keep dreaming, Chuckie. I wouldn’t sleep with you if my life depended on it.” Dave giggled at her Child’s Play reference and knew why she had said it. Preston looked a little like the devil doll, except for his little beady, ugly brown eyes which darted about constantly. Kate had learned long ago to never trust a guy with shifty eyes. “Get over yourself; your tits aren’t big enough. I only wanted a foot rub while I try to sleep.” Dave was not laughing now. “Why don’t you just take your ass upstairs, be on your way before I do something I won’t regret.”

      
“Oooh, I see.” Preston put his hands on his hips and nodded his head. “You want some True Red, too. I have no problem with sharing, if that’s the case. I don’t mind a sword fight every now and then.” Dave’s face turned purple and he stood up kicking his chair out from behind him across the kitchen floor. “I don’t think of her that way! I have known her for years, and if I did think of her that way, I guarantee you; I have a much better chance than you do. And as far as a sword fight, you’re barking up the wrong tree, all you’ll get is disarmed. Now, get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay,” Preston threw his hands out to the side. “Have it your way, it’s your loss. Try not to need me.” And with that, he headed upstairs. “So, how do you want to do this?” Kate asked Dave, nodding her head towards the body of the infected in the floor. “We can start by getting it out of the middle of the floor. We’ll put it in the laundry room. I found gloves in the pantry. Here, put these on.” He tossed her a packet of latex gloves. “Then you can read that thing you found or sleep for a while. I’ll take the first watch.”

       
“No, I can’t sleep when it’s daylight, no matter how tired I am.  Besides I would prefer that you be awake while I’m sleeping. I don’t trust his creepy ass not to try to something funny. I worry more about what he’s capable of than I do the damn zombies.” They easily moved the body and put it down in the floor of the laundry room as planned. When they removed the gloves and washed their hands Kate suggested that Dave go ahead and try to get some rest, she was anxious to begin reading the notes that the woman had left behind. Giving in, he went to lie down on the sofa that barred the front door and Kate sat at the kitchen table to read them.

        
An hour went by and Kate sighed as she finished reading Jillian’s account of events and felt so sorry for her, and was glad that it was over for them. She stood and stretched, trying to get the blood flowing again after sitting so still as she read. She looked into the living room and saw that Dave had still not fallen asleep. He got up and entered the kitchen to sit at the table with her.

“Is there something on your mind?” She asked him.
“Kate, do you remember Sunny Wright from high school?” “Yea, bleach blonde drama queen. I had two classes with her. She was always causing chaos and she was bitchy. Why, what about her?”

“She was one of the people who turned during the run to the Medical Center. The fucked up part is I could swear on my life, that I saw a spark of recognition in her eyes. I know that sounds crazy, but it seemed like she knew who I was. She even held out her hand to me, she didn’t try to bite me. It seemed that time stood still for that moment and all the memories from high school flooded my mind. Did I ever tell you that she kissed me once?”

      
“No, you failed to mention that.” Kate said after clearing her throat, a little jealousy peeking through because even though she was never interested in Dave, she knew for a fact that he had a crush on her in high school. He was always around to help her carry her books, or walk her home on a dreary day.

      
“I was standing at my locker getting out my books for the next class, and she appeared out of nowhere.  Put her hand behind my head and kissed me right on the lips. I wasn’t in love with her or anything but, it sure was a real nice kiss.” He was silent for a moment and Kate didn’t know what to say. “I almost walked away from her, didn’t want to kill her. I thought, for a second; that maybe I could hide her somewhere until a cure was found, but came to my senses, realized there is no cure and that she was infected.  I was watching several of the others fall under the attack of many at once and others searching for someone to bite...or biting the first thing they saw.  I had no choice but to do it. And it hurt me. Everything just got out of control after that. I didn’t stay to fight, there were too many of them, and after Sunny, I just didn’t want to have to kill anyone else that I knew.” Kate got up out of her chair to hug him and said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t had to put down anyone I know yet. I hope that I don’t. But I don’t think there’s anything human left in them, Dave. It may have looked like she knew who you were, but…”

      
“A woman from Eiler Street came back to her house. The mother of those two boys we took. I shot her, too. She was banging on her own front door. I saw her turn and look at everyone who was watching. She made no attempt to attack; she turned back around and continued hitting the door. I shot her quickly because I didn’t want to entertain the thought of her being in there somewhere, and that was after Sunny. I think they know, I think they are aware, just not in control.” Kate recalled the part in Jillian’s story about her neighbor and knew that the woman they were talking about was one and the same, but she didn’t feel like getting into that with Dave. There were so many things she needed to discuss with him about what she had just read. And the time would come for that later.