Life of the Dead Box Set [Books 1-5] Read online

  To Grady, these seemed the exact opposite of complaints. “I don’t understand, Sir.”

  “With you, it’s always this holy roller Jesus Christ Almighty bullshit. People don’t want to be preached to. They just want to buy a goddamn TV and your job is to sell it to them. Nothing more.”

  Why is he saying this? It’s like the world’s gone upside down. “But I… That’s my nature.”

  “You’re fired, Grady.”

  He thought he must have heard wrong. Fired? For being kind? For trying to share God’s love? “Sir? There must be a mistake.”

  “Turn in your uniform shirts by the end of the week or they’ll be deducted from your final pay.” Ollie closed Grady’s folder and added it to a new, smaller pile. “It’s a goddamn shame you couldn’t fit in here. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut.”

  Grady stared into Ollie’s tired, hazel eyes so long and intense the big man looked away. “The Devil has hold of you, Sir,” Grady said. “Avarice has turned your soul black and rotten but no one is beyond salvation. And I forgive you.”

  “Fuck off.” Ollie took another folder, and that was Grady’s cue to go. As he fled the office, his former boss sneezed twice in rapid succession.

  Grady turned around and said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm, “God bless you.”

  The day-care smelled like poop and Grady said a silent prayer that the source was not his son. When Tara Charles, the iron-haired owner of Tender Tots, stepped into the room and met him with a scowl on her face, he suspected the worst. When he then saw that Josiah, his ten-year-old boy, was wearing lime green sweatpants two sizes too big rather than the khaki trousers he’d begun the day in, those suspicions were confirmed.

  A dozen or so children, most under the age of five, played with a variety of toys, games, and each other. Only Josiah sat alone. He faced into the corner of the playroom and stacked wooden blocks with big, primary colored letters. His wood tower spelled out SVAEKC.

  “I wasn’t expecting you until six,” Tara said.

  Grady had rehearsed what to say about that during his half-hour bus ride. “I was laid off today,” was the most diplomatic and least emasculating response he’d been able to summon.

  Tara’s icy stare thawed slightly. “I’m sorry to hear that. The job market is… challenging, right now.”

  Grady knew this all too well. Before being hired to sell appliances and electronics, he’d been unemployed for fourteen months. “Yes, it is. But God will provide. He always does.”

  Tara snorted and the look on her face said a sarcastic comment was about to come, but Grady looked past her to his son. A long, yellow string of snot hung from the boy’s right nostril. Tara followed Grady’s gaze.

  “Joe had an accident no more than an hour ago. His pants are still in the laundry. You can wait if you like.”

  It annoyed Grady that she called him Joe. He’d asked her several times not to, and he sometimes wondered if she did it to irritate him. “No, I’ll get them another time.”

  She nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you could bring more diapers. Good ones from here on. Those generic ones aren’t adequate at all.”

  “I will. I’m sorry.” He chewed his lip before continuing, “But I must take Josiah out of day-care. Until I find a new job.”

  Tara’s frost returned. “He’ll have to go back on the waiting list.”

  “I understand. God willing, the wait won’t be long.”

  “And you’ll be billed for this entire week per your contract.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Charge it to my card.”

  Tara turned away and moved to a group of toddlers, never even casting a glance toward Josiah. Grady crossed to his son and drummed his fingers on the top of Josiah’s thin, blond hair which was a perfect match for Grady’s own. The boy’s attention didn’t leave the blocks, not even when Grady wiped the snot streamer from his face.

  “Hey now, Josiah. It’s time to go home.”

  Josiah ignored or didn’t hear him — Grady was never sure which — and stacked another block. Q.

  Grady had to reach under his armpits and lift him off the floor. The sweatpants threatened to fall, but the bulky diaper the boy wore, which Grady noticed was adorned with pink cartoon unicorns, gave enough resistance to hold them up.

  Grady led his son toward the exit and opened the door. Tara didn’t respond as they left and Grady said a silent prayer that God would teach her compassion. She certainly lacked it at the present.

