Medora: A Zombie Novel Read online

  Medora

  Wick Welker

  To Patricia Russell

  Chapter one

  Ellen had forgotten to let in the damn cat again, Keith thought. Like most damn cats, when left outside, it was scratching at the front door. It was a heavy tap and then a long drawn out scratch across the wooden surface. The sound bounced up the stairs and around the corner into the master bedroom. The swiping sound continued for several minutes, perforated by small moments of silence. During the intermittent pauses, he hoped in vain that the cat had given up, only to be disturbed awake again every few minutes. Somewhere between the sweaty frustrations of the sleepless night, the scratching sound assimilated into a dream about trains and he dozed off.

  “Hey, wake up.” Ellen’s voice was echoing from the tiled bathroom.

  “What?” He rattled awake.

  “Wake up,” she replied with a drawn out, melodic cadence.

  “Okay, okay, I’m already awake.” He coughed.

  At six a.m., his eyes were open and a streak of sunlight made a stark contrast of light on the grey ceiling. The sun began to invade the room, peering in above the blinds, forming a running pattern of slits of golden light across the bed. He placed his feet on the floor and felt the warm fur of the damn cat.

  “Hey, Hon, you forgot to let the cat back in last night?”

  “What?” She came into the bedroom with a red toothbrush sticking out of her foaming lips. “No, Bub slept with us last night, he wasn’t even out. He curled up right next to me all night. It was really cute.”

  Keith replied in inaudible mutters as his mind brought up the autopilot menu for the morning. A small secretarial part of his brain began to list the typical order of events for the morning: shower, shave, orange juice, and maybe some cream cheese on toast.

  In the kitchen, annoyed at his wife’s insistence of turning on the morning local TV news, Keith attempted to read an excruciating email from work. She came up from behind him and put her fingers on the knot of his tie. “Please don’t wear this tie. Paisleys are so ugly. I’m going to get you another tie and you’re going to put that one in the garbage.”

  “Alright, but not that purple one though.”

  The news blared in the background and through his mind’s morning haze, he heard the word “spree” and quickly paid attention, “…apparently the woman wouldn’t stop for a basic traffic stop and police pursued her for several miles until the woman crashed into the side of a local pizzeria. The woman got out of the vehicle with a firearm and began firing towards the policeman. The woman was killed by return fire from the police.”

  Ellen came back in with a gray tie and started to remove the apparent paisley debacle from his collar. “Did you see there was a shooting last night? It was right around where Dave lives, just down the street from him.”

  “Yeah, some lady on drugs, I saw it.” She removed the tie, and as promised, tossed it into the white kitchen garbage.

  “Hey,” Keith said in annoyance, “do you really have to throw it away?”

  She started to wrap the new tie around his neck. “Yeah, I never want to see you in that thing again. Now tie it, I have to get Jayne ready for school.”

  Keith always met Tuesday morning with dread because on Tuesday morning, he had the Tuesday morning meeting and at the Tuesday morning meeting they talked about all the things that they talked about last Tuesday morning meeting and then resolve to do nothing until the next Tuesday morning meeting.

  A coffee smell filled the air in the kitchen and his eyes were still readjusting from sleep. He finished with the tie and walked down to their unfinished basement where he picked up his half-smoked pack of cigarettes and a lighter from one of the bare support beams beneath the stairs. Ellen knew he smoked, he knew that she knew that he smoked and they came to an unspoken rule that he would smoke in secret. It worked. He slipped them into his jacket pocket as he walked back upstairs.

  He yelled up to the second floor, “Hey, Ellen, Dave’s going to be here any minute. Is Jayne going to make her bus?”

  “Yeah, come say good bye to your daughter!” she yelled.

  Glancing at his watch, he walked up the stairs two steps at a time. “Okay, okay, where is my little baby? Where is she?” He walked around the corner of Jayne’s room and saw her blonde pigtails hanging in front of her face as she bent over, trying to tie her shoes.

  “Hi, Dad, can you tie my shoe? I got one of them but the other one is bad.”

  “Let me see what I can do.” He kneeled down and puckered his lips out while bringing his index finger to them. “The damage to the shoe might be beyond repair.” He knelt closer to the tip of her foot and put his ear to it.

  “Daddy? What are you doing?”

  Ellen turned, putting books in Jayne’s backpack. “Hey, Keith, can you go over after work to Dave’s and pick up that molding sample that his girlfriend was keeping for us. She said she was going to bring them over this weekend, but I need them tomorrow before the carpet guys come. I really don’t want to entertain Dave and his flavor of the month this weekend, because that girl bugs me.”

  “Yeah, she does kind of suck. She said she was going to take all of us to the Nicks game like a month ago and then she didn’t mention it ever again. She lies a lot, so she probably won’t even have the moldings, but I’ll stop by anyway.” He finished with the shoe.

  “Yeah, she sucks,” Jayne repeated.

  Ellen was about to berate Keith for his word usage but then just said, “Yeah, she really does suck.” She grabbed a bright pink backpack and handed it to Jayne. “Okay, I’m going to take you to the bus stop now, so give Daddy a kiss and a hug.”

