Chapter 19
The aluminum baseball bat is on the table in the living room. Beside it is a Stanley FATMAX pry bar, a yellow one that’s slotted for pulling nails. Cooper says they’re also handy for inching a wall if it’s already been anchored to the floor or to a stairwell. He knows this because he has done construction as summer jobs in the past, dry-walling with his friend’s dad for party money.
“Take whatever one you want,” Cooper says, struggling to fit into his jersey now that it’s full of carpet strips. Bretta is already dressed and ready to go. “I’ll take the other one.”
Watching him struggle, Bretta shakes her head. “Should have been here to get fitted.”
“It wouldn’t have made the jersey any bigger.” He forces his head through the neck hole and stretches the material. “Or made the carpet any smaller.”
Bretta picks up the pry bar and tests it, swinging at imaginary people and striking air.
“You can probably stab with the slotted end, if you want,” Cooper says, checking his helmet. “That crook on the other end; it’s just like a hammer if you swing it.”
Bretta nods. Her helmet is sitting upside down in the couch, and she’s already sweating and itchy from the tough fibre brushing against her skin. She remedies the issue with a long-sleeved shirt that she wears under the suit.
She takes the pry bar over to the front window and peels back the nails on a board sitting eye-level. She looks out and sees six dead people in the street within half a block of where they are. There are more of them further down the street. There are none in the yard, though, thanks to Cooper’s cinder blocks.
The lawns up and down the block are all feral. In some places, the grass is high enough to hide bodies she knows are there. The street is littered with trash and the wrecks of cars. Some of them have dead people in them; she can see them writhing in their seats, too stupid to figure out a seatbelt buckle. Behind her, Cooper and Denise have turned getting dressed into a team sport.
“Where are we going?” Bretta peels another board free with the crook of the pry bar. It’s very good at its job.
“Walter’s house is the second one on your right.” Cooper grunts as Denise pulls on his pants, and she laughs. “It’s blue vinyl.”
By straining her neck, Bretta can make out the front edge of Walter’s house. “I wonder if anyone is alive in there.”
“Probably not. We would have heard something by now. But we can ring the doorbell if you want.”
“The door’s probably sealed,” she says.
Cooper laughs. “That’s what the pry bar is for.”
“There’s no power,” Denise says. Cooper smirks at her, and she slaps him. “Oh. Very funny.”
Bretta clucks her tongue. Of course it is. Hilarious.
Looking out the window, she visualizes what it will be like, going down the front sidewalk and down two houses. Less than a couple hundred feet, but she has a feeling this will be the longest walk of her life. “Should we walk, or run, you think? I’m wondering if quick movement will get their attention.”
“Good question.” Cooper sighs. “I’m not sure.”
They’ve seen dead people chasing down trucks like stray dogs. They’ve seen the dead rush after groups of people on foot trying to get out of town. There’s no way for sure to know what attracts them to the living.
“It’s got to be smell.” Denise has her head resting against Cooper’s ribcage. “This boy stinks.”
“We all stink,” Cooper says, and Bretta’s instantly grateful he doesn’t take another shot at Scott. Denise crinkles her nose and kisses Cooper on the side. He wiggles and pushes her head away.
“He’s ticklish,” she says, smiling.
Finally done dressing, Cooper stretches his arms out. The jersey slides partway up his forearms, and Denise puts a hand on the end of the sleeve. “This isn’t going to work if you’re not completely covered,” she says.
Cooper shrugs. “I guess I’ll wear a coat or something.”
“The carpet will still protect the soft parts of his body,” Bretta says.
Denise grabs him one of Scott’s plaid work jackets from the closet and he grins after putting it on, flexing his arms for the girls. The layers of clothing have added bulges to his arms and shoulders. “I look like the tire guy.”
“The marshmallow man,” Denise says. Cooper grabs her around the waist and pulls her close. She squeals and their black faces come together to kiss.
Bretta leaves them to it. She pushes the board back in place on the window and then heads down to Scott’s bedroom. He is on his bed again, staring up at the ceiling and rubbing his thumb in the palm of his hand. He doesn’t look at her until she’s standing beside the bed.
“That’s what you’re wearing out?”
“Boy, where have I heard that before?”
Scott looks her up and down, his withering yellow eyes dull and sticky.
