She’s on her feet, out of the trees, making her way toward the chain link fence, toward the road, for home, hiding her tears as best she can from all these people in the playground who are watching her. A voice calls, “Are you all right?” Keep moving, she thinks, having not realized she’s begun to run. The sun is hot and bright and horrible on her skin, and inside her head, she hears nothing but the sound of her son screaming.
***
In Alex’s room, all is quiet. Corrinne tucks the edges of his Spider-Man sheets beneath the mattress, smooths the lumps from the comforter, fluffs his pillows. She opens each of his dresser drawers and takes out all of the clothes, refolds them nicely, puts them back. She takes her time doing this, spends the entire afternoon making sure it is all just right. She brushes her fingertips along every item in the room before leaving, slowly, and shutting the door.
***
“How was he today?”
Mrs. Shirley’s hands are full with an infant, a boy who, it turns out, had his first day at her house today. He’s a big boy with a head of stark black hair that puts the locks of any two-year-old to shame. “Sorry?” she says, smiling at the baby. “He’s eight weeks old and already a handful. Isn’t he just precious?”
“Adorable,” says Corrinne. “How was he today? Alex?”
Mrs. Shirley bounces the baby up and down in her arms. He’s teetering on the edge of a fussy fit that might start at any moment. “Yes, of course,” she says. “As good as ever.”
“And he seemed himself?”
“He is himself, Corrinne. I see nothing wrong at all, really. If you’re still concerned,” she hoists the baby higher onto her shoulder, “maybe you should see the pediatrician. Set your mind at ease.”
“Hi, Mommy,” says the boy, appearing at her side and wrapping his arms around her leg. He looks tired from a long day of make-believe and games.
Corrinne turns to go. “Maybe,” she says. “Though, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“See you tomorrow, then?”
Corrinne looks over her shoulder and smiles. “Yes,” she says. “Of course.”
***
The boy eats his dinner quietly, watching his mother. “Are you okay, Mommy?” he asks.
“Eat your dinner,” she says.
When they are through, she does the dishes while the boy waits on the couch. She has proposed they watch a movie together and suggested he pick out his favorite, which he has. The boy snuggles against her during the movie, like any other time they’ve does this, like every other time, and Corrinne hides her hands beneath her legs to keep him from seeing them tremble. By the time the credits appear on the screen, she is convinced her flesh has begun to repel him. He feels like a growth. A tumor. When he looks up at her with his sleepy eyes, she nearly betrays a tear. She cannot handle how much she hates him.
This boy who looks so much like her son.
She brings him to bed and tucks him in beneath the sheets she so lovingly prepared earlier in the day. There, she remains until he’s fast asleep, the covers pulled up to his chin. She watches his chest rise and fall, and wonders what he dreams about. If he has the same dreams that Alex does.
That Alex did.
She slides the covers down an inch, exposing his milk-white throat. She watches the artery there pulse, smooth and even undulations beneath the flesh. She studies his cheeks, his lips, his ears.
There’s a crisp beam of moonlight through the window shimmering in the boy’s partially open eye, onto the revealed white. Her vision focuses on the eye. She listens to his breathing, long wheezes through his nostrils. There is another sound, a low rumble. She’s grinding her teeth.
The boy’s pupil rolls into view where before there was only white, and Corrinne gasps. She backs from the room quickly, as if being caught at some vile act, and makes her way to the bathroom.
She wets her hands and rubs her face, then dries it on a towel from the rack near the sink before shuffling, defeated, back to her room, and into bed.
“Mommy . . . ”
She moves only her eyes to see him, a shadow in the doorway.
“I had a nightmare.”
She swallows, blinks away a tear.
The boy enters the room and climbs into bed with her. He wriggles his way beneath the covers, presses himself against her, draping a thin leg over her waist. His hand is on her belly, gripping the flesh, kneading it, and it’s only a moment before his breathing slows and he’s asleep.
Corrinne stares at the ceiling, the moonlight shapes above her head. She looks for answers there, answers to questions she no longer knows how to ask, and with the boy’s breath warming her ear, she waits for a sleep that may never come.
THE LOUDEST SILENCE
MEGHAN ARCURI
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The beeping, constant and methodical, rings in her ears.
Why can’t I open my eyes?
She keeps trying to open them but fails.
It’s quiet. Too quiet. Except for the beeps. Except for my mind. Never still, never at peace. Forever stoking my anxiety and stress.
Is this hell?
Am I in hell?
Thoughts swirl around her head.
Are they the right thoughts? The wrong ones?
Her self-doubt has always been crippling. So crippling she can’t leave the house at times, too worried she’ll make the wrong decision, do the wrong things.
Lucas, her brother, understands the level of her anxiety, her perfectionism. Somehow—a long time ago—he let go of the need to please their parents. Their over-demanding father, their emotionally absent mother.
He has always teased her, trying to ease her mind.
“They’re dead, Willa. They don’t care about right and wrong anymore.”
