This is the twenty-third chapter of the zombie serial The Dead Life. You can learn more about the story over at the project hub. This series originally ran on Haunted MTL but is being edited and updated in the lead-up to new installments to continue the story.
You can read the prior chapter here.
Day 25
Bob had scarcely picked up his rifle, which he had leaning by the side of the RV door, when he noticed that Dani had already cleared the parked car and was in the outer lot, running toward the commotion.
“Dani! Fuck, wait for me!”
Bob was still a pretty spry man, given he was mid-60s, but he felt the years catching up the moment he had begun to climb over the hood and past the open gate; he could not scramble or crawl, and instead belly-dragged himself slowly across the cadillac, losing momentum in the pause to pivot so he could throw his legs over the other side of the car, escaping the makeshift barricade. Dani, in her youthful fucking exhuberance, pressed on, leaving him behind. Goddamn kid.
By the time Bob’s sneakers hit the asphalt again, a pair of ghouls had already emerged from around the corner of the front office building and had taken notice. The closest one moaned out of a slackened jaw; the jaw hung limply, not due to death, but rather it was only tethered in position by a few strings of cheek muscle holding it aloft along the right side of the ghoul’s face. It couldn’t be helped, as Bob watched the ghoul emerge and approach, he watched the jaw dangle like a cat’s toy on a string – possibly at any second, tearing completely, leaving a limp mandible swaying. The ghoul, who was nude from the waist down, no longer appeared to have genitals that Bob could identify. He shuddered at the sight of the dark brown gash of rotting meat that had dripped dark fluid that ran down thin, bare legs.
The other ghoul, by comparison, appeared untouched beyond some superficial rot. That was until its outstretched grasp revealed a hand torn down the center, down to the wrist, between the middle and ring fingers. It was like the poor woman’s hand had been the Thanksgiving wishbone, greedily tugged at by overzealous children. Two loose fingers and a chunk of the rest of the hand hung off the palm loosely, almost unmoving beyond the bounce of motion. The other three fingers wiggled wildly at Bob’s presence.
Dani was out of sight completely by now. Bob’s lungs were itching. There wasn’t a fire in them yet.
Bob drew his rifle into position, something instinctual, a muscle memory still very much sharpened from three decades of living with wholesale slaughter. He never believed in the cause, but he did his duty. Everything expected of him. Everything.
His reward was shitty lungs and a skull full of bad thoughts. From Viet Cong to the living dead; more faces for haunting the quiet hours.
But he tried not to dwell on them.
The first shot was perfect; the round drilled into the temple of the closest ghoul as it wobbled-walked on unsteady feet, swaying in wide arcs. The ghoul had dropped instantly, and its companion, the woman with the split hand, had not acknowledged its fall, still pushing forward. The ring and pinky fingers, along with their respective fleshy metacarpals, continued to bounce passively.
He couldn’t stand to see the things. He drew his rifle again, just as the ghoul approached the remains of its companion. Not looking, she took a wrong step and collapsed right onto the parking space in front of the body. Bob watched silently as the ghoul fell on an outstretched arm and watched it break. The arm did not reduce the impact, as the ghoul smashed face-first into oil-stained asphalt – a crunch and pooling of blood marking the violence.
And yet, the ghoul stirred. Bob didn’t know if these things could be disoriented, but it had trouble getting up. It may have been more from the broken arm not bearing weight, but he wondered if the dead could also be rattled like he could after a fall.
But, he supposed, it didn’t really matter. He began approaching the commotion, hip-firing into the ghoul’s skull, and making his way to where Dani had run off to. He scratched at the center of his chest – the itch was still there. Always there.
As he walked, Jimmy jogged up from behind him, a golf putter in hand; Jimmy only hung around for a moment to confirm where the commotion was, and sped past.
“I’m not that old,” Bob muttered. He started to jog, eyes darting around, wary of movement.
He caught up with them. Dani and Jimmy had settled into crouches, covering Edgar, who was on the ground, belly-down, wrenched back, trying to apply some sort of pressure to the back of his leg. It looked to be near the knee.
“Bob, watch out! Someone has a gun!” Dani shouted.
Bob ducked down just off to the side of a thinning brown hedge that ran along the metal-barred gate that encircled whatever this school district building was. Any ghouls on the street outside were a good distance away, and none had managed to wander over toward the storage yard’s gate. Even then, the parked car would provide an obstacle, but Bob wondered if maybe he should have stayed there and held down the entrance for the return of the youngsters.
“IT WAS A FUCKING KID. A GODDAMN KID SHOT ME.”
Bob whirled around. He hadn’t heard that high of a tone out of Edgar and was caught off guard, more so by the delivery than the words themselves.
“What do you mean you were shot by a kid?” Jimmy asked.
A shot rang out and hit the bus. Everyone flinched. It was a wild shot, but in their direction. The kid must have had some training – most panic fire came off in bursts. This was a single shot, and while the shot was off the mark, it was not quite off the mark. The bus was covering Bob and the others.
