Living Dead

  Living Dead

  J.W Schnarr

  Copyright 2016 by J.W Schnarr

  For Aurora, my light.

  And for Orion, who loves zombies.

  Acknowledgements

  Parts of this novel could never have been written without the help of Claresholm Fire Chief Kelly Starling, who warned me not to turn blood into Kool-Aid. He also thought the ending wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to, but that I shouldn’t let logistics get in the way of a good time. Always good advice, Kelly. Thanks for the help.

  Thanks also to Jeff R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec, who became my unwitting beta readers. You both had some great advice and your input was immensely helpful. Of course, you’ve both doomed yourselves to a lifetime of me bugging you for more of the same in the future.

  Chapter 1

  They slam their fists against the walls and the doors, and they slash their hands on the broken glass when they punch through the windows. But they are dead so they don’t feel it, and they are hungry so they won’t stop. The noise is a barrage. It’s an endless hailstorm on a tin roof. Day in and day out, the dead sense the flesh of the living and pound themselves into paste trying to get a piece of it.

  For weeks, the six of them listen as the song drones on and on and on. All rhythm, no melody. A song you can keep a beat to, but not one you can hum or sing. Through nameless, generic days and through longer nights. Double bass and toms, pounding through every thought of every moment of every day.

  When Calgary’s power grid goes down, Scott and Cooper head to the basement where there are stacks of long two by fours. Scott cuts them with an old wood saw. Cooper holds the wood still with his feet. They burn smooth, yellow, perfectly-sized bricks of wood in the fireplace and huddle around the scented candles Scott’s mom has been collecting since before Scott was born. At night, they look out at the empty hole in the horizon where the Calgary skyline used to be, now dotted with fire lights.

  The candles fill the air with vanilla and honeydew. With sarsaparilla and lilacs and roses. With cloves and cinnamon and earth. The smoke fills the sky with the crisp smell of burning pine. These smells are fragile reminders of the past. And like the past, they wither and die moments after entering the new world.

  The smell of dead people overpowers everything. It’s not that sickly sweet bullshit they describe in books. It’s a heavy, primal thing that grabs you by the throat and forces you to breathe through your teeth. It’s as though your body instinctively knows there’s something horrid in the air and refuses to draw it into your lungs. The smell demands attention. It commands it.

  But it’s the noise, and not the smell, that finally pushes Allen over the edge. Later, when it’s quiet, Bretta will realize you can get used to anything if you are exposed to it long enough. Anything can become your normal. But not right now. Right now, she wraps her head in pillows for a moment’s peace. And Scott presses those pillows against her ears, and she clutches his hands to force them tighter. And their wedding rings are warm metal touching, but it doesn’t make Bretta feel better the way it did once.

  And perhaps they all have their heads buried in pillows when Allen finally takes the plunge. Everyone is too busy fighting their own demons to notice that he has already lost the battle with his.

  All they really know is that their sleep is interrupted by the sound of Allen screaming, and then Nancy screams, but it’s a much shorter one. When screams are cut short like that, it’s always because something awful has just happened. The air is filled with the smell of vanilla candles and dead people, but that’s not a trigger because the air is always filled with those smells. Tonight there is something else. The electric tang of adrenaline. And so much rage.

  Scott is out of bed before he’s even awake, and then he takes a moment to stare at the floor and wonder what the fuck he’s doing. Outside, dead people are drumming the walls with renewed ferocity. They hear the screams, and it renews their faith that a warm meal is just inside the house. If they can drum their way through. They’ve finally busted out the window in Scott and Bretta’s room, and from under the boards shuttering the window closed, there are shards of glass all over the floor.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU COCKSUCKER!” Allen’s voice, from his room. If Allen was a vinyl record warming in the sun, and his soft vocals were straining past recognition.