Bretta holds out her arms and explains what the carpet is for. She tells him how they’re going to wear hockey gloves and duct tape the sleeves to them. She’s going to lock everything down so even if they do grab on, they won’t touch skin. “And if they bite me, all they’re going to get is a mouthful of carpet or plastic.” She taps her shoulder pads.
“It’s is a stupid idea,” Scott says. “You’re both going to die.”
“Awesome.” Bretta scowls. “Thanks for the support, ass.”
Scott sits up and laughs. “You guys are so smart,” he says. “You think you’re going to fix me, but you’re not. Pills won’t work. Nothing works. I’ll eat them and they’ll just sit in my stomach rotting, along with the rest of me.” He snaps his fingers at Bretta, and she matches his gaze. “You need to listen to me.”
“I hear you,” she says. “I just don’t care.” Even as the words tumble out of her mouth, she regrets them. Of course she cares. This is the man she loves. Her sick man. Her vows to him specifically included the word ‘sick’ in them.
Even more, he’s her connection to their old life. The one where the four of them, her, Scott, Cooper, and Denise, can be a family again, instead of a bunch of strangers making each other crazy and waiting to die.
“Survival isn’t enough for me,” she says. “Not like this.”
“Good,” he replies. “Because you go outside, you’re not going to have this anymore.”
Bretta puts her arms up in surrender. “I’m leaving in a few minutes. Can I have a hug?”
Scott sighs. Slowly, knees creaking, back popping, he stands up and shuffles toward her. He drapes his arms over her shoulders. She takes a deep breath and then puts her face against his neck. He feels cold and waxy. Corpse-like. She puts her hands on his back and pulls him close. His hands are rigid on her back. Even holding her is awkward for him now. She thinks about how natural it used to feel to be in his arms. She doesn’t feel that now. The feeling makes her eyes wet, and she whispers, “I love you.”
Scott starts to pull away, but not before Bretta grabs the back of his head and pushes her lips against his. He feels like bones under his shirt. His lips are chapped and scabby. The hair on his face scratches her mouth and the end of her nose. Tears drift down her cheek, and she finally lets him go. He stands arm’s length away from her, frowning, shaking his head.
“Stay here,” he says. “It’s safer for you.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
It’s time for her to leave the room, before she breaks down. She can already feel herself cracking under the weight of their goodbye. It feels like a forever goodbye, in spite of what she keeps telling herself. He just might be right when he says they’re going to die.
“Denise is going to be here if you need anything,” she says.
“I won’t.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“No. You won’t.”
It’s enough for Bretta, and she turns and leaves him for the privacy of the hallway. She wipes her hands on her face and takes deep breaths before coming back into the living room.
Cooper has his helmet on, and Denise has already taped his gloves to the sleeves of his jacket. She’s working on sealing his pant legs to his shoes now, and when Cooper sees Bretta enter the room, he puts a hand on Denise’s head. “Oh yeah,” he says.
Denise doubles him over by pretending to hit him in the balls. “Find a shower out there, and maybe I’ll think about it, Stinky.”
Bretta nods toward Cooper. “You ready to go?”
Denise finishes taping his legs and slaps his thigh. “He’s ready.”
Bretta puts on her helmet. She secures the cage and then snaps the buckles under her chin. She puts her gloves on and Denise holds the tape up. “Want me to do you?”
Cooper chuckles, and Denise shakes her head. Bretta holds her hands out. There’s a snap as Denise pulls the first strip of tape from the roll, and sets about sealing Bretta’s gloves and pants. Cooper’s got the bat in his hands, testing the weight of it, the feel of it in hockey gloves. He takes a practice swing. “I almost want to tape it to my hand.”
“You’ll only want that until you have to put it down and do something,” Bretta says.
Cooper swings again. “I was planning on making you do everything.”
Denise finishes taping Bretta’s legs and stands up. “I can tape his mouth while I’m at it,” she says, and Bretta laughs. Denise taps her on the helmet. “You’re good to go.”
Denise grabs her in a fierce hug. Bretta hugs her back. Denise turns her head so her mouth is against Bretta’s ear. “Bring him back to me please,” she says quietly, so Cooper can’t hear her.
“I will,” Bretta says.
“You come back in one piece, too,” Denise says. “Both of you.”
