by Lauren Beltz
still walked and still made noise, though they no longer seemed to have the capacity to speak. Even if they weren’t living, there was still a disarming sign of life in the jerky movements of their bodies, in the inhuman eyes.
Anna dropped the machete, tossing it away from her body towards Hayley’s lifeless form. She leaned against the wall and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Even after the dozens they had collected in the beginning, it was still a shock after each one, in that moment just after when reality sunk in. The relief that it was over, that he was safe, that he wasn’t infected. The regret that clung to his soul through his morality.
She would be able to clean up herself, but Sebastian wouldn’t make her. They were the cleaning crew together, and while physically the task could be handled by just one person, emotionally it took two to do.
Sebastian moved towards Davidson, gingerly passing his sister off to the closest thing she had to a friend left in the world. It was always harder, too, when it was a face his recognized. Those dead eyes still seemed capable of judging, and it was a lot harder to ignore when he knew what those eyes should have looked like.
He was careful to step over and around the head and puddle of sludge as he moved to Anna. “I’ll get the water, bucket, and mop if you want to see if you can find a garbage bag.”
She nodded in response, but she needed another minute to collect herself before she could move. Testing the boundaries, knowing if he happened to overstep them it would end in hurt for him, he tenderly laid a hand on her upper arm and gave it the slightest of reassuring squeezes. “You did good today, Marks.”
Sebastian didn’t stop to think what this would mean to the group, especially when Nathan woke to the aftermath. He knew there would be repercussions for her actions, that Daniel and Lenore and Davidson would all want their voices heard, and Nathan above them all. A moment like this, it threatened the very balance of the already shaky relationship between them all, and he wasn’t sure if they would all be able to survive it.
Especially not when they found out about the supplies.
The breaking point was coming, barreling down the hallway at lightning speed. It was only a question of what tipped the scales now.
Anna
The garbage bags were stored in the cabinet below the sink, which was thankfully only the third place she looked. She found a 13 gallon bag that would work for the head, but she would have to chop the remainder of the body up into several pieces to get it to fit in bags of that volume, and that wasn’t a prospect she looked forward to. She rooted around in the cabinet until she lucked upon some heavy duty outdoor 45 gallon bags at the very back. She hadn’t dared hoping to get so lucky, especially since no one in the city had lawns to clean, but there they were. Anna grabbed three.
She couldn’t find any latex gloves or cleaning gloves in the kitchen or the bathroom, so she settled with some oven mitts that weren’t perfect but would get the job done. As she suited up with the oven mitts, she side stepped Lenore attempting to lift Nathan up to move him from his spot on the floor. Anna figured she would take care of him herself, eventually. Unless Lenore wised up and realized she could slide him rather easily across the hardwood floors.
The head was the first part she disposed, as it was the easiest to take care of. As she tied off the garbage bag, she set it against the wall as Sebastian started to clean up the mess on the floor. The oven mitts were already soaked through by the time she finished with the head, so she tossed them to the side as well. Getting creative, she fit a garbage bag over each hand before pulling the oven mitts back on. It made it next to impossible to move the body, but it protected her skin from coming into contact with Hayley’s… fluids.
It only took Anna a minute of trying to negotiate the body into the bag before she realized she would have to approach the problem from another angle. She might have been able to cram Hayley’s small figure into the bag, but it would have risked stretching the bag and tearing it, which could have led to fluids dripping on the way to the elevator and possible contamination of the hallway. Returning to the kitchen, she found a pair of scissors in a drawer and set about cutting two bags along their seams until she was able to fold them out into rectangles on the ground.
At that point, she realized she could have just used the area rug in the living area to roll Hayley into, but she wanted to cause the least amount of disturbance to the apartment as possible. She had the feeling that when Nathan regained consciousness, he wasn’t exactly going to be okay with the results. Laying the garbage bags out side by side on the clean portion of the floor, she knelt down and began the process of rolling the body onto the bags, while holding the bag to make sure it didn’t bunch up under Hayley or slide across the floor.
