by Stevie Kopas
“Mommy, that man has a knife.” I pointed, but she didn’t look.
“Little girl get away from that thing.” That was the only thing he was able to say before Mommy knew he was there.
She screamed really loud and jumped up from the ground. The man tried to stab her with the knife, but Mommy was too fast. I hid my face away when I saw Mommy jump on him and bite his throat. There was a lot of blood. I peeked through my fingers and the man was shaking on the ground. Mommy was eating him and it was really gross. That’s when the thunder came and I started crying. Mommy was so hungry she didn’t even care.
I ran inside and locked the door. Mommy didn’t hurt me, but she hurt that man. The man was normal like me, but he had a knife. Mommy probably didn’t like that. My clothes were all wet, but there wasn’t anybody left to care that I was making the house dirty. Mr. Quigley was on the floor when I got back to my room. He must have fallen from the window because the storm scared him. We hid in the closet and I sang until the storm went away.
I heard Mommy banging at the back door. She was howling like a dog and sounded sad that I locked her out. I took Mr. Quigley with me downstairs and peeked through the blinds on the back door. Mommy saw me and stopped making noise. She was covered in blood again. Now I know why she looked and smelled so gross when she came home yesterday. She was finding food. I hope Mommy doesn’t decide that I would be good food someday.
When I open the door to let her back inside, I see that there are more sick people in the yard. They must have come when they heard Mommy screaming and banging on the door. They see me, and now they’re running toward the back porch. Mommy hears them and turns around. She screams at them, but they aren’t scared. She hits one and he falls, but the other two sick people knock her over and still come for me. I run back into the house, but the floor is wet so I slip and fall. Mr. Quigley flies out of my arms.
The two sick people grab me and drag me and I’m so scared I can’t stop screaming for Mommy, but when the sick people get too close to me and I can smell their stinky breath like Daddy’s, they stop. I can count all the ugly black lines on their faces. Mommy is still the prettiest of all the sick people. They don’t try to bite me or eat me like when Mommy ate the man in the yard. They look at me like they’re mad and start throwing a tantrum. One of the sick men starts hitting me and it hurts. Mommy yells at them again and attacks the man. She keeps smashing his face into the floor until he stops moving and then roars like a lion at the other man. She chases him out of the house and stands on the porch to block the door.
The kitchen is really gross and covered in the sick man’s blood. When the other sick people leave, Mommy finally comes back in the house. She stares at Mr. Quigley for a minute and bends down to pick him up.
“Don’t hurt him!” I yell at Mommy.
She holds Mr. Quigley in both hands and walks over to where I’m still laying on the floor. She drops him next to me and walks back outside. I hug Mr. Quigley so tight and tell him I’m so sorry I dropped him. When I look outside, Mommy is sitting down on the ground looking at the sponge. Even though scary things just happened, this makes me smile.
We’re in the house one more day before I notice Mommy stops following me around the house. She’s at the front door and she won’t move away from it. I wonder if she’s hungry again but she knows how to let herself out, she’s done it before. I stand in front of her and look up, she looks at me with sad eyes and grunts.
“Do you want to go outside?” I ask her, and she makes another grunt. “You don’t have to ask permission, Mommy. You’re being silly.”
She makes more noises that sound like crying and she crouches down with her face by mine. She’s smelly again, but it’s not as bad as before. The sick man laying still in the kitchen smells worse. Mommy puts one hand on the doorknob and I look at it. Most of her fingernails have fallen off and the ones that are still there look dirty. She puts her other hand on my shoulder, and at first I’m nervous because Mommy only touches things she wants to hurt or eat, but then I remember when she picked up Mr. Quigley and he was fine after. I smile at her. I miss when she used to sing to me. She had a beautiful voice, but now it sounds like a scruffy dog.
She looks back at the door and grunts as she opens it a crack and pushes me to it.
“Do you want me to go outside with you?”
Mommy gives me another push. She made me promise I would never go out front again unless she was with me, so I think this is fine and I’m not breaking her promise.
