“Careful, the number one cause of accidental shootings is careful aim.”
Paul wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she was holding the gun. “I’m getting some food.” Paul stood up.
“There are more candles on the table,” she told him before she opened the shade a bit to get a look out into the night.
“All the people left on the planet and I get stuck with her, I had more fun by myself last night.” The more he thought about that, the truer it rang. Of course, he had been with half a bottle of pain pills. “Should have saved those for tonight. Might have actually made her worthwhile company.”
“What are you going on about in there?” Deneaux asked.
“Just wondered what this peanut butter would taste like on some bread,” Paul said as he ate the thick, rich goodness off a tablespoon. It was the small things that hit the hardest. Paul thought the last time he had fresh bread was the day of the apocalypse. He had gone to a Subway and gotten a six-inch meatball sub. “Should have gotten the damn foot-long,” he said wistfully, popping another spoonful into his mouth.
“Bitch, where are you!” Paul heard from outside the house.
Deneaux was standing up by the window now, her half a smoke hanging from her lip. One word emanated resoundingly from her mouth, “Shit.”
“What’s going on?” Paul said, coming up beside her. He could not help but notice that an ashtray would be offended by her aroma of smoke.
“It’s Brian.”
“Brian? You said zombies got him,” Paul said as he got a closer look out the window. The person ambling down the roadway looked somewhat like their traveling companion, but the abundance of blood on his face and clothing made identification almost impossible.
He did not look so much like he was on death’s door as possibly he had passed over the threshold; and when he realized he had not quite finished his business back in the mortal world, he had come back a step to do so.
“I’ve seen zombies that look better than him,” Paul added, a little frightened.
“Bitch!” Brian yelled again. “I know what you did, well I got the best of him, you friggin’ hag! He couldn’t kill me!” Brian yelled, thumping his chest as the blood welled up in his mouth.
Paul made a move to open the door.
“Don’t you dare!” Deneaux said as she leveled the rifle on him.
“What the hell is the matter with you? What did you do?” Paul asked in alarm.
“He’s a dead man. Look at him.”
“What is he talking about, Deneaux? You said zombies got him and that he was dead.”
“Zombies did get him. Can you not see that?” she said defensively.
“He doesn’t look dead.”
“He’s a dead man walking,” she added flippantly.
“I’m going to help him,” Paul said, reaching for the door handle.
“You open that door and you’ll be joining him.”
“Fuck you, Deneaux, I’d rather be with a person that’s about to become a zombie than with you anyway.” Paul walked out the door, Brian was still a good fifty feet down the road but immediately saw Paul.
“Paul?” Brian asked, blood and sweat stinging his eyes and making it difficult to see.
“Hey, Brian,” Paul said, walking cautiously towards him, not sure if he should be expecting a bullet in his back for his trouble. “Are you alright?”
“Do I fucking look alright?” he asked heatedly, blood spilling from his nose and ears.
“No, you don’t, man, I’m sorry.”
“That bitch set me up,” Brian continued without any prompts from Paul. “I was sleeping and zombies must have been coming or some shit, but she throws a stick at me to wake me up. I look over and she’s hiding behind this small bush, and I’m thinking what is this crazy bitch doing? At first, I thought maybe I had just woken up and caught her taking a piss, but to take a piss, you have to be human!” he yelled the last word. “And I’m not convinced of that. She threw the stick, hoping that I would make a noise or that the noise of the stick hitting the ground would cause the zombie to attack me. It was on me before I could even sit up.”
Paul couldn’t imagine the horror, the guy was burning up with a fever, probably had the strength of a newborn kitten and a zombie comes and attacks. Guilt began to heft on his shoulders that he had not at least gone back to stand guard duty. He had spent the night getting stoned, staring at candles. Brian was beyond antibiotics at this point, Paul could count at least two bites on Brian’s face alone.
“I need to kill her,” Brian pleaded.
Paul pointed to the house he had just come from.
Deneaux threw the cigarette she had finished onto the floor, grounding it out with her foot. “Son of a bitch,” she said calmly as she lit another coffin nail.
Brian started walking towards the house. Paul stayed where he was. He wanted to go, but he had only one boot on and no weapon.
“I really need to think things out before I do them,” he said as he watched Brian approach the house.
Brian was halfway up the drive when he dropped onto his knees. Crippling stomach cramps hunched him over as his body expelled everything in his stomach. Ropy strings of blood and vomit hung from his chin as he stood back up.
Brian stood still in the driveway for a second longer; he then turned around to look at Paul.
“Fuck me,” Paul mumbled. He wasn’t going anywhere fast and now Brian wasn’t Brian anymore. Paul got into a reasonable facsimile of a fighting stance.
Brian started running full tilt. “I love you, Erin,” Paul said as Brian halved the distance. Bone, blood and brain sprayed across Paul’s face as Brian’s body, sans the head skidded past. Paul had yet to move from his fighting stance.
“You look like chum for sharks, you should get in here,” Deneaux said from the porch of the small house, her rifle still smoking from the shot she had taken.
The shock of the event took a while to wear off. It was more the sounds of the dead in the distance that got him moving. It was still a fifty-fifty debate on whether or not to go back into that house or just keep wandering down the road. “I still need my boot,” he said, heading towards the house.
“What do you think you know?” Deneaux asked Paul as he walked over the threshold to the house.
Paul noted that she had lit another cigarette and was sitting on the couch, the rifle draped across her lap.
“I know Brian turned into a zombie and you saved my life by killing him.”
“That’s all you need to remember,” she said, then taking a large drag from her smoke. He also noted that she had not so much as a quiver in her hand as she did so.
“You’re one cool customer, aren’t you?”
“How do you mean?” she asked as she exhaled her smoke.
“All I’m saying is you put a bullet into the brain of one of our traveling companions and you look as calm as if you were watching Lawrence Welk re-runs.”
“Oh I loved him.”
“Brian?”
“Lawrence Welk, you twit. That was before television began to cater to the masses and we ended up with drivel like Charlie’s Angels.”
Paul didn’t see the reason to argue the merits of TV, but anything with Farrah Fawcett fueling his young hormones was okay with him.
“What about Brian?”
“What about him? He was a zombie. Should I have allowed him to eat you? Would that make you feel better?”
“No, and thank you for saving my life, but I find your lack of compassion somewhat startling.”
“I killed a zombie, like I’ve killed a dozen times before. I feel the same as if I killed a pheasant, maybe less. At least we ate those.”
“I guess I don’t understand it.”
“Tell me what should I feel?” Deneaux asked coolly taking another drag. “Should I go tell my therapist about my touchy-feely feelings, about how I’m all broken up about Brian’s death? It is a survival-of-the-fittest world out there and he succumbed and now he’s dead; it’s as simple as that.”