But it didn’t stop my dad from venturing out.
Mindlessly working alongside me and crossing paths at the top and bottom of the steep staircase, we exchanged few words.
“Headed into the garage,” he declared.
“What?!”
“I’m headed to the shop.”
“For what!? Why??? They told us to stay inside unless it was an emergency!” I reminded.
“Got to make sure it’s secure. Locked up tight. What, with those whackos running around, I don’t need to go losing all my tools.” The thought that maybe he wasn’t headed to the garage at all flashed through my head. The possibility that he would head to Damariscotta, to try and talk Mom into coming home, was a definite one, but it was one he’d never admit to, even if I prodded for it. Then again, maybe he was headed to work. Either way, it was an opportunity for me to jump on the bandwagon.
“Take me with you.” I said, more than asked. “Let’s go by Catee’s house and pick her up.”
“No.” His response came without waver.
“But Dad! She could be all alone right now! She could be depending on us! She might need me!! We can’t just leave her there!!”
“No, Damian,” he repeated. “I’m going alone.” Placing an armload of folded cots on the ground, he rose and headed for the stairs, and stopped only briefly to unnecessarily adjust the light bulb that swung, suspended overhead. “You get those set up while I’m out.”
“Dad, you can’t just—
“Damian. You take care of business here. I’m not taking you out of this house. I’m not putting you in harm’s way. You’re all I’ve got left,” he said, “and I’m going to see to it that you’re safe. Conversation done.” And before I could rebuttal, he added, “And I already planned to stop by the Laverdiers’ place while I’m in town. I’ll check it out. And if she’s there, I’ll bring her back with me. Seems like we’re going to have a couple extra beds anyhow.”
“Thanks, Dad!” I jumped to my feet, threw myself at him, and wrapped my arms so tightly around him that they might’ve touched had they only been a few inches longer. His responsive squeeze was tight. Almost suffocating. My face squished into his chest, and I breathed the scent of his cologne. Or aftershave. Something. A spicy, signature scent I’d always associated with him—one that might still linger there, on the mound in the corner, if I throw myself down, wrap around it, and squeeze him now like I did back then.
But that’s crazy.
This is crazy.
And I can’t live like this anymore.
PART II
FIND THE LIGHT
May 11th: Day 10
I don’t realize what I’m doing until I’m spitting out a mouth of dirt that’s caked my tongue and coated it in a layer of mud. When I wipe away tears with the back of my hand, gravel scrapes the side of my face, and it leaves my skin raw and wet.
The dirt is hard-packed beneath me, and it caves very little to the man who lays just inches below as I push myself to wobbly, shaking feet. It’s all like a dream. Some horrible nightmare that I can’t escape, that keeps me trapped down here like some post-apocalyptic cockroach.
I haven’t paid as close attention to counting the days as I did before my dad ransacked the pantry. Has it been one? Two? Have any passed? It’s all a blur of timelessness as I fumble around in the filtered light of the rising sun. I know my pocketknife’s still here—somewhere—I’m just not sure where I threw it after I pulled it from his eye.
My hand runs across it, just under the edge of my cot, and I grip its cold, steel tightly in my palm. I flip open the blade to consider possibilities … and finalities … before I turn my bed to its side. Four-notches. Four days added to my first week down, and things aren’t getting better. They’re only growing worse. What’s next? Who’s next? My mom? Catee? Nicole? Who else am I going to have to defend myself from? Who else am I going to have to kill? What difference is two fucking days going to make?
I stop short of carving another notch, and the frame of the cot’s in my hands and overhead. I hurl it at the three others that sit, unscathed beside it, and they crash and bang against each other to create more noise than I dared make before in my more rational mind. But I’m not rational anymore. I’m stir-crazy. Or maybe I’m just crazy, now. I can’t take it anymore! The dark. The uncertainty. The loneliness. My dad, rotting in the corner! It’s all rotted me away and I’m not—I’ll never be again—the same guy I was when I first took to hiding.
