Free The Dead Live On by Julie Cooper Brown Page A

were working on were not yet functioning. At the end of the day, they were to abandon post and return to headquarters for further instructions, they were removing the remaining soldiers and placing them somewhere else.  I asked Evan why the soldier would tell him this, he told me that he asked him the same thing, and Fraley said he told them so we could run.
    It wasn’t an hour after they hauled the bodies away, that I heard the commot ion of people right out front. We stepped out on the porch to see what was going on. All of our neighbors save for Evelyn and Joe, were out there looking at Jake’s front porch. This had brought them out of the house. We stepped down to the street to see what they were looking at. The other people paid no mind to us then.
    Sue had come back, and she was leaning weakly and sluggishly slapping at the front door. Her clothes were dirty and torn in places. Her hair was a tangled mess. I’m sure we were all feeling sorry for her for just a moment, knowing what had happened with the children and Jake. Someone’s shoe scraped the ground, she heard it and her head cocked to the side, she slowly turned around, limping. We all gasped at this, she was infected.
        Her bloodshot eyes were sunken into deep dark sockets, a part of her bottom lip was missing and her right arm, her neck and right leg had big chunks of them missing. The wounds were a weird mix of yellow, purple and rust red. Oh, she looked just terrible! But yet she was standing and knocking on her own front door! Sue turned back around and began hitting the door again; she didn’t try to attack anyone. No one said a word or moved. The soldiers had seen us all gathered and were walking our way to see what we were gawking at. Fraley saw her condition and shot her from where he was standing, blood splattered across the door. He gave Evan a look, and we all returned to our homes. But I was upset. How could she know where to go? She knew that was her house. She was dead by all rights, but she knew and that bothered me. I wondered how it looked to her.
    That is why I know that Evan is still there, somewhere deep inside. And that is why I will not put a gun to his head while he is looking at me. A part of him may be conscious enough to want me to do it, but he has no way to convey to me if he does.
    Well, now is a good a time as any to tell you about our friend Jimmy. He’s the reason I know you’ll turn if you even get the infected blood on you without being injured. Jimmy used to live across the street from us until he broke up with his girlfriend. He was around twenty - three or twenty - four, I can’t remember, but anyway he was just a good kid with a lot of problems so Evan took him under his wing. He was always doing crazy stuff to his hair like spiked Mohawks and dying it blonde, the next time we’d see him it would be shaved off and back to black and then the next time after that it would be a different style and color again. The kid called us Mom and Dad sometimes. We trusted him enough to let him spend a few days with us when he fell on hard times. When he wasn’t staying with us, he would pop in from time to time and check on us to see how we were doing.
    We had tried to call him when all hell brok e loose, but he never answered. We were worried about him but there wasn’t anything else we could do and we didn’t know exactly where he lived. We kind of figured he’d show up sooner or later, and he did. When he showed up, we were in the house trying to go through the rest of our things assessing what we were going to take with us, because we were leaving first thing in the morning. We heard Old Joe, repeatedly shouting at someone.
    “GET DOW N! RIGHT NOW! I SAID GET DOWN!” We ran out to the porch to see what’s going on and it was Jimmy, and he had blood all over him. No wonder Old Joe had his shotgun on him. Jimmy had his hands in the air and was already down on one knee saying, “I’M GOOD, MAN! I’m GOOD! Old