WILLA

by Jennifer Reynolds

  However, I had to wonder if my uncles had let in any healthy people who happened by looking for sanctuary if we might have made up our losses. The thought of anyone besides family coming to Grandma’s house had never occurred to me, though, why it hadn’t was beyond me. Most people who lived within a ten-mile radius of Grandma’s farm knew she always kept a cellar full of food.

  It wasn’t until maybe a month after Sal left that I discovered live, possibly healthy people, were seeking shelter. I’d been in the kitchen helping Grandma clean dishes. Mom had had a duck about it, but no matter how hard she’d argued, Grandma hadn’t backed down. She’d needed my help and was going to get it.

  I was in charge of washing, rinsing, and putting the dishes in the drainer. Grandma sat on a stool while drying and stacking the items neatly for someone to put away. While rinsing a bowl, I looked out the kitchen window. The entire time I’d been washing, I’d been staring out the window, watching the guards walk up and down the row of cars, all of which had long stakes attached to them. The pointy ends of which stuck through the fence. Several zombies flailed at the tips of those stakes.

  What I saw out the window was two people wearing backpacks walking up the drive. The two had spear-like weapons. Once you run out of ammunition, I guess you had to improvise, and a spear was probably the most accessible weapon to carry as it doubled as a walking stick.

  “Grandma, people are coming up the drive,” I said, looking to her but nodding toward the window.

  She merely grunted an okay.

  “Who do you think they are?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” she said, not even getting up from her stool to look.

  “What do you think they want?”

  “Same thing everyone wants. To be safe.”

  “Will we let them in?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why not?” I asked dumbfounded.

  “One, because I doubt they are family. Two, we can’t take the chance that they are infected. Three, we can’t risk them taking our stuff or killing us in our sleep.”

  “What are the chances of them killing us?”

  “High if a larger group is waiting for them to infiltrate our home.”

  “Isn’t that a bit dramatic?”

  “No, now finish those dishes.”

  I tried to return to my task, but the sound of gunfire got my attention.

  “Kris is shooting at the two people,” I said with a gasp.

  “They’re probably refusing to leave,” Grandma said nonchalantly.

  “Will the guards kill them?”

  “If they have to.”

  “Grandma, this isn’t right.”

  “It may not be, but it’s what we have to do to survive.”

  “There has to be a better way.”

  “I wish there was.”

  I tried to watch the interaction between the guards and the newcomers. However, the two people with backpacks walked around the side of the house and out of my sight. I hadn’t heard any more gunfire, but that didn’t mean anything anymore.

  Through the rest of the dishes, I thought about the survivors. I guess I understood why those on watch had to shoot at them, but a part of me also saw how much food we’d stored away and wondered why we couldn’t share. Those humans might have been willing to help us keep watch over the house in exchange for food and a place to stay.

  12.

  The contradictory stories the guards heard on the car radios were what caused a small wave of people to leave in the weeks after Sal and his family did. Someone was always fiddling with the stations, trying to find something, even broken broadcasts. I couldn’t fathom how we were picking anything up so long after everything had gone to shit. I firmly believed that if we’d lived in ignorance of what was “supposedly” happening around us, we might have lived out the end of the world in Grandma’s cellar in relative safety.

  Instead, people believed the stories they heard. I couldn’t see how. None of them could agree on what the government was doing or if our military was defeating the creatures. No one knew if a vaccine or cure was underway, or where the safe zones were. I wasn’t one of the ones who thought we were waiting around to die, but I didn’t think we would see the end of the outbreak for a long time to come. I also believed that we needed to be patient and wait right where we were.

  My uncles felt along those same lines, as did my Grandma, which was the only reason we were able to stay alive and safe as long as we did.

  My second cousin, Jace, and his family were the last to leave us. He had arrived at Grandma’s after mom and I did, with just his two siblings. Both of his parents had been out of town for his grandfather’s funeral. Emma, Jace’s little sister, had had a summer cold. Jace and his older sister, Milly, had opted to stay home to care for the girl. Their parents had never returned.

  I wasn’t sure if it was Jace or Milly who decided that they needed to find their parents. One afternoon, the two went to Grandma with a plan to leave. She’d begged them to stay and told them their mother would hate her if anything happened to them, but none of Grandma’s arguments swayed them.

  “We have to go,” Jace protested.

  I’d seen their small group conversing and had eased close to the conversation so that I could listen.

  “No, you don’t,” Grandma said. “You can stay here and wait for your parents to come to you. They know to come here—just as you did. You could get lost or hurt if you leave, and then they might never find you.”

  “But they could be in trouble. Milly and I have a good idea what route they’ll take to come here. We can follow it. When we find them, we’ll come back. I promise,” Jace said.

  Both of his sisters stood on either side of him, nodding their heads.

  “I can’t allow it,” Grandma said.

  “We’re going, with or without your permission,” Milly said.

  Grandma took in a deep breath before placing her head in her hands. She hadn’t cried since the start of the outbreak, and I wondered if she was fighting back her tears.

  After a long moment, when Grandma didn’t look up at them, Milly gestured that they should leave her.