Bretta nods. Denise lets go of her then, and back to Cooper for another moment together.
Bretta takes the pry bar and finishes pulling the boards from the business side of the door.
Cooper comes up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder.
“Put these back as soon as we’re done,” he says, pointing the boards out to Denise. “Use extra nails. We’ll figure out getting back in when the time comes.”
Denise picks up the hammer. Cooper pops the cage on his helmet to kiss Denise one more time, and then he turns back to Bretta. “Ready when you are, boss.”
Bretta looks over Cooper’s shoulder. Scott is standing in the hallway. He’s leaning against the wall just inside the hall entrance, and the shadows make it hard to see his face. She puts up her hand and waves to him. Then she nods to Cooper.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says.
She pulls the door open wide enough to slide through sideways and steps out onto the porch for what seems like the first time in forever. For a moment, she feels like an astronaut and wonders if this is what Chris Hadfield felt like the first time he stepped out of the International Space Station. She wonders if he’s dead now, or if he’s barricaded in his house, too.
A moment later, Cooper joins her.
Chapter 20
Bretta takes the steps down to the front walk, two at a time, and is halfway to the sidewalk when she stops. The act of coming and going from a house is such a natural one she does it on instinct. But it only takes a few steps for her new instincts to overtake her old ones. She stops because there are dead people around who will murder her if they get a chance. Just like that, another piece of her old life falls away, and she feels it break free like a cracked fingernail breaks to reveal the stinging, tender flesh beneath.
“Keep going,” Cooper says behind her. It would be easy enough for him to go around. All it would take was leaving the concrete and putting a foot down in the tall grass. But it’s something neither one of them seem eager to do just yet. Not that knee-high blades of green can hurt you; it’s that you can’t see the ground. And
not
knowing is so much worse than knowing. Especially in this new world.
Cooper’s right though. She needs to move. And she needs to stop thinking about the things she keeps losing and focus on the things she can save.
They walk down to the sidewalk. Cooper walks with his knees bent, his hips on a swivel, watching the dead further down the street. They haven’t noticed the two trespassers in their domain yet. The dead shuffle about without direction and seem to change direction at random. They are oblivious to the degradation of their bodies and to the parasites infesting them. They are unaware of their crooked postures caused by ligaments tightening and twisting both limbs and frames. A surprising number of them have burned hands and faces, no doubt damage caused when they died the first time.
Seeing them instills a strange kind of fatigue Bretta’s never felt before. It slows her thoughts. It makes movement feel sloppy and uncoordinated. She thinks this is what deer must feel, locked by the terror of a set of high beams bearing down on them on a dark, lonely road.
Looking at them is knowing death in an intimate way, and the thought of it so close constricts her muscles into tight, useless balls. Watching them from the windows and from behind barricades is one thing. This is knowing them on a completely different level.
Cooper reaches out and grabs Bretta’s shoulder. He says her name, softly, his fingers squeezing the carpet of her armour into her flesh. When she doesn’t immediately respond, he shakes her arm. “If you’re having second thoughts, this is the perfect time to have them.”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine.” That is not the truth, however. The truth is that she wants very much to play the retreating turtle and run back to the safety of the house. Of course, if she does that, Scott will probably die. And Cooper and Nancy may be too fucked up or weak to escape when winter finally comes.
“Good,” Cooper says. He still has her arm, but he isn’t looking at her anymore. He’s looking down the street, and when Bretta turns, her stomach rolls over. A tall man wearing shorts and a ripped blue T-shirt, his body tattooed with sores and tears, is moving through the grass toward them. His first step onto the sidewalk shows he was wearing black socks when he died.
“Where?” Bretta asks, meaning
where did he come
from?
but her breath is hitching, and she’s having a hard time putting sentences together. Cooper is pulling on her arm, moving them away from their sanctuary and toward Walter Something’s house. Bretta puts one foot in front of the other, and then does it again. And suddenly, she’s skipping behind Cooper, looking ahead at her goal but also continuously looking back at the man hobbling behind them, because try as she might, she just can’t take her eyes off him for more than a second or two at a time. Two dead joggers in soiled matching spandex are further down the street, but they have already detected Bretta and Cooper and are making their way along the sidewalk.
