Dead Remnants

Chapter 7: THE WARDERS' CODE

The old woman had been shuffling alongside them ever since Fairmount Cemetery. Although she moved at the same pace as frozen molasses, she'd somehow managed to keep up with Ashen and the cowboy.

The woman had surprised Ashen when she'd first appeared, passing through the closed front door of a single-story home, bewildered, gawking at the painted light dripping from the night sky. Like Ashen's and Macajah's, her form remained unchanged. Solid. Like how regular living people had looked to Ashen back when she was also alive.

They passed another house. A glimmering, colorful silhouette of a living man sat on his front step, a cigarette in his hand. Bats shone as they zipped near the sparse plants and trees in his yard. The man, the bats, even the plants pulsed, the same vivid tones pumping through them in a steady rhythm.

Ashen shook her head as if trying to answer her own confused thoughts. In her new existence, everything was backward. The living looked, well, not alive. And the dead were sometimes fog or mist, like the Drifter in the graveyard, or made of light, like Constance. Or they looked ... real.

Ashen's mouth began to shape a question about the woman, but one glance at the cowboy made her snap it shut. A grouchiness cloaked his eyes as he stared straight ahead. She doubted that she would get much of a response. For the last several blocks, anything she'd asked had been acknowledged with a curt reply. Sometimes only a simple grunt.

She peeked back over her shoulder. Since Macajah had not bothered to address the old woman, Ashen assumed she wasn't a threat. Still, she kept a leery eye on her. If that shadow could use a person's body as refuge, like they had on the bus, perhaps the creatures could also hide inside seemingly innocent ghost grannies.

When the residential neighborhoods began to blend with concrete and brick businesses, another man, looking the same as the old woman, exited an apartment building. He ogled one thing after the other, reminding Ashen of how she'd felt when she first left the hospital. The man was fortunate. At least he didn't have a stampede of buffalo charging at him.

"Quackers?"

Ashen whirled to the old woman.

"Quackers?" the woman called again, bending down to peer beneath the low-hanging juniper bushes edging the sidewalk. "Where did you go?"

The cowboy didn't react.

"Should we, you know, help her or something?" Ashen asked.

"Not a thing we can do."

"But, she's an old lady." A frown touched Ashen's lips. "Isn't helping the right thing to do?"

"There ain't no need to interfere. She'll mosey on fine in the eventual."

Ashen let out a loud huff and marched over to the woman.

"Sakes alive, Little Missy!" Macajah yelled, trailing after her. "It ain't our place!"

She ignored him. "Hello, ma'am?"

The old woman looked up. Her cataracts gleamed. "Oh! Hello, young lady. Have you happened to see Quackers?"

"Who's Quackers?"

"My duck!" The old woman hung her head. "He drowned when I was a little girl. I suppose he wasn't very good at being a duck, but I loved him all the same."

Puzzled, Ashen started to ask about the woman's beloved dead duck when she noticed a thin frost covering the old woman's fingers. Each appendage had turned an odd blue.

"Ma'am?" Ashen grabbed the woman's hands as if her touch alone could warm them. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, my heater's not been working, you see. So I'm always cold. Cold, cold. Even my toes. Cold, cold, cold."