The Dead Series (Book 1): Tell Me When I'm Dead (2 page)

“Aw, come on, man. Don’t do this.”

“What?”

“Lay the guilt on me. I’m married. I have responsibilities.”

“She’s nothing but a piece—”

“She’s my wife, asshole.”

I looked over to see if he was crying and found him trying to pull his lower lip up over his nose.

“So?” he said. “What about a boys’ night out once in a while?”

“Next you’ll be wanting a sleepover.”

“Shit, let’s do it.”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I don’t have time for this anymore, Jim. Why don’t you grow up?”

I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, but I was pissed off. And it’s not like Jim didn’t know the score.

The silence carried us for another mile. He started singing the sappy chorus from “Someone Like You.” I don’t know what made me angrier—him knowing this song always brought tears to Holly’s eyes or what he might be insinuating. I smacked him hard across the ear. When I turned back, I saw something in the road coming at us and swerved to avoid it.

It was Jim’s dog—I could swear it!

After that I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t get on top of the situation. Next thing, we were going over the embankment, headed for the trees. Neither of us made a sound. It was at this moment I regretted never having fixed the passenger air bag.

A hundred-year-old pine stood in front of us. We hit it hard. My air bag stopped me, thank God. Jim wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and his head went through the windshield with a sickening crunch. Then everything got quiet and my eyes closed.

When I woke up I was alone. Beads of glass were everywhere. I looked over and saw a large hole in the windshield, dripping with blood, bits of flesh still hanging from the jagged edges. The passenger door was open.

I saw raccoons vaguely in the glare of the headlights, their eyes shiny and hungry with anticipation. I knew as soon as I got out they’d be all over the windshield.

It was hard to move—I was jammed pretty good against the steering wheel. I inched sideways and, feeling intense pain from my neck down, forced the driver’s-side door open and fell out onto the dry pine needles. I heard an owl hooting and the sound of the wind through the trees.

As I searched for my friend, I called out but got no answer. “Jim! Come on, man, this isn’t funny.”

It took me almost half an hour to get back up the embankment. I’d get a good start, but there was so much pain in my neck, back and legs. I kept slipping on those damned pine needles and gravel and sliding down to the bottom. Cursing, I’d go at it again, but I needed to rest after each attempt.

At last I reached the top, and lay there on my side till I could catch my breath. I couldn’t see Jim anywhere. He had to be in pretty bad shape. He might be lying out there in the darkness somewhere nearby, bleeding to death.

“Jim? Where are you?”

I was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by silence. I dug into my jeans pocket for my phone and realized I’d forgotten it at home. It was a long walk back. I took one last look at my car down below. A gaze of raccoons pawed at the windshield. I hoped they didn’t cut themselves on the sharp, bloody glass.

As I started down the road, I saw Perro again. The dog stared at me in the moonlight. There was something odd about him. His head was low, his body expanding and contracting like a bellows. I realized he was panting. Though it was dark, the animal’s eyes seemed to glow hot and red. Then he came after me, snapping and snarling.

I turned and ran, but I couldn’t move very fast. And I couldn’t turn my head because of the pain. I had no idea if he was gaining on me.

Blue-white headlights came up behind me. A horn blasted, and I heard a meaty thud followed by a grisly yelp. I stopped running. A white van with a logo I didn’t recognize was stopped in the middle of the road, the engine still idling. The blinding headlight beams illuminated the dog, which had been thrown several feet.

I heard a car door open and saw the dark shape of a man getting out. He approached the softly panting animal.

“Be careful,” I said. “I think he’s rabid.”

“You okay?”

“I could use a ride. Did you see anybody else on the road?”

“Like who?”

“My friend Jim. We were in a car accident. I need to find him.”

“Sorry, I didn’t see anybody.”

The dog howled suddenly and we backed off. The man ran back to his van and got a catch pole, but by the time he returned, Perro had limped off down the embankment and into the woods.

“Shit,” he said.

“Are you animal control?”

The man looked at me. Then he said, “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

As I climbed in I was able to read the side of the van.
ROBBIN-SEAR INDUSTRIES, OLD ORCHARD ROAD, TRES MARIAS, CA.
Both the name and address were unfamiliar to me.

The Good Samaritan looked to be in his early thirties. He was dressed like an academic, wearing a sport jacket and jeans. Pale, with curly black hair and horn-rimmed glasses. A thin scar went from his upper lip to his nostril, and I realized he’d been born with a cleft palate. He said his name was Bob Creasy.

“Good thing you stopped,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He seemed to be distracted and kept checking the rearview mirror. I must’ve looked pretty bad, because even though he tried to be helpful, he insisted on driving me to the police station rather than my house.

“Did you get bit?” he said.

“What? No, but if you hadn’t come along, it would’ve been over.”

“You sure you weren’t bit?”

“I’m sure.”

A noise coming from the back of the van startled me. It sounded like growling. “What was that?”

“Lot of injured animals on the road tonight,” he said.

He didn’t seem to want to talk, preferring instead to fool with the car radio. At the police station he looked like he was in a hurry for me to get out.

“Take care, buddy,” he said.

I watched as he shot away, almost taking out a parked patrol car. Then I went inside to call Holly.

