Zombie Waltz (Book 2) Page 5

  There is a golden coated dog on it and a handsome man with his armaround the dog. Next to him is anattractive woman crouched holding a dark-haired freckle faced boy in her arms. There is a man in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard. Everyone in the sign is smiling. The dog even seems to be smiling. Faith feels the bumps as the wheels of the van hit the uneven pavement of the shoulder. In that instant, she decides she wants to live.

  Faith jams both feet on the brakes and they squeal. The van jerks to an abrupt stop and launches her into the steering wheel. Both hands wrapped tightly around the wheel, stop her from hitting her head. She looks up; the telephone pole is onlyinches in front of the hood of the van.

  Faith breathes heavily, in through flaring nostrils and out through her pursed lips. With her eyes wide and full of tears, she looks back over at the sign.

  House call

  Faith comesback into the house through the wide flungfront door. Nothing has changed outside, so she has no reason to believe anything will be different inside. The street is strangely quiet, but Faith is glad for that. She has a large square of plastic drawn up around the horde of supplies she took from the vet’s hospital in one hand, slung over her shoulder. The other hand maintains a firm grip on the shotgun.

  The guy looks the same as he did when she left him lying on his living room floor. He isn’t moving. He’s pale…looks dead. Long ribbon slashes cross his face. There’s blood all over him. There is also a large knot on his forehead where she slammed her shotgun down. His dark hair is nice, he was probably very attractive before. She shakes away the thought.

  He has blue eyes but they have not been open since he fell. She tilts her head leaning over him and puts her ear to his chest. A steady heartbeat drums. “Jill, please don’t leave.” He mumbles, barely audibly. Faith jerks away from him. He moans and sighs and opens his mouth slightly but says nothing else.

  Faith looks around the living room. Long curtains cover 3 big windows behind the entertainment center. The TV is conspicuously missing. There is a small piano bench with its top painted like a beach scene that the guy and whoever else lived here had used for a coffee table. There is a mantelpiece on the far wall. There looks like there were once a few pictures in frames on it but now only one remains and the glass covering it is cracked.

  Faith sits down her makeshift bag of supplies by the front door. She walks around the couch and coffee table and up to the mantelpiece. She takes the frame in her free hand and holds it up. Four people are pictured sitting around a table in what looks like a bar. The guy is in the picture leaning in real close to a beautiful brunette. There is another guy, a tall broad shouldered but smiling goofyblond guyand a dark haired and very sharp featured girl. There are drinks and dirty plates mixed around the table.

  Faith sits the broken frame back up on the mantelpiece and smiles at it. The guywas cute.He has hauntingblue eyes. She looks for a moment at his picture then turns to the present version lying on the floor.

  She stands over him. His face remains perfectly calm. Though bruised and cut, it still carries some handsome qualities. The big sectional couch wraps around the room facing the entertainment center by the front door. The guy lies behind the couch just outside of a small hallway. Faith needs to get him up off the floor. The living room is not ideal for the work she intends to do. There is no place to work over him in here. The couch is too low and soft.

  Faith steps over him and walks into the gloom of the hallway. His bedroom door stands open, as does the door opposite. Faith looks first in the other room. It has a larger bed and huge piles of men’s and women’s clothing. There are boxes and posters and even an aquarium in the other room. Heavy curtains lie over the windows and there is a strangely pungent smell. She turns to the room this guy must have come from. It’s obvious because of the bloody foot prints. The smell in the room is bad but the big hole in the wall keeps it from being overpowering.

  There is a body in this bedroom. Faith stands in the doorway looking out at the back yard and darkening sky beyond. She likes the idea of there being an opening in here. So, there are two exits; in case anything happens and she needs out. But it’s a big hole. The bed is well made and sturdy. Plus, unlike the other room, it is not just a mattress on the floor. Under it lies a stand and box springs which bring it up to a much more useable height.

