The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(147)

She had to lean against the door to open it, and only when she had it fully open did she see that her way had been blocked by body parts. A coroner, his internal organs chewed, was split into four pieces. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room, which still echoed with noise. Nothing moved to stop her, so she moved slowly to the center of the large room lined with small doors with handles.

She could hear muffled howling, and the dull thuds of bare feet beating against metal doors. People were trapped inside many of the refrigerated cubicles, struggling to get out.

No, not people, she reminded herself. What used to be people.

And behind one of those doors was her father.

She moved respectfully through the room, pausing before each column of doors. She noticed that some of the compartments emitted no sound, presumably because they contained no body. She walked by someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s child, and wondered if others like her were coming to try to collect them. Slots in the doors held cards on which names had been scrawled. She had almost circled the room and returned to where she’d started before she stopped, at last, in front of a door which bore a name she shared.

She placed her hand on the cool metal handle. There was silence within, a silence that sickened her. For it could mean that he was already gone. She rested her head against the door, and was surprised to find herself praying, something she had not done since she was a small child.

She pulled the handle. Once the door opened, she tugged at the tray inside and slid it out from its compartment. It rolled out so effortlessly that she was surprised to see that her father’s body was still there, unchanged since the day before.

“Oh, Daddy,” she moaned.

He appeared the same as he had been when she had come to identify him. Though they had washed the blood from him as best as they could, the evidence of death was unmistakable. Whatever had brought the other dead back to this new sort of life had not yet touched him. No force had come to animate him again, to wake him so that he could say the things as yet unsaid, so that she could retract the things said that shouldn’t have been said.

She dragged a chair over beside his pallet so that she could watch him, and then she sat down to await his transformation.





She jerked awake, startled to realize that she had been asleep. All she remembered was studying her father’s face, just as she was doing now. There was no change. Her father still slept.

“He won’t be coming back, you know.”

She leapt up at the sound of the voice, tumbling her chair on its side. The guard who had earlier abandoned her knelt to pick it up.

“I’m sorry that I frightened you,” he said. “But I couldn’t leave you alone to face this.”

Paula backed away, keeping the righted chair between them. She had not known men to act kindly to her in the past, and she doubted that it was about to start under these circumstances.

“What did you mean when you said that he wasn’t coming back?” she asked warily.

“Only that it’s too late for him. I’ve been listening to the news, what news is still broadcasting. All the others, the ones we’ve seen, the ones we’ve had to fight…they died today, and yesterday. But your father…he died last week. No one knows why, or what happened, but it’s only the newly dead who return.”

She sank into the chair and began to cry.

“He wouldn’t have been the same anyway, Miss,” he said, trying to comfort her. “He wouldn’t have recognized you.”

The guard didn’t understand. That wasn’t why she was crying this time, not because her father couldn’t join her in life. She was in tears now because it was too late for her to join him in death. She was even worse off than she’d been before. Suicide had been rendered useless. There could be no end to life now. If she were to kill herself, she would just come back for another chapter. And she wanted no further chapters. She wanted her book of life to be closed.

She wanted to die, but the time for death was past. She no longer had a goal. All purpose had been stolen from her.

She dried her tears, but did not get up. She simply sat there, continuing to stare at her father.

“You should go home, Miss. If you can.”

“But what about my father? What about him?”

“There is no him anymore.”

“I was supposed to bring him home.”

“I don’t know that there’s any home anymore either. From what I hear, the States are just as bad. And at a time like this, I doubt they would let you return with a dead body. I’m sorry. But it’s best to just say goodbye.”

The former guard backed away from her, giving her space she did not need, inviting her with his body language to leave with him.

But he didn’t get it. She was dead inside. She may have looked alive, but inside, she was just like her father.

She belonged here.





By day, she wandered the wounded city, sure that her wounds were even greater, studying those who still dared to walk the streets in an attempt to get on with their lives in the midst of chaos, and being studied in return. At night, she slept by her father’s side, surprised that she even could sleep, for the noise in that room, the moaning, the pounding of creatures that could not escape, was unceasing.

As she moved through the city, it was as if she were leading a charmed life, though she was not sure that what she still had was life. She would come upon scenes of great carnage, small battles between the living and the dead, and walk through them unscathed. It was as if the undead took her for one of their own, so dead was she inside. The fugue state in which she existed had seemed to make her invulnerable, though she didn’t entirely think of herself as so, because she no longer had the level of consciousness to be self-aware. She existed without conscious choice. She just continued her walking through the city, eating when hungry, returning to sleep when tired.