This is the tenth 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 16
As the last of the ghouls had begun to round the corner, Edgar and Jimmy dropped low to the roof, out of sight of the stragglers. From their vantage, the two men could see the rooftops of a nearby RV park. Aside from the sound of scuffling feet and low moans, the area was silent.
Jimmy hadn’t gotten used to the silence yet. He doubted he ever would. He came from a loud home before all this shit.
Violently loud.
“Christ, these things are dumb. I’ve had dogs smarter than them” Edgar whispered.
Jimmy shrugged. True, the ghouls had no real smarts, as far as he could tell. They just kind of wandered toward whatever caught their attention. But they were still winning when he thought about it. That was the fucked up part of all this. There was something in the way they would ebb and flow when little groups came together. It reminded him of ants, honestly.
Ants who ran the show, now.
“Let’s get back down,” Jimmy whispered.
…
“Yo, old man… What’s going on with the ladder situation” Jimmy whispered. He’d begun to shout but quickly stopped himself.
The old man looked up at the two men on the roof of the row of units. “The name’s Bob and I want to be sure you’re cool.”
The asian girl who went by Dani leaned on the cinderblock and concrete frame of another row of units across the lane, along with the ladder leaning up against the structure. She was clearly observing the situation with caution. Bob’s play was risky. She had her gun on hand, hanging, as she had her arms folded across her chest. Casually brandishing it but appearing as nonchalant as she could.
“What the hell? Know what’s not cool, Bob? This.” Edgar gestured to the edge of the roof with a flailing, heavy arm “Not fucking cool, Bob.”
Dani chimed in. “We just want to know why you were trying to break down our gate, that’s all.”
Edgar looked dumbfounded. Jimmy stepped forward, closer to the edge of the unit. Maybe he could land without fucking up an ankle or knee, but Edgar certainly could not. That would have been a lot of flesh hitting concrete.
“Edgar had a unit here, we just wanted to grab something. We didn’t know anyone was still here. I mean most people probably would have found a grocery store or something. Not a bunch of storage units…”
“What unit?” Bob stepped forward, “what unit was your unit, Edgar?”
Edgar stepped closer to the edge of the unit. Jimmy winced at his friend’s gigantic body so close to the edge.
Edgar stared directly at the old black man below. “Don’t see how that’s any business of yours, Bob.”
Jimmy watched Edgar step closer to the edge and reach his right arm behind his back. His fingers grazed the pistol tucked into his waistband.
Shit.
Jimmy made his way over to Edgar and placed the back of his hand against Edgar’s chest, gently pushing him back. Not that he could physically move the gigantic man, but the push made the point. Jimmy glanced at Edgar and pleaded with his eyes, shaking his head slightly. Too slight for the two people below to notice, he hoped.
“Let’s be honest with them, man.”
Edgar’s brow furrowed.
“Nobody needs to die today,” Jimmy whispered.
Edgar raised both his hands, an open gesture of trust. “K34. That’s the unit. It has our dope. We were going to haul it out and use it to negotiate for some supplies elsewhere.” Edgar paused and sighed, “We’ll trade you some for the trouble.”
Bob nodded. “S’fair, but we cleared this place and locked it down. You nearly cost us our safety.”
“Sorry about that.” Edgar stepped forward. “Like we said, we didn’t know anyone was here.”
“Most people would have found a police station or something,” Jimmy added. “Whose first impulse is to hole up in a storage place?”
The girl named Dani coughed and turned her head from Jimmy and Edgar’s direction.
After a moment, an older woman wandered out of the office and stood near the door, eyeing the scene with caution. She clutched a kitchen knife.
“We seem to be good, Sandy,” Bob said to the woman clutching the knife.
Bob gestured to Dani. She carried the ladder over. She leaned it against the units and Jimmy and Edgar began to climb down.
Bob tucked his revolver into his pants. He glanced over at Sandy who practically flinched as the large latino man stepped from the ladder to the ground. She scowled and stepped back into the office.
Jimmy followed after Edgar as the four of them looked at the office where Sandy had retreated.
“What’s her problem?” Jimmy asked.
…
Dani stood outside the unit and Edgar and Bob negotiated over the marijuana bundles. Jimmy stood just inside the entrance.
“How long have you been here?” Jimmy asked.
“Me? Just a couple days. Bob and Sandy have been here since the start.”
“What, like, you just joined up with them?”
“I was isolated in my apartment for a couple weeks, and had to leave when…”
…
Dani’s undead neighbors flashed before her and she felt slightly disoriented. She shut her eyes tight and took a sudden sharp breath. She recalled each bite mark she saw on their bodies, festering divots of rot and blackened, sticky blood. She heard the buzzing of flies around her ear, unsure if they were real or a memory.
…
“You okay?” Jimmy asked. The sudden thousand yard stare of the girl alarmed him.
Dani rubbed the back of her neck with her wrist. She glanced over at Jimmy. “I’m fine. Sorry, not sleeping much lately.”
