Garden : A Dystopian Horror Novel

by Carol James Marshall

  Lola found her feet moving towards that stack of boxes before her mind and heart agreed to it. She carefully took off each box above the moving box. She gave each child in a box a quick thought, a momentary consideration and gentle touch before moving on.

  She reached for the last box. It scooted forward, then back, then forward. With her foot, Lola carefully nudged the box forward to free the rat stuck behind it.

  There was no rat.

  Maybe it was a mouse, small and dark enough to hide in a shadow.

  Lola pushed the box further from the wall.

  No mouse.

  The box shook violently now, bouncing along the floor. Lola jumped back from it. For some reason, she didn’t want it to touch her.

  Was it a baby?

  A live baby trying to get out of the box?

  But how could a baby survive the cold? How could a baby escape suffocating in one of those bags?

  The box slid across the floor and ended up against her legs. Muffled noises came from it, almost like squeaks.

  Of course, Lola thought, the rat is stuck in the box.

  Lola pursed her lips. She should free the rat but not in here. She picked up the box, holding it at arms’ length, stepped over the chairs, and left the freezer. Where her hands touched the box, she could feel thumps and bumps. The rat must be terrified. She’d have to be sure to step back quick; she didn’t want a rat bite.

  She headed for the break room she’d found and rested the trembling box on the nearest table. She relished the warmth, and it pushed the freezer from her mind. No, Lola thought, I have to remember, I have to bear witness. She murmured, “I will tell the world. I will tell anyone who will listen what I found here. Madam will pay.”

  Hand on her heart, one hand on the box, Lola whispered, “En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espirtu Santo. Amen.”

  She opened the box.

  The bag was already split… No ripped open. The baby’s arms flailed inside the bag, and it seemed normal, no deformities. Except for…

  Two white eyes stared at Lola. The eyes blinked. Dumbfounded, Lola couldn’t move. The baby’s head lifted, the mouth opened and snapped at Lola, teeth clicking together.

  Teeth? Newborns didn’t have teeth.

  The baby turned its head and almost bit Lola’s hand where it rested on the box.

  Lola yanked her hands away, backing up all the way to the door of the break room. The box jumped and slid, almost at the edge of the table now.

  Her mind said to look again and be sure, but her body didn’t listen. She backed from the break room and sprinted down the corridor. The sound of the box hitting the floor propelled her toward the elevator.

  In the elevator, she jabbed the button to close the doors over and over until she was sealed in. She repeated the same action on the button for the lobby. She looked closely at her hand. No marks. Lola rubbed her hand anyway, as the elevator slowed to a stop at the lobby.

  Lola panted from her run, from panic. Her chest felt on fire. “I will tell the world,” played on repeat in her skull.

  When the elevator doors opened, Lola heard gunfire, and the air was heavy with a mixture of gunsmoke and smoke from fires. People still screamed. The fight was still going on. Maybe she hadn’t been left behind.

  She could get out of Nutri-Corp City, tell everyone what she saw, and find her sisters. Find Chandler.

  Lola started to step into the lobby but stopped with her foot in midair. An ooze of different hues of white, pink, and red viscous slime covered the floor. Ignoring the slush, Lola left the elevator and headed for the doors. The smoke was so thick, she was worried she’d have to crawl to safety through the remains of those hit by Shakies.

  Something hit her in the side. Tiny pricks. It was beads. In the chaos, she hadn’t heard the pop.

  Lola fell to her side and dragged herself to a corner. The beads had broken the skin. She put her fingers through the holes in her clothes and felt the many holes in her flesh. Pain surged through her, so intense and in so many places, Lola couldn’t move.

  A buzzing in her ear.

  A bee? A bee in a hospital?

  No. A bead was in her ear, vibrating against her ear drum. She felt as if her ear canal was being turned inside out. Her ear went deaf.

  Lola screamed. She screamed for her sisters. She screamed because the beads would blend her to liquid. The beads would mix her lungs up with her heart, with her guts. After the beads had their way with her body, she’d become nothing but a people smoothie spread over the dirty hospital floor.