  Bretta’s in bed with the sheets pulled up over her chest. She asks what’s wrong and Scott ignores her. She asks what they’re doing up there he doesn’t respond to that either. He has a direction now. He remembers why he jumped out of bed. He grabs the baseball bat by the door and heads for the stairs. Bretta cries after him, saying his name like it has power, wanting to be included. And Scott says nothing. He opens the door and steps into the hall, his tanned face sweaty and full-bearded.

  At the foot of the stairs, Cooper is in a housecoat, rubbing the sleep off his face and scratching his head. Cooper asks what the hell his problem is now. Scott says he doesn’t know.

  “He sounds like he’s flipped his shit for good this time,” Scott says. What he doesn’t say is it’s because of the dead people outside and the noise, because everyone knows about that. You can stay quiet, and they’ll lose interest after a while, but a creak in the floorboards gets them going again. Scott waves his bat at Cooper. “Come on.”

  “After you, boss.”

  They head up the stairs. Scott takes them two at a time. Cooper takes them one at a time, pacing himself and holding the banister.

  Allen is screaming shut up, shut up, I can’t take this anymore, and Scott yells Allen’s name, once, like a dog bark, when he gets to the top of the stairs.

  “You’re just making it worse,” Scott says, and he holds up the baseball bat like it’s some kind of ancient samurai sword. Allen’s door is at the end of the hall by the bathroom. The walls are mint blue, like candle wax, like hospital walls. It was Scott’s mom’s favourite colour. Once, when the house was going to be theirs one day, Bretta would talk about getting rid of the blue. Now that they have the house, Bretta doesn’t want it anymore. And she couldn’t care less about what is on the walls – as long as they stay standing.

  On the other side of Allen’s closed door they can hear him stomping around. But Scott is pretty sure it isn’t feet making that noise.

  It’s something hard, hitting something soft. And wet.

  There’s another sound, and when Cooper hears it his face scrunches up and he grabs Scott’s shoulder.

  Holy Jesus fuck, man, he whispers. His fingers are corkscrews. It’s like he’s trying to burrow inside Scott to get away from the noise, starting with his hand and Scott’s shoulder. The noise in Allen’s room is high and soft; the sound of sand in the water when you dunk your head at the beach. It’s the tight, panicked whine of a dog at the door who knows it’s not supposed to make a noise but can’t help itself.

  It’s the sound of Allen’s girlfriend Nancy, huffing her breath because there’s only a little bit to be had at a time. It’s the sound of her vocal cords so tight they barely let any sound out at all. Scott and Cooper have never heard that sound come from a person before.

  Smack.

  Smack.

  Huff. Whine.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Allen is exploding. He grunts. Smack.

  Scott shakes Cooper off. He steps back from the door and delivers a sharp kick to the magic spot beside the doorknob. It’s a hollowcore interior door, little more than MDF and yellow wood glue. It collapses in on itself. Scott thinks about how the room used to be his dad’s library as the door crumbles beneath his foot. Once upon a time, Bretta thought this might be a nursery.

  The door explodes inward and showers the room with medium density fibreboard. The doorknob mechanism breaks free and skids across the floor. Allen
looks up from his work, the aluminum baseball bat in his hands is black and sticky with blood, discoloured by the candles lighting the room.

  Allen pushes his glasses up on his scowling face and gives a little cough. He leaves a red thumb print on his cheek.

  “She wouldn’t shut up,” he says, like it should be completely obvious to everyone in the room. Like he just said steak is better than hot dogs.

  Cooper yells Jesus Christ from the doorway but Scott’s already halfway across the room. Scott and his samurai sword bat, he has it cocked like he’s ready to crank one out of the park. He’s moving toward Allen and Allen is just watching him, like he’s expecting Scott to suddenly realize why everything went down the way it did. Waiting for him to say it’s OK, because Nancy wouldn’t shut up.

  Allen’s been screaming at Nancy, who, in spite of the amount of damage he’s managed in such a short time, is still blubbering — pulling a classic Nancy by making noise long after she has no business doing so. Not when her face is caved in on one side and the only thing left in place is part of her jaw, glistening with spit and a lot of blood and jagged on one the top where her teeth have broken off. Bubbles come out of vomit and blood in her torn mouth like chocolate milk, thick with slime, and she sucks it all back down into her lungs with her next breath.