  She evaluates the corpse resting at the foot of the bed. Hehas been dead long enough to bloat severely and flies circle over him. Deciding there is not going to be an easier way to do it; she grabs his pant legs near his calves and balls them up in her hands and slowly drags him outside through the hole. The man is heavy and putrid but she can’t let him stay inside with the wounded guy.

  While she pulls the fetid corpse through the wrecked wall, Faith looks at the materials closely. The thin cheap house is constructed of mostly plaster and dry-wall over 2x4s. By the time she gets the man through the hole, it is full dark outside. The power is out all around her but she canstill see bytheorange glowof fires that rage in everydirection. All far away, but they are very big. The neighborhood is abandoned. Not a soul stirs that she can detect. She pulls the corpse as far as she can out the hole and around the side of the house and releases her hold and drops it there to rot.

  Faith spends what is left of the evening getting the guy into his bed and prepping the room. She pulls the sheets off and flips the mattress, dressing it with plastic she found in the vet’s hospital. She takes sheets off the mattress in the other bedroom. Then she sets about the grim work of dragging the guy into the room and hoisting him up on the bed.

  He is very lean, but at least 6’ tall so the dragging is easy except that she has to do it slowly and carefully, measuring every movement to keep from injuring him further. The best possible way to get him into the bed is to hoist him by the shoulders while hugging him to her chest. Faith leaves the guy on the floor by the newly redressed bed for a moment and searches through the kitchen drawers for something sharp. She comes back with a big pair of scissors with black metal handles. He was not wearing a shirt at all but his pants and underwear are completely soiled and smell terrible. She pushes her thumb in by his left hip and pulls the material away from his skin. The flesh of his waist is pale and tight and feels nice, she again shakes away a thought; she is a professional. Faith inserts the scissors and begins to cut both pants and underwear away at once. She hoists him out of his clothes and drags him,, huffing, onto the bed.

  He lies there completely nude. Though he is not exactly in a flattering state, Faith can’t help her own excitement being over the top of a defenseless naked man like this, it’s morbid. She grins to herself wickedly for a second. Immediately after frowning and demoralizing herself as an unfit physician.

  He has an attractive body and she looks for just a moment. After, she rushes to his dresser and finds a pair of plaid boxer shorts and brings them over, sliding them up his legs and on. She breathes heavily letting out a little laugh.

  Afterfindinga stockpile of candles in the piano benchin the living room, she works all night just getting him stabilized and cleaned up. He moans and occasionally stray words escape. Faith finds an almost full bottle of bleach under the kitchen sink and washes the walls and as much of the floor as she can. She has to sweep up glass into a huge pile and then carries it outside.

  Once the room is clear enough, Faith turns her attention to the guy. Faith readies an IV to administer him fluids. She gives him OxyContin which she crushes into a solution of saline and injects into the port she makes in his hand. His blood pressure has all but guttered out. She has no blood for a transfusion, so she goes to work sewing. She stitches his cheek and worries at his arm, trying to get him cleaned up. He reacts very little to the stitching and scrubbing. There is no way to know if he will live.After all the wounds are cleaned and the bleeding stopped, she has no idea what to do with his arm but cleans it and wraps it tight.

  Giving him a big dose of general purpose penicillin and a very small dose of
Ketamine, she starts to do basic probing for reaction in his ribcage. She finds plenty of wire hangers in the closets and rigs them to hang from the ceiling so she can start the IV.

  Once a solution of nutrients and fluids is dripping, she takes a step away from her work, crossing her arms and leaning against his wall. On his dresser, Faith sees a half full pack of Camels. She takes one out and pulls out the lighter she found with the candles. She stuffs it in her mouth, flicks the lighter, and lights her first cigarette in 3 years. She takes a few drags in quick succession and succeeds in making her head spin. Faith stares at him thinking while she smokes. She would have used other medicines if she had been at the hospital. Oh, who is she kidding; she would have been swept out of the way or only allowed to assist if she had been at the hospital.