  Home was a three-room apartment of approximately two hundred square feet. Josiah’s toys — puzzles mostly, the boy had a real talent for them — cluttered the living room-slash-kitchenette. Grady and Josiah shared the lone bedroom.

  All together, it was about the size of a cheap motel room and it cost Grady almost eight hundred dollars a month. He didn’t know how they’d be able to afford even that much if he didn’t get another job in short order, but God always provided.

  They’d had a real home once, in a time Grady wistfully thought of as “before.” In that home, there’d been a wife and a mother. Her name was Ruth, which she always said was a plain name for a plain Jane, but to Grady she was anything but plain.

  She’d been the girl of his dreams when he met her at church camp when he was seventeen and she was fifteen. It took until the next summer before he could convince her to give him a chance, but once she agreed, Grady never looked back.

  They married the summer after Ruth graduated high school and for a few years everything was as close to perfect as he could have imagined. Yes, the baby they both longed for wasn’t quick to come, but all in due time. God had a plan.

  Six years and no babies later, Ruth had fallen into a deep abyss. They tried fertility treatments and medicines, but nothing seemed to matter. When Grady insisted they keep praying, Ruth admitted that she had lost faith. Her words shook Grady, but he rebounded. After that, he prayed not only for a child, but for God to come back into Ruth’s life.

  On one of the darkest nights, when Ruth was away with friends leaving Grady all alone and everything was silent, he begged God to hear him. For God to answer his prayers. And God did answer.

  Grady never told anyone this — he knew what they’d say — but he was certain the voice inside his head was that of God our Father as sure as he knew his own name and date of birth. God promised Grady that His plan was going as needed, that all would be well and that, in time, Grady would understand. The comfort Grady received from that voice was all he needed to get him through, even when Ruth grew cold and distant.

  Three years after that, God graced them with Josiah. He was a perfect eight pounds, two-ounce baby boy and Grady swore he came out of the womb smiling. His cherubic grin lifted Ruth out of her depression and their family was whole.

  When Josiah was two years old and still hadn’t spoken, not even mama or dada, or taken to potty training, Ruth insisted they take him to a specialist. Grady thought it an overreaction, but after countless appointments with experts, tests, and scans, Josiah was diagnosed as autistic.

  The following three years were hard, even Grady would have admitted that. As time passed, he accepted that Josiah wasn’t going to get better. Ruth took it worse.

  One day, Grady came home to find Josiah locked in his room and Ruth nowhere to be found. He filed a missing person’s report and for almost four months he devoted every moment of his life to finding his missing wife. He gave interviews to reporters, appeared on local television, and even paid for five huge billboards and a 1-800 number people could call with tips. No calls came, but a letter did. It was short but got the point across.

  “I’m not missing. Stop looking for me. I’m not coming back. Everything is yours.”

  Even though she hadn’t bothered to sign it, Grady knew his wife’s handwriting. He told the police, and the search was called off and that was the end of it. His sole income as a church bookkeeper was far from enough to pay the mortgage and they lost their nice home in the suburbs. That’s how they
ended up in a rundown row house apartment in Baltimore.

  Ruth wasn’t all that had left him. God too had gone silent. It had been almost five years since Grady had heard that warm, loving voice telling him it was all going to be okay and he longed for its return.

  Grady fried a pan of hamburger helper while Josiah stared blankly at Mister Rogers on the TV. He stirred in the fake cheese sauce and thought he heard a gunshot outside as Fred sang about it being a beautiful day in the neighborhood. No, it’s not, Grady thought. We haven’t had a beautiful day for a long, long time.

  At the other side of the apartment, Josiah broke out in a fit of wet, thick coughs, which lasted a full half a minute. Grady looked above his son where a painting of Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane hung on the wall.

  I beg of you, God, please embrace us and watch over us. We need you now maybe more than ever. Please make our lives better.

  His faith was so strong that he actually believed God would.