  Scott asks Allen what he did, and Allen shrugs like it’s nothing. Like he decided to move around his furniture for a change of scenery.

  “I told her a million times to shut up,” he says. “That noise, man. Who does that when they’re sleeping? Jesus.” He wipes sweat off his forehead and gives a little tick of a laugh when he sees blood in his hand. Allen’s poor dumb luck strikes again. He would get blood on his face, wouldn’t he? Because life just ain’t fair.

  Cooper is still yelling profanity, saying Allen fucking killed her. Just in case nobody knows what’s going on. But Cooper’s not entirely right, because Nancy’s not quite there yet. She’s making a different noise now.

  In another part of the house, back at the stairs, two sets of feet are pounding the floor and getting louder as Bretta and Denise come up the second floor. Cooper turns and grabs both of them before they can step into the doorway.

  “Don’t go in there!” he yells in their faces.

  They’re wrestling in the hallway and Denise crying and shouting What happened? and Bretta is in the doorway, her face curling up like she’d just been punched in the mouth.

  Scott looks at her.

  Allen swings for the fences.

  At the last moment Scott senses the movement and ducks, pure instinct, throwing his wooden bat up into the arc of the incoming aluminum one. The two weapons crash together, and Scott’s wrists fold painfully to the side. He almost loses his grip. Allen swings again, chest-level this time, and Scott jumps back out of the way. Allen whiffs on dead air. The follow-through crashes into candles and half-empty cans of meat sitting on the dresser. All of it comes down on Nancy and her open wound of a face. Under the stink of all that blood and mess, vanilla and sunshine candles. If Scott’s mother was here right now he might have killed her for that.

  Allen swings again, and this time, Scott counters with a swing of his own. The two baseball bats crash together, stopping instantly. Scott’s wooden bat cracks, and the sound of the impact changes mid-strike, dropping down an octave and ending with a buzz, like a fly caught in your fingers before you roll it around and end its miserable bit of life. The impact sends painful jarring vibrations into Scott’s hands, across his sore wrists, and up into his forearms.

  Allen starts to pull away for another swing, and that’s when Scott jerks his broken bat down, sliding it the length of Allen’s weapon to catch him across the wrist. If they were swords, a cross guard would have rendered this move useless. But they’re not. There’s no protecting your hands in baseball. Not really. Allen screeches and pulls the damaged hand free, away from further violence. It’s a fatal error.

  Scott gives another half-swing, down again, targeting the other wrist. He steps into it this time. The bat hits Allen mid-forearm, and the meat buckles at the point of impact. Now Allen’s aluminum bat is on the floor. He’s leaning over his hands, his mouth open, his screams pushing drool out of his mouth. Scott finally takes his eyes off Allen, just for a moment, and then he looks at Nancy, who isn’t bubbling anymore but her eyes keep blinking. Like everything will be okay if she can just get a bit of dirt out of her eyes. Calm like that, and blinking, blinking.

  It’s the blinking that gets Scott back on Allen again. Each blink is hot roofing tar onto his soul. It’s more black rage than he can handle. Bretta’s voice is far away, tickling the back of his neck like a stray hair. Screams, lots of screams.

  “Oh my God, they’re broken, they’re fuckin broken—”

  Nancy’s eye flutters are slowing down, like a moth on a cold window. She wasn’t a sister to Scott but like one. Like they are all family now, because there aren’t many people left, and they are all in this together.

  Scott brings his cracked bat to bear. More screams. Entombed in his parents’ house while a million dead people wander the streets looking for meat. Too much. It’s all, finally, too much.

  The bat comes down square on the back of Allen’s head, knocking his left eye out of alignment, so it’s staring straight down at his cheek. Allen snorts and falls forward, a large dent in the back of his head where he’d been struck. A moment later he is venting blood out of his mouth and his nose and his ears. From where Scott is standing, it looks like Allen just peeled open his face so the blood can all come out at once.

