I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 Read online

  ARTIE CABRERA

  I’M NOT DEAD

  THE JOURNALS OF CHARLES DUDLEY

  Copyright © 2013 by Artie Cabrera/RiffRaff

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author.

  Cover design by Artie Cabrera

  This story is for those crawling out from beneath the wreckage to fight again.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DIRTBAG PARADISE

  WHEN THE WORLD WENT TO SHIT

  PREY FOR THEM

  LAZARUS WILL HAVE TO WAIT

  DUSTY TRAILS

  YOU, ME, AND THE DEVIL MAKE THREE

  YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

  BURY X’MAS

  LAST RIGHTS

  CRYING IS FOR PUSSIES

  BLUNT OBJECTS

  THE SUIT THAT YOU WEAR

  I SAW YOU

  THAT’S THE SPIRIT

  MEAT PLOW

  JANE’S REMAINS

  THE COLD SNAP

  TOUGH LOVE

  CARPE DIEM

  LOVE AND OTHER CALAMITIES

  DEATH RATTLE

  CLEAN UP IN AISLE STYX

  BIRDS, BEES, AND OEDIPUS

  SUNRISE AND SATELLITES

  DON’T SEND FLOWERS

  DEAR GOD

  RICHARD (UNCLE DICK

  WHERE THE APPLE FALLS

  AN ODE TO NANA

  BUBBA

  JERRY AND THE ANGRY INGRID

  BULLDOZER

  CHILD’S PLAY

  UNEVEN STEVEN SINGS THE BLUES

  INSIDE YOU

  PILLOW TALK

  RED HANDED

  STRAYS

  CHARLIE & JERRY vs. THE APOCALYPSE

  MOURNING GLORY

  THE BIRDS OF BEDLAM

  THE FIVE FATHOMS

  THE BALLAD OF DEADGAR

  VALLEY OF THE VAGRANTS

  PEEP SHOW

  ANATOMICAL MAN

  DOG EAT DOG

  DUMPSTER

  PUTTING YOUR BEST FOOT FORWARD

  STUCK ON YOU

  ‘TIL DEATH DO US PART

  OVER MY DEAD BODY

  WILD FIRE

  SHMEGURT WAS A GAGGLE

  DOWN THERE

  GRUDGES AND GRIEVANCES

  ELI CROWE

  HONEY IN THE HORNET’S NEST

  Paging Doctor Windham –

  FALL FROM GRACE

  DIABLO DEL MAR – (Devil of the Sea)

  DER GEIST DES REICHS – (Ghost of the Empire)

  THE SONORAN DESERT, ARIZONA – 1945

  At sundown, the world escapes beyond the horizon without the promise of it ever coming back.

  The cold bites at your face with its wicked little teeth until you can no longer breathe. The fury of winds push you around like a gang of schoolyard bullies as they shake their fists at you, taunting you to push back when all you want to do is forge forward and leave those bad things behind.

  Disrepair.

  Let me tell you a little story…we’re all going to die.

  PART ONE

  DIRTBAG PARADISE

  QUEENS, NEW YORK: GROUND ZERO, LOW PRIORITY

  Saturday, December 14th, 2013

  8:30 a.m.

  I found some of Jerry on my lawn this morning—by the garbage pails—and the rest of him up along his driveway across the street. The idiot must’ve forgotten to lock up after himself again, but this time he wasn’t so lucky. The Deviants killed him late last night.

  Jerry Haley was my best friend, and I’d known him all my life—since grade school, that is. Too bad the drag he called his ex-wife won’t care that he’s gone, and will wipe him from their children’s memories.

  Good going, Jerry, I’m down a drinking buddy, and the bitch can have the house now!

  I AM ALONE—hung over and having the usual breakfast at Dave’s Diner again: the pot of coffee I help myself to from the service station, and these shitty Turkish cigarettes.

  Whatever food remained in the walk-in has gone from sad to complete shit. Stale decaf coffee grinds and the lonely rock-hard lemon bundt left on a cake dish was today’s early bird special. It ain’t so bad once you get past the mold.