  The bead inside her ear popped through her skull.

  Lola rolled to her back. Pain seared through her. Her last thoughts were that if someone found her body it would not be recognizable.

  She would never get to tell the world.

  She would never see her sisters again.

  And then she was blind.

  Danny had only a slice of light from his flashlight to spot his sister deep in the cave. The light was enough to show him the bleached white glare of her eyes. Somehow she’d gotten free. How…

  The flashlight’s beam showed him bite marks on her wrists and ankles. She... She’d chewed through her ropes, and now Dolly darted around the cave, hands searching along the walls. A way out. She was seeking a way out. As far as Danny could tell the only way out was the way they’d come in. She was trapped. They were trapped together.

  “Dolly...it’s Danny.” He spoke clearly, hoping that somewhere in there Dolly could hear him, respond to him, and fight whatever this was.

  She sprang from one side to the other, screeching. The flashlight’s beam trembled in sync with his shaking hands.

  “Dolly. It’s Danny. Your brother.”

  She stopped, turned, faced him. Her all-white eyes were alien, mystical, a sight Danny would never forget.

  Dolly stood still, but Danny noticed she crouched slightly, one foot ahead of the other. She was going to charge at him.

  His reserve almost fled, but he reminded himself he had promised to be with her, to stick by her side, to not leave her behind.

  He wouldn’t leave her.

  A twitch of a foot and Dolly was on him, knocking him to the ground. She straddled his chest, balling her fists in his hair. She lifted his head and slammed it against the rocky cave floor.

  Sparks of light erupted in Danny’s vision. His hands flailed, but he finally lifted his arms and legs, wrestling with Dolly, trying to get her off him but not wanting to hurt her. She was ill with something. She did not know what she was doing.

  She lifted his head again, and Danny knew even with her child’s strength, another pounding of his head against the rock would be the end of him.

  In a flash, someone yanked Dolly’s body off Danny. Between the flashes of light that filled his vision, Danny he saw a rope go around Dolly’s neck.

  Danny got to his hands and knees and stood. Ahead of him, Manuel wore a headlamp, and Danny saw the rope from Dolly’s neck went up and over an outcrop of rock. Dolly screeched again, kicked, clawed at the noose around her neck, but Manuel hauled on the rope, pulling her further off the ground.

  Danny ran to Manuel, screaming, “LET HER GO!”

  An explosion ripped through the darkness. Danny’s hands went over his ears. Dolly had stopped screaming. Squinting through his blurred vision, he saw Dolly on the floor of the cave, noose still around her neck, a big, bloody hole in her chest.

  Danny turned to where the explosion had come from. Jacob, also wearing a headlamp. He held a shotgun in his hands, smoke curling from both barrels.

  Jacob ran to his father, who was stunned by the sound of a gunshot in the cave. Jacob helped his father to his feet and handed him the gun.

  Jacob steadied his father, and together they headed to the cave’s opening. Jacob looked at Danny right before they merged into the darkness. Jacob’s expressions were always jolly and kind, but he looked at Danny with such disappointment that Danny felt tears well in his eyes.

  Dan
ny did not follow Jacob and Manuel from the cave. He knew he would not be welcome.

  Chandler was annoyed that once their group got inside the mansion, the people from The Hills were blinded by the luxury they saw in Madam’s home. They all began slipping things into their pockets—silver and gold candle holders, small, decorative bowls and vases, even the expensive copper pots and pans from the kitchen. Chandler shuddered, suspecting what food might have been prepared in them. The greediness annoyed her, but it really didn’t matter because she wanted to be the one to kill Madam. Their thievery got them out of her and BD’s way.

  BD and Chandler hugged a wall, stopping often to listen, wait, and move on. BD led the way, and Chandler mirrored everything he did. He knew the house, and he knew the way to the harsh voice they had heard.

