“You can’t go back on our deal. We had an agreement that you would bring Marissa over. Where is she?”
“And you agreed that you’d clean yourself up, but you didn’t.”
“I have!” I yelled. I stomped over to her and my body temperature was rising. “I have cleaned myself up. I moved here for you. I got a great job. I’ve found a place to live. I have done everything that you have asked! You said if I cleaned myself up that we could be together again! We need to be a family again.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind! We will never be a family again,” she said coldly.
“Who cares? I fucking hate you. Where is my daughter? Where is she? Is she in the car? Go fucking get her!” I was shouting now.
“She’s not here, you pathetic dumbass. You will never see her again.”
“She’s my daughter. You can’t do that.”
“Oh, bullshit, I can’t.” She got really close to my face. “You will never see her again.”
I stepped away from her and walked over to the dust-collected couch. I sat down and looked back at her. I looked away again because every time we connected eyes, I got angry. I needed to stay calm for my daughter’s sake.
“If you don’t give my daughter to me,” I said. I kept my head in the palm of my hand as I spoke. “I am promising you things will end very badly for you.”
“What did you just say?”
I lifted my head from my hand and saw that she was standing in front of me. She stood tall over me like a giant mythical figure. I felt so small and vulnerable in front of her. I felt child-like and scared, but I was going to stick up for me.
“You heard me.” I stood up. “If you don’t give me my daughter, I won’t regret what I do.”
“Are you threatening me, Scott?”
“You bet your fucking ass I am.” I stepped closer and she moved backward. I took another step and another until she was pressed up against the wall. “Do you have any idea what I’ve done? I fucking raped a girl. I attacked her and ripped her clothes from her young body. I stuck my dick in her all because a voice in my head told me to do so. I didn’t care about her.”
She had nowhere to go but I could see she was trying to press further back into the wall. Her head tilted down as she moved back and her chin disappeared into her neck.
“I don’t give a fuck about you. I will rape you and leave you lying on the floor to die. I will get my fucking daughter and there is nothing you or anybody else can do to stop me. You’re a bitch. You’re nothing but a bitch.”
When I was done with my speech, she stopped trying to get away and relaxed her shoulders. She took a deep breath and that scared look went away. She focused her eyes on me and her eyebrows straightened tightly. She leaned into me.
“Bring it on, you motherfucking pussy,” she said.
I moved my right foot back and lost my balance for a moment. I brought my left foot back to stand more squarely and then looked in her vengeful eyes. She wasn’t breathing. She didn’t blink. She was beautiful.
“I want us to be a family again, babe. I want you and Marissa. I want us.”
“What are you doing?” Came another voice from behind me.
I turned around and saw a curly haired woman standing in the doorway. The door was open and she stood there with an empty bottle of rum. She was staring at me as if I was the first species of my kind she’d ever laid eyes on.
I turned back to my ex-wife leaning up against the wall, but she wasn’t there.
9
Jack Scoville
I never liked the suburbs. I couldn’t explain why that was, it just wasn’t for me. Chicago was the perfect city for me. I’d taken a dozen or so business trips to New York and to Los Angeles. I also flew to Dallas, Atlanta, and even Seattle once for my firm. New York City was crazy. It was huge. Chicago, even though it was huge, too, was the perfect size for me.
I sat on the porch looking around this new suburban neighborhood that I was just supposed to be a member of. I watched as people around the neighborhood were out and about. One older couple was taking a walk, there was a guy riding a lawnmower even though the size of his yard didn’t call for one, and there was a dog barking in the window of the house next door to us. How the fuck did a dog survive?
Some of the people in the neighborhood saw me as they drove by or walked by, but they didn’t acknowledge me. I couldn’t imagine what rumors were flying around. I was sure as hell that a little town like this was full of gossip. I’m sure they’d heard about the fight the night before. With the amount of gunfire that Kendrick put onto our bus, there was no way people in the town didn’t hear it. Nobody wanted to acknowledge me.
I didn’t start that war. None of us did, but the people were staring at us like we had. I had this creepy feeling that everyone in town was in on the same sick prank. It felt like a horror movie where a new family moves in town and everybody is hiding this giant secret that they are cannibals or alien clowns. I knew it was crazy, but something just continued to feel off.
I took a small sip from a Bud Light Orange. I looked at the glass bottle and saw that one more giant gulp would finish her off. I tipped it back and put enough into my mouth that it almost flew back out between my lips. I couldn’t complain about the beer, though. The fridge was stocked with it. A fresh 12-pack of Bud Light Orange. It wasn’t exactly something I’d buy for myself, but free beer was free beer.
I set the bottle down on the porch ledge and stepped off into the grass. It was getting a little long and would probably need to be cut soon. Somebody was going to have to kill me before I cut that lawn. I watched the guy mowing his across the way and thought about going to introduce myself and asking him to cut the lawn, but it wasn’t that important.
