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  Bretta is straddled on Scott’s chest, pinning him to the bed, both hands locked on his forearm above the wound. Scott’s trying to push away with his free hand, but Cooper grabs it and pins it under his knee. Then he twists the lid on the alcohol bottle and splashes alcohol on Bretta’s hands and down Scott’s arm.

  Scott belts out a string of curses and tries one more time to get Bretta off his chest, but he can’t get any leverage because Cooper’s knee has his uninjured arm pinned tight.

  At the far end of the house, there’s a bump, and then a rapid-fire thumpthumpthump of feet on the upstairs hallway, and then a crash on the stairs. Denise screams, and Cooper says holy fuck and leaps off the bed. Denise runs toward the bed, toward the others in the room, and Cooper is at the door looking out.

  He slams the door and puts his back to it. His shaved head is covered in sweat, his blue eyes half-crazed. “It’s Nancy,” he says. “It’s fucking Nancy.”

  The sound of crashing on the stairs is Nancy going ass-over-teakettle as she sprints down the hall and out over the stairs, her broken face fanning blood on the banister and across the wall. Dead people can sprint sometimes, if their tendons are intact, and they’re tireless runners. They can sprint until their limbs break down or until they’re wounded. But they’re horrible with depth perception and can’t manage stairs worth a shit. Going up they can sometimes manage, but they have a tendency of trying to run down stairs and getting tangled up on the uneven ground.

  This is exactly why Nancy and Allen took the only remaining upstairs bedroom; Nancy was prone to panic attacks that left her weepy and mumbling incoherent nonsense. In a lot of ways, it might have only been a matter of time until someone in the house to a bat to her head.

  Nancy hits the main floor on her shoulders and is back on her feet in an instant. Then she’s pounding on the door, adding a solo to the relentless drumming of the dead people’s orchestra outside, throwing herself against the door while Cooper and Denise brace themselves against it. The door shudders with every blow. There’s a loud crack, and Nancy’s hand comes through the door, her fingers crooked and broken from the impact.

  Cooper tells Denise to grab a blanket and he’s got the door. He plants a foot against the base and uses a free hand to shove Denise toward the bed. Denise grabs the comforter, brown and patterned with flowers and berries. In their wrestling match to save Scott’s life, most of the blankets have been kicked from the bed already.

  Bretta looks up and nods, and both women have the same scared look on their faces.

  “It’s going to be OK,” Bretta says, up to her elbows in blood and alcohol. Scott is fading under her.

  Denise doesn’t have time to think about that because Cooper is holding the door shut and trying his best to keep one of her dear friends from eating everyone.

  Scott isn’t really fighting anymore, and Bretta is able to get a long string of gauze wrapped around his forearm. She cinches it tight, so his veins are bulging on the top of his wrist. The tourniquet slows the blood down enough for Bretta to splash more alcohol on the wound, and Scott moans in retaliation. He needs stitches, but there’s no time for stitches. Now that the gash is cleaned, she covers it with a cotton pad and it feels like she’s wrapping his wrist in a tube sock. The kit also has tape, but Denise knocked it to the other side of the bed when she grabbed the blanket. It’s out of reach now.

  “Come hold the door,” Cooper says, grabbing the blanket from Denise.

  Denise shakes her head. Nancy seems to be slamming the door with her forehead, from the sound and placement of the thuds coming from the other side. Cooper yells it this time, hold the fucking door, and Denise takes a couple steps toward him. Not many, though. Not enough. He grabs her and pulls her close, and she yelps like a kicked dog.

  “Put your foot down here at the corner,” he says, “and put your shoulder into it. Don’t worry about the hole. Just avoid her hand if it comes through. I’m gonna let go in a second, and you will have to keep this thing shut until I say. Then I want you to open it and stay behind the door, okay?”

  Denise nods, yeah, she’s got it, but Cooper doesn’t believe her so he makes her say it again. Then, when she’s ready, he steps back from the door. Nancy smashes against it, and Denise yelps.