  It’s 8:36 a.m., and I am delirious, frustrated, and too tired to cry. I am NUMB... no, fuck no, too tired to be numb, and there’s no time to feel.

  The man with the trucker hat and mirrored sunglasses sitting by the flickering empty pastry display is staring me down again.

  Shit. No, no, don’t wave.

  Christ, I’m so goddamned tired of looking at these dead bastards, so I write this book, my life story, my only friend, and my only means of sanity—The Journals of Charles Dudley.

  WHEN THE WORLD WENT TO SHIT

  December 14th, 2013 (cont’d)

  3:13 p.m.

  In the wake of the storm, freeways remain lined with abandoned cars going nowhere, most cannibalized for their parts, and dozens with dead passengers rotting inside. Streets and sidewalks are complex mazes of cable-coiled debris, sinkholes, and homes punctured by fallen trees.

  City officials sealed the island of Manhattan off with an iron fist. Martial law, baby—no one gets in, no one gets out, and I’d like to see you try. Many tried, and many failed once the evacuation ended.

  The survivors I’ve met along the way, most of them taking refuge at makeshift communes and living destitute—none of us has any explanation for what happened after the tornadoes touched down and everything started changing.

  All we do is speculate about what I call the Deviants and what we’ve learned during our encounters with the infected. A crash course in “zombies,” “the aliens,” “the walking-meat shits,” and it isn’t much other than…well, it’s not good.

  I’ve categorized the contamination based on the common three stages which I call the “Trinity Epidemic.”

  Category 1 (C1) is for minor symptoms—flu, skin rash, mild mutations—that sort of thing.

  Category 2 (C2) leaves the carrier in a cataleptic state, defenseless, walking around with little to no signs of intelligent thought. Like Jerry’s emotional coma of an ex-wife Ingrid.

  Category 3 (C3) is the holy shit of the epidemic, and that’s where it gets fun. The Deviants are ugly as hell and have an insatiable appetite for living things.

  Most neighborhoods in Queens are dark and lawless. Others protected by armed civilians are just as unsafe. You’d be lucky to see any law enforcement or authority around here except for the trigger-happy jarheads keeping watch along the expressways or the occasional eye in the sky. What are you waiting for, goddamnit?

  We’ve had no communication with the outside world since the presidential address—no cable, no Internet, no radio, and no signal to our cell phones.

  No one comes to visit, and I haven’t even seen a goddamn newspaper or one piece of mail in weeks. No signs of rescue, no signs of hope—so how will anyone know that I’M NOT DEAD?

  PREY FOR THEM

  Sunday, December 15th, 2013

  9:16 p.m.

  Death is readily available at my front door. I heard those fanged-tooth devils stomping around the outside of my house and on the neighbor’s roof again last night for what felt like an eternity. Clearly, my house has become the Deviants’ personal jungle gym and shit box. They did a number on the aluminum siding, they shit all over my lawn and wrecked my pick-up in the process—my beautiful truck. I should’ve parked her in the goddamn garage when I had the chance. Come on…you don’t touch the truck, man.

  Jerry and I did our best to reinforce the doors and windows after the storm with steel contraptions, bars,
and hinges. Jerry thought I was being paranoid, and I say paranoia is what’s kept me alive so far. Maybe he should have considered being paranoid too.

  It saddens me to think Jerry might’ve tried making a quick dash over here before the Deviants mangled him. I’m sorry I wasn’t conscious to help, and I’m sorry he was too stupid to listen.

  Those bastards decorated the street with Jerry’s innards: gristle, flesh, brain matter, and intestines stretched like a spider’s web from telephone pole to the fire hydrant.

  I gathered what remained of his body and gave him a half-assed burial in his backyard this morning.

  I put as much of Jerry as I could in trash bags and then in an old guitar case with pictures of his kids Tyler and Kendal.

  He’s now three feet under his ex-wife’s squash garden by the fence where our pot used to grow. Neither of them ever ate the squash that Ingrid insisted Jerry grow in place of our nursery.

