“Mommy?” she questions again as she reaches out to touch her mother’s hollow cheek.
In that instant, her father’s arm flashes up and grabs her wrist, squeezing it with strength he would never have had at his healthiest.
Her head instantly turns to her father. “Daddy…I.”
Over her father’s shoulder, she can see more people coming through the back gate. Her sister, both of her brothers, their spouses, Kyle, Andrea, all are slowly making their way to her.
Before she can say anything else, she screams in pain. Her father has his hand wrapped tightly around her wrist and is beginning to squeeze.
The crunching noise her wrist makes as it snaps and crumbles in his grip is drowned by a second more hideous scream that escapes her lips. Her father continues to crush her forearm with his hand, until all the bones that had been in that particular part of her arm are gone and the skin from her upper arm is rubbing against the skin of her lower arm.
Flashing lights explode in her head. For a second she thinks she is going to pass out. Once he has made her wrist and part of her hand good and floppy, her father tries to bring it up to his mouth to bite into it. As he does this, he loosens his grip a small bit. Her survival instincts kick in, take over, and register this. Without thinking, she jerks what is left of her arm out of his hand. In that same instant, she turns sharply around and runs back into the house.
Making a typical horror movie mistake, she leaves the back door open behind her and runs up the stairs. She heads for Caleb, unthinkingly leading them all right to him. After locking both of their doors, she begins moving furniture in front them. She is trying to move her dresser in front of her door when she hears a loud crash come from Caleb’s room.
Her body moves in slow motion as she makes her way to his bedroom.
When she gets to his door, she wishes she hadn’t looked into his room. Her parents, Caleb’s mom and dad, Kyle, Andrea, and a few other familiar and not so familiar faces are all standing around the baby bed. When she screams Caleb’s name, they all turn and look at her. In their hands and hanging from their mouths were bloody clumps of flesh.
Eve’s face pales as she takes a few steps closer to see inside the crib. Nothing in the bed resembles Caleb. There are only splatters of blood, muscle, tissue, bone, and shreds of the Finding Nemo onesie that he had worn to bed. All the feeling in her body leaves her at the sight, and she slides to the floor screaming.
If she was lucky, she would wake herself at this point in the dream. She considered this lucky because most of the time she woke from the screams she made as the flesh-eating creatures that were her loved ones tore her skin from her body. Sometimes there were variations in the dreams. Sometimes her father rips her wrist or arm completely off when she is still on the back porch before she runs up the stairs. Sometimes there would be more than just her mom and dad and they eat her right when she comes out of the back door.
She was afraid to take sleeping pills because of Caleb. She feared that the sleeping pills would put her under too deep and she wouldn’t hear him if he cried for her. Most nights she tried to keep herself awake until she nearly passed out from exhaustion, too tired to dream of anything. On other nights, she took a shot of whiskey, which would almost instantly knock her out just hard enough that she didn’t dream but not hard enough that a good loud noise would wake her.
The dreams lasted a long time, and she didn’t notice when they stopped coming every night. Six months into the New Year, they stopped completely. She had set her mind on other things by then though and had started to grow comfortable with her new life.
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On the first warm day of Spring, Eve took Caleb to one of the many parks that inhabited the city. He was old enough and mobile enough by then that he could play on most of the parks “for toddlers” equipment with little help from his aunt. Eve packed them a lunch, with a real picnic basket and a red and white tablecloth. She had done it to be funny, even though she was the only one who would find the humor in it. The whole scene was so Brady Bunch, something she had never thought she would be doing.
Caleb played for over an hour before giving in to hunger and exhaustion. After they ate, she laid him in the stroller and went for a walk while he slept. It had been years since she had been down any of the trails that spider-webbed out around the park.
She made the slightly overgrown loop that went around the outside of the main park area once before she remembered where one of the trails led. There was a spot she used to go that overlooked the entire city. On her second loop, she veered off onto the trail that would take her to that spot.
The trail was a little hard to follow. A few times, she had to stop and move dead branches out of her way, and once she even had to move a half-eaten body off the path. Doing this reminded her of her situation, and made the wooded area around her much creepier than it had been in the beginning. By then, though, it was too late to turn back; she was nearly to her destination.
When the trail broke off, she was standing at the beginning of a cobblestone circle. At the other end of the circle was a wrought iron gate. Beyond the gate was what was left of an old railroad bridge. The bridge stopped a fourth of the way across the river that flowed passed the park and divided her hometown from its southern neighbors.
At one time, the parents of one of the kids she had grown up with had belonged to some city council group or another that was in charge of making sure this site stayed groomed for visitors. The kid’s parents along with a handful of other people had keys to the padlocks that kept people off the bridge.
If a person was brave enough, they could climb out onto the sides of the cage that encircled the end of the bridge and walk out onto the tracks that way. Most people just made sure that they either knew the kid or knew someone who knew the kid, because the kid had also managed to get a copy of the key.
