Free The Dead Live On by Julie Cooper Brown Page B

Joe, It’s me, Jimmy! I’m OKAY man! PLEASE!! Don’t shoot me, man. I swear, dude!  I’m okay.” Old Joe lowered the shotgun, walked over and grabbed Jimmy’s hand to pull him up, clapped him on the back and said “I’m sorry, son. You just never know these days. You never know.” He looked at his hand and noticed he had gotten blood on him and shook his head in disgust and said “Get the hell off the streets, kid. And what are you doing out anyway? No one should be out. The troopers are damned near gone, and the dead is gettin’ thicker. I don’t know how you managed to make it past that soldier up there looking like that. Evan, I’ll be waiting for you in the morning. Jimmy, you’re more than welcome to come with us.” He was coughing hard as he went back into his house. I know now, that he was getting sick from Clark spitting in his face. Even if we knew about it then, what could we have done to stop it? Not a damn thing.
    We went down on the lawn as Jimmy was picking up a metal fence post he had been carrying and walked up to us .“ Put that thing back down and go out by the shed. I’ll go get some clothes for you and Evan can spray you off out there. You ain’t coming in the house with blood on you” I said. So, Evan hosed him down and he went in the shed to change. The pants were a little too big for him because he was so skinny, and he used a shoe string from an old pair of Evan’s shoes, to hold them up. They came into the house and I had resumed gathering our things and listened to them talking.
    “So, how did you make it pa st the soldiers?” Evan asked. “I came in through the woods behind the empty lot, and when he wasn’t looking I ran but Old Joe seen me, hawk eye that old feller is. I thought his hollering was gonna get me killed. I’m glad they didn’t hear him” he replied. “Did you cut yourself, what was all the blood?” I asked as I looked him over and turned him about.
    “Dude! I got to kill a zombie! It was cool! I was riding my bike up 41 from San Carlos, headed here to your house and got a flat. I had to start walking. That thing just came out of nowhere and the only thing I saw was that fence post, so I picked it up and blasted his head like I was hitting a homerun, man! He tried to get up, so I hit his head about five more times. Smashed it up! It was nasty but I got a lot of anger out of me when I killed it” he chuckled. “I don’t feel bad cause it wasn’t a real person, then I started taking the side streets up this way.”
    “Who w ere you staying with?” I asked.
    “Some girl I met a couple weeks ago, but she didn’t come home after leaving on the bus to get food yesterday. So I figure she’s gone, I reckoned I’d come here with y'all, but I had to get up here quick as I could. We gotta get outta here, now. I saw four troopers bust in a door and shoot everybody in the house. They weren’t even infected!”
    “See, Jillian!” Evan said as he sprung up off the couch and began pacing the floor. “I told you this was going to happen! I’ve been telling you for years!” Evan had been dreaming about U.S. soldiers, breaking into citizen’s houses and shooting them down without explanation, ever since he was a boy. I thought it ridiculous at the time. I cut him off. “Now, wait a minute. How do you know they weren’t Infected, Jimmy?”
    “Because the man said he wasn’t! They just kicked in the door, raised their guns and the man said that there weren’t any Infected in there. I didn’t hear any of the troopers say anything. They just started shooting and the others inside were screaming and begging until they had all been shot dead. They didn’t even use their machine guns; they shot them one at a time. It scared me to death! I ran as fast as I could to get off that street so they wouldn’t see me out. It ain’t safe to stay here anymore. I would have tried to call you but I lost my phone last week and I don’t know your number without