But I do.
What if it’s wrong?
No. Not “it.”
Me.
I.
What if I am wrong?
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
She does not know where the beeping comes from. It sounds like a time bomb from some stupid action movie. If she could, she would make it stop.
“You should get out of the house more,” Lucas said to her.
“I get out plenty,” she said.
“Buying groceries and gas doesn’t count.”
“It should.”
“You need to be with people. Get out of your own head. What about joining a book club or a gym?”
“A gym? You do remember I’m about as coordinated as a one-legged rhinoceros, right?”
“The book club, then.”
She loved books. She loved to read. So she joined.
Worst mistake ever.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
She sees nothing. She feels nothing. She hears nothing. Except for the damn beeping.
“What did everyone think about Frankenstein?” Beth, the head of the book club, said.
A few others made some comments.
Willa, having thoroughly enjoyed the book, had comments, too.
Say them.
Don’t say them.
Say them. They’re good.
Don’t say them. What if they’re wrong? What if you’re wrong?
It’s fine. Go for it.
“I think it’s about resentment and families. Frankenstein resents the monster, and the monster resents him. Kind of the way some parents resent their kids and kids resent their parents.”
The room quieted, everyone staring at her.
Her face heated, her heart thumped.
“That’s interesting, Willa,” Beth said, but she moved on to the next person without further comment.
Were some of the others snickering?
See? Shoulda kept your mouth shut.
But I’m not wrong.
Yes, you are. No one agreed with you. You should leave.
So she did.
Probably should’ve stayed.
>
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The beeping time bomb keeps tugging at her, pulling her away, driving her crazy. She wants to scream, but she can’t. Her mouth doesn’t seem to work.
She got in her car, worried and distracted. By what Beth said—or didn’t say. By the snickering. By how wrong she’d been.
Which is why she missed the kid on his bike as she backed out of Beth’s driveway.
She hit him. She hit the kid.
You didn’t just hit him. You killed him.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Her face itches, but she can’t scratch it. She might explode.
Lucas tried to comfort her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “He came out of nowhere.”
If only I had been more focused.
If only I had kept my mouth shut.
If only I hadn’t joined the damn book club.
“This is why I hate to do things,” she said, shaking. Even two weeks after the accident, she trembled at the thought of it.
After a negative breathalyzer test, the cops had been kind to her. They’d called Lucas. He had been kind to her, too.
The kid’s parents couldn’t even look her in the eye.
She couldn’t look herself in the eye.
The kid can’t look at anything anymore.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
She is not alone. She doesn’t know how she knows this, but she does. And she smells coffee.
“Did you call the number of the therapist I gave you?” Lucas said.
Willa said nothing.
“I knew it,” Lucas said. “You’ve gotta call her, Will. She’s great. Helped me with a lot of my issues.”
“What issues? You’re perfect.”
“No one’s perfect.”
“Obviously,” she said with a humorless laugh.
“It’s been three weeks. You’ve lost weight, your eyes are sunken in, your skin is gray.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “I know you. I know what you’re thinking. All that blame and fear. All that ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda.’” He tapped her forehead. “You’re deep in there, now, and you need to get out. You need to talk to someone.”
She sank into his arm.
“Please, Willa,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”
Tears fell down her cheeks as she nodded into his chest.
But the nod turned into a no.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda listened to your brother.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
She opens her eyes. They finally work. Does anything else?
Lucas stands over her, worried and sad.
“Willa? Can you hear me?” He puts down his cup of coffee.
She tries to say “yes,” but she can’t. Something’s in her mouth, down her throat. So she nods.
Her neck hurts. Her head throbs. Her face is killing her.
Isn’t there a joke about that?
“Why did you do it, Will? Why didn’t you just call me?” He rubs his hand over his face, stubble scraping his fingers. “Where the hell did you even get a gun?”
A gun?
A gun.
The cold metal. On her hands. In her mouth.
The frequency of the beeping increases.
A nurse shoves Lucas to the side.
Willa’s world turns black again.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
No nurse. No Lucas. Only the beeping and the bicycle and the boy and the gun.
Only her and her thoughts, swirling and swirling. Weighing on her.
Trapping her.
Fracturing her into a million pieces.
THE FOLLOWERS
PETER MARK MAY
We walk during the hours of daylight, using every moment we can to escape them. We used to stop and rest, but that was our downfall at first. Losing five people, good people the first night changed all that. Those who can’t keep up are left behind, which has been the unwritten rule of the group since day three. It is inhumane, but there are no UN doctrines here: you walk, or you die.
