Home to a life that would never be again. Home to parents who would never hold him, never kiss him, never touch him, or love him again.
So, as much as it hurts to think these words, something still inside me says softly, maybe it’s better this way.
“I’m so sorry, baby.” I hold him close and cry. “I’m so, so sorry. Sissy wasn’t there for you. I should’ve been there for you, always, and I wasn’t. But I’m here now, okay? I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He holds my gaze for a moment, before his eyelids fall heavy, then lift again to stare off into space somewhere above my head. There’s the hint of a smile, and I wonder if he sees his momma and daddy calling for him from somewhere beyond this life.
The last remaining souls I love in this world are leaving me in the same hour . . .
How will I go on without them?
When I hug him again, his skin is so hot it almost burns me. And then his little body jumps and convulses, and projectile vomit pours from his mouth, covering both of us. Gideon sits beside me, hurrying to clean it up, but more comes, and the cleaning is futile. Instead, he kneels in front of us, his tears matching my own, and we watch as an unseen monster rips away from me the fragile child I took for granted. He gasps one last time, then stills in my arms.
I’m trapped in a silent shriek that reverberates in my bones, deep within my soul where I alone can reap its wrath and wreckage with these seeds I’ve sown.
Gideon places two fingers to Corbin’s neck, then weeps as he flips open his pocketknife. “Ophelia, I . . . he’s—”
“I know . . .” I kiss his precious cheek one last time before turning away, and shattering into a million irreparable pieces. I sense Gideon’s hesitation, the wrestling with a conscience, before warmth on my thigh follows the crunch of fragile bone.
There’s a white noise, a silence in my pain, as I place the tiny soul on the couch behind me. I can’t look at him, can’t see him this way. I float around the room on a lake of icy glass, of too much pain, my heart turned inside out. It beats in reverse, remembering the miracle baby’s life. He was never supposed to be. And how I wish—more than anything—that he could be with his parents in his perfect world that never was but should’ve been. He deserved that. He was too precious for this life here, in this broken world. Maybe that’s why he was stolen from it, why all of them were.
Why was I left behind?
Gideon exits Eve’s room, holding two sheets. He covers my brother with one of them, and with the other, he veils my best friend . . .
I’m in her backyard, and she’s not here anymore. She’s gone.
How did I get here?
Screams.
Mine.
Blood.
Theirs.
And the sky is too blue, like his eyes.
The flowers on the graves are wilting, like me.
I wither beside them, tell them . . . they were right about me all along. I couldn’t save their Lucy from her fate.
“Hey.” Hands find my shoulders, and Gideon peers down at me, wearing a halo from the sun. “You’ve gotta stop screaming. They have us completely surrounded now.”
“I don’t care.”
Behind him is the sheet from the bed where Eve and I first made love. It’s now in the shape of her, the only one I loved who never hurt me. Until now.
Now I remember: there was good reason for shutting them out. If I’d never loved them—any of them—it wouldn’t hurt so much when they left me.
“I know you don’t care, sweetheart.” A gentle guide of my chin with his thumb and forefinger, and his brown eyes pierce through the haze. “But they would want you to. Do it for them.”
But they’re all gone, and I’m still here.
“I’ll be right back.” The sun shines on me again as he leaves me to go to the shed, returning a couple minutes later with two shovels. He gives me one, offering his hand, too.
I take it and he helps me to my feet, though I fight it. I wasn’t ready for it to be this soon. It would’ve always been too soon, even years from now. But what I wouldn’t give to have those years anyway, or even just five more minutes.
As I dig, my muscles object to the familiar movements that wore them out last night. But with a few strokes, the rage grabs hold, and the handle is wet from my opened blisters. There’s pain, but not enough. I strike the ground and the breach reverberates in my chest, that last piece of virgin inner space being ripped open, like my Eve’s flesh. Snuffed out like Corbin’s light.