  “Open it!” Cooper yells. He’s got the blanket in front of him, holding the corners out from his sides like he’s making a bed or setting a picnic. Denise fumbles with the doorknob, and then she unlatches the door and pulls it open but forgets to hide behind it. Instead, she stands off to one side, her hands curled into fists and tight against her breasts, like she’s about to get hit in the face with a football but doesn’t know how to react.

  Looking at Nancy as she charges into the room, Cooper wants to tell Denise not to bother worrying. There’s no way Nancy could eat anything after what Allen has done to her. Her jaw is a broken ruin on the bottom of her face, no longer the shape of a jaw but more a piece of chewed meat, hanging off the bottom of her face and marbled with broken teeth and bone shards. It’s broken just past the joint under her ears, though, and she is still trying to bite.

  All she can do is make the limp chunk of flesh flap around, bouncing off her neck and making drool and blood splash down her chest. The wound has also pulled down the skin on her cheeks, and her eyes are bulging and full of blood. She’s added a pressure cut on her forehead with wood splinters in it. She holds up her hands, showing purple, broken fingers, and rushes Cooper.

  He holds the blanket up as she comes at him, a full-on sprint only the freshly dead can manage. Cooper catches her in the blanket, and he turns his head to avoid her blood hitting him in the eyes or the mouth. They both go down heavy on the floor, sliding on the hardwood, and Cooper is swearing even as he grabs Nancy in a bear hug and pulls the blanket tight around her.

  He yells at Denise to help him. She’s still standing by the door, wringing her hands, but now she comes to Cooper and asks, what do I do? Cooper tells her he’s going to push her off and she needs to get on top of her, but keep the blanket tight or she’ll get out. Denise has never played a sport in her life; she was a lipstick girl before the end of the world, and she’s more or less been trying to maintain that lifestyle ever since.

  But when Cooper shoves Nancy to the side, Denise jumps on her and actually manages to stay on her.

  Cooper’s only halfway to his feet when the blanket starts to come off, though, and Denise is losing the battle. Nancy was bigger and stronger than Denise in life; in death, she’s even stronger. Cooper’s doing a crab walk, trying to get to his feet too fast, and he slips on blood and falls back on his ass. Whether it’s Nancy’s blood or Scott’s blood, he has no idea.

  Bretta comes out of nowhere, landing on Nancy’s back and pinning her on the floor again. Cooper has a flash of Bretta’s face as she lands - bloodied, enraged, her eyes wild and shiny. She’s baring her teeth like a cat and screaming something at Denise that isn’t registering in Cooper’s head. Cooper gets to his feet, careful not to slip in more blood, and the girls have Nancy pinned on the floor. There aren’t any baseball bats around; no weapons in this room at all.

  But Nancy’s head is covered in the comforter, and she’s thrashing around under Bretta and Denise, so he stomps on her head with as much force as he can, jumping and bringing his foot flat down on the back of her skull. He drives her forehead into the floor, and when her head rolls, he starts to fall and catches himself; he rolls his ankle painfully but nothing is broken, so he does it again. And again. And the third time, there’s a crunch, and it feels like he’s stomping through ice into mud underneath, and the comforter goes dark where Nancy’s skull hatches open.

  Cooper falls back on the bed, sitting down beside Scott, and he doesn’t bother to look over to see how his friend is doing. After a minute, Denise and Bretta pull themselves up off Nancy’s still corpse. Bretta goes to Scott and Denise sits down beside Cooper. She puts her head on his shoulder.

  Bretta washes her hands with the alcohol an
d finishes wrapping up Scott’s wrist.

  He is docile now, his breathing deep and even. He looks over at Bretta cleaning up.

  “Am I gonna live?” his voice is soft and is barely heard over the drumbeats on the walls.

  Bretta looks at Scott for a long time before answering. “I don’t know.”

  Outside, the band plays on.

  Chapter 3

  They leave Scott to rest in his bed, after they pull the bloody sheets away from him and throw them in a heap on the floor.

  “What are we going to do with Nancy?” Denise asks.

  “Just leave her for now,” Cooper says with a strained voice. Now they have dealt with this latest bout of insanity, they are all feeling the afterglow of their adrenaline.