  Chapter 11

  The hard vinyl made a gross farting noise as Mina Costell shifted side to side in her chair and tried to get comfortable. Hospitals were already such horrible places with the beeping machines, the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, the barely controlled chaos, and of course, the sickness. You’d think the least they could do is provide comfortable and quiet seating.

  She folded and unfolded her hands, smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt and, with nothing else to distract herself, looked at the bed beside her where her father tossed and turned. His labored breaths were thick and full of phlegm. Every once in a while his breathing would stop all together, and each time Mina held hers.

  As she stared at his leathery face, its left side pulled down into an obscene grimace, Mina wished, no, she prayed, that the old bastard would just die already.

  Instead, he woke up.

  Vernon Costell looked around the room with confused eyes and for a fleeting moment, Mina pitied him. But when he saw his daughter anger replaced the confusion and his beady, black eyes zeroed in on her like missiles. “What am I doing in the goddamn hospital?”

  Mina melted into the chair and she looked at her hands in her lap rather than her father. “You went unconscious, Daddy. I couldn’t wake you up.”

  Vernon squirmed into a sitting position, and in doing so, caused the nasal cannula feeding oxygen into his nose to pull askew and yank his nostrils upward like a pig snout. “You know I don’t want nothing to do with hospitals, you little bitch. Don’t you got any brains left in that thick skull of yours, Birdie.”

  The instant he used that name, Mina was twelve years old again. That was the first time he had called her Birdie. She was standing in the hot, cramped kitchen of their section eight apartment, her wiry hair pulled back in pigtails, and she wore the bright yellow dress she bought all on her own. It didn’t matter that it came from the thrift store or that it only cost a quarter. She picked it out and, for the very first time in her life, she felt pretty.

  “Do you like my new dress, Daddy?” she’d asked him.

  Vernon glanced up at her as he gobbled up his food like he was afraid someone would beat him to it. “Look like one of those birdies to me. Ones that peck the nigger seed off the flowers in the fall.”

  Layla, her younger sister by less than a year, burst out laughing, spraying a mouthful of mashed potatoes in the process. That made Vernon cackle. He pointed at Mina. “Don’t she look like a birdie? Skinny little legs? Big beaky nose?”

  Layla flapped her arms. “Mina’s a birdie! Tweet, tweet!”

  Seeking an ally, Mina turned to her mother, who washed dishes by hand at the sink. But her mother kept her head down and her mouth shut. Something Mina learned to do all too well in time.

  Even though Mina never wore the yellow dress again, Vernon called her Birdie often after that day, especially when he wanted to hurt her. Through the years, he hurt her a lot. Sometimes with his hands, like when he slapped her so hard that his wedding band broke her front tooth in half. Sometimes with his feet, like the time she missed her curfew by six minutes and he told her she was a cock-sucking whore who needed to mind her place. That night he shoved her onto the floor then kicked her over and over again with his heavy work boot clad feet until she managed to crawl under the kitchen table. She passed blood for almost a week after. But, for a girl with a name as beautiful as Wilhelmina, all the beatings put together didn’t cause her as much pain as being called Birdie.

  Layla got pregnant when she was thirteen, knocked up by the maintenance man who spent too much time making repairs in their apartment. He married her, but they both died in a car wreck before the baby could even be born. A couple years later, their mother died of a brain bleed supposedly caused by falling down the steps, but more likely caused by Vernon’s fists. Mina envied both of them because they got out.

  When Vernon was forty-nine and digging out a drainage ditch for the city, he suffered a major stroke. His left side was useless, but he still had his right to keep her in line. His disability insurance barely made ends meet, so Mina, who was then seventeen and had dreams of being a nurse or a teacher, got hired on as a chambermaid for a local hotel and spent the best years of her life cleaning up other people’s messes.

  If anything, the stroke made her daddy meaner. It was easier to slip out of the way of his fists, but he had other ways of punishing her. His favorite trick was soiling his pants on purpose, even though he was perfectly capable of using the walker and going to the bathroom on his own.

