by TW Brown
“How?” he managed as he stared down into her milky white eyes that were riddled with the black tracers just like the woman from the CDC had warned against.
He couldn’t understand how Missus Bentley could’ve contracted this terrible sickness. She never left her home—people on the block and her family even took care of her grocery shopping—and other than what appeared to be an irritated-looking scratch that likely came from one of her nine cats, she did not show any signs of having been bitten.
Her head lolled around for a moment until her eyes locked onto him. As soon as they did she opened her mouth and let loose with a low moan that sounded all the more frightening coming from her tiny body. Her teeth snapped together with a loud click. Mike pushed away and came to his knees, his eyes darting to where Ashley lay curled up on the ground still wailing…and bleeding. He drew the knife that he’d started wearing on his belt and drove the point of it into Missus Bentley’s right eye. There was a soft popping sound when he punctured the eyeball, and that, coupled with the horrible smell was enough to cause Mike to lunge to the side and vomit. He heaved twice more before he could get his body to obey his brain’s commands.
Scrambling up, he crab-walked the short distance between them and scooped his daughter into his arms. Her wail had ebbed to hitching sobs, but she showed no recognition that he’d picked her up. Her eyes seemed to be looking past him with no real focus.
Mike blinked. The hint of black in the capillaries of her eyes appeared to be darkening as he watched. He had to get her inside and stop the bleeding first. He would worry about everything else later. Starting for the steps, Mike skidded to a halt when he saw Nettie sprawled on the front porch. She must’ve fainted when she saw what was happening to their little girl.
Casting a quick glance around, the corpse of Missus Bentley seemed to be the only one on the street besides he and his family. Of course, most everybody else had already evacuated to one of the area FEMA shelters. Not Mike Pinkham and his family, though. Nettie had insisted that they wait until Missus Bentley’s nephew arrived like he’d said when he called yesterday morning. He was supposedly driving out from Idaho and was due to arrive any time now. That was how Ashley had managed to slip from the house; he and Nettie had been making a list of what they were going to take with them to the shelter once Missus Bentley was safe in her nephew’s care.
Mike glanced down at Nettie and decided that his wife would have to wait until he got Ashley inside and laid her on the couch. It would only be a moment and then he would come out and fetch her.
Sprinting up the steps and into his house, he could hear the televised EBS loop playing the same warning that had been running the past two days. He was beginning to doubt the validity of the idea of relocating to one of those FEMA centers. After all, shouldn’t there at least be some sort of update after almost forty-eight hours?
Once Ashley was laid on the couch, Mike looked out the living room window. He could see Nettie still sprawled on the front porch where she’d fainted. He could also see that the street remained empty of any sort of movement. That confirmed, at least in his mind, that they were the last living souls on the street; either that, or the ones remaining were so callous that they could ignore the horrific screams of a child.
A flush of shame washed over him for the briefest instant as he recalled sitting huddled in the bedroom with his wife and daughter just last night when they heard a very similar scream from close by.
“Somebody’s in trouble, Mike,” Nettie had whispered.
“Probably too late to do anything about it now,” he’d said, half-managing to believe his own words. He’d had no idea if they were a lie or the truth, but since it hadn’t been one of his family members, he hadn’t seen it as his problem.
With no signs of activity outside, he decided to rush into the bathroom on the main floor and grab the box they’d just packed full of first-aid supplies. Nettie was fine for the moment; his top priority was to stop Ashley’s bleeding.
He worked feverishly, glancing out the window repeatedly as he did his best to at least staunch the flow of blood. As soon as he was satisfied that he could leave Ashley’s side, he hustled outside and scooped up Nettie. She let out a soft moan and whimper that almost caused him to drop her.
As soon as he got her inside, he laid her out on the loveseat. Ashley had stopped making any sounds except for a rapid panting and Mike rushed back to her side.
Her eyes had shut allowing him a strange flash of relief at not having to see her tracer-filled gaze staring up blankly at the ceiling. Already, the dressings that he’d put in place were soaking through. Seeing the blood trickling down the cushions of the sofa triggered a hiss of frustration that morphed into a wail of despair.
The hospitals had been declared unsafe days ago. There was no sort of public service, and even if there might be, the phones had not worked for a long time. In a moment of coldness, he’d once had the thought that, after enough people died, the phone lines would free up. That had not proved to be the case and he was certain the problem was likely more of a technological issue than it was one of the circuits being overloaded.
As he knelt beside his little girl, holding her hand, he felt her start to twitch. That lasted only a few seconds before it grew to a convulsive fit. Instinctively, he reached for her mouth. Something flashed in his brain about not letting her swallow her tongue. However, the very next thought was that she might bite his fingers off if he did so and he instead tried to hold her down by the shoulders as he whispered her name over and over.
At last, her thrashing ceased. His little girl’s eyes flew open as she gasped once, went momentarily rigid…and then seemed to melt in his grasp.
