Book 2 Chapter 27: Helpless

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I groaned a little as I stretched, trying to ease the soreness out of my too tight muscles. The last four days had been brutal. Four full eighteen hour days of mind numbing back breaking hard labor meant our odd tire wall was almost finished. Only a short stretch on the seaward side of the Newagen Inn was unfinished. But it had left all of us aching and cranky.

 
Annie’s abrupt shrill cry startled me mid-stretch and I jumped, making the muscles in my back scream in protest. But my girl was obviously hungry. My mouth twisted in an odd way as I tried to grin and grimace at the same time. It was funny tha

 
I limped through the routine of changing her and getting her a bowl of mashed veggies mixed with formula. We were running frighteningly low on both and I made a mental note to ask Peter if he thought the farm could supply a goat or two for milk. The makeshift cloth diaper went into the bucket to be washed later and I plopped down at my desk with Annie on my lap.

 
The list of helpful skills the girls had was finally done, and it was more than I expected. A lot of them knew about all sorts of things that would be helpful. Some had hunted or farmed, one of them was an honest to god mechanic, something we’d been sorely lacking here.

 Most of them could sew, thanks to home economics classes,I gave myself a sharp mental kick in the ass for NOT taking home ec. Just look how useful cheer-leading was now. Oh well.

 
But the barge was finally empty and Claire, our new mechanic was looking over it today. She and her husband had owned their own shop before the dead rose and now she was worth her weight in gold to us. Or more, as gold was freaking useless. Maybe her weight in toilet paper?

Sighing and shoving a hand through my hair, I decided to put all the paperwork away for now. I really needed to get out. And our dwindling supplies were the perfect excuse to do so. My shoulder and foot were both pretty much healed, and until Claire got the barge up and running again we were still dependent on local scavenging to survive. And there was still one area of Moosehead island we hadn’t touched at all.

Molly looked up at me like I was completely daft. So I shrugged and scooted a stool over to the counter next to her. I could help sort through the clothing while I explained again why I was leaving Jason and Billy in charge and why she was coming with me.

After I’d gone through all the logic for her again (and several tons of mismatched socks) Molly just nodded at me. I was right after all, we did need things…and things on the northeast side of the island needed to be…taken care of.

 
I stood and bent over a little to crack my back and tried not to think about what we would find. It would be bad enough when we got there, no use worrying about it until then.>

We muddled through the rest of the rest of the day, leaving instructions for the girls and trying to get them to at least get started on the enclosed pool-turned-greenhouse project. But I really didn’t have much hope that they would have anything done at all by the time we got back.
 

 
I was easily up before the sun the next day since Annie made a very reliable (and insistent) alarm clock. By the time we were both fed and dressed Molly was already outside in my moms mini-van. I didn’t ask when she’d retrieved or gotten it working, I didn’t want to know.

 
We drove in silence through the dark, foggy streets and my heart sank when I realized that the frost heaves were particularly bad. And there’d be no fixing them either. We drifted past most of the houses slowly enough for me to realize that there were still zombies in most of them.

 The houses on either side of the rural tree lined street were dark, pocked with bullet holes and broken windows. Gulls and grackles argues over unidentifiable gray lumps in the front yard and very occasionally we’d see a still form standing in a window.

The slowly melting snow still softened the damage enough that if I squinted, just a little, it almost looked normal. Apart from unnatural stillness. My heart twisted a little as we passed homes that my friends and family had grown up in, places where I’d had sleepovers and barbeques at.

The empty shells of memories taunted me all the way up the road, right up to the driveway of a small, nondescript split level ranch. Molly stopped the van and we sat listening to engine ticking as it cooled. The sun was just peaking over the trees, washing out the faded blue paint on the outside.

There were no other cars in this driveway. The attached garage was open and small items were strewn about, mostly lost in drifted, melting snow. The doors were all shut and the windows boarded up from the inside. Broken glass on the outside and dark smudges marred the once pretty house.

The plant potters were filled with dead, frozen flowers and the dog tied to the front porch was long since dead. Nothing more than empty sodden fur.

It took a few minutes to get up the courage to get out of the van and climb the steps to Brad’s front door. A few more minutes while my hands trembled and went weak while I opened up the turtle shaped key holder.

I let Molly unlock the door. My knuckles were white around the crowbar and I couldn’t feel my hands anymore.

Brad’s mom and little brother were waiting for us in the living room. They stood still for several long seconds before moving. Searching their eyes I didn’t see anything. I hadn’t really expected to, not anymore. And in a way it was both a relief and a disappointment.

They were both still dressed in summer clothes, leaving their exposed skin faintly blue-gray and wrinkled. The gaping holes that exposed bone on their arms didn’t leak anything, they were just there.

Shrunken lips had pulled away, exposing yellowed teeth in the boy and oddly white, pristine dentures in Brad’s mom. There was a brief flash of memory, the day she got them she took us all out to get ice cream and watch the tourists get lost. Then it was gone.

She stumbled forward and Molly raised her pistol. I grabbed her arm before she could fire and shook my head at her. We hadn’t cleared this area, to much noise was suicide. She gave me a searching look, staring at my face for a few seconds before she stepped back. I never knew what she saw there, but she left me alone and let me finish what I should have done months ago.

Both of them were stiff with cold and it was easy. Too easy, one blow with the crowbar and they went down. It felt like cheating somehow, like we’d never given them a chance. It felt like we…took advantage in some obscene way. They were more helpless than children with their half frozen muscles. That word took on a new meaning for me, horrible new depth. And the notion that nothing on this earth was as helpless
as the dead struck me like a sledgehammer to the gut. They’d been helpless. Unable to move, unable to see, unable to hear or smell or love or hate or even think. Tears scalded my eyes and dropped like lava down my chilled face and the inside of my of head grew a little darker and a little colder.

Everything in their bodies had either dried up or was half frozen, there was very little mess left behind. I stared at the almost clean crowbar for a minute and tried to sort out what I was feeling, but it was impossible. I knew they’d kill and eat me if they got the chance. I knew that, but it didn’t make the unclean feeling crawling over my skin or the guilt go away.

And then I realized that I felt sorry for them. Sorry for their ever hungry corpses. That was something I could never tell anybody. Not ever. The feeling of being utterly alone staggered me for a moment, and I gasped. But Molly was still staring at me and we had things to do.