Cooper is at the walkway to Walter’s house; he’s waving her on and pointing to the front door with his baseball bat. She rounds by him, and over his shoulder she sees another shambler coming around the back of a red station wagon. She runs the walkway in less than six steps and pounds the concrete stairs to the door. She trips at the top, falling into the door with a thud, and Cooper is coming up behind her, still watching their backs, and he squawks when he sees the second man coming toward them. He’s Asian, and his twisted, broken arm is burnt black. Charred flesh runs up his shoulder and halfway across his face.
Bretta pulls herself to her feet. She tries the doorknob and it’s locked, so she pushes the straight end of the pry bar into the molding that protects the gap between the door and the door frame, and when she pulls, she comes away with a handful of splinters off the wood and scrapes the paint on the door. Behind her, the man in the black socks has made it to Scott’s parent’s house. Cooper is up on the stairs behind her, waving the bat, and it takes a moment for her to realize he’s actually screaming at her to get moving, get moving.
She pushes on the door with her shoulder and slides the pry bar behind the moulding again, and this time is rewarded when it pops the little headless finishing nails and cracks down the middle. She grabs it with her gloved hand and pulls it free, revealing a sliver of black between the door and the frame. She tosses the moulding onto the yard just as Cooper screams
JESUS CHRIST
and takes a swing at the man in the black socks, who is now in the yard behind them. The Asian man is also coming up the yard from the other side and the runners are halfway between Scott’s parents’ house and Walter’s.
Cooper connects with the man’s arm, snapping it clean. The black flesh bends around the bat before flopping free. An iceberg of white bone and rancid arm fat splits the meat of his forearm, and his hand makes a limp fist as the exposed tendons tighten. Cooper swings again, and Bretta jams the pry bar into the gap. She leans on it. The door pops up on the hinges until the top of the door touches the door frame. She hears the groan of nails and squeaking wood from inside the house where Walter’s family had barricaded themselves in.
The thought of someone alive inside never occurred to her until she hears the nails and the wood from the barricade on the other side of the door. At once, she both hopes for and against this being the case, but there’s no time to sit and think it out. It’s either a case of dying out here in this moment, or maybe being killed by whatever is waiting in the darkness of Walter’s house, living or not.
Cooper’s second swing connects with the side of the man’s head, and he goes down sideways with an ugly dent below his bulging yellow eye. The Asian man hits Cooper from the side.
Cooper trips over the body at his feet. Both Cooper and the Asian man fall into the grass. Cooper is yelling and pushing up on the man’s face, his gloves revealing streaks of white fat and bone where he pulls the charred skin free.
Bretta leans on the pry bar when she jams it into the gap on the door, and this time when she leans into the bar, there’s a loud crack on the other side of the door and inside the door itself. The bolt guard buckles as the wood splits, and suddenly the sliver of a gap between the door and the door frame is two inches across and growing by the moment. Behind her, the two shuffling dead people who were following the man with black socks are in the yard now.
Cooper rolls the Asian man over and gets to his knees, and they fall on him just as he’s getting to his feet. One falls over the prone corpse of the first man just like Cooper did, and the other knocks Cooper backwards so he stumbles and lands flat on his back a few feet from the front step.
The dead man is on his hands and knees and he crawls to Cooper, grabbing him by the legs and pulling himself into a better position to feast. Cooper thrashes one leg free to kick the man in the chest. The man doesn’t let go of Cooper’s leg. Instead, he pulls Cooper’s foot into his stomach and bites Cooper on the knee.
Cooper flails with the bat in one hand and connects with the dead man’s arm. The blow is too weak to dislodge either his leg of the man’s teeth on Cooper’s knee.
And then Bretta is there, flying off the stairs, swinging the pry bar like an axe over her head, so the angle end pounds into the back of the Asian man’s head. The blow drives Cooper’s knee up into the man’s mouth, splitting his cheeks in a Chelsea Grin, smashing his teeth on Cooper’s kneepad and dislocating the man’s jaw in the process. The blow also fractures his skull where his neck meets his hairline, and when Cooper kicks him off finally, the man’s face seems to be divided by a top half and a bottom half, and the bottom half is little more than a flap of skin drooping down over his neck and a lot of broken teeth in rotting gums.