Eve and her group of friends had known better than to come out here drunk or high. They saved this place for when they needed a natural high. There had been a number of accidents, but most of them were because an idiot talked some dumb drunk kid into doing something stupid. These accidents didn’t keep kids off the bridge; it just insured that most of the people that came out here were relatively sober.
Eve and Doyle had gone to that spot a lot during the day when they wanted some alone time. They had been good at climbing the sides, when they didn’t have a key. Doyle had been fairly good friends with the guy—Eve never did remember his name—who had the key, and could get it nearly every time they wanted to come out because most of the kids didn’t want to go out there in the middle of the day. There was no challenge, no fear, no danger to coming out during the day.
Eve pushed the stroller up to the gate and pulled on the lock. It was secure. She looked around for a big rock or something to break the lock, then she remembered the shotgun slung across her back. She had seen people break locks with the butts of guns on television, but she wasn’t sure it would work in real life. Taking the bullets out of it, in case she accidentally pulled the trigger, she slammed the butt of the gun down hard onto the lock.
The bang echoed throughout the park, but only three birds took flight. She watched them in awe. Only three birds; there should have been hundreds.
Caleb flinched in his sleep, whined but didn’t fully wake up.
The lock rocked back and forth from its loop, but stayed securely locked. She slung the barrel back down on it three more times before it finally broke loose. She laughed aloud when it hit the pavement.
“I guess television doesn’t lie about everything,” she said aloud to no one.
Caleb woke momentarily, mumbled a response to the noise, and said the letter ‘E’ that stood for Eve. She hadn’t taught him to call her mom, so his first word had been Eve, but apparently, he felt that was too much to pronounce so he had shortened it to E. He yawned wide, and she handed him his sippy cup. He took a few sips and fell right back to sleep. He had played a lot that day.
Putti
ng the bullets back into the gun, she made sure the safety was on then slung it back over her shoulder and went back to the gate. The hinges screamed as she pulled it open, but not loud enough to wake Caleb. Inside the gate was a small platform with a railing dividing the land from the tracks. She wheeled Caleb on to the platform and shut the gate door behind him. Ivy had grown over most of the cage in the last year or so. It made a good cover to hide him from the nonexistent people in the world. It also gave him shade from the sun.
Once she felt that he was safe, she lightly stepped over the railing and placed both feet on a wood strip that went between the two metal rails. Slowly she stepped from one wood plank to the next until she was at the end of the bridge. Her entire body shook in fear. The walk across the bridge should have been nothing, she had made it so many times in the past, but this time it was different. There would be no one to save her if she had an accident.
The water below wasn’t horribly deep, and there wasn’t a harsh current to grab her at this section of the river, so she wouldn’t have to worry about drowning if she fell in, as long as she didn’t hit her head on the way down. She looked back to Caleb to be sure he was still asleep. He hadn’t figured out how the straps of the stroller worked, so she didn’t worry about him getting out, but she didn’t want him to think she had left him if he couldn’t see her.
Easily, she squatted and sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the bridge. Memories flooded over her. Sadness crept in as she realized she had never brought Kyle here. This was her special place. The place she came to think, to take pictures, to be away from everyone. This was also her and Doyle’s place, so she guessed it was a good thing she and Kyle had never come here.
Sitting so far out into the water, she could see a long ways up and down the river and out across her hometown. She could see Doyle clearly there as well. Those visions were too painful to dwell. She pulled a camera from her pocket. That day had been Caleb’s first time at a park, so she had taken loads of pictures of him on every piece of equipment she could get him to hold still on.
Her albums at home, albums from her old life, were full of pictures taken from this bridge. She had been here at sunrise, sunset, snow, rain, fog, and the sunniest of days. Pages upon pages of her scrapbooks showed everything from every possible angle that she could see from this bridge. That day she snapped a few shots of the city then turned the camera onto herself. This was something she had never done before. No one had taken a picture of her up here nor had she taken any of herself.
After she had taken nearly ten pictures of herself, she heard Caleb begin to stir. Carefully, she walked back to the entrance of the bridge. When Caleb began to whine, she started talking to him, telling him she was nearby and was trying to get to him. He called out her full name once, and she told him to be patient she would get to him as soon as she could.
V – Vera
Eve and Caleb had been alone for almost two years, with one minor exception, when she came along. The previous two years had been silent and uneventful. Well, mostly uneventful, but that story will be told in a moment. Caleb had grown so much and so fast in such a short time. Eve was thankful she was able to spend all of her time with him, to be able to watch him do everything for the first time. He was walking and running shortly after his first birthday. By his second, he was talking as if he had always known how.
Eve was glad when he was able to form sentences. Hers being the only voice she heard day after day had gotten tiresome. The sound of another person’s voice was the one true thing she missed from the old world, the one thing she prayed to God for every night.
Therefore, one day when they were out in the front yard working in the garden, and Eve heard someone say, “Hi,” she automatically assumed it was Caleb. Two rows of tomatoes were on one side of her and two rows of cucumbers were on the other. She was steadily plucking weeds from all of the rows she could reach, while occasionally restringing the tomato vines. When she heard the voice, she looked to her right where Caleb was playing in his sandbox. She was about to say, “Hi,” back when she realized he was lost in his own little world.