We dig a shallow grave, because that’s all we can manage. I try for one more patch of dirt, but my muscles reject in spasms, and I drop in a daze. We sit there for a few minutes to rest before lowering my baby’s small frame down into it. And as the earth becomes her, I give her every broken piece of me, too, saving only enough to survive another day. Because once I take my brother home, it’ll be my time to go, too. I can’t bear to live another day in this world without them.
I pluck some flowers from the same three bushes she’d clipped from last night, and place them onto the fresh mound. “I’m so sorry, baby,” I whisper.
Quit blaming yourself. And quit apologizing. Okay?
But it’s my fault, Eve. I should’ve kept you safe, but I let you down, again. I let them hurt you again.
When the sounds of the infected grow around us, the haze lifts, and a clear thought snaps into place. I spin around to face Gideon, who leans on his shovel, caught in a moment of grief as he looks upon Eve’s grave.
“You said you would wake up.”
“Huh?” He glances up at me.
“You said”—I take a swift step toward him—“that if there was any noise you would wake up.”
“Ophelia, I’m sorry, I was exhausted from running, and we dug all night, and—with all that liquor we drank, I . . . he, they . . . slipped past—”
“You were supposed to be watching! You said you would wake up! I trusted you! This is your fault! They’re dead because of you!” I slap him hard, and his head whips to the side. But when he turns again, it’s not anger that greets me, but sorrow.
Fuck your sorrow.
I tackle him with a hook to the jaw, but he doesn’t fight back. He lies there as I trade punches to the face, chest, abdomen, until I rise and kick him in the gut. “You fucking killed them! Get out of here!” I yank him up from the ground. “Leave!”
“And go where?” He spits blood from his mouth.
“I don’t fucking care—just leave!”
I push him toward the side gate, and he trips and falls against the brick wall. I head toward the house. When I get inside, the small body wrapped in a sheet ignites the flame even more and I snatch Suki from the bar, kick the back door open again. I turn to the right side of the house, prepared to give him what he deserves . . .
Instead, I find an empty corner.
TWENTY-FIVE
My cellphone is dead.
And just like that, the last blinking eye of society as I know it has closed forever. My pictures of me and Evie, a few of Corbin, and my music . . . my distractions . . . gone.
I swing Mr. Davisson’s baseball bat until nothing’s left inside me. I swing until the rage has cleared my lungs, the dirge of this Judgment Day, and pieces of my surroundings slam against each other. Nothing’s left whole, and I realize now—nothing was to begin with. They were all fractured pieces, waiting to become splintered shards of what was.
The storm ceases when I open the door to Eve’s room where her parents’ blood peeks out from underneath two dropped towels. A calm, stillness washes over me, along with the smell of weed, and lilac incense, her favorite scent. The bare mattress is a stark reminder of why this room will forever encapsulate an unmendable sorrow. She’s gone. Just when I’d opened up and given myself fully to her, accepted the risk that came with bearing my heart. I tied its strings around our souls like a tourniquet, and now they’ve snapped, and my soul bleeds out into my lungs, this love I’ve held safeguarded for so lon
g. There was supposed to be more time to give it, but the time was then, and I let it slip away.
Jesse’s on Eve’s bedside table. I pick it up with an unstable hand and follow the memory there. Her parents had gotten it for her for her eighteenth birthday last year—the first gun she’d ever owned, though the rest of us had been packing since sixteen. But their sweet, innocent Lucy was so delicate, and scared of guns, saying her tiny switchblade would do the trick if she needed to protect herself.
I didn’t have the heart then to tell her that four years of karate and a switchblade wouldn’t save her from the throes of survival in this world. I helped her steal her first pair of steel-toed boots, taught her how to shoot with Suki, and prepared her for the world her parents did their best to shelter her from. I fed her that world on a silver platter, and in the end, it poisoned her.
Jesse’s loaded.
What reason do I have to stay? Nothing’s left but a wasteland full of monsters, both living and non. Whether under my skin, or outside of these walls, there’s nowhere left to hide from this devastation. With the gun to my temple, I say goodbye. Goodbye to a life that never wanted me. I begin to count, hold my breath, finger at the trigger, but there’s a silent nagging, a ghost, beckoning my thoughts outward.