  She walks to the hole in the wall and flicks three quarters of the cigarette out of it. The candles she sat on the desk cast ghostly light into the backyard of the little house. There is a big dark building back there. It is not a shed but looks too small to be a house. It is also square with a flat roof but in the front, there is a normal enough looking door with windows on either side and house plants sat around it. She turns around and goes back to work on her patient.

  It is very late before she as much as takes a breath again without either cleaning him or the room. As Faith relaxes a moment, she looks around. The other bedroom was decorated with Bob Marley posters and other psychedelic memorabilia. This one seems blank. There are no posters on the wall. No books or magazines. There is an empty bourbon bottle by the dresser lying on the floor. He moans again. Faith walks over and puts her ear nearhis mouth to test his breath. She jumps back shocked as he starts to mumble and says, “Hey pretty eyes, your hair is like spun sunshine.” Faith trembles.

  She stills herself as much as possible and her breath catches and then she gives the prone patient a curt smile, “You talk in your sleep. You scared me, you know that?” She asks, expecting absolutely no reply.

  “I don’t mean to stare, but I’ve never seen such a pretty face.” Faith shrinks away. She leaves the room again. This time she goes through the door and finds a plain little gliding chair and drags it into the room. She sits the glider next to the closet so she is shielded from the door and can see both the guy and the hole.

  She had been staring at him intently but fell asleep. She hears a horn honk, and her eyes spring open. There is a loud commotion outside and she creeps to the hole in the wall and sticks her head out toward the driveway. She sees several figures shuffling by the van. Faith jerks her head back in. Her breathing is hitched. She looks around and the only thing that seems solid besides the bed is the big dark stained wooden dresser.

  “It won’twork.” She says aloud to no one, thinking thatthe dresser would only cover the bottom of the hole and that the things would just crawl over. Then she thinks about the thick queen sized mattress in the other room. Dragging it through both doorways and across the room to the hole is hard. She gets under it, pushes and shoves, forcing it into the hole as much as possible.

  She steps back, “at least this will slow them down.” She whispers to no one. She looks at the dresser again and walks to it and starts to jerk it away from the wall until she can get behind it, then shoves it inch by inch until it rests tight against the mattress. Without the big hole the room is much darker and Faith lights three more candles.

  Sleep talking

  In the morning, Faith wakes and her head hurts and stomach is in knots. Her neck has a kink from sleeping upright in the glider. She looks up at her IV and the bag is thin and dry. She goes to work preparing another solution and after she has it flowing, checks the guy for response. She pulls his eyelids apart one at a time. His pupils dilate at the change of light and he winces and starts to moan low and long as if in terrible pain. Faith gives him another injection for the pain and then another small dose of Ketamine to keep him in deep sedation.

  A few minutes later, after returning from the kitchen with a large openedpackage of chocolate chip cookies and a full glass of soymilk, she panics. His color is going white. She digs through her pile of supplies and finds one of the four epi-pens. She pops the cap off and holds his right shoulder in her hand and plunges the needle into it. The epinephrine flows through him and his body jolts. He moans more and suddenly bursts out in speech, though his eyes are still closed and rolling, “It wasn’t the maid that took the money, Jameson. Dad, it was me. I wanted to be the one to tell you I was guilty. I will pay it back, all of it…yes 350 dollars. With my own money. I don’t know, I will get a job.” then he goes silent and seems to settle into deeper sleep.

  After sitting in the glider watching his breathing, Faith eats and then uses the claw hammer she found when she went looking for the scissors and starts taking apart the piano bench, entertainment center and mantelpiece. She re-uses all the nails she can and fixes the pieces of wood over the windows in the living room. She takes apart the small kitchen table next. After beating the last boards away from each other, she sits breathing heavy.

  She hears, “Hey asshole, get back here I’m not done talking to you…” She bolts into the room and leans over the guylooking at his face. It is contorted with anger and he continues talking but his eyes are firmly closed. “Lind, you son-of-a-bitch, how could you do this to yourself. I’m sorry. I couldn’t come…” He seems to stop but she realizes he is crying. “Before you went to Afghanistan I tried to call…I am…sorry brother… …sorry you died…I’m sorry I got wasted and missed the flight home for your funeral.” He goes quiet again for a while.