  At the end of the hall BD stopped before a door and lay prone on the floor. He motioned Chandler to do the same. They were both on their bellies, BD reached up and slowly turned the knob. He pushed the door open but not too far.

  Chandler heard hundreds of things impact the door and watched in horror as the door began to shred.

  BD lunged backward, away from the door, pulling Chandler with him. Beads began to emerge from the splintered door, and he grabbed Chandler’s hand and steered her to a closet down the hallway. They stood inside, in the dark, listening as the beads bounced around the walls.

  Chandler closed her eyes for two-seconds, long enough to remind herself that today she wouldn’t let panic win. Today was her day. Today, she’d prove to everyone she should be recognized.

  Whistling came up from the opposite end of the hall, and she and BD ventured a glance from the closet. A Hills man walked down the hall. He carried a large television and seemed oblivious to the Shaky beads. He must be lost, Chandler thought, daydreaming about his new television.

  When Chandler stepped forward to stop him, BD shoved her back into the closet, shaking his head. Follow me, he mouthed, and she nodded.

  They allowed him to pass then quietly fell in step behind him. He was their human shield. The man stopped at the ruined door then kicked it open. A pop and Shaky beads splattered the TV screen along with the man’s legs.

  The TV crashed to the floor as the Hills man’s body jerked. Crouching low, BD and Chandler slipped past the dying man and into the room. BD again hit the floor and belly-crawled behind furniture until they reached the other side of the room. Luck was with them. BD and Chandler went unnoticed.

  Distracted by his kill shot, Sir laughed, unaware of the two people behind him. BD stood, finger on the trigger of his Shaky. A slight twitch of his finger and beads flew into Sir’s skull. Chandler felt a thrill run up her spine as she watched Sir, Madam’s husband, fall to the ground, screaming with the convulsions of the Shaky beads. Something moved in Chandler’s periphery.

  Madam, her perfect hair askew, broken nails clawing the carpet, blood dripping from her face, crawled away.

  Chandler sprang for Madam. Later, BD would tell her she looked like a lioness leaping on her prey. Chandler landed on Madam’s back, her fingers closing around Madam’s throat. Chandler squeezed and kept squeezing, curling her fingers tighter, feeling flesh give. Warm blood spurted from between her fingers. Madam gagged and thrashed, but Chandler would not let go. Finally, slowly, Madam’s movements became nothing more than quivers, then they stopped altogether.

  Chandler pulled herself off of Madam and sat on the floor, grinning with the realization that it was not important what people knew of her, but what she knew of herself. She wiped her bloody hands on Madam’s designer dress.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  “Good evening. Tonight, as part of our ongoing series on the mysterious and now defunct company, Nutri-Corp, we dive into the perverted and demented world that was Nutri-Corp with someone who had first-hand knowledge of not only Nutri-Corp but its founder, the woman who insisted everyone call her Madam. We have an exclusive interview with Juana Martinez, a former Gardener and a survivor of Nutri-Corp.”

  The newscaster with her bristling green eyes, tight hairdo, and blue dress looked like she could be Madam’s sister. Jen, now going by her real name, the name given her by her mother, answered the newscasters prompt with a weak smile.

  “I read your memoir,” the newscaster gushed, smiling at the camera. “It is enthralling and all the more horrifying knowing that it’s true.”

  In a small apartment in the urban-renewed Old Town, Danny sipped his beer, strangely thrilled to see Jen on the television. He’d read her book and tossed it in the trash. Even before he’d read it, he’d let go of the idea of not only them together but of her. Jen was no longer a real person. She was something in a bookstore. Something on television.

  Taking another sip of beer, Danny turned up the volume on the TV and snuggled with his new roommate, Jesse the Great Dane.

  Micah heard the word Gardener from the television and looked up. He had spent the better part of the last hour feeding his son Ralph a bottle and enjoying cuddling with him in the comfortable chair while Clarissa took a well-deserved nap. Micah was so relaxed, both he and Ralph dozed.