The rage boils and burns inside me, and the only thing I can do is unleash it—to let it out where it has the freedom it needs. To let it exist where it can’t hurt me from inside anymore.
I’m across the room and the cot’s back in my hands before I can rationalize what I’m doing. Its taut fabric becomes a sail, and it fights the wind and tries to stop me as I swing the frame forward and into the wall, shattering it to pieces that bind limply together with dark green cloth.
I grab another, and I’m screaming like an animal as I smash it against the other wall. Again! And again! Until there’re only two splintered sticks in my hands.
I grab the third cot and run with it to the empty shelving, swing, and make hard contact that smashes the wooden frame to pieces. It feels good. It feels primal. It feels like what I’ve needed to get out for so long, that I savor snatching up the fourth and repeating the assault on my rock-walled fortress—angry at it—loathing the unused excuses for beds, and imagining it’s Him I’m destroying instead.
Panting, hunched over, and hands to knees, my head’s a kaleidoscope of colors that whirl in and out in a prismatic display of emotion. I don’t know what came over me, but it feels good. Invigorating. Untamed. Almost as animalistic as they’ve become. It’s what I’ve needed to find all along to be any match against their mindless rampages, and I resolve to be done with being timid and afraid. I’ve let my own monster free from its cage, and it feels good.
Screw my countdown.
To hell with the wait and see.
Today is my day, and I honestly don’t care if I live or die anymore. I refuse to be a victim, and I won’t be a hostage any longer.
It only takes a couple minutes to find the piece that’s right for me: a jagged stake that’s almost 5’ long. It’s pointed at the tip, and it feels strong enough. I swing it around and slice it through the air to gauge its range and weight. It’ll do. Compared to every option beforehand, it’ll have to—at least, until I find something better. A gun would be nice, not that I’ve ever fired one before or that I’d know the first place to start. Still, I’ll learn fast enough, if I can get my hands on one.
I’m not sure what I’ll find up there, so I do what I can to pack myself full, without weighing myself down too heavily, and gather the things that might come in handy. I grab my backpack, long useless and lying on the floor, and I stuff it with rations: crackers, water, jerky, and a few other essentials. I pack my pocketknife, too, along with a couple more wooden stakes—their handles already wrapped in duct tape that I found among the shelves’ scattered contents. I stand them upright in my backpack and zip it as best I can before I sling it over my shoulders and take final surveillance for anything useful that I might’ve missed.
It’s hard to go. It’s hard to leave the recesses of what’s protected me for so long, but I know in my head and heart that I’m not safe here anymore. That if there’s ever going to be closure to all this madness, I can’t keep locked away, trapped, and counting the days before I’m just another of its victims.
“I’m going now, Dad,” I announce to the empty room. “I’m going for you, for Mom, Nicole, and I’m going for Catee. I’m going to find them, Dad, and we’re going to make this right. And when we do, we’re coming back for you, and we’re going to give you the burial you deserve.” I’m expecting tears, but they don’t come. Maybe I’m finally beyond them. Past feeling sorry for things I can’t change, I’m running on sheer revenge now. “I love you, Dad. I’ll see you soon.”
And I
ascend the steps, unhinge his belt, and toss it to the gravel below. I pull down on the door’s handle with all my weight, and I don’t breathe, I don’t move, and I hear nothing.
Up and open, I scramble to the kitchen floor and ease the heavy door into its frame behind me. Its seamlessness is almost imperceptible, even to me, but that’s of little consequence because there’s no turning back now. Freed from the darkness, it’s time I finally face the light.
May 11th: 9:17 A.M.
I haven’t been in my kitchen for what seems like an eternity, and the feeling of wooden timbers underfoot is as familiar as it is foreign. It’s like stepping on dry land after weeks spent at sea. My legs wobble briefly, and I stagger two steps to the closest wall to reclaim balance. Body and mind on high alert, my eyes look to the ground, and I focus on concentrated breathing to calm my racing heart and to set my head straight before I attempt to navigate the pale obstacle course that’s become the floor. I know the consequences of complacency too well, and I can’t linger for long with uncertainties around every corner. I’m not sure I’m ready for whatever those might be, and I consider a retreat to the pantry’s confines, but that’d be sealing my own grave, and I can’t go down like that. Not if there’s anyone left who’s still depending on me.
