by Megan Hart
"...But what?"
"I don't know. She must've tripped the security system weeks ago and then...she wouldn't leave. Couldn't leave with it still running."
Kelsey bit her lower lip for a minute, a chill running through her despite the warm clothes she'd borrowed. "So, she's still in the house."
"Yes. Probably."
She had an image of a giant black widow spider settled in the center of a huge, pulsing web, venom dripping from its fangs as it waited for a couple of tasty flies to stumble into its trap. "Do you think your mom would like me, Dennis?"
He paused, considering. "No. She wouldn't."
Kelsey smiled at his honesty. "Would I like her?"
"Probably not." He smiled, just a little. "She's a tough woman to like."
"I'd say we should look for her though, don't you?"
Dennis sighed and scraped a hand across his head, then down over his face. "Yeah. I guess so."
It didn't take long to find her. Dennis opened the door to the basement and flicked on the light, a bare bulb hung with dust. At the bottom of the stairs, they found a puddle of blood gone long dark, streaks of it leading into the darkness of the basement. Kelsey swallowed her distaste and trepidation to take him by the elbow before he could move forward.
"Be careful," she whispered.
He nodded and reached for the cord of another overhead bulb. As soon as it lit, they both saw the overturned scooter and the corpse of the woman beside it. Kelsey couldn't see her face because of the blood and the flap of skin and flesh hanging down. She let out a small noise, but Dennis was silent.
"She must've tried to get her scooter down the stairs," he said after a minute. "She was always bragging how she could make it do whatever she wanted."
Kelsey slipped her hand into his. "I'm so sorry."
He gave her a level look. "Better this way."
She squeezed his fingers, not sure what to say. Dennis didn't pull his hand away, not at first, but when he did it gently. He knelt by his mother's body and touched it with just his fingertips before looking back at Kelsey.
"She was a crazy bitch," he said without much emotion in his voice, though it was evident in his eyes. "I don't think I ever said that to anyone before, but she was. Crazy as a shithouse rat, crazier than that. She kind of made my life hell as a kid, she said she did it out of love, but really...she was just nuts."
He stood. "You think that makes me a shitty son? To say that over her dead body like that?"
"No." Kelsey shook her head. "I think it makes you honest."
He snorted softly, not a real laugh but only something pretending at humor. "But you know, if she hadn't done all the things she did, I wouldn't be who I am. I'd probably be dead already. Or sick."
Kelsey knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder. "It's okay to hate her, Dennis. Just because she was your mom doesn't mean you can't hate her. And love her, too. Sometimes, it's kind of hard to tell the difference."
He nodded but stayed quiet for another few seconds. Then he looked at her. "I'm going to have to burn her."
Startled, she stood. "What? I mean..."
"We can't go outside. I can't bury her. Anyway," he said, "she's got a furnace hot enough. She made sure of that."
"In case something happened to her?" Kelsey asked with a frown, wondering what sort of woman his mother had been, to make a house like this, complete with a furnace capable of cremation.
"No," Dennis told her. "It was for anyone who didn't make it past the traps."
"Oh. Of course." It wasn't funny, but she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggle. It came out sounded strangled, more like a groan.
Then she was sobbing, wretched and ugly and not caring about how she must look with swollen eyes and snot leaking from her nose. Everything had become too much, all of it, and she let it all out. She felt the press of his chest against her face as he put his arms around her, awkwardly but without hesitation. He patted her back, stroking her hair in silence until her sobs tapered off. Sniffling, she let herself rest in the comfort of his embrace. How nice it was, she thought, to be held. Just held.
They stayed like that for a few more minutes before she pushed away from him. "Thanks, Dennis. For everything. Just...thanks."
"You're welcome."
She looked at his mother's body, then back at him. "Let's take care of her, okay? I'll help you."
"You don't have to."
"I know I don't," she told him. "But it will be easier, if I do."
40
Dennis had used the furnace before. Mom had instructed him carefully in the dials and gauges, now to check the temperature, how to make sure the door was completely locked. Squirrels, a few stray cats and once, sadly, a dog that had been hit in the road outside and left to die had all met their fiery fate inside. He'd never in a million years imagined stuffing his mother inside it.
There was no satisfaction in it. No grim triumph. If anything, he imagined his mother's laughter. She'd have been delighted to know that she'd ended up in one of her own additions to the house. It would've seemed perfect to her, he knew that much. Watching the flames rise inside the small glass frame, he thought should mourn or something...anything than feel nothing.
Behind him, Kelsey waited without saying a word. She'd helped him carry Mom's body, though the smell had been disgusting and moving her had been difficult because of the decomposition. Kelsey hadn't so much as flinched or gagged, though Dennis himself had found it hard to keep from choking.
She was a pretty incredible woman, beneath the mass of bleached hair and fake boobs. It wasn't the first time he'd thought so, but now he thought he should tell her. Except the words wouldn't come, they stuck in his throat and caught behind his teeth the way they always did when something was important.