  “Bye, Dad.” Keith bent down to let his six-year-old kiss him on the cheek.

  “Bye, I’ll see you tonight.”

  After Ellen and Jayne left, Keith gulped down some coffee and waited for Dave, thinking that the bastard would make him late again. Dave’s forte was being late, even that one time, when Keith broke his arm in junior high. He remembered that Dave was supposed to go run to tell his mom but had stopped off at the gas station first for a Flintstone’s push pop.

  Such a jackass sometimes, Keith thought as Dave’s horn honked from the driveway. Keith walked out the front door and turned to lock it. In the middle of the door, there were two series of scratches spaced by a few inches with wood splinters jutting out. It looked like claw marks with a little blood in the grooves. One of the windowpanes in the door was also cracked. He locked it and ran to Dave’s car.

  “Hey, man.” Keith climbed in the seat and put on a seatbelt.

  “What is with your neighbor?” Dave asked, looking behind his shoulder.

  “What, who?” Keith looked around through the windows.

  “He still has that stupid Santa Claus dummy hanging on the side of the chimney.”

  Keith looked out across his driveway and saw a long skinny Santa Claus hanging onto the top of his neighbor’s chimney with its legs dangling down the brick.

  “Oh, right, I know the Jacksons. The husband Hank or something is the biggest prick you'll ever meet. I swear he's just doing it to spite all of us.”

  “I mean it's July, how tacky can you be?”

  “Yeah, I know… Hey, I think someone tried to break into my house last night.”

  “Really? No way.”

  “Yeah, there is a bunch of scratches on the door and someone cracked the window.”

  “You have a gun, don’t you?”

  “Uh, yeah, but I forgot the combo to the lock. It’s not like I would ever use it anyway. I think they hurt themselves and left, but there’s some blood on the door.” He put his hand into his jacket. “I’m going to call Ellen real quick.”

  He flipped open his
phone and got Ellen on her cell. “Hey, did you see the front door when you left? It looks like someone tried to break in last night… Yeah, well I heard some scratching last night, but I just thought it was Bub… No, don’t call the cops, because they aren’t going to do anything. Just lock up when you get back to the house. Okay, bye.”

  “That’s weird.” Dave exhaled loudly. “So do you know when you’re going to get your car back?”

  “Um, they said Thursday, so just two more days of this. Thanks for all the rides. Let me take you and what’s-her-face for lunch today.” Keith produced his cigarettes from his pocket.

  “No, not today. She came over last night and she was sick or drunk or something. I know that she’s kind of crazy to begin with but she was acting all delirious or something. Hey, gimme one of those.” Dave rolled down the windows.

  Keith lit two cigarettes in his mouth and handed one to Dave who hesitantly took the cigarette. “Don’t, don’t light my cigarette in your mouth.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a little too intimate for me, almost like you’re trying to seduce me.”

  Keith laughed, “If I were trying to seduce you, I would have just showed a little more cleavage.”

  Dave gave out a little laugh and drew in a deep breath from the cigarette. He gently patted his head to see how dry his hair was from the excessive amount of gel he had put in it.

  “Yeah, so all of the sudden, she comes over last night and doesn’t even say anything. She just sits on my couch and stares. Then I try to sit down next to her and she just freaked out and started yelling. Then she apologized and said she felt weird and then left. I called her this morning and she didn’t answer, so I don’t know what’s up with her.”

  “I’ve always thought she was a little off. Did she leave some wooden moldings at your house for Ellen?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “That’s what I thought.’’ They pulled onto the freeway ramp from Kearny, New Jersey and headed towards Manhattan. There was a car on the shoulder of the road with the back up lights on.

  “What is that guy doing?” Keith looked into the car as they passed and there was a man and a woman yelling and grabbing at each other. “Did you see that? There was a couple fighting in that car, and it looked like the woman punched him right in the face!”

  “Seriously?” Dave looked behind his shoulder for a look but there was a semi now blocking the view to the car. “Ah, I missed it. Married people.” Dave smiled and looked at Keith.

  Keith flicked his cigarette out the window and rolled it up. “Hey, I saw on the news that there was a shooting just a few blocks from your house last night. Did you see that?”

  “What? No, I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Some lady wouldn’t pull over and just started shooting at the cops. I think they shot and killed her.”

  “It doesn’t really surprise me, since there’s a lot of drug trafficking around there.”

  As usual, there was dense traffic on the freeway, but the cars were flowing without congestion. The sunrise shone through the windshield into their faces as they simultaneously flipped down the sun visors. After driving for a while, the downtown silhouette was getting bigger and they pulled off onto their exit. They stopped at a crosswalk for a crowd of people who were exiting the subway.

  The mornings brought out the masses of commuters into the city. Swarms of people crowded into coffee shops, newsstands and elevators. The subway in the summer filled with sweating bodies from end to end, weighing the train down with wheels screeching an ear-piercing scream at all the stops. All traffic intersection teemed with people waiting to cross and the sidewalks filled with throngs of strange faces that couldn’t be differentiated; just one massive entity of flesh, hair, and shouting conversations.

  Dave parked the car at their company garage and they got out. The July sun weighed down on them, especially in their suits.

