Shore Haven (Short Story 2): Childhood's End

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  Mom and Alley didn’t drink much of the broth I made for them, and after cleaning them both up a few times, I didn’t eat much of my supper either.

  The next morning after breakfast, Dad asked for my help in bathing them and changing the bed sheets. I was happy to oblige. Both of them desperately needed the bath.

  After that, he and I sat in the living room watching television and listening for my mom and sister. I used Dad’s phone to call and message Keisha a few times, but she never replied. I worried about her, but I worried about my family more.

  Saturday went about the same as Friday, and Sunday wasn’t much different. Each day my mom and sister got weaker. Eventually, they stopped peeing, having bowel movements, and vomiting. We did our best to keep them hydrated, but they slept so much and spit out a lot of what we tried to get in them, that it wasn’t helping.

  Dad wanted to carry them to the hospital on Sunday morning, but the news channels were talking about how patients were being turned away. The news still insisted it was just a bug and needed to run its course. The hospitals couldn’t do anything more than what people were doing at home.

  “They could give your mom and sister I.V. bags,” Dad said, but never made the decision to load them in the car and carry them anywhere.

  All we could do was wait it out. I felt helpless, useless, and like I was doing my family a disservice, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do.

  Chapter 3

  When I woke Monday morning, I’d made the decision that despite what the television said, if my sister and mom were still sick, I was taking them to a hospital or clinic or a doctor’s office. They wouldn’t live much longer if I didn’t.

  Just as the last two mornings had been, the house was quiet as I exited my bedroom and walked softly to the hall bathroom. Dad had been sleeping on the sofa with a baby monitor by his head. I’d offered to take it so that he could get a solid night’s sleep, but he’d refused.

  In the bathroom, I peed, brushed my teeth, and contemplated showering, but figured it might be a fruitless endeavor if Mom and Alley were still sick. I pulled my hair back, though. I’d learned my lesson about letting it hang loose to dangle in the bucket of vomit.

  Back in my room, I changed clothes and used Alley’s cell phone to leave Keisha yet another message. I was just about to flip through some of my social media pages to see if the school was going to be open today—either way I wasn’t going, of course. Dad needed me here to help care for my mom and sister—when I heard a loud thump come from my parents’ room.

  The sound scared me, and I dropped the phone onto my bed. Dad didn’t come rushing down the hall to see what had happened. My heartbeat went into overdrive.

  Another sound came from my parents’ room. That one was muffled but sounded almost like a scream.

  I rushed to the hall but froze before I could reach the door handle. Something wasn’t right. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I knew there was no way I was stepping a toe inside that room without my daddy. Turning quickly, I rushed down the hall and to the living room.

  Dad was sound asleep with the television on low. At first, I only gave the screen a brief glance before moving to squat down by my father, but once my brain registered what it had seen, I turned back to the images the news channel was showing.

  Forgetting my dad was asleep on the sofa behind me, I grabbed the remote to turn the volume up. A louder thud came from the back bedroom. Dad made a noise behind me. I tuned all that out and listened to what the newswoman was saying.

  She had to be joking. The video playing while she spoke assured me that she wasn’t, but she had to be.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked in a sleepy voice behind me.

  “I…I don’t know,” I said, moving out of his line of sight to the television. “They’re saying people are…are…”

  I couldn’t say it aloud.

  “They’re saying what?” Dad asked, sitting up and rubbing his face.

  “Listen.” I turned the volume up a bit more.

  He lifted his head and stared at the screen.

  As the woman on television was explaining how all over the island sick people were turning on their loved ones and eating them, another loud thud came from the room Mom and Alley were inside.

  Dad’s head jerked in that direction, and he started to rise.

  I grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “Kayla, didn’t you hear that? Your mom and sister…”

  “I heard it. What if they…” I pointed my finger at the T.V. without finishing my sentence.

  He focused on the news anchor for a few seconds before looking toward the back of the house. Scuffling noises were coming from the room now.

  “Your mom and sister wouldn’t hurt us,” he said, but he made no move to go to them.

  “They wouldn’t before, but what if they changed like those other people?” I asked.

  “Surely not.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “But what if?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “They could have, and the woman said the only way to stop them is to shoot them in the head.”

  “I’m not shooting your mom and sister. They’re just sick. If they’re violent, we’ll find some way to sedate them until this bug blows over.”

  “Daddy.”

  “We aren’t having this conversation, Kayla. I don’t care what that reporter says. I’m not killing anyone. We will wait this out.” He turned from me and headed down the hall.

  I rushed into the family room and over to Dad’s desk. I knew where he kept his gun and the bullets to it. When I’d turned sixteen, my parents had shown me the weapon, schooled me on gun safety, and taught me how to use it. They also swore me to secrecy. I wasn’t to tell anyone, not even Alley, that my parents owned a gun. It wasn’t against the law to own one. They had bought it legally and had all the permits for it. They just didn’t want it known there was a gun in our house.

  The gun was a 9mm, and my parents had tucked it into the bottom drawer of Dad’s desk under a bunch of paperwork. The bullets were on a shelf above the desk, inside an old jewelry box of Grandma Rose’s. I removed the gun and bullets, loaded it, and rushed to the hall to find Dad opening the bedroom door.