“Okay, I need to get Mr. Quigley.”
I run upstairs and grab my friend and when I come back down, Mommy is on the front porch waiting for me. She starts to walk down the steps and I follow, taking her hand. I squeeze but she doesn’t squeeze back. It’s almost like having a Mommy again, but she’s different. I’m okay with it because it’s better than having no Mommy at all. We walk in the middle of the street and I don’t know where we’re going, but I really hope we stop at the shop down the road to get some snacks. I’m hungry and haven’t eaten since yesterday because there is no more food left and I’m not allowed to use the stove.
The air is stinky and hot. Summer is my favorite time of year because we don’t have any school, but I haven’t seen any of my friends. I wonder if all their Mommies and Daddies are different now too.
I can see the candy shop now and I’m so excited. This used to be my favorite place in the whole world to go with Daddy.
“Come on, Mommy. Let’s go inside!”
I let go of her hand, and me and Mr. Quigley start running to the candy shop. I hear Mommy make an angry sound behind me, but I know she’s following because I can hear her feet moving fast.
When I open the door to the candy shop, I almost want to cry because it’s always such a beautiful place with my favorite colors everywhere, but today it is ugly with brown stains on the floor and walls. The glass jars that hold all the candy are broken and there’s glass and candy all over the floor. Mommy comes into the shop behind me and stares at me. She’s probably mad, but I don’t care because somebody ruined the candy shop.
There are some shelves behind the counter and I see some boxes of candy bars, but I can’t reach them, even when I walk around and stand on my tiptoes next to the sleeping man on the floor. I look at the sleeping man and somebody has hurt him really bad. I don’t like to look at him because he doesn’t have a nose and there are bugs crawling inside of his face, so I look at Mommy instead.
“Can you get them for me?” I ask her, pointing at the candy bars, but she just stares at the shelf. “Please?” I keep pointing and making mean noises at her until I think she understands.
She comes over to where I’m standing and knocks the boxes off the shelf. I jump up and down with excitement and gather up the candy bars. I eat almost a whole candy bar in one bite and then stuff whatever I can fit into my pockets. I don’t want to eat too many right now because the last time I did that I got a real bad tummy ache and Mommy yelled at me.
Mommy waits by the door while I use the water fountain. When we leave I ask her where we’re going and then remember she can’t answer me. We just keep walking. There are some people like Mommy up ahead and I squeeze her hand really hard. Mommy stops and growls like a dog when she sees them. I get behind her and peek at them. They’re screaming and running at us, but Mommy isn’t scared — she screams back at them. When they get close enough, Mommy fights with one of them. They fall to the ground and Mommy claws at the other lady’s face. She twists her head around until it makes an awful noise and the other lady stops moving. I curl up into a ball on the ground, hugging Mr. Quigley. I hope the other people don’t start hitting me again — I have bruises from the last time. They don’t seem like they want to bother me, though. They seem angry with Mommy. Maybe it’s because she isn’t like them.
Mommy jumps off the lady who isn’t moving and lands on another lady. She keeps hitting her face into the street over and over again and it’s making a mess like in the kit
chen. It’s scaring me to see Mommy act like this, so I roll over and face the other way. I almost pee in my pants because there’s a sick man squatting next to me with red dripping from his mouth. I scream and he screams back, putting his face so close to mine that my tummy almost gets sick from the smell. I hear Mommy get angry, but the other sick people are still fighting with her.
The man is sniffing me and making sounds like he’s frustrated, but he isn’t hurting me. I’m confused and scared, but I’m glad he isn’t trying to eat me. He seems confused too, and it’s making him scared. He gets so scared that he yells louder than I’ve ever heard any of the sick people yell. He runs away and I watch him. He’s joining the other sick people and they’re trying to beat up Mommy. But Mommy is strong and smart — not stupid like them. She hurts all the sick people until they stop moving or they run away like scaredy-cats, and when they’re all gone she runs to me. I jump up and wrap my arms around her. She seems like she doesn’t know what to do, but I don’t care — me and Mr. Quigley are glad she’s okay.