  Bretta is yelling something at Scott, but it’s still too much for him to process. Allen is kicking his feet, and he keeps kicking Nancy in the face and in the chest, and his feet catch on one of her exposed tits and the force knocks her sideways.

  Scott looks down at the floor and his feet are bloody, and then he looks at Bretta she’s just standing in the doorway, not screaming, just crying and looking at him with scared, dark eyes. Her hand is over her mouth.

  Denise and Cooper are behind Bretta, and then the three of them are holding on to each other. Denise crying into Cooper’s shoulder, and Cooper has an arm around her, but he’s staring at the floor where Allen and Nancy are tangled up. His face is passive, like he’s seeing it all on television. Bretta is looking at Scott like he did the right thing, even though it was a horrible thing. The dead people outside are drumming their lunatic anthem. It’s the only sound getting through.

  He walks toward Bretta. He drops the bat and it makes that muted buzz again when it hits the floor. Bretta unwinds herself from Cooper and Denise, and she’s nodding at Scott. She opens her arms to him. He steps into her warmth and she pulls him close, pulls his head down so his face is on her shoulder and her neck so they can share their breath. It’s the warmth and the taste of her breath that finally brings Scott around, finally causes the drumbeat to die away and finally he can hear what Bretta is saying to him. She tells him it’s okay, he’s okay now, and everything is going to be okay.

  “You did what you had to do,” she says. “He would have killed us all.”

  She leads him away from the blood and the death, and away from Cooper and Denise clinging to each other, Denise sobbing with a snotty nose, her face shiny and wet. Her bleached blonde hair clinging to the tears on her cheeks and to the stubble on Cooper’s face.

  Denise keeps saying it’s going to be okay but Scott doesn’t believe her. He knows they’re going to die here. Sooner or later, they’ll all go out like Allen, complaining of headaches and being sad for days on end until he picks up a bat and knocks out his girlfriend’s lights.

  Walking down the stairs, back to their room, Scott sees it all and it’s still too much. Everything he’s just done is a pointless waste of time. Survival isn’t extending their lives. It’s living in denial. It’s futility. Drawing breath is futility.

  He pulls away from the sanctuary of Bretta’s arms and approaches the window. Bretta tells him to be careful
, there’s glass all over the floor.

  He looks down. Why so there is. Long, clear fingers with razor-sharp edges. He reaches down and picks one up. So very long. So very sharp.

  The first gash across his wrist opens like a puckering fish mouth for a moment before it floods his arm with red. He cuts hard enough to slice his palm and fingers with the glass he’s holding. There’s pain, and then burning where the glass kisses flesh. His legs are spattered with hot and wet. His hand looks like a candy apple that’s melting red caramel all over the floor.

  He sits down on the bed, and there’s a moment or two before the screaming starts up again, a moment when Bretta is confused about what just happened, and where all the colour is coming from. It’s a moment of perfect, utter peace.

  And then it’s gone.

  Chapter 2

  Bretta is trying to get off the bed to get to Scott, and the mattress is fighting her at every turn. Scott is watching his arm carefully, monitoring the outgoing fluid pressure while blood is splashing onto the bed and the floor. Bretta is yelling What are you doing? like a sentence, not a question. Scott flexes his hand into a fist to keep it going, and then Bretta is on him, knocking him over onto the bed and grabbing at his arm. She takes his wrist in both hands and clamps them into fists until her knuckles go white.

  Scott says leave me alone, and get off me, but Bretta ignores him, and when Cooper and Denise appear at the bedroom door, she screeches at them to get the first-aid kit from the kitchen. Denise asks what happened and her hands are at her mouth like she’s trying to keep from puking. Cooper disappears. When he comes back, he pushes past Denise, who has only managed to take a step into the room, still holding her lips in her hands, still asking what’s wrong.

  “He did it with glass,” Bretta says as Cooper pops the first-aid kit and pulls out gauze. There’s a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and he takes that out too.