This isn’t my kitchen anymore. This isn’t even my house. It’s nothing like what it was. This is some sick horror shop, cooked up in the twisted mind of a grief-stricken lunatic. There must be twenty, maybe thirty bodies, strewn about like pick-up-sticks and in varying stages of pallid decay. Once a rich brown, the floorboards are chalky white and coated in the dried blood of the dead. Pale bodies pile atop even paler ones, partially dressed, partially rotted—mostly without hair, ears, or fingernails. Emaciated, some are without fingers and limbs, while others have few visible teeth left in their suspended-open mouths. My stomach wrenches, but it can’t throw up what it doesn’t contain.
There’re a lot of people I know there, old and young. Some I went to school with, some are their parents, and nearly everyone is … was … a Platsville local. There’s Gail Madden, who ran the only store in town, and my third grade teacher, Ms. Allen, just below her. My old school janitor’s spilled out alongside them, and I could go on and on to name almost everyone around me, but why bother? I don’t have the time or stomach for it, and it won’t bring any one of them back, so I do the only rational thing I can think of, and I weave a path to the drawer where Mom keeps her knives.
My dad was never one for guns, and knives are the best weapons I can think of besides this stake I carry, jagged end up to protect its splintered sharpness. It comes in handy to slide an arm and leg or two out of the way, and it creates opportunities for solid footing as I move through the mangled display of corpses, toward the cabinets.
The air hangs heavy with the smell of rotting meat. Flies, seemingly impervious to the sickness, swarm and fill the air with the audible hum of fluttering wings as they move from pallid perch, to pallid perch. They land briefly to feed, to lay their eggs, and to propagate what could now become the dominant species.
I slide a drawer carefully open to reveal a haphazard array of gleaming metal and indiscriminately pull what I can from it. Long, short, wide, narrow, it makes no difference what I grab, so long as they’re sharp, and I load the knives into by bag with the rest of my rations. And with that, the easy part’s done—if you can call it that.
I consider going to my room—to see it for what might be a final time and to gather what I can for clothes and other memories—but I dismiss it as superfluous. It’d be a time waster, and it’d only create more weight that I can’t afford bringing me down right now.
It’s time.
There’s no delaying it.
There’re no more excuses.
And as hard as it is to abandon the false-security of my house, I’ve got no choice any more. Leaving the pantry was the catalyst that set a ball into motion, and it’s got its own momentum now; I can’t question its direction. As terrifying as the unexpected might be, and as much as every fiber of me wills against it, I’ve got to keep moving forward.
And so I do.
Outside the kitchen, the dining room and the rest of what I can see of our place is exactly what I found in the kitchen, and it makes me wonder whether the rest of Platsville and Madison won’t look the same way, too. Then again, maybe it was my presence here that drew the masses of rotting corpses around me.
Curled and pale, mangled and spiritless, I carefully make my way through them to get to the door. With keys in hand, the garage is only steps away. My bike’s just inside it, and I know I can make it that far. Or, I’m pretty sure I can.
When the door opens, the light of day is blinding. It’s the first direct sunlight I’ve seen or felt in what seems an eternity. My skin, void of it for so long, must look as translucent as those who weren’t so fortunate—if you can call it that—but fading quickly might’ve been better than being left behind to brave the fallout of infection, alone.
I squint and peer around the front yard for anything or anyone who might still be active, but I see nothing. I hear no one. My eyes finally adjust to the point that I can see clearly, and I recheck what I’ve already surveyed. Still, there’s nothing. Abandoned cars and empty yards, aside from scattered bodies, there isn’t a threat in sight. Maybe my timing was better than I thought. Maybe enough has passed that I’m actually safe now, I think. My fingers cross with the optimistic thought.