She crouches down and shakes me, like when I was bad and snuck out of the house the other day. Mommy looks scared and her eyes are big and sad. She is checking my arms and my legs.
“I’m okay, Mommy.”
She stops checking and stares at me. Her mouth opens and closes like she wants to talk, but no words are coming out.
I hug her again and this time she hugs me back.
We walk for another few hours and Mommy makes sure no other sick people see us. She sniffs at the air and I think she can smell where they are. I tell her I’m tired and she stops walking, she looks around and takes me down a street with houses instead of shops. She tries a few doors and makes sad sounds when they’re locked. The fourth house has a front door that’s open and so we go inside and I lock the door behind us.
I find water on the floor in a closet and drink that after I eat another candy bar. There’s lots of food here so I hope we can stay another day before Mommy wants to start walking again. My feet hurt.
The sun is starting to disappear and I go upstairs and sleep in the biggest bed. I don’t mean to make a mess in the house — my clothes are really dirty — but there’s nobody here to care about that. Before I close my eyes, I see Mommy standing in the doorway keeping watch. I’m so glad she’s here.
When I wake up Mommy isn’t upstairs. I found her downstairs by the front windows growling. When I look out, I see there are four people like me, not sick, and they’re walking down the road. They hold guns and big knives, but they’re laughing so I hope that they’re nice. They keep coming toward the house and then I remember that the door was unlocked when we got here. Then I remember all the food and water I found.
“Mommy, we have to go.” I pull on her arm, but she won’t come away from the window.
The people are getting closer and now I’m scared. I didn’t know the water was theirs and I don’t think they’ll be happy to find Mommy in here. Mommy’s making angry sounds and her shoulders are shaking now like she’s laughing, but there’s nothing funny happening. I run to the back door and hope she’ll follow me, but she doesn’t. I can’t leave her here. I can’t be alone.
“Mommy, please!”
I yell at her and she looks back at me, her eyes are big and scary. She looks like the other sick people from earlier. I don’t like it and it makes me cry. Mommy hears me crying and her eyes look sad again, but then she hears the people at the front door using bad words because it’s locked, and she growls.
The people outside hear Mommy growling and start arguing with each other. Then they start shooting their guns and kick the door open. There’s so much noise and I don’t like it. I get on the ground again and cover my ears. I try to scream louder than all the noise but I can’t block it out.
I hear the people yelling and I hear Mommy yelling. More gunshots and screaming. I think Mommy is hurt. I heard her cry out, but I’m too scared to move. Somebody picks me up and I start to kick my legs and hit them. I almost drop Mr. Quigley, but I squeeze him tight while I hit the person with my free hand.
The house is silent now, except for Mommy who is angry that the person touched me. The person keeps telling me to be quiet and telling me that it’ll be alright, but I just want them to let me go. They run out the back door of the house with me and tell me they’re going to keep me safe. Mommy keeps me safe. I don’t need this person.
I scream for Mommy and the person stops running and looks at me. He looks scared and confused. Mommy comes out of the back of the house, but she’s slower than before. She is covered in lots of blood and she has black stuff coming out of where they shot her in a couple different places. The man puts me down and points his gun at Mommy, but I scream at him and stomp on his foot with mine. He drops the gun and I run to Mommy.
She tries to get past me and go after the man, but I yell at her that she’s already eaten. I start crying again and the man tells me to get away from that thing, just like the man in the yard said.
“Mommy, stop! Please!”
I beg her and the man makes a strange face. Mommy stops and I throw my arms around her. She hisses like a cat and doesn’t take her eyes off the man, but she hugs me tightly. She picks me up like she used to when she was my old Mommy.
The man lowers his gun and his mouth is open like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Mommy backs away and doesn’t turn her back to the man until we’re almost around a corner. She runs a little bit, but she is slow and I can tell that it hurts her. I tell her to put me down.
