Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel by Jay Wilburn Read Free Book Online Page A

The libraries were in the other buildings and I wasn’t interested in crawling through the barriers.
    Chef himself just brought one small duffle that he placed carefully into a storage groove in the cargo section in the back of the truck.
    Short Order wore about three or four layers of clothes and filled the pockets with whatever struck him in the moment, I think. At first, I thought it was about the pockets. Doc thought that Short hated even a light chill outside, but it turned out that he didn’t like being uncovered.
    Doc brought his aluminum bar, of course. He also brought a crank, record player and a crate of vinyl records. It was mostly gospel and a couple other classic rock albums. He tried to explain what made classic rock different from rock and different from pop and different from a dozen other types of music that used exactly the same instruments. It was worse than listening to him talk about God.
    Chef stared with his mouth open, but didn’t bother calling them out on their overpacking. I knew Doc liked his music, but playing music out in the open with zombies around seemed instantly like a bad idea to me.
    Chef reached in his pocket before we loaded up and pulled out a cork from our “last meal on Earth” several meals ago. He rolled it around in his hand for a while and then finally placed it up on a shelf in the garage.
    Short Order felt around the pockets of his outside coat. Several pockets either crinkled or jingled. He reached up on the shelf with Chef’s cork and brought down a tin box.  He slid open the top and showed a collection of matches. They were the kind we used to make in the Complex and not the kinds left over from before the zombies. He closed it back and shoved it in one of his pockets.
    “Well,” Chef said in the echoing garage, “Are we ready?”
    Doc pursed his lips, “If I say no, can we just go on anyway.”
    “Let’s not make speeches,” Short Order said. “We don’t want this to sound like a second funeral.”
    “Thanks for the bad Juju right from the start, Short,” Doc said as he opened one of the truck doors.
    Chef turned from the garage door back toward the truck, “How do we open it?”
    Everyone just sort of stood. I finally pointed at the chains and pulleys on the sides of the big, pull-up door.
    Chef said, “Thanks, Mutt, I got that.  I mean, how do we open it, get in the truck, get out, and then close it again?”
    Everyone stood and stared.
    “Damn,” Doc said rubbing his chin.
    Short Order said, “They pulled the exiting vehicle right up to the door. They put up a ‘U’ shaped fence around the door that locked into these ruts on the floor. Someone worked the chain opening the door from behind the fence. The vehicle pulled out. They closed the door. They killed the zombies that got into the pin, took the fence down, and then dumped the bodies. I had to do this a couple times before I started working in the kitchen permanently.”
    “How do you get back in the truck after you work the door?” Chef asked.
    “The guy working the door and clearing the bodies wasn’t in the truck,” Short Order explained.
    Doc said, “They never planned on having a last man out the door.”
    “How do you close the door from the outside?” Chef asked.
    “You can’t,” Doc and Short answered together.
    There was another long pause as we just stood around the truck staring at the door.
    “Do we want to draw straws to see who pulls the chain and then runs to the truck?” Doc asked.
    No one answered.
    “How were we planning on doing this back when we were going to check on the animals after the funeral?” Chef asked.
    No one answered.
    Short Order started cracking his knuckles against the hood of the truck. It vibrated down into the engine block.
    “Stop it,” Chef said quietly staring up at the tracks on the ceiling.

     
    ***
    Again, I can only imagine, but from detailed observations of the behavior of the walking dead, this is what I picture.
    Outside, the