Corbin. My baby brother . . . his tiny body on Eve’s couch all alone.
All he wanted was to go home.
So, before I leave this life, Sissy has to grant his last wish. And Henry, Eileen . . . they deserve a proper burial with their baby boy after the shit I put them through. It’s the least I could do, considering I couldn’t save them, couldn’t keep their baby safe.
He’s safe now, though, and soon, he’ll be with his mommy and daddy again, where he belongs.
I stumble from Eve’s room, hunched against the jagged edges of my torn innards slicing against my other parts. I hug my middle to stabilize myself, and I avoid looking at the couch. But peripheral vision is a traitor.
The rest of my weed is still on the table near the almost-empty bottle of Jim Beam from last night. I guzzle it in seconds, then smash the bottle against the empty cross wall and load a bowl. I smoke it down to ash, then load another, and another, until I’ve finished it off. In the liquor cabinet, I find a small bottle of whiskey, which I down with my last two Xanax from my duffel bag. I collapse in the middle of Corbin’s toys on the dining room floor. Gideon’s Lego wall still stands where he left it.
I’m blindsided by another dose of remorse. Would I have really shot him? It was as much my fault as it was his. I should’ve been the one watching, guarding, protecting the people I love, and I wasn’t. What if he’s dead now, too, because of me?
I try to stand but my legs are cooked noodles, so I crawl to the front window. When I try to grip the sill to pull myself up, my hand slips and I grab hold of the drape, yanking them from their perch. Sunlight blinds me for a second, before I’m smothered by heavy, dusty fabric.
The sounds from outside the window tell me to stay out of sight. With the drape still over me, disoriented, I move to the left, tracing the edge of the windowsill to its end. I uncover myself and rise up until I catch a glimpse of what’s outside.
More of them now, all waiting for me to come out. For a split second I think I see one with chin-length, brown hair and a white T-shirt, and my heart sinks. But my eyes dance and blur from my self-medication, so I tell myself they’re playing tricks on me.
Maybe he got away. Maybe I don’t have his blood on my hands, too.
TWENTY-SIX
I startle awake wrapped in Eve’s drapes, head pounding in my skull. On the wood floor in front of me dance the rippling reflection of flames through the window, and I welcome whatever hell has come to take me away. It’s too dark, and quiet enough to hear the sounds of the dead outside, and behind them, off in the distance, gunfire.
Everything hurts. An atom bomb has gone off inside of me and all that’s left are fragments amid the debris. But I remember my promise, my final duty, an homage long overdue.
Untangling myself from the curtains, I rise to my knees, peeking outside. The house across the street is in flames. The infected seem drawn to it; they crowd around, and those nearest catch fire. They don’t flail and roll, or panic, as any burning human might do. They pace as they burn, until there’s nothing left but charred skeletons, then piles of bones and ash.
Distracted. Drawn to the flames, like carnivorous moths.
Now’s the time to go, to take Corbin home.
I’m wobbly on my feet at first, and my muscles are tight and sore as I approach the dark living room where he lies. I wretch onto the floor, arm propped against the wall, worried I may have been infected. But if so, I would already be one of them.
I gather up Eve’s bags along with mine and Corbin’s, because taking their belongings brings some comfort. Two drops to fill a gorge, but I’m not ready to let go yet.
After I load the SUV with our bags, and the rest of the beer from the fridge in the garage, I go back inside. I take slow steps to the couch, where the white sheet glows over the small silhouette in the moonlight. Just yesterday he’d slept here, breathing softly as the world collapsed. But now . . . he’s a ghost, an angel, crushed by the weight.
I scoop him up into my arms, and my tears come swift. He’s already stiff, cold, passed on to his next life where I hope he’ll be loved again, and again, and again, for all eternity. I cradle him and sob, making my way out the door and into the garage. Seeing his empty car seat in the SUV is too much. I lay him gently on the seat beside it, then unbuckle the safety seat and jerk it from the car and onto the pavement. After strapping the seat belts over him, so he won’t move around while I drive, I head back inside.