He was saved from having to say anything at all when the alarms started to sound. Nothing loud and whooping, not like a klaxon or firebell. Instead, a series of lights set into the walls at regular intervals started blinking. They'd be doing that all over the house but away from any windows, a silent warning that would alert the people inside without letting those outside know they'd been caught.
"What's that?" Kelsey asked.
"Alarm," he said.
He was only a little surprised, having seen the motion of oncoming strangers on the road earlier. What concerned him was not that people might be moving past the house, but that they were approaching it. There was nothing to attract random people to this house, set back so far, no lights, no signs. Unless you already knew the house was here, it would be unlikely for anyone to simply happen past, even in a world that hadn't been half-destroyed by some weird disease thing already.
Upstairs, he took Kelsey into the small room that had originally been a pantry but now housed the house's main control panels. He showed her the rows of video screens. "There are other control boxes, like the one upstairs, but this is the big one. From here we can see everything from every video feed."
She studied the screens. Nothing strange showed on the interior ones, of course, though she looked a long time at the one broadcasting his bathroom, the one where she'd showered. A small smile tugged the corner of her mouth when she looked at him. "Dennis."
He cleared his throat, heat rising up his throat and across his face. She could see it, he was sure of it. But Kelsey didn't say more than that, just shook her head a little and looked back at the rest of the monitors.
"There." She pointed, leaning close. "They're coming up the driveway."
A staggering group of four, their clothes torn, shoes off. One woman had her face sheared away from the jaw down, her arms curled and fingers clenched into claws. The two men behind her looked more normal, their skin dark with blood or dirt or bruises, it was too hard to tell. Their shuffling gait told Dennis they'd moved past the sickness to the next stage, that reanimated stage, and it sent a shiver of loathing down his spine.
It was the fourth person in the group that fixed his attention, though. Lumbering like the
others, this man nevertheless moved with purpose at the front of the small pack. He came up the driveway dragging one leg, the ankle bent at a painful angle, the white glint of bone peeking out from below what had once been a very expensive pair of pants. The others looked as though they might wander off, except that every few minutes the man in the front barked out some sort of command Dennis couldn't hear. The guy's jaw opened impossibly wide each time as his head jerked. Whatever he was doing, it always brought his companions back into line.
They made it up the driveway and stood in front of the garage. The others turned and twisted aimlessly, never going more than a few steps away from their apparent leader, who didn't move at all. He stared directly into the security camera mounted over the garage's control panel. His jaw was slack and his face a ruined mess, but his gaze bore without blinking into the camera.
"Shit," Dennis said softly. "Shit, shit, shit."
Kelsey touched him gently on the elbow. "Do you know him?"
He turned to face her, not quite believing what he was seeing...though of course it made sense. Those things out there didn't seem to have held onto any sort of intelligence, but maybe that wasn't true. Maybe they did hold onto whatever they'd been, at least in some manner. And if that were true, it made absolute sense why the guy outside had made it all the way from wherever he was to this place.
"Yeah," Dennis said. "He's the only other person who knows how to get inside this place without getting killed...not that it looks like it would matter so much, since I think he's already dead."
Kelsey frowned. "I don't understand."
Dennis sighed. The guy was still staring. His mouth had opened further, tongue lolling. It looked hideously like a grin.
"That guy," Dennis said, pointing. "He's my father."
EIGHT
41
Asphalt had bitten her feet to the bone.
She had walked and walked and walked, each step at first deliberate and steady and becoming shuffling and uncertain the farther she went. She had crossed this distance once already in the opposite direction, though the memory of that, like the memory of most things, was nothing but a faded blur.
There was no pain.
Now, sand gritted into her bloodless wounds and ground the bones of her toes to dust. A gull, black eyes glittering, swooped at her head to pluck at the tips of her ears, the soft lump that had been her nose. When it went for her one remaining eye, she grabbed it by the throat and tore off the top of its head, then tossed the corpse aside where its brothers and sisters squawked and fought over it; where a thing like her but without the use of its legs pulled itself toward the flock of quarreling birds to snatch them up with broken fingers and cram them in its unhinged mouth.
If she had a name it was as lost to her as everything else. If she forced her thoughts into coherence, a victory she was less and less able to claim, she could recall the sound of small voices calling her “Mama,” but surely that was not her name. Her fingers twitched at the feeling of tiny hands in hers, but her hands were empty.
She did not bleed, because her heart had stopped pumping. Her lungs moved sometimes out of habit, and breath slipped in and out of the gaping slash in her throat where the edge of a shovel had hit her. She didn’t need to breathe, and many times forgot. When she remembered, the air whistled as she drew it in and let it out, and the fringes of her skin fluttered like lace.
Curtains.
Lace curtains.
The breeze blows lace curtains against an open window. Outside, the hum of a mower as her husband cuts the grass. Her children play, shouting and laughing.
Screaming.
Her children are screaming.
The images rose up, vivid and brutal, and she went to her knees there on the side of the road, in the dirt and and sand, while the sun beat down and seared her skin. While she dug her fingers into the earth and tried to remember her name.
She’s in the kitchen when she remembers how she got home. Someone gave her a ride in a truck. A big truck. The man had put his hand on her leg, high up on the thigh, his knuckles brushing her bare flesh.