  He’d had plenty of time to enter while I’d fetched the gun, but he’d been scared and cautious.

  I said nothing about the gun as I stepped up beside him.

  The sight before us was unreal. Alley sat on the bed, eating one of Mom’s arms. Mom was on the floor, unmoving. Blood covered the bed and colored the wall behind Alley.

  My sister looked up at us for a second. Her mouth was still chewing. A piece of flesh was stuck to her chin.

  “Al…” was all Dad got out before my sister leaped from the bed and rushed toward us.

  I fired one shot into her right leg. She went down for a brief second, but in no time, she was on all fours and standing. She made a sound somewhere between a growl and a moan before coming at us again.

  I shot her in the other leg. She dropped again and didn’t get back up.

  I knew what the reports said, but at that moment, I didn’t have it in me to kill my sister. Vomit was trying to rise to my throat over merely shooting her in the leg.

  Dad stood next to me, frozen to the spot.

  Alley flopped over onto her stomach and began to drag herself toward us.

  “Shit,” I said, not knowing what to do.

  “In the head,” was all Dad said.

  I did as he ordered.

  As her brains shot out the back of her skull, I threw up on the floor in front of me.

  Once I was done, I wiped my mouth on my shirt and stood up. Dad still hadn’t moved from his position. I wanted to ask him what we did now, but couldn’t form the words. We had to call someone. Who? Would I go to jail for murder?

  A million things started running through my head, and they didn’t stop until Mom made a noise. Her whisper of a moan snapped Dad out of his frozen state, and he rushed
to her.

  With all the blood everywhere, I’d been sure she was dead, so I hadn’t thought about going to her.

  A voice in my head told me that she was dead. That wasn’t a moan from a living being.

  I believed the voice and had the gun ready the second Dad turned over my mom’s body.

  The first thing I noticed was that her eyes had gone solid white. Her skin ash grey.

  Dad must have seen it too, but he didn’t move away from her.

  The second she raised her remaining arm and opened her mouth, preparing to lunge for my dad, I shot her.

  He went to his knees beside her, and I threw up again.

  “What do we do now?” I asked, wiping my face with my clean sleeve.

  “I don’t know,” Dad said, shaking his head.

  “Should I call someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I watched him looking down at my mom for a long time before leaving the room. I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take off my dirty shirt, giving myself a few moments to process what I’d just done.

  Dad wasn’t in the living room when I entered after donning a clean shirt. I didn’t check to see if he was still in the room with Mom and Alley. Instead, I found his cell phone and started calling police departments, hospitals, ambulance services, coroners, and anyone else whom it seemed I might need to notify.

  Either I got busy signals or “your call can’t be completed at this time” messages. With Dad’s phone, I searched what to do in case I missed something, but I hadn’t. I watched the television to see if one of the news channels had instructions, but it didn’t. All I got from that end was to stay in my home and shoot anyone who’d turned in the head.

  Chapter 4

  Swearing under my breath, I tossed Dad’s cell onto the sofa and stood in the living room for a long moment, trying to figure out what we should do next. It occurred to me then that none of our neighbors had come running when they heard the shots. No one had called the police, or if they had, they hadn’t been able to get through just as I hadn’t. Someone should have come to investigate out of pure curiosity.

  I tentatively opened our front door and looked out at the street. I saw no one. I heard nothing.

  I stepped onto the porch in time to see someone run between two houses up the road. They moved so quickly that I couldn’t tell who they were, if they were injured or if they had turned into what Mom and Alley had.

  I took the first step off the porch and heard a loud crash come from the house next door. I didn’t rush over to investigate. I backpedaled into the house and locked the door. Whatever was happening was occurring all over the island just as the news anchor had said.

  I ran through the house locking doors and windows. I didn’t know how long that would protect us, but hopefully long enough for whatever was happening to pass.

  Once I was done, I sat on the edge of my bed, panting. Dad still hadn’t come out of his room. He couldn’t stay in there forever with those bodies. For that matter, the bodies couldn’t stay in there. They’d begin to stink after a while. So would the mess.

  I changed into something I could throw away, went to the utility room to gather all the cleaning supplies I could, and forced myself to enter my parents’ bedroom.

  Dad was where I’d left him, sitting beside my mother and looking down at her. I deciphered the expression on his face, so I left him alone for the moment. I pulled the comforter off my parents’ bed, spread it out on the floor, and rolled my sister, who still had my mom’s arm in her hand, up in it. I straightened her on the rug she lay on, grabbed both of its corners, and began to drag it from the room.

  Maneuvering her wasn’t easy, but I pulled her down the hall, through the living room, kitchen, and laundry out into the garage where I left her lying in front of Dad’s car on the cold concrete. With the wet mop, I cleaned the trail of blood I’d made through the house. Back in my parents’ room, I cleaned the blood off the wall, floor, and bed frame the best I could.

  Through it all, Dad didn’t move.

  “Daddy,” I said, squatting down beside him, trying not to look at my mother.