She never said so, but I knew she was upset. We stopped at the emergency room even though I insisted I was fine. Good thing. The X-rays came back showing there was spinal damage at C3 and C4. They made me put on a neck brace. Said I was lucky I wasn’t paralyzed.

While we waited, a man with a goiter came in, complaining about a kid in the park who had bitten him.

On the way home, Holly and I “talked.”

“So were you drinking?” she said. That was always her first question whenever I screwed up. If I broke a glass washing the dishes, she’d ask me where I’d gotten the beer.

“No,” I said. “Holly, how long is it going to take before you trust me?”

“Well, let’s see. You stopped going to AA three months ago.”

“It was two months. And anyway, I don’t need those people telling me I have no power over alcohol. I do and I’m fine, FYI.”

“Then why did you lose control of the car?”

“I swerved to avoid a dog, okay? Smell my breath.”

“Never mind,” she said. Great, now she was getting weepy. “I was worried.”

That was the thing with her. She acted all hard on the outside, but inside she was like a marshmallow. I knew I was supposed to be the man, but I was still pissed off. So I let her stew in it. We drove on in silence. I closed my eyes and let myself drift.

The ER doctor had prescribed Vicodin for the pain, but I asked for Motrin instead. When we got home, I was so sore I couldn’t make it up the stairs. Apparently over her hissy fit, Holly kissed me and made me a bed on the sofa in the TV room.

“I need to find Jim,” I said.

“Dave, you need to rest. Come on, let me help you.”

I lay down, and a few minutes later I was gone.

In my dream I woke up in daylight. Jim was standing there wearing a curious expression, a dark red gash ringing his neck like a twisted reddish lei. I tried screaming, but when I opened my mouth, blood gushed out. Gallons of it, running down the sofa and spreading like a lake on the oval area rug and covering the hardwood floor. Shiny parasitic things that looked like kidney worms writhed and convulsed in the blood. Had I coughed them up too?

Someone touched my shoulder and I opened my eyes. It was night, and Holly was standing there in the Giants jersey I’d bought her the previous summer. She looked so good, I wasn’t mad anymore. I took her hand.

“You were moaning,” she said.

“Bad dream. What do you think happened to Jim?”

“I don’t know. He’s prob’ly back at his house, sleeping it off.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. He was pretty damn drunk.”

I stayed home for a few days, in too much pain to work. I felt bad about not looking for Jim, but since I’d filed a missing person report, I figured the cops could take care of it. Because someone had been injured and was now missing, they impounded what was left of my car as evidence. A Detective Van Gundy called later to say he’d taken a ride out to Jim’s house. He didn’t find anyone.

At work I felt like a spaz wearing the neck brace. But Holly insisted and I owed her for looking after me. Besides, she’d know if I took it off. I practiced turning with my whole body—I was like a robot. And I got headaches from the pressure on my jaw. There was an upside, though. Holly tied my shoes for me, which even in my compromised state turned me on.

At lunch I took a walk outside, hoping to see Jim. Everything looked normal. Cars went in and out of the parking lot, mothers pushed children in strollers. Some girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty hawked cheap prepaid cell phones. One or two stew bums hung out under a tree, their short dogs tucked inside wrinkled brown paper bags. Some things never changed.

As I said, Tres Marias had always been a strange little backwater town. But over the next few days, things got even weirder. On the local news, reporters described people acting “erratically” in public. Then I saw one for myself—a pizza delivery guy. The halting steps, the strange glazed-over look, the difficulty putting words together. The sports guy on the local TV station dubbed the condition “the jimmies.”

At first it was funny to see how these people acted. Then we saw them urinating and defecating in public. Later we heard stories of healthy people and animals being attacked, and it wasn’t funny anymore.

While I was outside, I saw the guy from the emergency room who’d been bitten, the one with the goiter. His gait was halting and strange—the jimmies. Kids on skateboards hounded him, some following behind and imitating his walk, others laughing cruelly and calling him a tard. If it had been me, I would’ve kicked their middle-school asses. This poor guy kept lurching down the sidewalk, oblivious.

Across the street a crowd gathered in front of city hall, which in true Tres Marias fashion was an old saloon that had been converted into an office building and stood next to a Dunkin’ Donuts. A man dressed in a crisp brown suit and red pocket handkerchief stood on the steps with a megaphone. It was Ormand Ferry, self-appointed leader of a “charitable organization” known as the Red Militia. Behind him were what I supposed were his lieutenants. One of them I recognized as Travis Golightly, owner of the Beehive, the bar Jim and I used to hang out at in the old days. Travis was a bully and a racist, but we never paid much attention because the beer was so cheap.

As his followers collected donations, Ormand spoke passionately of “the blood of our countrymen” and the coming apocalypse. Some in the crowd chortled, but I found his manner disturbing. He was slender and tan, with blonde hair cut short like a Marine and wearing thick, round glasses that glinted whenever he moved his head. And he wasn’t stupid. He made every effort to sound reasonable. He talked about the charitable work his group was doing, feeding families in need and giving the homeless a place to sleep.

I recalled something I’d read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn’t be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace. As I walked past the crowd, one of the volunteers handed me a pamphlet. There on the cover was an image of a black wolf with bright red eyes, slavering and feverish with disease. And at the top a single word in large red print—
Prepare