I walked around to the side of the house and came across the garage door. I’d spent so much time walking around the inside that I never even stepped out into the garage. It was attached to the house, I guess I just missed it. I went through the kitchen and living room, expressed my frustration to Haylea in there, and then went upstairs to shower.
That’s how I ended up in the front lawn. I grabbed the handle and pulled up until the garage budged and opened up. The sun lit up the inside like flashlight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a fucking car in there and it looked brand new. I walked around to the side of it and inside were a pair of keys.
It was a red Chevy Tahoe. I didn’t know what year, but it looked like it had never been driven before. I couldn’t believe the amount of crap that this town was stocked with. The outbreak hit and they just happened to ship new cars in and stuff them into every home?
I looked around at the rest of the junk inside. There were a couple of bikes, a skateboard, and then there was the damn lawnmower that I was never going to use. In the corner, there was another fridge. I always respected people that had a refrigerator in their garage. Those kinds of people didn’t play around.
I opened the door and the top shelf was filled with different sodas. I scanned from left to right of Sprite, Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Root Beer. No diet. That was odd. I could have been convinced that I was in heaven when I saw that the bottom shelf was lined with nothing but beer. Bud Light, Guinness, Coors Light, Heineken, Blue Moon, and Rolling Rock. Damn me. This place wasn’t so bad.
I hadn’t seen Emily since we were gifted our new homes. She’d called me on the phone, but I was trying to forget that strange moment. I closed the garage behind me and strolled across the street. I could feel people watching me from around the neighborhood and I tried to look less like a serial killer, but I just had a “fuck you” plastered on my face.
I knocked on the door and helped myself in. They’d left their door unlocked. I guess the people living here didn’t have any thief problems. We’d been through some much worse shit and I wasn’t about to leave my door unlocked for any reason. They’d have to break the damn thing down to get into my house.
Emily’s house was very similar to us. The color scheme was di
fferent, but both were very light. It had light tones that made the rooms brighter than they actually were. I scanned the shelves in the living room. They had much of the same stuff that we did. They must have bought all the products in bulk from Costco before the surprising outbreak.
“Hey,” Emily said. She was drying her hands as she came out of the bathroom.
“Hi,” I said. I watched her step closer to me. She was beautiful. Her hair was still wet and hanging down across the sides of her face. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of athletic black yoga pants. I was still trying to put my feelings for her away but it was difficult when she looked like that.
“You alright? You look agitated.” She dropped the hand towel on the counter and opened the fridge. She untwisted the cap on a bottle of water and took a long drink. “This taste so amazing. It’s crazy to think what we’ve been drinking for the last month.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Alright, Jack. What’s going on?”
“Umm, Haylea and Heather are on their way over here, too. We need to have a meeting.”
“A meeting? Why?”
“About this place, Emily.” I pulled one of the stools out from under the counter and took a seat. “Something about this place is wrong. It’s too perfect.”
“Jack,” she started. She took another sip and then tightened the cap and slid the bottle to the center of the counter. “You need to stop with these conspiracy theories. It is always something with you.”
“It isn’t always something,” I said.
“Yes, it is. Kurt is trying to overthrow your power. Kurt is going to get us killed. Cameron and his friends were going to come back and kill us, Zach can’t be trusted. Now this place is what? Some crazy town that is going to kill us and torture us? It is always something.”
“I was right about most of that. Those damn kids were going to kill us but— “
“But nothing, Jack. You killed those poor kids before you gave them a chance to move on with their lives. They were scared and they made a mistake. You need to stop this or you’re going to drive all of us crazy.”
“I just don’t think…If I…” I trailed off. There was nothing to say to get Emily on my side. At least, nothing I had at that moment.
“When Heather and Haylea get here, we will have a little meeting and everyone will get their two cents in, but if everyone agrees that this place is normal and safe, you need to drop this.”
“Okay, that’s fair.”
“Promise me.”
“What?”
She smiled and looked into my eyes. “Promise me you’ll drop this so we can move on with what little lives we have left because this place may give us more of a life.”
“Okay. I promise,” I said.
“Say it,” she said. She smiled again.
It made me smile as I spoke, “I promise I will drop it.”
“Good. I’m going to change before they come over.”
“Why?” I asked.
She grabbed the bottle of water and was out of the kitchen before I heard her voice from the stairs. “Because I’m not wearing any underwear.”
That killed me to hear. She was trying to tease me. At least, I thought she was. Hopefully, she was. I couldn’t believe how quickly I was falling for her, but I still believed it was a good idea to keep it to myself.
People were going to die in this world. Constantly. It didn’t matter if we were in a TV station, wondering the streets, riding a bus, or in this fake neighborhood, people were still going to die. Decent humane people didn’t exist anymore. We were going to get eaten by zombies or killed by each other.
If I told her how much I cared about her, it was only going to start a countdown on a time bomb that was eventually going to go off. One of us was eventually going to get ripped away from the other. It was better to never love her than to love her and lose her, or worse have her lose me. She already lost Sam.