  I wondered if I should comfort Grandma but thought better of it.

  An hour later, we all watched in stunned silence as Jace, Milly, and Emma went up the cellar steps and out of the house. Neither of my uncles watched the three kids as Kris escorted them through the barrier and to the road.

  I stayed up all that night, waiting for them to return, and I wasn’t the only one. Most of my family did, as well. I hadn’t been close to any of them, but they were family.

  For days, those few of us left at Grandma’s wandered around the cellar somberly, listening for any hint of the kids’ return.

  A good number of our group had left since the horde. Few returned. On rare occasions, someone would reappear. Unfortunately, the guard on duty would find a bite mark on the person and have to turn them away. Some returned as zombies.

  I don’t know how my uncles discovered that anyone with a bite turned into one of the creatures. Yet, somehow, they had. Almost from the start, they turned away anyone who showed up with a wound that looked even remotely like a bite mark. Kris told me that one or two had willingly skulked away, but others had insisted that they were okay, that their wound wasn’t anything, and that we had to let them inside.

  The guards never did. Many of the people circled and circled the parameter of the house until they turned, then whoever was on watch would put them down. Only on rare occasions did the person persist to the point that someone would shoot them before they turned.

  I had a feeling the guards showed the same treatment to any strangers who came up to the house.

  “Why don’t we start letting people in,” I asked Chad during one of the few times he wasn’t on guard duty. “We’ve lost so many. There can’t possibly be enough people on watch.”

  “There isn’t,” Chad said, stretching out on his cot. “But, Dad doesn’t think we’re r
eady to bring strangers into the house. He doesn’t think we’re far enough into the outbreak for people to be out of panic mode. I don’t know if I agree with him, but only a few people have shown up that would’ve been any help to us. Most have been bitten and turned shortly after their arrival.”

  “Does everyone with a bite mark turn?” I asked.

  “So far. We had one lady—I think she was a teacher at my high school, but I’m not positive.—show up with a nip on her fingertip. We only knew it because she had a bandage on it. She said her baby, who didn’t have any teeth, had grazed her finger. The infant had turned in his sleep, and she hadn’t known it. When she went to pick him up, he snapped at her. She said she didn’t know how he’d turned. He hadn’t been bitten...that she knew of, and hers was only a graze, so she didn’t think she would turn. Dad said we couldn’t take the chance, and told her to leave. She didn’t. A day later, she turned, and someone brained her.”

  “You think that was the only bite she had,” I asked.

  “I don’t know. No one examined the woman’s body after she died.”

  I could picture one of the guards shoving a spike through her head before dragging her body to the cow field.

  “What do you think caused the baby to turn if a zombie didn’t bite him?” I asked.

  “No idea. Maybe one of those things had bitten the baby, and his mother hadn’t known it or wanted to admit it. Probably, he died of natural causes in his sleep and turned upon death.”

  “If that’s the case, then wouldn’t we all turn once we die?”

  “I have no idea. Uncle Ray didn’t. Neither did Claire. Maybe it has something to do with the way they died, or perhaps the baby was exposed to the virus some other way.

  “None of this makes sense to me.”

  “Me either,” I said, spreading out on the floor next to his cot and looking up at the ceiling.

  We lay there for a long time in silence.

  “Mason is talking about leaving,” Chad said, breaking our silence. “Dad and Uncle Carson doesn’t know it yet. Mason had heard rumors that there’s a military base in Missouri taking in survivors. He thinks we should pack up and go, but he knows Dad, Uncle Carson, Grandma, your mom, and a few others won’t agree.”

  “They won’t. I don’t. I think we’re safer here. I think we’ll continue to be safe if people would only stop panicking and looking for others to save them.

  “Don’t look at me like that. You damn well know that I’d be doing more if Mom would let me.”

  “If Mason leaves, she won’t have a choice. He has the largest family. We’ll lose half the guards we currently have when they go. There won’t be anyone else.”

  “She’ll have a fit, but I’m ready to help. I don’t want to shoot anyone or brain them with a spear. If it keeps us safe, then I will. Mom, on the other hand, will be useless in that department.”

  “I know. And your mom won’t be the only one. It won’t matter. They’ll have to pick up the slack. And if they don’t, we’ll all die.”

  “Even knowing that, they’ll still be of no use to us.”

  “I know, but too many people have left.”

  Silence spread between us again. That time it lasted until Chad fell asleep.

  13.

  Mason and his family did leave. Not too long after that, we began running low on food. I think if Mom had come across as a rational person in all other aspects of our survival, people might have listened to her more when she harped on rationing food. Despite being able to see the emptying shelves themselves, those that were left at Grandma’s ignored Mom’s warnings.

  Yeah, when we’d had more people, we could go hunting or collecting eggs, but there weren’t enough of us left for anyone to venture far from the house. Only on the rare occasions when the zombies weren’t coming at us in groups of five or more were we even able to get the eggs or tend to the chickens. Luckily only a few of the small animals had died since the outbreak at the hands of those creatures who mistook them for tiny humans.