  Micah stood and put a sleeping Ralph in his crib. Micah sat back down and turned up the volume on the news broadcast. He took a sip from his long-forgotten cocktail and listened.

  Eager to watch Jen on the news, Chandler nestled into the couch for the next hour. She’d not seen or spoken of Jen since the night The Hill people invaded Nutri-Corp City.

  Jen’s face appeared on screen, and BD joined her on the couch.

  “She looks really good,” Chandler said and smiled at BD, who yawned and kissed his wife’s hand.

  Mrs. Ortiz could hear Suzy singing loudly from the tub, and as much as that warmed her heart, Mrs. Ortiz strained to listen to the news report featuring her sister.

  Mrs. Ortiz had shielded Suzy from the reports on any Nutri-Corp survivors, especially Jen. In case Suzy thought her sisters had abandoned her, it was better to let Suzy think they were dead. In the aftermath, the oldest sister, Lola, had been listed as “missing presumed dead,” and Jen had never contacted Mrs. Ortiz at all.

  Mrs. Ortiz didn’t want to cause the child such pain. For now, she’d keep it from her, sparing that hurt until she was much older.

  Suzy appeared in the hallway, dripping wet. Had she put her pajamas on before bothering to dry herself?

  “What are you watching?” Suzy asked, giving her head a shake like a freshly bathed dog.

  Mrs. Ortiz quickly changed the channel to cartoons, shrugged, and said, “Bah, nothing important.”

  With the Gardener camp gone and the Gardeners dead or scattered elsewhere, Manuel had found their old house and worked hard to get it livable again. Jacob was glad to be there. Even some of his toys had still been here. When he saw Jen on the TV, he looked over at this father’s sleeping form on the couch, smiled, and turned the television off.

  The End

  A Message from the Author.

  Thank you for reading Garden.

  The idea for Garden came out of my hatred for cooking. Since I lack the funds to eat out every day and have children who insist on being fed, I’m forced to cook on an almost daily basis.

  One day I lamented to my husband about my hatred of cooking and how I wish there was a pill we could take to replace meals. That way, cooking would happen only on special occasions, like Thanksgiving.

  From there, Garden was born.

  I wrote Garden during some hard times in my life. The COVID pandemic was going on, and if that wasn’t stressful enough, a doctor discovered that I had a hole in the retina of my left eye then. I had surgery to repair it, went through a long recovery, and because of the injury to my retina and my age, I became sight-impaired.

  I’ve never had good vision, but now my poor vision is enough to affect my daily life. I am now visually disabled. Thankfully, I can still write and be somewhat independent.

  Another aspect I was dealing with while writing Garden was anxiety. I
believe all of us experience anxiety in one form or another in our lifetimes. However, sometimes anxiety can sink its teeth into a person and make every day a struggle.

  The character Chandler in Garden reflects my battle with anxiety. Chandler suffers from panic attacks, and in the course of the story, Chandler confronts the anxiety and fear that cause her panic attacks. In so doing, she discovers herself.

  I have worked with children with disabilities on and off for the last fifteen years. Jacob is inspired and named after a young man with down syndrome who has a whopper of a smile and a wild head of red hair. The character Ani was written as a nonverbal adult with Autism.

  After my last book, Ella Is One of Many, I promised myself that going forward I would represent my Hispanic heritage in all my books. I am a proud Latina, and my books needed to represent who I am. That is where the Martinez sisters came from.

  If you enjoyed Garden please take a moment to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub.

  Acknowledgments

  A very special thank you to my editor Phyllis A. Duncan at unexpectedpaths.com. She turns my Jackson Pollock into a Rembrandt.

  Thank you to Chris T for coming up with the name Nutri-Corp and for listening to the crazy ideas of one frustrated writer.

  To Jennifer T, thank you for being my unofficial/official proofreader and friend.

  To my Advanced Copy readers Annette J and Sandra W, I am very lucky to have readers like you who understand the blood, sweat, coffee, frustration, and tears each author puts into their books.