I think about the man that picked me up and the people that Mommy killed in the house. That was their hiding spot, we shouldn’t have been in there. I feel bad that Mommy hurt those people, but they would have hurt Mommy and kidnapped me.
“We need to be more careful,” I tell her.
She stares at me and holds out her hand. I take it and we keep walking.
I know where we are now. We’re getting closer to the city. I can see the big buildings up ahead and there are lots of car accidents. Daddy used to hate driving around here. He would yell bad words out the window and get angry because of all the traffic. Somebody covered up the green signs on the side of the road with their own signs. I stop to read one of them.
I have to sound out the first word, but then I finally figure it out, I know where Mommy’s taking me.
“Evacuation zone up ahead.” I say. I still don’t know what that word means, but at least I know we aren’t doing all this walking for nothing. Mommy looks at me with big eyes like she’s surprised. I smile at her, “We’re going to see Dr. Miller! Is he going to make you better?”
Mommy’s eyes look sad again and she pulls on my arm. We keep walking all the way into the city and it’s really stinky here. I don’t like it and I wish Dr. Miller would have picked a different place for his evacuation zone. Mommy is sniffing at the air a lot and looking angry. I don’t think she likes how it smells either. I tell her I’m hungry and that I have to pee and she makes a funny face at me. She pulls me down a street and stops. She makes a growling noise and looks around. This scares me. The city is really big and I hope Mommy doesn’t run off because me and Mr. Quigley will get lost. It’s starting to get dark outside and being on this strange street makes me nervous. I tug on her hand and she follows me into a small store on the corner.
“Stay here, Mommy,” I tell her and I go find the bathroom in the back.
I eat another candy bar when I’m done and drink some warm soda. It’s really yucky when it’s warm and it makes my belly feel really full. Mommy is standing at the front of the store making strange sounds and I hear somebody outside screaming from far away. It doesn’t sound like a sick person, and then I hear loud popping noises and I think the person is shooting a gun. Mommy starts to run around the front of the store like a wild animal.
I wrap my arms around her leg and try to pull her away from the front, but she knocks me down. This makes me cry, I don’t like when she acts like the other sick people. T
he screaming and popping sounds are getting louder and so are Mommy’s growls. I think the screaming person is on our street now. Mommy must know this, that’s why she’s being crazy by the front door.
“Mommy, please, don’t leave me!” I can’t help but yell because I’m so upset. I jump up and run to her, hitting her on her leg over and over until she finally stops making her loud sounds. I beg her to stay in the store with me, I beg her to leave the screaming person alone.
The screaming person comes in to view and I see that there are actually three screaming people. There are a lot of sick people chasing after them, more sick people all together than I’ve seen so far. Mommy’s eyes get big when she sees how many sick people there are and she finally moves away from the door.
“Thank you.” I tell her.
She crouches down and puts her dirty hand over my mouth. She wants to play the quiet game.
Mommy holds me and I don’t care how dirty she is or how bad she smells. It’s really scary to hear all the sick people outside running around and screaming. I have to cover my ears because I know what’s happening to the healthy people and I don’t want to listen to it. Mr. Quigley is squished between me and Mommy and that’s good because I know he feels safe.
We stay like this until it is completely dark and I can’t see anything but Mommy’s shiny eyes. Mommy gets up and I want to go with her, but she shoves me back — she wants me to stay hiding. I hear her shuffling to the front of the store. She growls once and I want to know what’s happening, so I sneak up there with her.
There are lots of shiny eyes out in the street — they almost look like lightning bugs, but I know it’s just all of the sick people from before. Mommy turns around and sees me. She makes an angry sound and grabs my arm. I think Mommy is scared. The sick people won’t eat me, but they can still hurt me, and they know Mommy is different and that makes them hate her. I don’t want to be trapped in this small store. I want to get to Dr. Miller so he can make Mommy better. I remember there is a window in the bathroom so I make Mommy follow me in there and I point to it. She stares at it for a minute before opening it up really slow and sticks her head out. She crouches down and puts her finger on my lips again to let me know we’re still playing the quiet game, and then she picks me up.