  The zombies didn’t seem to like animals but would eat them in a pinch. We’d long since let the cows and pigs run wild because the undead would go after them if a human wasn’t available. I don’t think they liked the bigger creatures as much as they did humans, but the zombies preferred them over chickens, dogs, cats, and other less meaty animals.

  The dozen or so of us left had assumed that with so few people, the food we had and the food we could kill would last, and it would have for a bit longer if we hadn’t fallen. Eventually, those like my mother would’ve probably come to understand that if we didn’t want to starve, they were going to have to either hunt or keep guard.

  The majority of us still held out hope that the outbreak was coming to a close. A few of the guards swore they were seeing fewer and fewer zombies each day. Neither of my uncles felt that meant anything. They tried to remind people that just because the creatures’ numbers were thin where we were, didn’t mean that the cities weren’t overflowing. Any day now, the zombies would leave the cities in search of food.

  I didn’t know if I believed that. I hoped that the zombies in our area had already fled, but I feared that it was only childish hope. No matter what the situation was really, few people wanted to ration. Because we had very little to do but wait and eat, we sat around and ate.

  Mom had mostly gone quiet after that first month or so after the outbreak, especially after she’d got it in her head that my dad was dead. I held on to the belief that he was still alive long after I should’ve, but she’d convinced herself that he was gone and that it was just a matter of time before we followed.

  When Mom was still alive six months into the outbreak, I guess that fear went away, and she began to worry we would starve to death instead. She didn’t believe the zombie apocalypse was over or under control. In her head, I think Mom thought the dead surrounded us with no end to the creatures’ in sight.

  Mom wasn’t scared enough of starving to take over patrol watches for my uncles so that they could go on scouting missions or to allow them to train me as they had others on how to use the weapons even though I was sixteen. No, she was just scared enough to bitch about our diminishing food all day—every single day.

  I think it was her bitching that had distracted our already tired and short-staffed guards from their duties and allowed my cousin Jace to sneak back into the house with a zombie bite. He and his family were gone long enough that we’d assumed they were either dead or had found their parents.

  Why his stupid ass was willing to put us at risk by returning, I didn’t know.

  I promised myself that if one of those creatures bit me, I would run away. I didn’t care what anyone said. If I could, I was going to find a way to kill myself before I turned.

  There wasn’t a lot we knew about the zombies, but we did know that once you were bit, that was it. You turned. Not necessarily right away, but you always became a zombie.

  Jace hadn’t been the only person to use Mom’s latest round of complaining to do something stupid. In my case, the “something stupid” that I did ended up saving my life.

  “Mom, we have to cut our rations again,” my mother said, carrying a clipboard to my grandmother to show her the numbers she’d tallied.

  Mom had tried to get me in on her constant counting of our food, but I’d slunk away as soon as she was distracted. I didn’t have anywhere to go other than to my bunk to read. Our clothes were all clean. With so few of us, people could do most things like that on their own. We still took turns washing dishes, cleaning the cellar and bathrooms, but people could wash their own clothes when they needed.

  I knew that, eventually, Mom would figure out that I wasn’t with her and come to get me. Still, I escaped whenever I could for as long as I could.

  “Molly, I’ve told you to stop. We’ll be fine. Your brothers are going to survey the fields next week when the rest of you are ready to stand guard. There’s still plenty of deer about,” my grandmother said, pushing the clipb
oard out of her face and trying to move my mom to a cot.

  “The rest of us? I can’t... Willa isn’t...” Mom stammered, trying to formulate an argument.

  “The both of you can and will.”

  “My daughter isn’t going up there,” my mom said, barely holding back a shout. “I won’t have it.”

  “Willa has to learn to fight and hunt sometime. One of these days, we won’t have a choice but to leave this cellar. When that day comes, she’ll need to know how to defend herself against those creatures and whoever else comes along.”

  Grandma shouldn’t have said that last line. Thinking of the creatures was one thing, but Mom refused to acknowledge that in the aftermath, a lot of bad people were going to take advantage of the situation. My grandmother’s words sent my mom into an entirely different rant.

  While Mom had everyone looking at her, the shelves, and the diminishing food, I snuck upstairs. I hadn’t been up in the main house in weeks. I didn’t dare venture out of the house. The new barrier we’d erected since the first horde was still holding steady, but I didn’t want to see that part of the world. I needed to look at the sky, breathe in the fresh air, and not be around people for five minutes.

  Jace didn’t pass me as I wandered through the house, so I assumed that he snuck in shortly after I made my way up to the second floor.

  I went to Grandma’s room to watch the world from her one remaining bedroom window for a while. We’d long since stopped keeping guards on the second floor. No one or thing moved in the fields that lay before me. Seeing the emptiness, one could almost believe the worst was over. I wanted to trust my mom over my uncles, but I knew that the two men were thinking realistically and that she was not.

  After a while, my eyes grew tired of scanning the area and finding nothing. For a second, I thought about going back downstairs to my cot, but when I looked over to see how inviting Grandma’s king-size bed was, I decided to nap upstairs.