  When Faith is done fixing the front door shut after the terrible commotion out in the street, she returns to check on him and the guy is talking in his sleep again. “I can see you with me. You are so beautiful. I could never hurt something so beautiful…” Faith frowns and then walks up to him as he goes on, “Those blue eyes and sexy curves. My god blondie, you are gorgeous. I could love you…”

  Faith rolls her eyes, “Seriously? You don’t even know me. And when you wake up we need to get you some new material because I have heard all that shit before.”

  As the day rolls by, she grows to yearn for his words. She listens carefully to everything he says, even using an old notebook filled with a bunch of dark and sad poetry to write some of the things down.

  After three days of this, Faith feels like she knows this guy as well as she has ever known anyone. He never says his name. She knows his brother’s name, his girlfriend’s name -she thinks- and that the girlfriend recently left him. She knows that something terrible happened to his brother and father separately. She never hears mention of his mother and wonders about her. His speech is very cryptic and she realizes she could be reading more into it than she should,

  but she can’t help herself.

  By the time he actually wakes, Faith realizes her feelings for her patient are not appropriate for a doctor. She fears that she cares for him perhaps more than she should.

  Chapter 2: S.H.S. Need a gun?

  “Whatcha thinkin about?” I ask Faith.

  She jerks her head towards me, surprised. She’d been staring out the window for a while. “Nothing…just…nothing really…” She replies. She looks over at me and into myeyes and then down at little Kevin lying up against her with his head resting on her shoulder; his eyes are closed and it is hard to tell if he is breathing, “We need to stop somewhere. I can’t…”

  “I know but where?” I ask.

  “Somewhere I can examine him.” She says. I turn my attention back to the road. We are approaching another intersection. Intersections are particularly tricky.

  “We aren’t far from the high school. Take a right just up there.” Chris leans forward between the seats and points. This intersection has three crashes in it and the largest, right in the middle, is still on fire. We approach at about 10 mph with two tires running up on the sidewalk. Kevin moans.

  “If we do get to this school, is it going to be open or locked up? Are there goingto
be people there? Zombies?” Faith asks, turningto Chris.

  It doesn’t seem like Kim has thought about Kevin –or anything else- since Nick arrived, and in her defense,he looks reallybad. Both eyes are swollen with deep purple bruises sprouting from each side of his nose like wings. His jaw has a nasty almost black bruise on it too and that side of his face is swollen. Jason is up on one of Chris’s legs with his feet dangled across Kim’s. She is wedged beneath Nick, and he is slouched over laying his face on her shoulder.

  Kim had beenstaring out the windshield silentlywatchingthe road. She had not spoken once since Nick passed out. We left the hospital, screaming down Bayshore for a few miles and making crazy turns as fast as I dared. We ended up out on a tiny Key. Before us sat a private island with a gated community. The whole thing was burning; we backed down the bridge and turned around. We spent half an hour backtracking to the main road. Kim never spoke. I had looked back at her in the rearview several times. I don’t know if she saw me because her eyes never moved to meet mine.

  Glancing in the rearview after Faith asks Chris about the high school, Kim looks at me a moment then turns her head toward Faith and answers, “Yes there will probablybe zombies. But the school isn’t locked up. We went back…after…my parents’ house. Nick and I stayed a night. It was clear then but who knows now.” She looks at me in the rearview and gives me a pinched smile.

  I give her a jerk of the lip and wink, then make the turn carefully past a burnt up police cruiser with blood coated on the inside of a spider webbed windshield and the back glass shattered out of it. Its hood is folded around a telephone pole. Faith turns and stares hypnotized by the car as we pass by.

  I drive another 3 blocks about 5 mph through about a hundred car wrecks. The entrance street to the front of the school is jammed full of buses that look like they collided with each other trying to get out at the same time. “What do we do now?” I ask no one in particular.