Bretta reaches down and grabs Cooper by the arm. “If we kill them now, they won’t be banging on the walls while we’re looking for the keys.”
He climbs to his feet just as the two dead joggers come into the grass off the sidewalk. They are a matched pair; a man and a woman. The woman is wearing a gaudy diamond on her finger.
Cooper rests his bat on his shoulder. Bretta moves away from him, in a half circle, making space to swing when the time comes. She’s got the pry bar up like a spear, holding it in two hands. Both of the dead people lunge at Cooper, their first target. His swing knocks the woman’s head sideways and she half-spins before falling in front of her companion, tripping him. Bretta takes two quick steps and plants a knee in the middle of his back. When Cooper swings, she turns her head to keep the blood out of her face.
“Holy Christ,” Cooper says, his chest heaving. He starts to put the baseball bat down and then seems to rethink that position and opts to keep it at his side.
Bretta points at his knee as she stands up. “Looks like the armour works.”
Cooper looks down at his leg and sees the imprint where the dead man’s mouth smashed against the plastic cap of his knee guard. He holds up his arm and shows Bretta another bite mark. Two crooked half-moons are dented into the material, but there aren’t any tears. “I didn’t even feel it.”
Bretta nods, and then looks at Walter’s door, hanging open like a cave mouth. “Nothing came out of there, so I’m guessing nobody is home.”
“Or they’re already dead.”
“Yeah.” Brett hefts the pry bar. “There’s always that.” She walks up the stairs slowly, listening to Cooper’s breath returning to normal. There are no other sounds. The house is silent. She pushes the door open the rest of the way, and the boards holding it crunch and resettle. After being outside in the light, the house is a pit of black and Bretta blinks hard to sweep away the gloom until her eyes adjust. She is only a few feet in the door when she gets the first solid whiff of rotting corpse.
“God,” Cooper says. “Smells like my room in here.”
“Your room smells like paint and sex,” Bretta says. Cooper chuckles behind her, but he doesn’t try to defend himself.
They move through a darkened kitchen, filthy with dishes and garbage, the open food long since past stinking and reduced to dehydrated versions of its former glory. There is cereal all over the floor from a dented corn flakes box in the corner of the room near the fridge, still lying where someone threw it. There’s also broken glass from several cups and beer mugs on the floor, and the brittle glass crunches underfoot. In the living room, they discover the source of the stink is an old woman’s bloated and reeking corpse splayed out on the floor. She has the black handle of an expensive carving knife sticking out of the top of her head. She’s leaning against the couch, covered in maggots. There are hundreds of flies in the room, and Bretta’s thankful she’s sealed in her armour when they begin crawling on her arms and landing on her helmet.
“Denise says they can make you sick if they crawl on you too much.” Cooper waves his hand. At the sound of his voice, there’s a thump in one of the back rooms. Something small and hard hits a door down the hall, where the bedrooms are. Bretta starts down the hall but stops when Cooper grabs her. He points with his bat at the floor under the big screen television sitting opposite the couch. There are a row of four dolls and three little plastic horses lined up neatly against the television stand.
Looking at the dolls and the ponies, Bretta gets an image in her head of what the thumping in the back room probably is. She holds the pry bar in front of her when she leaves the room, moving slowly so she doesn’t make any mistakes. Cooper follows behind her.
“You don’t have to look,” he says, but only once. Just to let Bretta know the option is there if she wants it.
The thumping is coming from the first door on their right. The door itself is adorned with stars and rainbows, and the words “ADELE’S ROOM” in different coloured block letters that look a lot like alphabet magnets. Bretta puts a gloved hand on the words, and pulls it back when the door thumps again. There is scuffling on the other side of the door. Whatever thing is in Adele’s room, it doesn’t want to be in there.
The door opens into the room, and Cooper puts a hand on the doorknob. “I’m just going to take a peek.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Jesus Christ. Get back.” He opens the door fast and hard, knocking the thing on the other side flying back into the room. He opens the door long enough to stick his head in. Bretta sees blood on the far wall beneath a barricaded window, surrounded by more glittery decorations. A large glitter star with a rainbow shooting out of its back says
ADELE IS A STAR!
Blood has dulled the rainbow colours to shades of brown. She sees it only for a moment, and then Cooper slams the door shut again and stumbles backward into her.