The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Christopher Golden

fingers on Copper’s oak table.
     
    I pass the cellar door by the pantry.
     
    I walk down the hallway.
     
    The quilt is not on the wall.
     
    I touch the wall.
     
    I leave a little stain on the wall.
     
    I walk down the hallway.
     
    I find Copper in the living room.
     
    I find Copper in the front room, on his chair.
     
    There are six blankets over him, all askew.
     
    There are six blankets and a quilt over Copper.
     
    Becca’s quilt is bundled close to his neck.
     
    Cloth houses on the cloth street, bundled around Copper’s neck.
     
    Cloth Copper on his cloth rocker on his cloth porch.
     
    Cloth Copper with a stain on his cloth clothes.
     
    I put that stain there.
     
    There’s a fresh stain over mine.
     
    A stain from Copper’s mouth.
     
    A reddish, ruddy stain.
     
    Copper sits in his chair.
     
    Copper, wrapped in the cloth houses and cloth street and cloth neighbors and cloth Copper in his cloth rocker on his cloth porch.
     
    Six blankets and the cloth neighborhood didn’t keep him warm.
     
    Six blankets and a quilt, but how to cover oneself when you can’t feel your fingers?
     
    Six blankets and a quilt, but it’s not enough, and it doesn’t quite do the trick.
     
    Six blankets and a quilt, but one leg is bare between the top of the sock and edge of the pant leg, its crease gone.
     
    The bare skin is blue-white.
     
    Copper is blue-white, his skin the color of his eyes.
     
    Under the blankets, his right hand is wrapped over his left wrist, his left hand clutching his right wrist, his fingers locked over wrists like dead crow feet.
     
    The cold bit deep this time, deeper than deep.
     
    Copper’s face is waxed, his jaw fixed cocked to the side, his lower gums bared, mouth slightly open.
     
    A light frost bristles on his lips, spiking from his unshaven chin, whiter than the paraffin-white of his skin.
     
    The frost continues down onto the cloth Copper on his cloth rocker on his cloth porch.
     
    Copper’s spider-leg eyebrows crook upward over his nose, frozen in surprise.
     
    I remember dying in the Baker basement.
     
    It was cold.
     
    Copper hates the cold.
     
    Copper hates the cold, but it still took him by surprise, a slow, steely revelation of how bad it really had become, could be, was, is.
     
    It took Copper hard.
     
    It hurt.
     
    It took a long fucking time, and it fucking hurt; it hurt bad.
     
    The cold took him and his and all he still had and all he’d been.
     
    Took it hard.
     
    I sit and watch.
     
    I sit and watch Copper.
     
    I watch him until he’s watching me.
     
    I watch his eyes trade one glaze for another, just like when I watched Fetus when his eyes did the same thing.
     
    When was that?
     
    I can’t remember.
     
    I watch Copper’s brow furrow, his milky blues go from watching nothing to watching something to eventually taking me in.
     
    ‘It hurt, didn’t it?’
     
    Copper straightens his jaw.
     
    His jaw pops, and he works it back and forth.
     
    ‘The cold, I mean.’
     
    He closes his mouth and purses his lips, testing them, like an infant.
     
    ‘It really fucking hurt, didn’t it, old man?’
     
    Copper glares at me.
     
    ‘No need for language, kid.’
     
     
    Turns out Fetus and I were right.
     
    Turns out Copper is just what we need:
     
    A commanding officer.
     
    Copper takes command.
     
    Copper knows the neighborhood.
     
    Turns out Copper knows more than this neighborhood.
     
    Copper knows more than this burb.
     
    Turns out Copper knows most of the city.
     
    Turns out Copper has maps and charts and floor plans.
     
    ‘How do you remember all this?’ I ask.
     
    ‘Worked in just about every nook and cranny at some point, kid.’
     
    Copper winks at me when he says it.
     
    ‘What I didn’t work, my brother-in law did.’
     
    Copper reprimands us for thinking small.
     
    Copper has plans.
     
    Copper has plans and makes plans.
     
    Copper is in command.
     
    Copper sets up his command outpost in his own