Read Cities of the Dead: Winters of Discontent for Free Online Page B

Frank and Will sat
in the living room, again, the fire going low but neither of them
worried about heating the cabin. They had taken to playing chess in
the evening, after Will had found a set on a shelf with games. Will
had had to teach Frank how to play the game - he had a general idea
of how the game was played, but hadn ’ t played it since “ learning ” it in high school (that was always something
Will and Greg did, when Greg was still alive). Frank had beaten
will three times since moving into the cabin in the fall, and the
unofficial “ official ” score of
the games was Will 103 to Frank ’ s three. Will had won the game
tonight and, as usual, had just put the pieces away after the game.
As Frank thought on the night, the only words he ’ d heard Will say since walking
home that afternoon were “ check ” and “mate.”
    “ You alright,
bud? You ’ ve
been pretty quiet since we got home, ” Frank asked.
    Will looked at him and Frank could
see there were no emotions in Will ’ s eyes. They
weren ’ t dead,
they were sharp and focussed, but devoid of emotion. Frank knew
that Will hadn ’ t given up on life, hadn ’ t become a nihilist and was
generally optimistic and in good spirits. Will trimmed his hair
with scissors and shaved frequently. He worked out nearly every day
they were home, doing push-ups, sit-ups and a variety of other
exercises. He was probably the last man on earth to do any of that,
but Frank had given up making fun of Will ’ s determination to pretend that
if life returned to normal- Will always said “ when ” - he wanted to be the same person he had been
when everything had gone wrong.
    Frank didn ’ t think the world would ever
return to normal, not in their lifetime. If the undead died
tomorrow, there would be years of devastation to repair, and nobody
with the skills to do the repairs. It would be like life in Italy
after the fall of Rome: a hundred years later everyone would look
at the marvelous infrastructure and incomprehensible architecture
and wonder how it had been achieved. Centuries might go by before
anything like the 21st Century rose again.
    “ I ’ m fine, ” Will said after a moment. “ We need to get up to the
gyro ’ s and run
the engines a little sometime soon so the fluids
don ’ t gum up.
If we can find some gas, I wouldn ’ t mind taking one up for a
flight. ”
    Frank laughed. “ It hasn ’ t been above twenty degrees in
two months. You ’ d freeze your ass of up there in an open
cockpit. ”
    “ True, but I
freeze my ass off every time we tromp through the woods around here
looking for something to eat. Maybe we should try flying south
again? ”
    Frank rolled his eyes. “ We tried that. So did everybody
else in the country. That ’ s why there ’ s so many fucking zombies down
there. We ’ re
better off freezing our asses off a few months of the
year. ”
    Will smiled: it was a discussion
they ’ d had many
times, and then Stacey walked into the room, a petite brunette
Frank had saved from death in Knoxville the year earlier when the
group had been trying to get to Central America.
    “ I ’ m going up to bed. You coming up
soon? ” she
asked.
    Frank turned his head to her and
said, “I ’ m coming up now. We cheated death, today, so
it ’ s time to
celebrate life. ”
    Will threw another log on the
fire. “Have fun. I ’ m gonna work my way through some
more of that bottle. ”
    A week later, Frank and the other
men were deep in the woods looking for game, the sky overhead
crowded with clouds and littering the world with a steady stream of
snow flurries. He had his Mossberg 500 shotgun and a 9mm Beretta on
him, but it was the compound bow and fifteen arrows that he was
relying on. Nobody liked to use firearms anymore because ammunition
was tough to come by, and the bullets were best used on rival
tribes of humans than on the undead. Frank hadn ’ t seen that coming: the
breakdown of civilization into small units. Not everyone