“That little fuck shot me as I was trying to get away from all those dead shits. There was some kind of fight that broke ou-OWWW!”
Edgar stared at Dani, who was checking his leg by unflexing it to get a better sense of the wound.
“Sorry,” she said. She pulled his leg back further and gingerly felt around the injury. “Bob?”
“Looks like a .22,” he added. Could have been much worse, he thought.
Dani continued. “They missed your knee, thank god, this is just at the top of the calf. Looks like it hurts.”
“IT FUCKING HURTS,” Edgar shouted. “I got clipped by a fucking fifth grader.”
Bob chimed in. “You said you were running from the dead – where is the kid?”
“Still back there, I didn’t get a good look at him,” Edgar grunted. “I saw three people spill out of a building trying to kill one another, and they got overrun. He must have been with that group. Maybe he thought I killed them or something?”
He paused.
“I… put them down after they’d been attacked. They weren’t gonna make it. She… one of them, her face had been bashed in, and she was drowning in her own blood. I couldn’t…” Edgar stopped as Jimmy gripped his shoulder.
Bob nodded at Edgar, and he kept his expression flat. “Makes sense. Though maybe the kid didn’t understand it. You did what you could to help.”
Dani, still crouched, duck-walked toward the front of the bus. Bob watched her take a couple of quick breaths and glance past the front before he could tell her no.
After a couple of seconds, she pulled back, and then the sound of another shot followed. Another hit to the bus.
“Goddamn it, Danielle.”
Again, the kid appeared to be a good shot. Whomever he had been with had taught him some trigger discipline.
“I don’t see him, but there are a lot of dead things moving toward a spot. I think he might get overrun if we don’t help him.”
Bob said nothing, still thinking about the kid’s aim. Jimmy and Edgar were trying to get Edgar to his feet. Jimmy was having a tough go of it due to Edgar’s heft.
“Guys, that kid is going to get overrun. We need to-”
Jimmy cut Dani off. “We need to get Edgar back to safety first and figure out a plan. We need to remove the bullet.”
“I can get back myself,” Edgar added. He was sweating, doing as much as he could to not put so much weight on Jimmy, but it wouldn’t last. Bob could see the man was tapped out. He was big and strong, but now he came off as helpless.
“Danielle, Dani. We need to get Edgar looked at. We can regroup there and figure something out,” Bob added.
Dani looked up at Bob, who had already risen to his feet, hunched just behind the hedge. He looked back at her, trying to convey that he understood her thinking. And he did, but the kid was too accurate a shot to do this safely with an injured man.
“It’s just a kid,” she pleaded.
“With a goddamn gun,” Edgar added. Bob sensed the bitter tone. “He’s in a panic, and you’re gonna get shot if you approach him.”
Bob took a couple of steps toward her. “I don’t like it either, Dani, but we need to get out of here. The kid has a gun and a chance. We need to get Edgar to safety and not risk this injury getting worse. We’re not trading a man for the chance of a kid. We care for our own.”
The itching in his chest had grown more intense. He felt the start of a cough but stifled it by clearing his throat.
“I can go by myself,” she pleaded.
“Goddamn it. Dani, it’s gonna take all of us to get Edgar out of here. He’s too big for just Jimmy to support him, and we need someone on point for the way back.”
Edgar chuckled, out of breath. “Fuck you, Bob.”
Bob flipped Edgar off and flashed the man a smile. Edgar nodded. He was still sweating but seemed to be less panicked.
Dani said nothing, turning from the men, staring toward the front of the bus. Bob wondered if she was planning a path and if she would bolt forward. He hoped not. She sighed. She turned back, clearly pissed.
“Shit. Alright, let’s get this done.” She swept over to Edgar’s left and positioned herself under his armpit, bearing as much of his weight as she could, and Jimmy focused on the side with the wounded leg.
“Bob, keep the path clear,” Jimmy said.
Bob, still hunched, moved into the street and straightened his back, rifle drawn. His chest began to burn; the stifled cough was seeking its vengeance.
As he could make out, there were three ghouls on North Lyon, two coming up from South Lyon. He took up a position in the middle of the street and aimed at the closest of the northern group. He glanced back at the storage yard, wary of motion outside of the rest of his unit.
A sudden coughing fit sent his shot veering off into the top of the ghoul’s chest, sending it stumbling back a step or two, but otherwise did not cut the momentum.
“Shit,” Bob continued coughing. “Move!”
He did his best to suppress the cough as Dani and Jimmy, supporting Edgar, came up behind him. With them behind, he was free to shoot again. This time, his mark was felled, and he watched the ghoul collapse onto the street. The two companions noticed nothing about their third, only moaning as they became aware of Bob’s position. They were still a distance off, far enough that there would be time to get to the gate. It was better to be reactive than aggressive, here.
He also hoped that maybe his shot had alerted the ghouls across the street. He hadn’t heard anything there. Maybe the kid had managed to run in the moment.