Fear began to build in her as she realized he hadn’t said anything to her. There was no sign that he was even trying to get her attention. No sign that he had said or done anything that hadn’t involved pushing a line of Hot Wheels across the wood frame around the box.
She froze. Her return greeting never making it past her lips. At that second, she realized that there was someone else with them.
Eve’s body began to tremble. Memories of the last time she had seen another human being began to overrun her nerves. It was the one and only time she had seen or heard another living soul since Kyle had passed away. The man had come one day last summer while she and Caleb were doing basically what they were doing then, except they were in the backyard.
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Caleb was playing in the yard while Eve pulled weeds out of the vegetable gardens. As she slung a handful of grass behind her, she heard a soft shuffling noise. Her body froze. Her instincts screamed that the sound was coming from the other side of the fence that separated her yard from her neighbor’s. Slowly, she stood to see what had made the sound. The idea that the noise was caused by a ‘who’ and not a “what’ never crossed her mind.
What she saw when she stood was a man of about six-feet in height with scraggly dark hair standing on the stoop of her long-deceased neighbor’s back porch. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans, a black t-shirt with the words “I do what the voices in my head tell me to do.” on the front, a denim jacket, and dusty cowboy boots, whose soles had worn down to nearly nothing. A cigarette hung from his mouth like a limp piece of straw. Smoke billowed into his face, but he didn’t seem to notice. The sun had tanned his skin a deep bronze. He looked as if he had spent the last year walking across the Sahara.
He was just standing there, grinning at her. The cigarette between his lips barely moved as he inhaled then exhaled the smoke. A cold chill swept through her at the sight of him. The grin on his face wasn’t one of those sweet, innocent grins that are normally seen on shy people who are introducing themselves for the first time. His was the grin of a fully crazed and sadistic psychopath.
When she could, she moved her focus off his grin and looked into his eyes. Her breath caught. His glazed-over red eyes told her everything he was conjuring in his shell-shocked head. If she let him near her, she was dead, or worse.
Small chunks of her half-digested lunch, which had consisted of a bowl of condensed noodle soup and a cucumber from her garden, began to creep up into the back of her throat. She swallowed hard and felt her throat go dry. With all of the courage she could muster, she smiled, said, “Hello,” and bent down to pick up Caleb. She carried the small child up to the porch, sat him just inside the door, and closed it in front of him, blocking his view of the backyard. All the other doors throughout the house where shut, so he had the entire hallway that ran the length of the house to play in.
This wasn’t the first time she had put him in the hallway while she worked outside. She did this a lot when the weather was too hot or too cold for him to be outside for long periods, yet she still needed to work on one of the many projects she started after the world died. When she turned around to speak to the stranger again, he was standing right inside her back gate. He was staring that crazed stare and grinning that insane grin he seemed to have permanently attached to his lips. The only difference being the lack of cigarette.
“Hello,” she said again, trying to appear calm, welcoming and not at all creeped out. She shouldn’t be so casual. She understood this as a fact, but a part of her was attempting to justify his behavior. God only knew how long he had been alone, the things he had seen or had to do to survive. She knew from firsthand experience how the loneliness could mentally damage a person. A more dominate part of her was screaming for her to run into the house and lock herself in. This voice also chastised her for not having her grandfather’s shotgun with her.
She argued with herself every time she stepped out of the house about whether or not she should carry it. Until that moment, though, there hadn’t been a need.
“Hello back. The name’s Brent. Brent Cast,” he finally replied, nodding his head. Eve figured if he had been wearing a hat of some kind he would have tipped it at her. He moved a step closer to her and the house.
“I’m Eve. The little one is Caleb.” She didn’t offer up their last names. Giving him that information would be opening up a conversation that she didn’t feel was necessary or safe to have at the moment. There was nothing he could do with the information, she knew. Yet, something about him made her uncomfortable, and it wasn’t only the way he looked at her. He had an aura or vibe radiating off him, and it was not a good one.
“Cute kid. Is he yours? Or did you find him?” he asked, looking over her shoulder to the back door that Caleb was hiding behind and taking another step closer.
Eve stood her ground. “He’s mine,” she lied.
He nodded.
The nod wasn’t a normal nod. The nod was not one someone gives when confirming a question or thought. This one was more of a contemplative slow up and down movement of the head, as if his mind was answering a question he had asked himself. His nod caused her body to scream with fear.
Eve’s common sense begged again for her to turn and run, to race into the house, to lock all of the doors and windows. The logical part of her on the other hand, gave itself a pat on the back for being correct in its assumption that they weren’t completely alone in the world. This part of her was thankful it was seeing another living soul, despite his appearance. Unfortunately, this same part stopped her from retreating into the house, where it knew it would be safe. Thankfully, it was slowly losing its battle with the rest of her mind. She knew exactly what this man wanted. She also knew that if she didn’t move soon he would get it.
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