Carefully, Mitch went up onto the porch with his Remington autoloader and stuck his head through the doorway. Instantly, he could smell the sickly-sweet tang of death. “Miriam?” he called out. “Miriam? You around?”
His voice echoed out and died.
Inside, there was wreckage: shattered furniture and pictures hanging askew on the walls, lots of mud in the carpet. Yeah, Miriam had had visitors last night and it sure as hell wasn’t the fucking Welcome Wagon. He knew if they searched that house room by room, they were going to find things. Maybe some of the dead ones. Maybe Miriam’s corpse and those of Russel and Margaret Boyne. Maybe even Lou Darin. But Mitch wasn’t up to it. He’d seen enough death, he didn’t need to go hunting for it.
Down the block they went, knocking on doors and looking for life and finding nothing. They didn’t even see anyone out walking or hear a dog barking. The world was just graveyard silent. Flooded and stinking and dead. If it hadn’t have been for the far-off drone of a plane, it would have been easy to imagine the entire world was like this. A colossal cemetery.
Then at the Procton house, life.
Lou Darin was on the porch, looking agitated like usual. “Is there anyone else left?”
“Not that we can find,” Mitch told him.
“Have you looked?”
“Yes, we looked, Lou. We’ve been knocking on doors for the past half-hour. Nobody’s around. Either they’re dead or they just got out of town.”
He grunted. “Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“How’d you end up over here? Where’s Miriam and the others?”
“Miriam’s dead as far as I know. And good riddance. Russel and Margaret are inside. And I’m getting out. This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Those things burst into Miriam’s house last night and we ran. We hid inside the Procton’s. I don’t know where they are.”
“You taking Russel and Margaret with you?”
He shook his head. “No way. They’re both crazy. I don’t care what they do. They think they’re living in a zombie movie. They’re preparing for the final battle of mankind. If you can believe that.”
He made to move past and Mitch grabbed him by the arm. “Miriam didn’t make it?”
“I don’t know. They attacked and we ran. The Boyne’s and I.”
“And you left that old woman there?” Tommy said.
“We didn’t have a choice.”
Lou gave them a more detailed version of events. Apparently, the dead got in the house and Miriam told the others to run. That’s all that Darin knew. Miriam was most likely dead.
Tommy laughed. “Well, you are one brave sonofabitch, ain’t you?”
“Oh, shut the hell up, you idiot.”
Darin stormed away, making for his own house and his SUV in the driveway if he was to be believed.
Inside, Russel and his mother were nailing boards over the windows, lording over an improvised collection of weapons: sharpened baseball bats and broomsticks with steak knives attached to the ends. Mitch had to wonder what good any of it was going to do.
“You both need to get out of here,” Mitch told them.
“There’s nowhere to run to, Mitch. This is the end battle. Just like in the Bible. Hell has delivered up the dead and this is the last stand of mankind. The whole world is like Witcham now.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, yes I do. Hell on earth.”
“Russel, you can’t believe this.”
Russel drove a nail through a board. “It’s true. Just like in that picture where the dead take over the world. You can stay here with us, Mitch. Help us get ready. Because tonight they’ll be out in force.”
“I don’t think they have to wait for dark,” Tommy said.
“Sure they do,” Russel told him. “That’s how this works.”
Outside, both Mitch and Tommy just shrugged. There was no point in arguing with a dementia that was so well-developed. They wanted to stay and die, there wasn’t much you could do.
Mitch sighed, wiping a sheen of wet mist from his face. “Let’s go over to my house. I want to get some more shells for the Remington.”
They trudged through moist yards to his own, wet leaves blown up against the house, water dripping from the roof. It was impossible not to look at that house without getting assailed by a hundred memories. There were the raingutters he’d put up five, six years back. He could remember being up on the ladder and Chrissy was standing at the bottom, nine or ten years old and cute with pigtails and freckles on her cheeks. There were the Andersen windows that Lily and he had put in one sunny September day three years ago, the air brisk and sharp as apples, the sort of day you were glad to be alive. To either side of the porch there were Lily’s flower boxes filled with wilted brown stems. There were those pain-in-the-ass hedges that she made him round off every summer with the clippers. God, it was everywhere. All the damn memories. He could see Chrissy running up the walk from grade school, her dark hair bouncing and her Little Mermaid lunch box bumping against her leg. He could see Halloween pumpkins on the porch, Chrissy taping up cardboard skeletons and green-faced witches in the windows. He could see the trees that Lily hung with lights every Christmas, the evergreen boughs she decorated the porch railings with. He could see himself out there come Easter, scattering the carrots Chrissy had left for the Easter bunny in a trail, taking a bite out of each one first.
Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ in heaven…it had been a life. A real life. It had been his life and he had been content with it all. In love with it. In love with his wife and his stepdaughter. All the holidays and special times, raking leaves in the fall and cutting grass in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter while Chrissy pegged snowballs at him. Chrissy’s slumber parties and Lily’s quilting guild. Tommy and he building the garage out back. Summer cookouts with steaks on the grill and cold beers in hand, Chrissy and her friends splashing in an inflatable pool and?
“Mitch?” Tommy said. “You okay, man?”
Mitch swallowed it all down before it took him away. He wiped his eyes with the back of his fist. “I’m all right.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go in there, you know? I can get the shells.”
“No, I’m going in.”
Mitch led the way up the porch, shutting it all down inside of him until he was numb and could not feel a thing. Just some wind-up machine out doing a job. The door was unlocked and he couldn’t remember if he’d locked it or not. No matter. He led the way in with Tommy behind him and he wondered vaguely in the back of his mind how many times they’d come in like this together, carrying groceries or six-packs or bowling trophies. Maybe even Christmas presents to be surreptitiously placed under the tree for Chrissy. A new sled and skates, Barbie’s Dream House and an Easy Bake Oven. God, those were the days. Tommy…crazy fucking Tommy…climbing up onto the icy, snowy roof on Christmas Eve night, stomping around up there like Santa Claus so Chrissy would go to bed already.
Stop it! he told himself. You don’t feel any of it! You don’t feel anything! Nothing at all! You’re empty!
Mitch got the box of shells from the locked metal box up in the hall closet. As he was taking them out, something gave him pause. At first he thought it was those damn memories again, sneaking up to torment him. Because he was smelling lilacs. Lilacs of all things. He stepped farther into the hall, over near the staircase leading to the second floor.
The odor was stronger.
Lilacs.
“You smelling it?” he said to Tommy.
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. Flowers or some shit.”
“Lilacs.”
That meant nothing to Tommy, of course. Not really. But to Mitch it meant everything. He knew that smell. Knew it very well and it made something in his belly pull down low. Lily’s body lotion. She put it on after she had a bath. Its smell was distinctive and he could feel her skin beneath his lips, that lilac odor sweet in his face.
Mitch stood there looking up the stairs.