“No shit,” he laughed. He knew how that was. Sharing a car with Edgar at the end of the world didn’t make for the most comfortable sleep. “Edgar’s snores like a chainsaw.”
Dani smirked. She walked a bit closer to the unit’s entrance, leaning on the frame. “Anyway, I, uh, ran out of supplies. Came here because my Dad kept a gun here when he was running it.”
“Oh shit, this place is yours?” That was certainly an interesting development, he figured.
Dani shrugged. “I mean, not really? Not sure what good owning a business does for you these days. He paid the bills. Paid for Bob and Sandy to work here. I haven’t really been here in… god, like, two years?”
Dani looked at Bob and Edgar. Bob appeared to be haggling over a second plastic-wrapped bundle.
“If anything, the place is Bob and Sandy’s. They’re just kind enough to let me stay. I dunno how long I’ll be staying, though.”
“Seems like a pretty good place, honestly.” Jimmy sighed. He kicked at a cinderblock corner and glanced back toward the direction of the gate he and Edgar had nearly smashed. “Edgar and I were trying to find a larger pool of people somewhere, maybe closer to San Diego. Figured we could barter some essentials with some dope, y’know?”
Dani sat on a cardboard box. She appeared to weigh little, or the box was filled to capacity. It barely shifted under her. “A sound plan as any right now I guess.”
“Is it?” Jimmy asked. He went silent, thinking about how today had gone. The last survivors he had run into had tried to kill him. Edgar got to them first. Now he was having a genial conversation. What the fuck even was this?
After a few moments, Bob and Edgar shook hands. It seemed like the trade was done.
Edgar glanced back to Jimmy and huffed. “Yo, Jimmy. Let’s get going.”
Jimmy scratched at the patch of red hair on his chin. It was a weak growth. He hated that he couldn’t quite get a full beard. Whenever he tried he ended up looking like some red-headed, mutton-chopped civil war soldier, complete with mustache and a weak chin growth.
He looked to his friend. “Actually, I’m thinking maybe we ask to stay here a bit, to just kind of rest up?” He glanced back at Dani.
She shrugged. He knew she could see it wasn’t the craziest idea. “Fine by me, at least.”
Bob stepped forward, rubbing his chin. “How long are you thinking, kid?”
“Honestly, could we just stay like – the night?” Jimmy gestured over to the fence that they had hit repeatedly with Edgar’s Cadillac. “I’d be happy to help you reinforce the gate tomorrow before we leave.”
Edgar brushed past Jimmy. “Dude, are you kidding me with this shit? What about San Diego?”
Jimmy shrugged. Edgar looked angry.
“Look, man, we had a plan,” Edgar said. “We can get down there and find someone to exchange with.” He held up one of the six packages he was holding and waved it in front of his friend. “We had a plan.”
Jimmy looked around the storage facility. The grey concrete had begun to take on an orange hue from the encroaching sunset.
“I… don’t think San Diego is worth it, man. All those things… the city would be full of them, right?”
“That’s a solid point,” Bob said. “We got nearly overrun with the handful here. Imagine a big city.”
Edgar opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then said nothing. His jaw tightened and he rubbed at his forehead with his thumbnail, likely recognizing the man’s point.
After a few moments, Dani stepped forward. “You two can take an RV for the night if you want. That’s fair, right, Bob?”
“Can’t imagine Sandy is going to be thrilled, but I don’t mind if we’re all cool about it. We could smoke a bit and talk about San Diego.”
Dani started off toward the RV area.
“You two coming?”
Jimmy and Edgar stared at each other, shrugged, and followed, with Bob right behind them. The old man took a huge sniff from one of the two bundles he’d finessed and chuckled softly to himself.
…
Sandy wasn’t happy about the strangers staying the night, but she was outvoted. How she was outvoted in her own home was beyond her. She wasn’t sure why Danielle had any sort of say. She was leaving soon, anyway.
She sat in her chair in the living room. She had turned it toward the window to keep an eye on the world outside. There was smoke in the far distance. Maybe it was a wildfire. Maybe it was something else. People, maybe. People who would come to take what she had.
The knife rested on her lap.
She sipped her tea. She was running low on the mix. She wasn’t a fan of cold tea, but heating anything had been a problem, so all her tea was at room temperature. She hated that there was still no power. Bob had been stingy with the generator and she wasn’t about to light a fire outside.
Too many strangers.
She thought of the smoke outside. She ran a finger along the flat side of the blade.
Bob suggested the power might never come back. Sandy was not so sure. She had a brother in the military – a career man, he’d done logistics. Surely he and a whole platoon would be on their way to save her. It made sense.
She just had to stay safe until order was restored.
The apartment was dark and there was no glare on the window. She could sit comfortably in her seat and stare out the window toward the hills in the west, past the outskirts of Emmett.
In the distance, she saw what looked to be some sort of light flashing. She approached the window, setting down her glass of tea. After a brief time, the lights faded.
How odd, she thought. I hope they don’t come this way.
Her grip tightened on the handle of the knife.
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.