  When I couldn’t bear the nausea and sadness that came over me, I hosed the rest of him away into the gutter. Maybe it wasn’t the ideal funeral for a friend, but I had limited time to prepare.

  Jerry would’ve understood that, and he would be happy that I took in his ugly dog Alice Cooper and his esteemed Led Zeppelin collection for “safekeeping”...he’d want that.

  In Memory of Jerry Haley—1976–2013...This one’s for you, buddy...Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On”

  Dear Jerry,

  Hey, bud, you should’ve seen yourself all over my lawn this morning…not cool, man. I wish you’d listened to me just this once and stayed inside. What the fuck were you thinking?

  What am I supposed to do now? If you were alive, I’d kick your skinny little ass, but...I miss you already…you stupid bastard.

  Anyway, I did my best to find you a resting place, and I thought maybe you would’ve appreciated me using your Gibson case as your coffin. I kept the guitar (Les Paul ’79).

  It’s the thought that counts, right? I also put that picture of the boys at the zoo in there with you for company…I know that was your favorite picture of them.

  Jerry, I said some shit over the last couple of days, but you were being a dick, and I didn’t mean any of it. I know I could have done a better job of being a friend, but you’re gone now, and I’m sorry, buddy.

  Love,

  Chuck

  P.S. I took some more of your shit.

  LAZARUS WILL HAVE TO WAIT

  Monday, December 16th, 2013

  5:45 p.m.

  This will be the last night that darkness finds me walking amongst it. The night brings the bad things. The winds carry the call of the wild from every dark direction. They’re coming.

  168th Street looked like a Vatican yard sale. Statues of Jesus, hung from his wrists, arms stretched to the nails; St. Peter, a broken man, hunched over his crutch; Madonna wept with hands in prayer.

  Crucifixes, short and long, hung from the doors and windows of their home.

  An exhibit of offerings or spiritual shields sat at the doorstep: bowls of fruit, honey, sage, and white candles melting into one another in uneven heaps of wax castles. Shadows danced against the threshold in the flickering orange glow of the flames.

  Weathered statues of saints stood side by side with lawn gnomes called upon to do battle with the devils—should they come to this picture-perfect manicured battlefield. I found myself more frightened by the hanging faces of bloody and beaten saints than the boogiemen.

  I thought to knock, though it wasn’t my place to say that I felt the whole production was just a bad idea. No smoke signals—that was my rule. No call to attention if you want to survive—just lay low and you’ll be fine.

  I knocked anyway, for their sake—

  “Please go away! I have a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it,” the voice shook from behind the door.

  The inflection in her voice told me she either didn’t have a gun, or hadn’t grown the nerve to use one yet.

  “I don’t want any trouble, ma’am. Just please put your things away before they come. They’ll know someone’s in there. Just put everything away quickly and keep quiet...can you hear me?”

  I was only trying to help.

  “Who are you?” she spoke from behind the door, only two inches of wood separating one faceless stranger from another.

  “I won’t be the one kicking down your door, ma’am. I’m just a friendly voice who hopes you’re someone who listens. I’m going to go now.”

  She let me hang in a long silence, and perhaps, that was my cue our conversation had ended, and I walked away.

  Latches clicked and cranked open before she allowed me to reach the curb, but the chain remained.

  “Are you alone?” She asked.

  “Yes, I’m alone—and unarmed,” I answered, turning to show I was telling the truth.

  “Who are they? You said they…who?” the voice softly demanded, a voice taken over with the first signs of an oncoming cold...or infection.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said, my thoughts contending with a feverish cry from beyond the door, a baby who might’ve been wrestling the same contagion as the woman who spoke to me.

  “We’re sick,” she admitted. “He’s not mine,” she continued. “My sister…she never came home after the storm and…we’ve been alone ever since. Can you help us? Can you stay with us a while? Talk to me, mister,” her voice cracked.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t. You should get back inside now—and hide.”