I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs quickly. She must have forgotten something or was just coming back by to see my beautiful face again. I could dream. I could also joke. I turned in my stool to see Elyse pop her head around the corner and prance into the kitchen.
“I thought I heard your voice,” she said.
“Hi, Elyse.”
“Hi, Jack.” She stood up straight like a shoulder and mocked my deep voice. “Hi, Jack. I’m Elyse.”
“We’re going to meet in a few minutes to talk about this place if you want to. You could give your input.”
“Oh, I could care less about that. These little meetings don’t solve anything.”
“That’s how young people used to feel about voting,” I said.
She smiled and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m having a beer, Jack. Don’t be such a little bitch.”
There was something wrong with her. She was acting hot and cold. One day she was somber and the other she was off her rocker. I would have believed a doctor if he told me she was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, but I knew she didn’t have it. Everything started after the rape. Her mind was broken.
“Relax, Elyse. I’m sure your mom would not be happy about that.”
“Oh, no,” she joked. She twisted the cap off and smiled at me. “Okay. You’re probably right. She better not see this.” She tilted the beer back and chugged the entire beer within ten seconds. Right in front of me. It was there and then gone. She would have dominated all drinking games if she were able to have gone to college.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said after she finished. She walked around the counter and leaned over the table. She was pushing her chest out to me and getting as close as she could. “You didn’t want any, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
She brought her face close to the bottle and licked around the opening. “Too bad.”
“Yeah,” I said. I stood up and walked over to the living room. I turned around to see that she was giving me a childish pouty face.
“Because if you wanted some, I could have shared.”
“Elyse, stop,” I said firmly.
“I know you don’t mean that. Everybody knows when a girl says no, she really means yes, right? Isn’t that right, Jack?”
She walked over to me and stepped closer and closer. I wasn’t going to run around the room with her and play chase like two high school lovers. I stood my ground and watched this formerly sweet girl act like a vixen.
“Jack, you know you want me. I knew it from the moment I grabbed,” she stopped talking and looked down at my waist. “Mmm. I know you want me.”
She pushed me up against the wall and pushed her waist into mine. I knew it was wrong at that moment, but I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her back. I knew I shouldn’t have pushed her and that it could have done worse damage to her already fragile mind, but I wasn’t going to play any games with her anymore.
She didn’t cry or get angry like I thought she would. She looked at me and smiled. She put her hands around her neck and then dragged them down her body. She let out a soft moan and closed her eyes passionately.
Before I could do anything about it, she jumped at me again and started kicking me. I pushed her back again but she held on. I could feel her nails dig into the back of my shoulder and pull at my skin.
She moved forward again and licked my mouth. She twisted her head to the side and started kissing and biting my neck. I finally used more strength than I had before and shoved her so far backward that she fell on the couch.
My heart was beating as fast as it did when I was surrounded by stragglers. The blood was rushing through my body, but it immediately stopped and my heart dropped into my stomach when I saw Haylea standing in the kitchen.
“Haylea,” I said.
“What the fuck?” She looked at me but quickly turned her look to Elyse on the couch.
Elyse spread her legs wide as if she needed to do that to stand up. She got to her feet and walked around th
e couch and over to the stairs. She looked back at Haylea and smiled. Her eyes made their way back to me and she licked her lips. Before ducking around the corner of the wall she bit her lip and smiled. She was gone and we could hear her feet pitter patter up the stairs.
No more than five seconds after that, Heather walked into the room drinking a bottle of water. It was like we all forgot what water had tasted like. Everybody was chugging it since we’d been there. She had no idea, though, what had just happened.
Kylie came down the stairs. “What’s up?” she asked as she went into the kitchen to grab a snack. Emily came down right after her and greeted the other girls.
“Alright, so what are we meeting about?” Heather asked.
They looked at me because I was the one who called the meeting. Heather directed her question to me. Kylie was biting into an apple looking at me and Emily sat at the kitchen table and was looking at me. It was Haylea’s stare, though, that was doing the most damage. She wasn’t ready for the meeting. She was still staring in horror because of what she just witnessed Elyse doing.
10
Scott Daugherty
T he woman in my apartment wasn’t my ex-wife, of course, it was the girl from the bar, the bartender. She had under-the-radar looks. I imagined her like a movie star. A young star whose popularity hits at a peak before she’s ever really been in anything. As a young teenage actress, everyone says she’ll be the next big star. She’s beautiful and a good actress and people love her and she is in a movie that does amazing with fans and critics alike. But then she hits a snag and kind of disappears. She never becomes the big star, but after about ten years she’s cast in a TV show and the show does well.
She had curly brown hair that just touched her shoulders. Her eyebrows were darker than her hair, but not by much. I would say her hair wasn’t dyed, there was just a slight difference in the colors. Her nose was thin. It was like a short stick on the front of her face with two tiny nostrils.
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