Living Dead by J.W. Schnarr Page A

chewed by a hungry mouth. Listening to her friends being eaten, Denise thinks about how dead people are sometimes better. They are simple and honest when it comes to what they’re all about. They don’t put on airs, like flies. Like the people in her old life. They see what they need and they go after it.
    Looking at it this way, through the haze of chemical drunkenness, she can see the attraction. She can understand why Scott would want to be one of them. At least the waiting and the worrying would be gone. Trying to survive would be as simple as wandering around until someone got too noisy for their own good. At that point, they’d have to be eaten. And dead people get to go outside, something Denise hasn’t done in months.
    She makes up her mind, then. If Bretta and Cooper don’t come back, Denise isn’t going to put on airs. She’s going to give up the pretentiousness of being alive. She’s going to stop worrying about what the dead people think of her. She’s going to open the door and let them in. She’s going to go outside. And Scott?
    Well, if they don’t come back, Scott will finally get his wish.

 
    Chapter 15
     
    Another day. Bretta lights a candle with a cheap pink lighter. Sitting with Cooper in this flickering light, making plans Denise wants no part of, makes Bretta feel like they’re conspirators in some secret drama. She looks at the paint on Cooper’s face and sighs inwardly. If this is a conspiracy, she could have really picked a better partner. In truth, if she wasn’t positive she would need another set of hands out there, she might just consider going by herself. Sober, Cooper is a good man to have around. Stoned on paint fumes, he is a child in a man’s body.
    Right now, his eyes are more or less clear. But he and Denise had been hitting the paint a lot lately. So much that Bretta has taken to sleeping upstairs with the window open to escape the fumes. Sooner or later, they are going to kill themselves with that stuff. She is sure of it.
    “So?” Cooper says. “You said you have a plan?”
    Bretta nods. She begins by telling him things they already know; things he may need a reminder of because of his new pastime. She tells him how the dead scratch and bite, and that’s how they spread it. And sure, if you die with a healthy brain, you’ll come back like Nancy did, but that’s not what they’re worried about out there. They’re worried about the infection in the mouths and on the fingernails of the dead people. “So we stop fingers and teeth from touching us,” she says. “We’re golden, Ponyboy.”
    “Okay, horsie-girl,” Cooper says, misunderstanding the reference. “So we just need to find something to cover up with and we’re good to go.”
    “Right.” The candle flickers on the table from her breath. “We have some duct tape left. You can’t bite through that.”
    “ Au contraire ,” Cooper says. “People bite through it all the time. That’s how they tear it usually. Bite the corner and pull down.”
    “So we wrap it tight on a shirt so they can’t bite the corner. We use long-sleeve sweaters and tape the hell out of them.”
    Cooper’s staring into the candle, chewing his lip. And then he snaps his fingers. He looks up at Bretta, smiling. “By Jove, I think I’ve got it,” he says in a fake British accent. He gets off the couch and heads for the basement.
    “What do you have?” she asks.
    Cooper’s voice wisps up from the basement stairs. “I’ll be right back!”
    Bretta can hear him thumping around down there, and then he’s on the stairs again, his feet heavy as he clomps back to the main floor, one stair at a time. When he appears again, he’s got two large black duffel bags in his hands. He pushes the door shut with his ass because his hands are full, and winces when the dead people outside bang on the living room wall in response. He throws the bags at Bretta’s feet.
    “Problem solved,” he says.
    Bretta grabs the zipper on the bag