  Bretta shakes her head. “We have to get rid of her. We have no idea how vulnerable Scott is to infection.”

  Cooper sighs. He grabs Nancy by the feet and drags her out into the hall.

  “We need to get the bodies out of the house, Coop,” Bretta says, careful to step around the blood trail as she follows him out into the hall.

  “Later,” Cooper says. “I need to sit down. Can you grab the first-aid kit, Denny?”

  He heads out into the kitchen. There’s water to drink and he starts to fill a cup, but his hands are shaking and he spills it all over the counter. He leaves the bottle sitting open and sits down at the kitchen table.

  “Let me get that,” Denise says, filling the cup for him before sitting down. Bretta grabs a seat on the other side, but she doesn’t drink anything. The three of them sit at the table, Cooper looking down at the floor and Bretta checking her fingers and Denise looking at Cooper like she is waiting for him to start talking.

  “I would kill for a cigarette right now,” he says finally. He starts to smile. But then he thinks about what just happened and he stops.

  There have been a lot of nights with the six of them sitting around the table being very quiet. When dead people don’t hear anything, they kind of forget what they are doing and shuffle around until something else catches their attention. Watching them, Allen used to say they were like goldfish with teeth.

  Now there are three of them sitting there, and being quiet has never been easier. Especially when there’s nothing to say, and no way to verbalize the shock from the evening.

  “So how is he?” Cooper asks, using the question as a door to step into a conversation none of them really want to have just now.

  “I don’t know,” Bretta says, breathing out the words like a sigh. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Is he gonna die?” Denise asks.

  Bretta’s face wrinkles. “I don’t know.”

  “We should tie him up, maybe,” Cooper says.

  Bretta’s eyes turn to slits. “What the hell would you want to go and do that for?”

  Cooper won’t match her gaze. He just keeps looking at the plastic cup in front of him.

  “I just don’t want to go through that again,” he says.

  “You won’t, because he is going to be fine.”

  “But what if he isn’t?”

  “He is.”

  “But what if he isn’t?”

  “This is pointless right now,” Denise says, trying to make peace.

  “What do you want to do?” Bretta’s cheeks are flushed. “Bust his skull open? Just like Nancy?”

  “I’m not saying that,” Cooper says.

  Everyone at the table thinks that’s exactly what he’s saying.

  “Maybe if Scott dies and comes back, he’ll be a lot easier to deal with now than later, when he’s thrashing around and trying to pull everyone open,” he says.

  “But he isn’t dead.” Bretta runs her hands through her hair. “Oh my God, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation right now.”

  “Calm down, Brett,” Cooper says. “Nobody is suggesting anything. But we’d be stupid if we didn’t at least talk about it.”

  “Talk about what, killing him?” Bretta shoots back. “Some fucking friend you are.”

  Cooper’s teeth snap together, and his hands become clubs. “I’m the best goddamn friend he’s ever had.” He stands up. Bretta gets up too, so she can be eye level, not wanting to give an ounce of space from across the table.

  “Yeah great friend!” she yells. “I just saved him and you’re saying kill him!”

  Cooper slams his hands on the table and the cup of water bounces and falls over, spilling everywhere.

  Denise pulls back from the table. “WOAH!” she says as loud as she can manage without yelling. Like more noise is what’s needed to calm everything down.

  Outside, the dead people react to the sounds of their voices and hammer on the sealed doors and boarded windows.

  “I was Scott’s friend before you ever started fucking him.” Cooper’s voice is cold and hard. “We grew up together. You think I want to just knock his brains out for fun?”

  “You grew up together?” Bretta says. “Bullshit. You never grew up, Coop. You’re still a child.”

  “Nice. Really fucking nice,” Cooper says.

  “Guys,” Denise says, he hands out to both of them. “Sit down. We can talk about all of this. Nothing has to be done tonight.”

  “Yeah, and nothing is gonna be done tomorrow night either,” Bretta says.

  “I didn’t mean anything,” Denise says.