  “Birdie! Get in here and clean my ass!” he’d holler.

  The first time Mina had to wash the putrid shit out of his crack and off his shriveled balls she threw up. Vernon heard her retching and cackled like a hyena. That wasn’t the last time he’d made her puke, but it was the last time she let him hear her.

  All told, it had been thirty-nine years of cruelty and on more days than not, Mina just hoped that one of them would wake up dead. She didn’t even care much which one, she just wanted it to end.

  Vernon reached over with his hand and slapped her thigh hard.

  “Quit your wool gatherin’ and fix this fucking tube--”

  Mina glanced at him, saw his piggish nostrils flared and his eyes wide. His entire body tensed and then went into a violent spasm that seemed like it would never end. But it did and then he collapsed backward. It took her a moment to react; she just stared into his eyes. When his pupils dilated, she snapped out of her daze. She rushed to the door and leaned into the hospital hallway. “I think my daddy just died!”

  Chapter 12

  Bundy owned what he considered to be, an admirable collection of firearms. From rare long guns like an 1892 Winchester Saddle Ring Carbine 25-20 Caliber Rifle and a Springfield Model 1842 Percussion Musket to small arms such as a U.S. Simeon North Flintlock Pistol Model 1816 and a Colt Model 1860 Army Revolver.

  He’d fired all of them at least once. Guns were more than his hobby. Guns were his way of life. So when a friend of a friend of a shooting buddy offered him a chance to buy a genuine, fully automatic Hellpup AK-47, he wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass him by. The fact that buying said gun was illegal didn’t bother him that much. Bundy had no plans to rob a bank or shoot up a school. He wanted to own it just because.

  He met with Jim, the seller, outside what Jim said was his favorite bar, a street-side dive named Mel’s which promised Good Eats, Good Company, and Unlimited Wings every Friday. Bunny liked wings and thought he might take them up on the offer after their transaction was complete.

  Jim was an intense, bearded fellow who looked like he’d seen some time in combat. Bundy handed him five hundred dollars in twenties, but Jim didn’t hand him the Hellpup. Instead, he arrested him. Bundy never even got to touch the gun. Or try the wings.

  His real name was Rudolph Polakowski, but ever since Hulk Hogan squared off against King Kong Bundy in Wrestlemania 2, everyone had called him Bundy. And that was fine. It certainly beat Lardass or Wide Load or Porkbeast or any of the other taunts tha
t had been hurled his way since the first grade. He was a large boy who grew into a mountain of a man.

  Bundy stood six feet seven inches tall. He was far too large for regular scales, and once he thought it would be amusing to step onto one of the truck weighing stations they had out front of the scrap yard. He was about four hundred and forty pounds then, but that was thirty years ago when he was still growing. He now considered his weight to be indeterminate. After the arrest and conviction, Rudolph Polakowski became Inmate 2089349. He still preferred Bundy.

  He’d been a guest at SCI Pittsburgh for about two months when the prison physician discovered the lump on his testicle during an otherwise routine physical. Bundy had wondered why the nervous little man was spending so much time fondling his junk, and after the doc finally told him to pull up his pants, he broke the news.

  Bundy wasn’t too worried. After all, he had two balls, so losing one wasn’t anything to lose sleep over. Normally, a van would have taken Bundy and the other seven prisoners needing medical care to the hospital, but due to his extra-extra-extra-large frame, a bus was procured instead.

  Around noon, they traded their cells for the police blue prison bus. Just in case anyone might confuse it with a school or public transit bus. “Department of Corrections” was stenciled on the front, back, and both sides in bold white lettering.

  The day was already hot and the heat bounced off the pavement in shimmery, rainbow-colored waves. Bundy was sweating through his orange prison jumpsuit before he even stepped onto the bus. His uniform was the biggest size they made, but the zippered front still threatened to burst.

  He and the other inmates were handcuffed, and the cuffs attached to belly chains. Bundy required two chains to be locked together to fit around his waist. The restraints gave his hands about five inches of movement in any given direction.