  When he didn't answer, I put my hand on his arm and repeated his name. That time, he looked at me.

  “We can’t leave her here,” I said, nodding down at Mom.

  “Is the coroner coming to get her or the funeral home?” he asked.

  “No. No one is coming. All the lines are tied up. The news keeps replaying the same thing over and over again. I think what happened to Mom and Alley is happening to a lot of people.”

  “What are we going to do then?”

  “I put Alley in the garage,” I said.

  He jerked his head in the direction of where my sister had been half an hour ago.

  “I think we should put Mom out there too. Maybe in a day or two, this sickness will blow over, and someone will come for them then. They can’t stay in the house though.”

  He nodded but didn’t make a move to get up.

  I pulled the rest of the blankets off the bed and rolled Mom up in them just as I had Alley. I didn’t have a rug, and with Mom being bigger than Alley, I had a harder time dragging her through the house. Dad didn’t help.

  When I returned to my parents’ room, Dad had moved from the floor. He was in their bathroom with the door shut. I didn’t disturb him. I went about cleaning the room the best I could.

  Pretty much everything came clean with bleach, except the mattress. Mom’s blood from where Alley had torn off her arm had seeped deep into it. I scrubbed it the best I could, but in the end, I had to leave it. I did throw towels over it so Dad wouldn’t see it when he came out of the bathroom.

  In my bathroom, I stripped, throwing my stained clothes in the trash, and got in the shower. I stood under the hot water for what felt like forever, crying.

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I’d done. I’d killed my sister and my mother. And I’d cleaned up the mess as if it were something I did every day. What kind of person could do that? My father hadn't been able to do anything more than stand there watching my sister eat my mom. He didn't even flinch when my mom started to attack him. That's the typical reaction, right? When seeing something so utterly impossible, most people would freeze, but I hadn't. Something was wrong with me. It had to be.

  The water had turned cold by the time my sobs had slowed. I quickly washed and got out, shivering, but not caring. Avoiding the large mirror that stretched across one wall of the bathroom, I rushed out of the room and into my bedroom.

  After dressing in thick sweats, I curled up on my bed with Alley’s phone and tried calling everyone in her contact’s list. Mostly I got the same as I did earlier when I tried calling hospitals and the like: busy signals and calls that couldn’t be completed.

  Next, I scrolled through my social media accounts again. That time, I did find posts and photos showing what was happening across the island. I couldn’t believe what I saw, even after what I'd done. A friend of a friend posted a photo of a man eating an elderly woman on the sidewalk in front of a boutique shop. Another picture was of a street lined with dead bodies. A video showed the posters’ mom dying and transforming. The person videoing cried through the entire thing. Thankfully, he’d turned the camera away when he shot her.

  Keisha’s pages were silent. She hadn’t been on since Wednesday the week before. Alley had posted a photo of her and Mom in the bed sick together. They looked pitiful, but they were both smiling. Our school’s website had a banner running across the top stating that the school was closed until further notice.

  I kept telling myself to get off the phone, to go check on my dad, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from what I was seeing.

  This couldn’t be happening. I’d seen old world horror movies about people coming back from the dead and eating people, but that was fiction. That wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real.

  After what happened to our world barely a hundred
years ago, you’d think I’d never be able to say something couldn’t be real, but this—the existence of zombies—was far more unrealistic than meteors destroying our planet, but here we were. There had to be some other explanation. There just had to be.

  “Kayla.” My dad’s voice calling to me from out in the hall scared the shit out of me.

  “Yeah,” I said, getting up and opening the door.

  “Are you hungry,” he asked. He looked beaten, tired, and a little sickly, but I told myself that was from witnessing what I’d done that morning.

  “Yeah,” I said and followed him to the kitchen where a spread of breakfast food sat even though it was already late afternoon. While I’d been immersed in social media, he’d been cooking.

  “Looks good,” I said, scooping scrambled eggs onto a plate.

  “Your mom’s a better cook than me, but I think it’s all edible. We should eat what’s in the fridge and freezer and save the canned stuff for later,” he said, taking me off guard.

  I couldn’t reply. Surely, this wouldn’t last long enough for us to run out of food. Dad didn’t seem so sure.

  We ate in silence for a while before Dad said, “I’m sorry you had to do that.”

  “Daddy…” was all I could say. Tears slid down my cheeks, but I didn’t burst into tears.

  “You shouldn’t have had to do any of it. I’m sorry. When I saw your sister, something in me broke. I froze. If you hadn’t been there, I would have died. I promise that it won’t happen again. I’m the adult. I’m your father. I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you.”

  I rushed around the table and threw my arms around him. We held each other and cried for a long time.

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday morning, Dad woke up sick. In the back of my mind the day before, I’d thought he looked drained, paler than usual, and not himself, but I chalked it up to losing my mom and sister. I’d felt run down, raw, and numb myself.

  Dad had slept on the sofa again. That time I understood why he wouldn’t sleep in Alley’s room, and of course, he couldn’t sleep on his own bed. I did offer him mine, but he adamantly refused. Since I couldn’t make him take my bed, I stopped insisting after about the hundredth time of asking him.