In that instant, Mike Pinkham went completely numb. It was as if his body had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. He sat, dumbfounded and totally at a loss as to what he could or should do.
“Ashley?” a groggy voice said from over his shoulder, causing him to jump.
He turned to see Nettie standing just a few feet away. She was looking past him, her eyes probably not even registering his presence as they quickly shed their sleepy appearance, growing wider every second.
At last, her eyes shifted to him. “Mike? Is she going to be okay?”
He could tell by her expression that she already knew the truth, she simply did not want to accept it. She was looking at him and expecting him to say that Ashley would be fine. He could not bring himself to say the words and instead simply dropped his head, slid to the floor beside the couch, his chin coming to rest on his chest, his eyes closing out the world for a moment.
He knew there were things that had to be done, but his mind absolutely refused to put itself in order. He was at a loss, his grief so overwhelming that he lacked the ability to latch on to one single thought. He was still trying to focus when a shriek of pain snapped him back to his senses.
It was Nettie. While he’d been adrift in his misery, she’d moved over and sat beside their daughter and apparently put her arm around the lifeless body. Ashley had clamped her mouth down onto her mother’s forearm and was tugging at it, worrying it like a dog with its favorite chew toy as she sought to tear away a chunk of meat.
At last, the flesh gave and Ashley came away with her prize. Blood from Nettie’s wound left a crimson trail across Ashley’s face, and as Nettie scrambled to get away, her left arm caught for a moment in their daughter’s frizzy auburn hair, turning it an unnaturally dark shade of red.
Mike yanked Nettie away from their daughter. His goal had been merely to separate the pair in hopes of saving his wife from being savaged by Ashley; underestimating the combination of his strength, his wife’s petite size, and the rush of adrenaline coursing through him, he ended up throwing Nettie into the wall across the room where she hit hard and slumped to the floor unconscious.
A hair-raising mewl came from his little Ashley and he returned his focus to his daughter…or what she had become. Between all the blood, the way her skin was already start
ing to pale even more than normal—which was making her many freckles look all that much more dark and pronounced—and her milky eyes seeming to writhe with the black tracers, there was nothing in this creature that resembled his baby girl. And yet…he could not look at it and not see her.
“Come with me, Princess,” Mike cooed as he backed away from the tiny horror.
Unsteady step by unsteady step, it followed. Its steps were awkward, and its head would cock to one side and then the other in jerks and fits. When he felt the knob of the garage door at his back, he reached behind himself and gripped it, turning it without allowing his eyes to drift from the Ashley-zombie.
He backed into the bay of the garage and then made a wide circle, leading her away from the door. As he backed into the tool bench, his eyes spied a coil of hemp rope. He knew in his brain what his daughter had become, but he was not ready to do what those people on television and the radio said needed to be done. It was one thing to say such things, but when you were faced with a loved one—especially your own child—it was another thing entirely.
“This is how it is getting so bad,” he whispered, finally understanding what had puzzled him for several days.
As soon as he brought the coil of rough rope around and where Ashley could see it, she changed. Up to that point, she had followed, but made no hint at attacking. That was what was making this even more difficult. Now she was like Missus Bentley as she came at him with teeth gnashing and hands reaching, swiping at the empty air between them.
He walked backwards in a circle around his car as he fashioned a loop at the end of the rope. As he did, the war between his head and his heart continued to rage. With the loop ready, he stopped retreating and allowed Ashley to advance. He timed his lunge and knocked her back against his black Ford Mustang GT. It was almost too easy to keep her subdued while he lashed her wrists together and, not knowing what else to do, he yanked open the car door, picked Ashley up, and dumped her inside.
He stepped back and saw her writhing on the seat as she tried to right herself. Unable to watch any longer, in addition to needing to get back to Nettie and check on her condition, Mike exited the garage with a sick feeling churning in his stomach. It had nothing to do with the stench that was still in his nostrils that wafted from his daughter—the same stink he’d encountered with Missus Bentley.
He entered the living room and felt his heart leap into his throat. He’d left the living room door wide open this entire time. It was already a certainty that the undead were drawn by noise, and his house had been a steady source these past several minutes. He rushed over and shut it, then returned to Nettie.
Kneeling beside her, he brushed her red hair from her eyes. Looking her up and down, she had the one nasty bite on her arm, but her chest was still rising and falling with her slow, deliberate breathing. Scooping her into his arms, he carried her up the stairs to their bedroom. As soon as he reached the second floor, his eyes could not help but rest on the open door to his little Ashley’s room. Adorned with her beloved Disney princesses—her favorite was Ariel from The Little Mermaid—he carried Nettie to their room and laid her on the bed.