He turned to see Dani and Jimmy struggle under the weight of Edgar’s body on their own from his one-legged hops, like they were stakes to be driven into the asphalt. Both of them were puffing nearly as much as Edgar was.
He whirled south and observed that the other two ghouls had cleared the distance surprisingly fast. He took a few steps back, following his companions, observing them. They didn’t seem that fast – he wasn’t sure how they’d gotten so close.
His chest still burned, but the cough had seemed to clear out most of the tension. He wanted desperately to rub his chest, to soothe it as best he could, but he didn’t loosen his grip on the rifle.
As Bob and the others made their way into the small outer lot of the Storage Yard, he took point again, waiting for Edgar to crawl over the hood of the car.
Sure enough, the pair from the south rounded past the fence. They looked “fresher” for lack of a better term, and he wondered how recently they had been living people. Their bodies were still fleshy, and there was no sign of bones just beneath the skin being drawn too tight.
One ghoul’s neck had jagged tears, and the blood was not merely a brown stain, but looked tacky. Maybe a couple of hours old. The other ghoul had a similar, tacky stain around its mouth. Where had this drama played out?
But that was a question for another time.
Bob held his breath, lungs burning. He fired off a shot, hitting the ghoul with the neck injury in the throat. He swore under his breath, took aim, and fired again, this time sending the ghoul reeling back, red blood arcing as it fell back.
Edgar had managed to slide off the hood of the Cadillac and collapsed within the safety of the storage yard. Bob glanced over his shoulder as he watched Sandy march up to the man, simply staring from a yard away from him. He turned back to the ghouls as Jimmy began scrambling over the hood.
“Fuck, Sandy, go grab our aid kit,” Jimmy shouted.
Bob steeled himself as Dani approached and stood next to him. He took aim and fired, dropping the second of the South Lyon ghouls. He began to cough again.
Dani placed her hand on the rifle.
“Got two more coming from the north,” he said.
“Bob, you need to get over the car. It’ll take you longer. I can handle this.”
“Take me longer?”
Dani said nothing, glancing away from Bob, awkwardly. She didn’t want to say it.
“How old do you think I am?” he pressed.
“Eighty?”
Bob began coughing again, and he tugged back the rifle. “I’m 64, kid. I’m not that fucking old.”
“Just get inside.” She snatched the rifle from him. “You’ve been coughing. Go. I’ve got them.”
Bob sputtered between coughs, “Alright, but you follow right after, got it?”
Dani nodded and took a firing stance.
“‘Eighty’ my ass,” Bob muttered as he approached the gate. He glanced back to see the first of the two North Lyon ghouls round the corner of the storage office.
Bob began to climb the hood of the car and belly crawl back into the yard. As he slid over, he watched Alicia approach, carrying a duffel bag. In the distance, he saw Sandy wheeling around in a golf cart, heading toward the RV where Mary and Alicia had been staying.
“I’ve got the bag, Jimmy, here!” Alicia tossed the bag toward the front of the car. Jimmy caught it and unzipped it, dipping into the supplies with what appeared to be a practiced hand. Alicia continued speaking as she jogged toward them. “Ms. Gunderson is picking up my mom. She used to work at a clinic. She can help!”
Alicia came to a stop in front of Bob and stared down at Edgar, who was on his side, breathing heavily. His brow was furrowed; he was concentrating on anything but his injury.
“Face down, bitch,” Jimmy told him. Edgar glanced back at him and grunted, doing what he was told. He lay on his stomach.
“Alicia, help me down.” Bob outstretched his arm, and she took it, helping guide him off the Cadillac. His feet had clipped Edgar in the head during the dismount.
“Cuídate, estúpido,” Edgar muttered.
“Cállate,” Bob added, winded. His chest was still hurting. He was breathing fire.
Alicia stared out the gate, toward where Bob had left Dani. “Holy shit.”
Bob glanced up over the hood of the car and saw Dani, standing over two crumbled ghouls. She hadn’t fired a shot. She had just finished dislodging her fireplace poker from the skull of one of them, with the rifle strapped over her shoulder. The poker’s hooked end was caked in gore, and the ghouls at her feet looked as though their heads had been bashed in, and the asphalt was covered in a browning slurry with spacklings of white and grey.
“Jesus, kid.”
A distant shot rang out. It had to be the kid again. He was on his own for sure, now. Still measured, still dangerous.
Dani looked toward the direction of the sound – across the street. She looked back at Bob, her eyes wide. Her mouth had been drawn tight.
Bob remembered that look from Quý on a joint patrol along the Song Gu Via in ‘71. He’d heard a distress call and walked into a trap, quite literally. Bob had never seen a man skewered so thoroughly.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Dani!” Bob shouted.
Dani said nothing. She whirled away from the gate and ran off, toward the sound of the gunshot.
Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available.
Enjoying original fiction like The Dead Life? Support my work by subscribing over at Ko-Fi for chapter previews and exclusive content, all for just $1 a month.
[…] Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available. […]
[…] You can read the prior chapter here. […]