She ate his eyes.
The memory of the taste of his blood is fresh and thick and slides down her throat like cream, like sweet cream. She stands at her kitchen sink with this taste on her tongue and coating her teeth. The water runs and runs. She should turn off the faucet, but her fingers twist and slip on the handle — it’s not that she lacks the strength, she simply can’t figure how it works.
Trucks passed her on this road, one after another. Big wheels. Green and black and gray. Men in the back, dressed to match. Guns and masks.
She crouched and waited, not moving.
She waited a long time for them to pass. The sun ticked past overhead. Ants found her flesh and made a meal of it. Some crawled into her nose, her mouth, the empty, sodden socket of her eye.
This is how it feels to be dead.
It was nothing like she was taught to believe. That her soul would leave her body behind to rot in the ground, that she would go someplace white with clouds, where she’d be greeted by a choir and the people who loved her. Even in her dark days, when God was a concept she could not believe any rational mind would accept, she did believe there had to be something more.
Maybe there was, but not for her. Maybe heaven had been left for those who deserve it. The innocent ones.
When she turns from the sink, she knows the man there.
“You’re home,” he says. “Where’s the car?”
What will he see on her face? Will he see what happened, first when the music played? Later, in the dark? Will he see what she has become?
Yes, I paid that bill on time.
Of course I like your tie.
No, I didn’t eat the last piece of cake.
She’s told him lies before, but none like this, the one she doesn’t say. Her mouth opens on silence, her tongue pressing the back of her teeth. It hurts, she realizes. Her mouth hurts.
“Oh, my God. Oh, God.” He’s not praying.
This man she knows, her husband, father to her children, stumbles back from the door and into the living room. Shadows there. The lights are out. She follows, hand out, thinking if only he’ll listen, she can explain.
How it was the music and the dancing, how it was something she didn’t expect and didn’t look for.
This is the man who rubbed her back and brought her ice chips when she was in labor. He holds her hand through every movie they ever watch. He makes sure her car is filled with gas.
He cannot find the ketchup. He cannot fold a shirt. He cannot change a diaper, replace the toilet paper, return his mother’s phone call.
She is on him in three steps. She bought him the shirt he wears, the one that rips in her grasp as she claws at the front of him. His skin tears easier than the cloth, runners of flesh curling under her nails.
She can smell the blood.
It’s only because of the itching that she lets him go. Scritch-scritch inside her head, something is scraping like the tines of a fork along a varnished table. Lines in her brain, filling with a feathery, wriggling touch. Something is in there.
It threads down her spine and through her nerves. It jerks and twists her. Makes her dance.
They danced together at their wedding, his hand on the small of her back. Box step, waltz, he was clumsy and it didn’t matter because it was their song. Clink, clink, forks on glasses, urging them to kiss.
He is beneath her, her knees pinning his sides, her hands on his wrists. He bucks and thrusts. He cries out her name, low, then louder.
What is this? Making love or making hate, some people call orgasms “the little death,” and she shudders and shakes with desire. Not to fuck him.
She wants to kill him.
42
Madison had a pair of roller skates, the old-fashioned kind, with pom-poms on the laces. They were a little too big for her, but she’d stuffed the toes with an extra pair of socks and laced them up super tight. She pushe
d off with one now, gliding along the concrete floor, keeping to the side of the wall in case anyone came around the corner.
Nobody probably would. This section of the complex was empty most of the time. The living quarters were in the West section, closer to the canteen and medical labs. This part of the complex contained the climate-controlled storage units full of stuff nobody needed. At least not yet.
Dad said that if they all had to stay down here for longer than a few years they’d start breaking into the storage units, but he didn’t see how boxes of DVD players and mp3 players would do them any good. Those guys who’d tried to steal a bunch of stuff right in the beginning figured out quick enough how stupid it was to take from the complex, that’s what Dad said. Because no fancy piece of electronic equipment could ever be worth your life, and besides, even if they’d made it outside, what would they have done with it?
“Money’s only worth something when someone else needs it,” Dad had told her and Everett, who was sixteen and trying to grow a mustache. “Those days are long gone. Our currency is food and ammunition now.”
Skating, Maddy pushed herself to go a little faster along the curving corridor. At one end, just before the double doors into the next part of the complex, she paused to look up at the men hanging there. Three of them — the fourth had managed to get away, and Dad said good luck to him, he’d be sorry out there.
The smell had been bad at first, worse than Everett’s farts after he ate burritos, and that was really heinous. One of the men had a baseball cap pulled low over his face, which was good because then she didn’t have to look at his eyes, bugged out and staring. She knew they couldn’t see her — these men were dead, really dead, and they weren’t going to come back to life.
Not like the ones outside.
When Maddy was small, she’d woken in the middle of night to the sound of screams coming from the rec room. Everett was having a sleepover with a bunch of his buddies, and they’d put in a gruesome horror movie, the kind she was too young to watch. She’d snuck down the stairs to peek through the railing, watching as a squadron of the undead attacked, dismembered and ate a flock of scantily clad cheerleaders with their boobies hanging out.