From the drawer in Eve’s kitchen, I find a flashlight, and after snatching the bottle of whiskey from the counter, I head to her parents’ room where their armory closet is.
When I get to it, the array of weaponry lights a new bulb in my mind. I won’t stay in this life for much longer, but before I leave . . . I might as well go out with a bang.
I fill my arms with as many as I can carry, pile them into the SUV, then go back for more. One more trip after that and I’ve stockpiled the car with every last piece of artillery they had, including a digital crossbow, and a pair of matching katanas with blue metal blades. Eve’s dad liked to collect them over the years, “In case there was ever a time in which I needed to protect my family,” he’d told her, though he’d never once shot a gun outside of Arms-Holders Education when he was sixteen.
In the end, it was that peaceful man, her own father, Eve needed to protect herself from.
And she did.
With an AK-47 strapped to my shoulder, I lean in to start the engine, then leave the driver’s side door propped and head to the garage door. I’ll have to raise it manually. After a few seconds of wrestling with whether I should do it fast or slow, I decide fast would give me the best getaway advantage. So I click off my firearm’s safety, hold my stance, and give the door a quick, hard push.
To my surprise, the alley is empty. I hop into the SUV, throw it into reverse, and replace the rifle with Suki, which will be easier to shoot while I drive. I hold two magazines between my thighs, just in case.
By the time I start down the alley, a group of them has been alerted to my presence. They run toward the garage in the direction of the noise, unable to see the black vehicle against the night sky. I creep along slowly, against my urge to speed up, and they hear me as I pass by them, floundering for their next meal in the blind darkness.
Not me, assholes. Not yet.
One of them—an older man with balding gray hair—crosses in front of me, then stops. I let it idle, afraid the sound from the engine might give me away. He traces the hood with a bloody palm, then up the windshield, leaving a streak of red, and more of them come in a wave.
I make sure the doors are locked, then freeze, stiff against the leather of my seat. I stare straight ahead, my left hand on the window button, and my
right cradling Suki’s trigger. The dead man stops at my side, bends awkwardly, and I feel those black eyes on me. Others crowd around the vehicle, too, but after a short eternity they lose interest in the empty machine and continue toward Eve’s garage, where the others have gathered in hopes of a meal.
When my path is clear again, I move faster this time, but not by much. When I get to the end of the alley and turn onto the street, I pick up speed until I’m going about twenty miles per hour. The streets are littered with cars and messes, so I have to swerve here and there, and at one point, drive down the median and into oncoming traffic. Though there’s no traffic.
Fires blaze up ahead and for a moment I’m worried there might not be a home for me to return to . . . But when I turn onto our street and pass up our house to the alleyway, there’s relief to find it still standing, and seemingly uninhabited.
The alley is empty, but I’m sure not for long. I pull up into the garage, tires crunching over the pile of bodies we created when we left, and I get out, AK-47 in hand. I give the rolling door a good yank until it lowers with a metallic screech. But the mangled mess of bodies on the pavement blocks the door from closing, and moments later, a group of them races around the corner. I crouch and spray them with rapid fire, and when they fall I go to work moving the mess from beneath the door. Fighting the urge to vomit, I clear the way, and slam the door down onto stained pavement.
After a moment of catching my breath, the stench of death bombards me. And then, I puke. There’s nowhere to walk that isn’t splattered with ripe decay.
Wait until you open the bathroom.
This is nothing compared to the task at hand.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Eileen once had this rule when we got new carpet years ago. “Take your shoes off before you come inside,” she’d ask of me, and of course, I never would. I never did half the stuff she asked me to do. Always so angry, and she was easiest to take it out on. Because, for the first time ever I had someone in my life who would never leave me, abandon me, or give me away, and I did everything in my power to prove my theory correct: that eventually, she’d break, and the truth would be revealed. And if I beat her to the punch, I wouldn’t be caught off guard, and it wouldn’t hurt as much. I’d stay in control.
Dysphoria and Grace Page 12