  “Please…ple-?” the young and faceless voice pleaded, crumbling and begging—like the baby who was competing for its life inside the house—to be held, to know she is safe and not alone. A stranger’s arms might do, but not mine.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry, just go back inside now,” I said, prying myself away from the judgmental eyes of saints and gnomes. I was only trying to help.

  “They, who are they, mister? Don’t leave, please!”

  But I did.

  Leaving was the only choice I had.

  DUSTY TRAILS

  Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

  3:25 p.m.

  I found Dustin Walsh sitting alone on the steps in front of his home two weeks ago over by Sanford Avenue, hands and face caked in blood, but none of it his.

  He was rocking back and forth, cradling himself as he stared at the ground.

  It wasn’t until I thought to leave that he snatched my hand and wouldn’t let go. I really didn’t want to bring him home, but I couldn’t abandon the poor bastard either.

  The front door to the Walsh home was open, and the family car remained in the driveway. I rang the doorbell twice before entering and following the trail of little bloodied sneaker prints back where I found both his parents face down in blood between the ottoman and the couch.

  The living room was a wreck, but the rest of the house was neatly intact and oddly smelled like puke and pinecones.

  This was too clean for the Deviants. There would have been limbs hanging from the chandelier and shit everywhere. Those goddamn hoarders have no respect.

  Family photos and personalized Christmas stockings graced the fireplace mantel with ornaments, candles, and knickknacks.

  There were framed pictures labeled “Dusty’s 7th birthday party” dated “September” on the refrigerator, making him and Kate roughly the same age, except Kate’s birthday is in June. I’d imagine they’d probably get along great if they got to know each other.

  Carol, Steve, and Dustin seemed like a nice family. Carol was kind of hot, Steve didn’t look like a douche, and the boy was all smiles and sunshine. They looked sugary and happy-go-lucky. Not happy just-for-fuck’s-sake “happy” like the Dudleys. You’ll find more joy and laughter among suspects in a police lineup than inside a Dudley photo album. They looked like the type of family that enjoyed annual vacations together, cuddled, and smiled for pictures (and never beat one another).

  The Dudleys never dare embrace in photos like the Walsh family.

  No, no, that’s c
lose enough now, Uncle Richard.

  Dusty should be fine as long as I keep him in Kate’s room with the baby gate in the door so he doesn’t get any bright ideas and get himself into trouble.

  I hose him down in the driveway so he doesn’t stink up the house, throw some of Kate’s clothes on him and shove food down his throat so he doesn’t drop dead.

  6:48 p.m.

  It’s the “calm before the storm,” and I can feel the prickling of pins and needles in my back coming to life again, like anxious little spiders dancing beneath my skin and crawling through my pours.

  The pain has been unbearable since the surgery. I ruptured two disks in my spine falling from a scaffold at the job site two years ago, falling two stories and bouncing off the back of a cement truck, rendering me unconscious.

  It left me disabled and unable to continue working in construction after 15 years of hard labor. Now I’m just simply constricted and can’t do much without a little help. I’ve been double-dipping in the medicine cabinet lately just to secure at least four painless hours of sleep at night.

  YOU, ME, AND THE DEVIL MAKE THREE

  Friday, December 20th, 2013

  8:25 a.m.

  Fumes and a foul stench linger with the breeze this morning. The seagulls coming in from the west look sick from something they ate, and the traveling pack of brown mangy dogs look even worse. So weak their heads hang low as they amble by.

  The shameless looters and hoarders have taken almost everything despite the efforts from the Crusaders trying to preserve order downtown. Food, medicine, clothes, fuel, money, supplies, you name it—nothing left behind but the decaying corpse of humanity after bleeding her dry.

  A mass of bodies lay in the streets after the Main Street riots: people clashing, running in no clear direction of safety and into traffic. It was the Mardi Gras of road kill. It was the Tiananmen Square rally revisited.

  The cops never stood a chance. New York’s Finest, in riot gear, attempted to suppress the mobs but vanished after day two of the fallout. No one knew if they were coming back once they retreated…and they didn’t.