The Followers are slow, but they never tire. Nor do they or have to stop to drink, eat or piss like us living. We camp after dusk and set fires around the main perimeter of our camp. It does nothing to deter them, only gives us a chance to see them coming. We are too fatigued to set watches. Those who volunteered on the first night, died the second day because they couldn’t keep up with the march across the flats. We out-distance The Followers by day, and they catch up to us by morning, while we sleep overnight. They are unrelenting, fixed on their goal of overtaking us survivors; to join their ever swelling ranks. Yet we are well aware each new morning they are closer than the previous day. And the nights are getting longer, and, as a result, our daylight hours in which to walk diminish every day. They are half a mile away; we can see the dust cloud surrounding them in the shimmering distance of the dawn. It will only take a few more longer nights and shorter days before we wake with them in our midst.
They all used to be fellow passengers, like us. Some dead instantly and some have fallen behind, having swelled their shuffling ranks.
There were twenty-seven of us who survived the crash. Now there are only sixteen, women, men and children left. Our group rouse their friends, relatives or children and set off again before they are all fully awake. There is no choice. Apart from the ever walking death that follows us, you are either alive or undead, there seems to be no in-between now. The suicides on the third night proved you could not fully die. All we managed was to subdue them with our belts and ties so that we could leave them to be joined into the Followers’ death collective.
The Followers was a name I penned for them, but other use Rotters, Returners and other coarser words they try not to use in front of the constantly frightened children. My wife, Margaret, calls them The Departed as though they are fluffy post-rigor-mortis boy-band angels, who only need a coffee morning and understanding hugs. But she bathes in holy water perfume and shits communal wafers to my mind, banging on only how God can save us. Didn’t see him doing that in regards to the others who now put one dead leg in front of the other behind us. If we had any weapons or the energy, we would try and put them down for good.
Can you kill something that is already dead?
Double-down-death perhaps.
There is nothing but intermittent bushes and brittle branches on the flats. Good kindling for fire, but it’s all rubbish for bashing an undead person’s brain out.
So we get up and walk on.
Hoping for the flats to end, hoping we have the strength to outdistance them for another day.
***
We lost Karen and little Dorothy today. Karen fell due to tiredness and carrying her six-year-old daughter for three miles. She twisted her ankle badly. Alan volunteered to take Dorothy with him, but Karen refused. If they were going to die, it would be together. She got up and hobbled slowly after us.
An hour passed and they were just two black dots in the far distance at our backs. Another hour later, they were gone from sight totally. Everyone feels terrible, but one has to be alive to feel remorse. It’s all we have left, hope having faded to a dying ember in our hearts.
Don fell an hour before dusk. Heart attack.
We tied him up with stripes of cordage from the sparse vegetation. Then left him to be reborn.
Mohamed was next. He didn’t stop walking when darkness fell, and we lit our campfires. He carried on into the night, never to be seen by our group again.
Twelve humans, on the point of exhaustion, are all that’s left. We barely had the energy to prepare the dwindling supplies we carried with us, but it was a necessity. We licked our fingers clean, made our toilet by the edge of the last lit torch on the outskirts of the camp. Then we collapsed into fitful dreams as night fell.
I dreamed of my late first wife, Gwen. She was pushing Margar
et aside and welcoming me onto a double bed by a blue lake, dressed in a silk nightie. I loved that woman beyond anything in the world. Margaret my second go around on the marriage carousel seems like a mere travel companion to the love that had been cut short in our mid-twenties. If Gwen turned up the next morning leading the Followers, I would be in her dead arms like a shot. Doesn’t say much for me or my second marriage to Margaret that I’d choose my dead wife over my living one.
Dawn arrived with groans from the group. The sounds of adult men weeping, and children begging for more sleep and to be carried. They got neither.
The Followers were ever closer now. We could see Don, Karen, and little Dorothy in their midst; they were that close.
Lee ran at them, roaring his head off. The bespectacled chubby man was out of shape at the best of times and died screaming. It was like an alarm clock to the eleven of us left as we started off a new morning across the flats.
***
Sarah, the prettiest woman in the group and most outspoken, went next. She was always moaning about her hair, makeup, her dogs at home, or her rich older married boyfriend and the price of Edam. Not anymore, she was soon a dead dusty creature and a sheep like the rest of the Followers.
She decided to head out on her own, her blouse ripped into a crop top so she could use the rest of the material to form a head covering. Like a female Lawrence of Arabia, she strode purposefully off in a straight line to the right, hoping, I guess, the Followers would go after the majority and not her. We wished her well, but the next morning she had joined the dead.
***
They had nearly caught us napping. In fact, they did. I can still hear Margaret screaming my name to come save her, and the others they caught. But I didn’t. Nobody can save any of us.
There are only seven of us now.
I’m not sure if we are the strongest or the more morally bankrupt of the surviving human beings. We want another day of life so bad, we are willing to do anything to achieve it.
Tracey fell next and did not get up. She lay panting and looking at us as we ignored her pleas for help and walked on. I hoped she had lived a good and full forty-six years of her life. I listed her amongst the dead already, even with her cries for help still in earshot.
Nathan, the last of the children, collapsed into a sobbing, hysterical heap around noon. His tears and wails for his mother did not make us stop. They even seemed to spur us on, eager to escape his cries.
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