Rushing into the bathroom that sat at the top of the stairs, he grabbed the towels from the rack and knelt to rummage through the bottom drawer where he was pretty certain that a bottle of hydrogen peroxide was stashed. Hurrying back, he dumped generous amounts of the liquid on a hand towel and then went to work trying to clean the wound.
At first it was like trying to build a sandcastle as the tide came in. He would clean away the blood only to have more seep up like crimson crude. By the time he had a suitable bandage made from a pillow case he’d cut into strips, the room looked like a crime scene.
He got up, looked around and told himself that he would clean up the mess later. He just needed to catch his breath for a minute and figure out what to do next. Obviously they would not be leaving for a FEMA center any time soon.
He had just slid down the wall and planted himself on the floor when Nettie stirred. It started as a whimper and became jumbled with her attempts to speak.
“Ash…no, baby…MIKE!” She’d screamed his name and then sat bolt upright.
Her eyes flew open and Mike Pinkham felt his stomach and heart tighten. The eyes staring back at him were laced with the darkness of Nettie’s looming fate.
“Mike?” she cried.
“Right here,” he said almost void of any emotion.
Rising to his feet with a grunt, he approached his wife and knelt beside the bed. He took Nettie’s hands in his and made himself stare up into her eyes even though they were not really the ones he remembered from the night they shared that first kiss at her parents’ doorstep.
Nettie Pinkham was not a stupid woman. She knew what was going on in the world around them, and despite her reluctance to accept it, she knew the fate of their daughter. And now, as Mike stared up at her, she knew her own as well.
“Please don’t let me become one of them,” she whispered, her hands coming free from his and caressing his cheek. She ignored his flinch.
For the next several minutes, there was a lot of crying, arguing…and denial. In the end, when Nettie pressed the small .22 caliber pistol that was kept in a lock box on the top shelf in their closet into his hand, Mike sobbed his agreement to honor her wishes.
The couple sat, foreheads pressed together until darkness began to devour the room with the arrival of the evening. Shortly after dark, Nettie began to slip in and out of consciousness. Mike continued to sit by her side and wait. When she shuddered twice and grew still, he stood, pressed the barrel of the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger. The pop was almost entirely silenced, but he felt it slam into his bones like a hammer.
In his grief, he tossed the pistol away, not noticing as it ricocheted off the wall and slid under the bed. He could feel the desire to cry raging within him like a storm, but the tears refused to come.
There was nothing keeping him from escaping to a FEMA center now. But there was also no longer any reason to go. His will to continue had evaporated.
Like one of the walking dead shambling past his home, he scooped Nettie into his arms and carried her downstairs. He knew where she belonged, and this would be his final act.
When he reached the garage, he paused. He’d never noticed how dark the world seemed, nor how bright the moon’s light could truly be.
He shifted Nettie’s body in his arms and opened the door to the garage. The inky blackness was shoved into the corners by the silver square of moonlight burning with blue coldness in a near perfect rectangle on a section of concrete pad of the garage floor.
He took two steps and faltered. Ashley’s face stared back at him from the driver’s side window. There was enough shadow that she could just be his little girl for that moment. He finally felt the dam holding his tears shatter when her tiny bound hands slapped at the glass as if she was beckoning for him to let her out.
Mike had to fight for each step that brought him closer to the car. Eventually he found himself on the passenger’s side. He took a deep breath, vowing to hold it as long as possible, before opening the door. He was reaching the point where he would have no choice but to take a breath when he realized that he’d been standing rooted to the spot. The zombie version of Ashley had made no move towards him the entire time. In fact, she almost appeared to be leaning away like she was the one afraid of him.
He knelt and placed Nettie in the passenger seat. As soon as he moved back, Ashley-zombie leaned forward, her hands seeming to try and pat her mother. He had no idea what was going on, but Mike knew two things for certain in that moment. He could not end Ashley as he had Nettie, and he would not leave her hands bound.
Reaching down to his belt, he drew his knife. As soon as he did, he caught a flash out of the corner of his eyes and looked up just in time to see the zombie side of his daughter re-surface. She was coming at him like she had before. He pushed her back easily enough and then reached in and pushed her
against the door just long enough to cut the rope tied around her wrists.
Slamming the door shut, he waited for what felt like forever, but Ashley showed no sign of reverting to that version that had greeted his arrival just moments earlier. At last, he left the garage and trudged back up the stairs.
He walked into the bedroom, his senses dulled to the sights and smells that were the final moments of his Nettie’s life. Opening the closet again, this time he pulled out the case that was stored behind the boxes of dress shoes and produced the shotgun that had been a gift from his late father.
Mike Pinkham exited the bedroom, absently shutting Nettie’s bedroom door out of habit as he trudged to the bathroom. Shutting the door behind him, he dumped the box of shells onto the counter and plucked one from the little bunch of red cylinders. Climbing into the tub, he slid down the wall, opened his mouth to accept the barrel, and pulled the trigger.