  “I’m going to burn up here.” Dave took off his jacket and gently laid it over his arm like a waiter with a cloth napkin over his arm presenting wine to some diners.

  Keith gathered his briefcase and jacket from the back of the car and they made their way to the crosswalk. There seemed to be more pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk than cars in the streets. Stopping behind a crowd at the crosswalk, they waited for the light. People started collecting behind them and Keith began to feel as if he was in the middle of a concert mosh pit, waiting for the band to show up on stage. Dave’s hair glistened in the sun from the gel and it now looked like a hardened helmet of blond hair. He patted it with his hand and his whole head of hair shook with the movement.

  “What do you think of this tie?” Keith lifted up the gray tie for Dave to see.

  Dave looked down, squinting, “Ugly.”

  “Ellen literally threw my favorite tie in the garbage this morning.”

  “The one with the paisleys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That tie was ugly too, and you wore it too much.” Dave looked back up at the crosswalk light. “You got anymore cigarettes?”

  “No.” He really had two more.

  The crosswalk light turned and the crowd started to cross together as one fluid body. Approaching their office building, dozens of people were entering at once as they followed behind into the glorious air-conditioned foyer. Cramming into an elevator, Keith recognized a few people from their company in the elevator talking about the Tuesday morning meeting.

  “Hey, did you guys see that data from June?”

  Dave turned around to one of them, “No, when did we go over that?”

  “Last Tuesday morning meeting with Janice.”

  “Oh, that makes sense, since I never listen to her.” Everyone gave a small chuckle and exited the elevator.

  The meeting was long. Janice always conducted it with malice and pleasure. She wore flower pattern dresses that draped over her gigantic body. Every time she lifted her arm to point at the projection on the wall, half the room would look at the fat roll hanging from the back of her arm. Keith enjoyed hating her; it sometimes really filled the day. She was droning on about an advertisement campaign for a new client that sold cough syrup.

  Keith stared at Dave from across the table. He was texting someone on his phone. Keith drew a stick figure on a memo pad of a little man tying a noose around his neck. He sighed and thought about coffee.

  *****

  Ellen called the police anyway. The cop was crouching in front of the front door, staring at the scratch marks. From his crouching position, it was easy to tell that he had a hairpiece, but Ellen thought it actually looked pretty good from a normal angle. The other policeman was asking questions.

  “Did you hear anything last night or see any movements outside? Any cars?”

  “No, I didn’t even know anything about this until my husband saw the front door this morning.” Her arms were crossed and she was squinting in the sunlight.

  “Have you had any recent workers in the house, like painters or lawn care, anything like that?” He was jotting some notes down on a pad of paper.

  “Uh, yeah, actually we have some carpet people putting some carpet in our basement but they really haven’t done any work yet. They just came and took some measurements. They are actually coming by later today.”

  “Okay, I see.” He turned to the other cop, “What do you think?”

  “It looks like someone was definitely trying to force an entry here, but I don’t know. It doesn’t look like they tried very hard to get in. They just left these scratches and cracked the window a little bit, leaving a little blood. It could have been an animal, maybe a big dog.” He cleared his throat and stood up, dropping his sunglasses down to his eyes.

  “Okay, well we have filed the report, Miss… ah…”

  “Mrs. Sanders”

  “Mrs. Sanders. We can’t really tell much from what was left behind so just keep your doors locked and maybe ask some neighbors if they saw anything last night.” They started toward
s the cruiser.

  “Okay, well thanks, guys. Thanks for coming by.”

  “We actually have a breaking and entering report a few blocks away, so if we see a connection, we might come back.” They drove off.

  She reluctantly started towards one of the neighbors, the Jacksons. There had been a falling out ever since they accused Keith of poisoning their dog after an autopsy revealed the presence of a toxin in the dog’s corpse.

  The heat was heavy and the sun was blaring down the street. Oil spots on the driveway reflected sunlight into her eyes. She gave a grunt and crossed the lawn to the Jacksons, knocking on the door and staring at her reflection in the window. No one came, so she knocked again. No one. Sighing at herself in the window, she started walking back down the steps when the door flung open and a man in a tank top, shorts and long black socks stood at the door.

  “Oh, Hank, hey, you’re here.”

  “Uh huh…” He stared down at her with a cigarette between his lips.

  “Um, there may have been a break in over at our house last night. Did you happen to notice anyone or a car last night?”

  “No.” He stared with a frozen expression, cigarette hanging.

  “Okay, thanks.” Always a pleasure, she thought. She walked away with his eyes following her. She turned the corner and heard the door slam. She headed for the house to wait for the carpet guys to come.

  Chapter two

  “Good morning, ladies and gentleman, and welcome to flight 5328 direct to Holland. We will be boarding within twenty minutes, once our flight crew has arrived. At this time, we are asking for any passengers who would like to have their bags checked at the gate. Today, you may do so as a courtesy. We are offering this service to expedite the speedy departure of our flight this morning. Please come forward and we'll attach a red tag to your bag for checking. Thank you, we appreciate your patience as we prepare to board.”

  *****

  “This place sucks, why would we ever come here?” Dave dropped the flat burger on the table.