Sebastian finished cleaning the floor before Anna had the body wrapped, so he helped her finish. They managed to curl the body up into the fetal position and envelope it in the two cut bags. Then Sebastian held the third bag open while Anna worked on getting the mass stuffed into it. When Sebastian was able to pull the drawstrings together at the top of the bag, Anna collapsed to the floor from fatigue. For such a small person who had surely been starved for the past two weeks, Hayley still had some mass to her. Last year, a similar task would barely have stretched her muscles. Now, Anna sat with her head propped against the wall, breathing heavily. Her arms and legs ached. Though the apartment was rather cool, she was definitely sweating.
Sebastian stood in front of her and offered her a hand up. No rest for the wicked, she guessed as she got right back up on her feet. The sooner they finished the job, the better it was. She knew this and accepted it, but man did she want a nap.
Picking up the smaller white trash bag, Anna dropped it in the center of the overstuffed bag. Sebastian gripped the bag by the top, and Anna grabbed the bottom. On the count of three, they both lifted and shuffle walked, carrying the awkward bundle between them, out into the hallway and to the elevator. They placed the bag carefully on the ground in front of the doors. Each of them took a hold of an opposite elevator door and pulled them open.
The first time they had decided to dump a body down the elevator, it had taken all day. The restrictor on the doors had taken hours to bypass in order to create a gap large enough to dump a body. But Anna had been wise enough to disable the restrictor once they had finally gotten the doors open, and now it was a simple matter of sliding the doors open, dumping the body down, and closing the doors once more.
When the doors slid open, it took only a few seconds before the putrid smell of death and decay sent them both tumbling backwards. Sebastian found himself gasping for air, and then the meager meal he had eaten that day resurfaced with violence. Anna typically prided herself on her ironclad stomach and her ability to handle gross situations, but the sound and smell of Sebastian upchucking his food sent her stomach reeling as well, and she soon followed. She at least had time to bend over the garbage bag and projectile into the elevator shaft instead of all over the floor.
With a quick wipe of her mouth, she bent down and slid the body into the elevator shaft. It toppled down and collided with the top of the elevator, which sat conveniently on the first floor. She managed to slide both doors shut on her own while Sebastian tried to regain his composure.
“You gotta stop being such a little bitch,” she teased. “And for the love of God, will you clean up that mess you just made?”
He still needed to dispose of the mop, bucket & water off the roof, so a quick stop at the elevator to clean up his sick was hardly a lot of extra work. “Yeah, I’ll call the janitor right now.”
Nathan
By the time he became aware of his consciousness again, he was laid out on the couch. A bob of brown hair sat in his direct line of sight, and for a moment his heart soared as his brain immediately went to his desire. Hayley. But it wasn’t Hayley sitting on the floor in front of the couch, legs crossed and pinned in the small space between the couch and the coffee table. It couldn’t be Hayley. It would never be Hayley, ever agai
n.
The shock of the realization hit him with as much stunning force as it had when he first saw her exposed from the closet. His heart twisted as it shriveled in his chest. The only thing he had wanted to do was protect her, and he had failed. How could he face that? How could he live with that?
His dry throat itched, and he gave an involuntary cough. The push of his chest caused an aching. His throat scratched, making the irritation grow.
Lenore turned, twisting at her waist to face him. The normal bags under her eyes that came from a lack of sleep were now accompanied by a red sclera. Her lips separated a fraction of an inch as if she was going to speak, but no words came. It was for the best, he decided. There was nothing she could say that could lessen the hurt inside him. He could barely contain the hatred he felt, and the urge to blame her increased with every second she sat there inside of his apartment where she had no right to be.
“I think you should leave.” The words hurt his throat to speak, and he had to clear his throat when he was done with his not so subtle dismissal.
“I just thought someone ought to stay to make sure you were ok,” she responded lamely.
Ok. As if he could possibly be ok. How could she expect him