Just Words

This is a work of fiction. No real persons, places or events were used. Copyright 2011 Plot Roach.

Just Words

By Plot Roach

Why is it that when you have everything you want, you’re never happy? About twenty minutes earlier I had taken a brick from the front yard of a fancy house and used it to break open the window next to the front door. I don’t have to worry about anyone calling the cops, or getting shot at from someone inside. The cops have long since left this place, if any survived. And someone would have answered the door (had anyone been there), what with me pounding on it for ten minutes before I decided to break in.

This block of houses, and the ones for half a mile in all directions, all look to have been abandoned. Abandoned of life, that is. I can tell by the smell that greets me like a Jack Russell terrier at the door, that there are dead inside. Most people died out about three months back. Some odd thing that happened almost overnight. They just laid down, said their prayers and never woke up again. No sickness, no ‘dirty’ bombs, just dead like a Wal-Mart goldfish two days after its warrantee expired.

I met up with a preacher man about a month ago that claimed that it was all God’s will. Like some celestial Scotty beamed them out of their bodies and into better ones back in the kingdom of Heaven. He said that they were too pure for this world, so they were taken away. Leaving the rest of us to mire in their corpses to pay for our sins. But I’ve been through a lot of houses, and I can tell from the stack of porn left behind by some of these residents, that not all of them were as innocent as the preacher man let on.

There was a small group of us, and we were getting tired of his preaching. Finally I had enough of it and piped up with my little bit of know-it-all and asked the man that if he was so pure, being a man of God and all, why was he stuck here with the rest of us losers?

I found him two weeks later in a garage. He’d made a noose out of an orange electrical cord and took a long hop off of a short ladder, if you know what I mean. I remembered, while looking at his swinging bloated corpse, about how back in the old days they used to use old rope to kill an outlaw. New rope had too much spring to it and would snap a man’s neck as fast as he hit bottom. But old rope would just let him dangle until he strangled. Electrical cord has no spring, so I figured that the man had a hell of a fight before he found his Heaven.

Groups of us get together when we bump into one another, but we often drift away just as fast as we find one another. A few may travel together for a while, but no one forms too tight a bond. It’s like the humanity left us when everyone we knew and loved died around us.

So I entered the house, wiping a good sized dollop of Vick’s across the underside of my nose to kill the smell. Usually the corpses are dry by now and the smell isn’t so bad. But this family must have invested in a good dose of weatherproofing. Once used to keep out allergens and keep the temperature at a constant, all it does now is keep the moisture in and let the bodies stew in their own juices. Like hermetically sealed coffins turn a pine box into a pressure cooker. When I finally do “go”, I hope I die outside so that I can return to the earth instead of being a urban mummy display or a chunk of human lasagna.

I rummaged through the house quickly, checking for food, bottled drinks and sorting through the medicine cabinet for anything of use. I check the barbeque in back, but it runs on gas -long since gone in this world. The house is pristine, with the exception of the moldy owners, and very empty of character. There are no pictures on the walls other than “art” for arts sake. It looks like a model home that you would find in a magazine. A quick perusal of the desk next to the front door rewards me with several sets of keys. I check the garage and whistle appreciatively. A bright shiny Mustang, like what I’ve always wanted, sits under a thin layer of dust. The garage door won’t open because there is no electricity to run it, so I pull the emergency handle and have to haul the sucker open by hand. Using the keys, I slip behind the wheel and pull out into the sun. It’s a bright metallic green like the body on a Japanese beetle, with black stripes down its center. And while I would have liked a different color, I have to appreciate the taste this dead family had in cars.

I rumbled and purred like a great tiger as I pull out of the neighborhood and go off in search of another neighborhood to pillage. Twenty minutes away I’m in a “middle class” neighborhood. And I know that while there won’t be more dream cars waiting in their garages, there will be food that rich snobs will not have in their cabinets. Comfort food that I’ve been raised on. The first house reveals a cheaply made grill that uses charcoal, just what I was looking for. And while there are no more steaks, hotdogs or hamburgers to throw on the grill (refrigeration have gone the way of the dinosaur once the electricity gave out), I can still heat it up and throw on a few cans of stew or whatever I can find.

Back inside the house, I see that it is occupied by the dead. Mom and Dad are jerky under the covers of their discount sale cotton bed sheets. A kid corpse rests in pajamas decorated in cartoon characters snug in a racecar bed. Throughout the hallway I see family photos of who they once were, I pull a few down and study them as I wait for the grill to heat up. I rummage through the den, find out their names and even a photo album. There are hand drawn pictures and a few tests posted up on the door of the refrigerator. I pull out a notebook from my backpack and add some of the photos to it, along with names and descriptions. By the time I’m done, the grill is ready to cook my dinner. Before I leave, I ransack the house for usable things. They have more food than the house I visited earlier, but little in the medicine cabinet. Which makes sense since rich people tend to eat more pills than real food in my opinion. They have a stash of camping equipment in the garage and I pull out a few sleeping bags to make the Mustang a decent bed for the night. I don’t sleep in the houses of the dead. It’s not that I’m afraid that they’ll get up and exact their revenge on me or anything. It’s just that it doesn’t feel right to invade their “peaceful rest” with the night noise of my dreams. I already feel bad pilfering their homes to survive, I don’t need more bad Karma.

I’m on the road in the car early the next morning. I navigate by instinct and before I know it I’m back at the Collective again. I mentioned before how the survivors tend to group together when we find each other, but never last long in that grouping. The Collective is kind of different. I don’t know if all cities have them, but this one does. It’s in an old library, ironic for what it stores, I parked the car in front of the old building, taking my backpack with me. I’m not afraid of someone stealing the car or my supplies, since all I would have to do is rummage around to get more.

Once inside, I met up with one of the Caretakers. They maintain the knowledge left behind by the old society, and something else. “You’ve got a Remembering Place?” I asked. The man merely noded and motioned for me to follow him. He is dressed in an all beige uniform, like a jumpsuit of sorts and I wondered if he took it from the maintenance closet or if it was his from before the “Big Death”.

“What have you got for me?” he asked, peering at me over small spectacles.

I handed over my notebook, having filled its last pages the night before. I’ll have to get another soon to continue my hobby. He took it from my hands and fliped through the pages, making admiring noises before he put it on the shelf with the others. We Remember Them, a wood plaque read on the wall. It is surrounded by guttering candles and stack upon stacks of notebooks, photo albums and other assorted physical bits of those who have passed before us. They’re just words, photos, dates and anything else we can find to share with those left in the rest of the world. But they are our past, and they should not be forgotten.