The lock on the garage door turns easily, and I’m quickly inside to pull my bike from where Mom’s car used to sit. And with my backpack slung tightly around my shoulders, I climb on and situate myself.
I leave the door swinging behind, roll to the end of the driveway, bang a left, and start pedaling on what will become an eighteen-mile trip to Madison and to Catee’s house. And from there, we’ll begin the long ride to Damariscotta, where I’ll find my mom and the brains behind the disease, and then I’ll have my revenge.
Even if Catee has to see her own dad die, it’s what he deserves for what he’s taken from me.
May 11th: 9:36 A.M.
It’s a mile to the end of my road. Mostly lined with trees and dense shrubs, there are a dozen or so small homes and trailers sprinkled along the way. The sky is a flawless blue, and the early morning sun casts warm rays of spring on my exposed skin. The air is eerily quiet: foreboding in the sense that its stillness will inevitably be broken. I pedal quickly, legs whirling round and round, as I climb the large hill of our road. My legs burn from weeks of inactivity, but in a few more turns of pedals, I’ll be coasting down its other side.
The crest of the hill—what should have been celebratory—stops me instead. I’m at the top now, and I can see clear behind me, back to my mailbox and to our driveway. And I can see the end of the road just ahead, littered with cars—what looks like six or seven from here. A couple face my way, a couple face where I’m headed, and a couple more bisect them to face the sides of the road, instead. One even hangs nose-forward in the ditch.
It feels like a trap. A scene lay before me, like from the movies, where I’m supposed to turn and go the other way. But I can’t go the other way. It’d add another twenty miles to my trip that I don’t have time or energy for. My only option is to move forward and to face whatever’s in front of me. It’s going to happen sooner or later—a break in the utopia of silence—and it’s better to do it here and now, on my terms, when I can see it coming and can have some control over it. I’ve already learned I can defend myself—I’d done it with my dad, after all. And if I could kill him to save myself, I won’t have a problem taking down anyone or anything else that gets in my way.
I keep my brakes on as I roll down the hill, and I release them only when they start to squeak. Worried about drawing undue attention, I coast from one side to the other and make wide, loping movements down the incline to keep my approach as slow, easy, and as silent as possible, because any of those things might still be alive down there.
An
d as I get closer and closer, I can see them: bodies. There’s at least one per car, maybe more.
Closer and closer still, I stop about a hundred yards away and shield my eyes from the sun to survey what I can from the distance I’ve kept. There’re definitely heads in the closest car—two, I think. But they don’t look like the paled-out types. They don’t look like my dad did. They just look dead. Slumped forward against their seatbelts, the driver and passenger of the closest car look like a man and a woman: husband and wife, maybe. I don’t recognize the vehicle, and I certainly don’t recognize them from this distance, and at the level of decay I can tell they’re in.
I see what looks like an arm, too. It protrudes from behind a car, and it stretches across the ground. I step from my bike to hunker low and to see what it might still be connected to. Tattered clothes, cover what—
“SCRRRRRCCCCKK-CHH-CHHHKK-CHHHRRKKK!!!!!”
The unmistakable, metallic screech launches me back to my feet, and I spin, shaking, in the direction of the woods and toward the sound of snapping twigs and branches that grows louder and louder with the approaching “SCRRCHH-CRKKK-KK!!”
“SCRRCHH-CRKKK-KK!!”
“SCRRCHH-CRKKK-KK!!”
Until it leaps to the side of the road and lands on all fours, like an animal, only yards from me.
I barely have time to react, and I’ve got no time for digging in my backpack. It’s dropped, and I take quick steps back, clenching my stake tightly between two, shaking hands.
“GET BACK!” I scream as loud as I can and somehow, its earless head hears me. Still on fours and head crooked sideways, she breathes deep through holes that were once her nose. Her pale, hairless head snaps in my direction to look at me through white, cue ball eyes.
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