  Bretta steps back from the table, arms crossed, speaking to both of them but watching Cooper. “If you guys don’t feel safe, by all means, there’s the goddamned door. You can get the hell out.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Cooper grabs the first-aid kit and stomps out of the kitchen, leering at Bretta as he walks by.

  Bretta raises her head when she looks at him, not backing down, but half-expecting him to take a swing at her. Instead, he flips her off as he goes past, into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Bretta watches him go before turning to Denise, cheeks flamed, chest scarlet.

  “I didn’t mean anything,” Denise grabs a dish towel to wipe up the water. She puts the cup on the counter and then wipes her hands on her hips before sitting down again.

  “Your boyfriend is an asshole,” Bretta says.

  Denise ignores the comment. “Everyone is just really stressed out.”

  Her face crumples, and then she’s crying, and Bretta can’t hear the next words through the sobs. But she hears Nancy’s name and then she isn’t that angry anymore. She pulls a chair beside Denise and sits down, and puts an arm around her.

  “How could Allen do that?” Denise asks.

  “I don’t know,” Bretta says. Listening to the dead people outside though, she kind of has an idea. That sound of fists on vinyl siding and on the wood covering the broken windows and on the doors gets under your skin and crawls around in there like a maggot, growing and feasting until it’s fat and you can see it flopping around just under the surface of your skin. It’s just like that, except it’s a sound in your brain. And it won’t go away. You have to take a needle and stab the maggot so you can drag it out through a hole you made. Then you can pop it under the heel of your boot.

  Denise just nods her head. “Me either.”

  They sit there until it gets quiet, and Bretta washes her hands, and they both use a bunch of hand sanitizer. They check under their nails for blood. Denise seems pretty clean, but Bretta’s arms are stained brown and it takes a while to get the blood off.

  Denise hugs Bretta again. “You OK?” she asks, rubbing Bretta’s back.

  “I will be.”

  “I know you will,” Denise says, smiling at her. “I’m gonna go check on Asshole.”

  Bretta smiles. “Yah, sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Denise says. “He is, sometimes.”

  “We all are.”

  Denise walks down the hall and stops where Nancy is on the floor, blood pooling around her head. Her stomach pulses when she looks at the drag marks coming out of Scott and Bretta’s room. Taking a step beside the body is almost more t
han she can handle, and she puts her hands out to steady herself against the wall. It takes another brave step to get past the body, and then she hurries down the hall without looking back.

  The room is dark save the light of a single red candle sitting in an ashtray, buried in melted wax. The room smells like cherries all the time because of the candle. It’s Cooper’s favourite, and Denise knows he’ll be sad when it finally burns away. Right now, he’s sitting on the bed, leaning over with his head down, taking deep, measured breaths. There’s something in his hands.

  At first, Denise thinks he might be trying to stave off nausea. “You going to be sick?”

  He looks up at her and smiles, his eyes like red marbles. His voice low. “I’m good now.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He lifts the alcohol bottle from the first-aid kit so she can see it. He pats the bed beside where he’s sitting, inviting her to his little party. “You want some?”

  Denise hesitates before sitting down, and Cooper hands her the bottle and drapes his arm over her shoulders, pulling her in close. His heat is comfort. It’s exactly what she needs right now.

  “I thought this could kill you,” she says.

  “Naw. Just take small sips. You’ll be OK.”

  “How do I do it?”

  “Just relax.” Cooper puts the bottle under her mouth and cups the top of the bottle and the bottom of her face at the same time.

  “Now, breathe.”

  “Slower.”

  “Deeper.”

  Outside, the song of the dead fades into an interlude, and the house is as quiet as it ever gets.

  Chapter 4

  The house is still quiet the next morning, as it is most mornings. Bretta is already up. She’s burning the legs off a chair in the fireplace and boiling water for coffee. Scott’s mom dragged the chair home from a garage sale.

  The coffee is dehydrated crystals that you add to hot water and stir. The first couple times any of them used it, they put too much coffee in the water and the pots were undrinkable. Bretta’s got a system now, and usually hits the right amount without too much measuring. Good coffee is more about colour and smell than math. They don’t have any powdered creamer left, so it’s been going down black for weeks.