In the old world there were crazies everywhere. Corrupt officials. Corrupt cops. Corrupt teachers. Corrupt sports figures. Kids killing kids. The world was on the verge of killing itself when the dead began to rise. The difference between then and now? The crazies aren’t arrested for the things they do now, and there is no media circus to follow them around, reporting on their every move. (more…)

SEQUEL TO Part 12

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Life is all about choices. Every choice you make, every decision, alters the direction of life. It changes which road you follow. If a person makes one decision, it takes him one way. If he makes a different decision, it takes him a different way. Growing up, that was one of the things Pop drilled into our heads. (more…)

Silence.

The new world–or maybe its still the old world–is all about silence.  The quieter you are, the less chance you have of attracting attention from the dead.

“Let’s play the quiet game,” I said. (more…)

I used to feel sorry for them.  You know, the zombies.

When the outbreaks started and people began to die and then get back up, everyone was scared.  Panic filled the streets and hearts of most people.

Not Pop.

No, Pop told me the dead–whether they were truly dead or stuck in the shells that were their bodies–deserved to be treated with respect once they were finally ushered from this world.  It was Pop who told us that we should bury the dead.  And that’s what we did until it was just me.

Pop’s gone.

Leland’s gone.

Davey Blaylock’s gone. (more…)

It was a sunny morning.  The trees were a green so lush it looked like they could have been computer generated.  But they weren’t.  They circled the open field I parked in the night before.  I had made my way from Sommerville to the little field in Columbia the previous day.

I was still tired.

I still hurt.  The pills only dulled the pain.  Things were a little fuzzy in my head, as if everything was falling apart in my mind, just as it had in the world. (more…)

I never liked taking medicine.  Waiting out a cold or sweating out a fever seemed natural to me.  Drugs didn’t.  They were dangerous things, addictive things.  That never stopped Jeanette from being on me to take my meds when I really needed to.  It was just one of the many things she was good about.

As I lay dying in some kid’s bed in some other family’s house, I heard her talking to me, telling me, “Take your meds, Walker.” (more…)

SEQUEL TO PART VI

Adrenaline is sometimes painful.

The anger that coursed through my body as I mutilated – and that’s the right word for what I had done – the Paul Marcum look-alike faded before I got back in the truck. My hands and legs shook as the effects wore off. I guessed that’s what a junkie feels like after a high, after his head has been totally messed up for a few hours or a day or whatever and reality starts to come back. I was cold and my joints were stiff and I shivered as if winter had arrived and brought with it the northern winds. (more…)

I’ve never been good with directions. Jeanette always planned out our trips, routes, where we would stay, what we would do.

Turn left at the light. Hit the interstate. Just keep driving. Don’t worry, I know where we’re going.

Always in control, the true pilot of our vacations. I just navigated us where she said to go. (more…)

The dawn came, the sun casting its blinding rays on us. Nature’s alarm clock. My joints ached, as they did every morning. Sleeping in the truck just wasn’t good on the body. I missed the comfort of a bed and sheets and a pillow. I glanced around our surroundings. Things were much the same as the night before. The world still spun, the sun still came up… time, however, no longer sped along at a breakneck pace. It had dropped down to extra slow motion, each second like minutes, each minute like hours. Survival and loneliness are wearisome bedfellows at best and I had them both as companions.

“You awake, Humphrey?” (more…)

Humphrey sat in his seat, his head slightly higher than the edge of the door.  He could see over the dashboard and at the road ahead of us.  My little stuffed traveling buddy.  We sat atop a hill overlooking a small town—Jalopa, South Carolina.  It wasn’t much of a hill, but it gave me a clear line of sight in all directions.  The town wasn’t much of a town either—a couple of buildings that looked as if they belonged in the fifties, some cars lining unmetered parking spots.  A red vehicle sat stopped at a street light.  The light itself had long since expired. The death of electricity made sure of that.  The few houses off in the distance ran along a cracked blacktop that was in serious need of repaving.

There wasn’t much to see.  (more…)

“Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth.”  It was one of Pop’s sayings.  It was how he referred to dealing with everything in life.  “It’s how you respond that makes you who you are.”  It was also one of the last things Pop said before…

I can only shake my head and close my eyes and pray there is a better place on the other side of this mess. (more…)