Between Life and Death

by Ann Christy

  Our first house is one of the nearest ones, so Karen and I don’t have far to run. We trample the already trampled garden. I can’t help but feel a twinge at all the food that has gone to waste. Some of it actually looks alive, but I doubt it could remain so for much longer with this many feet running around.

  Karen slides up to the windows set along our side of the house and takes a quick look inside. Then she taps the window with her poker and we both duck underneath. It’s loud outside, but the noise should be somewhat less inside the house, and if there is an in-betweener, a tap like that should cause a scream at least.

  I mouth a silent, slow count of three. Nothing.

  “Go,” I say.

  At the next two windows, we do the same thing and nothing happens, so we duck around back and see the sliding glass door leading out to the low deck has been busted out. There’s blood everywhere, dried to an almost-black color, but no sign of anything fresh or new. The carpet inside the door is turning black with mold, so clearly this door was broken during or near the time of the attack that killed the people.

  “Shit,” Karen says.

  I agree. Wide open doors and mold means any food inside might have suffered a similar fate.

  “Let’s just hope they used good containers and tight lids,” I respond.

  It only takes a few seconds to clear the house. It’s a single level house with the sort of typical open floor plan I see everywhere. The house is nice. The furniture is of good quality, though it has certainly taken a beating in the last few years. The walls are hung with nice art and the bookshelves are full. I cringe when I see the toys still scattered on the floor of the family room.

  Luckily, I don’t see the kid those toys once belonged to.

  “Bastards,” Karen says.

  Karen has the worst potty-mouth of all of us. She used to be a professor up in a fancy college somewhere, but was visiting family here in South Carolina when things went bad. I never expected anyone like her—she taught physics, of all things—to talk like that, but she does. When Tom’s group is in residence at the warehouses, it’s pretty typical to hear a string of colorful words immediately followed by a “pardon my French” from her. It drives Gloria crazy.

  Still, I understand it. I think the people who did this to these survivors are bastards too.

  “Kitchen,” I say.

  In the kitchen, we find a bonanza. Whoever these people were, they were on top of things. There are endless mason jars absolutely filled with canned, wet produce in the pantry. The bright colors alone are enough to make me stop and admire them. Of course, my second thought is that I’d like to eat it all. On the top shelves, more jars are filled with dehydrated versions of the same food. In just this pantry, there’s more than twenty backpacks could ever hold.

  “Shit,” Karen says.

  I knew that was coming.

  “No jars. They’re too heavy and easy to break. That’s what Tom said,” I say. She already knows that, hence the cursing. I’m tempted too.

  “Get me a bag then,” she says as she starts rapidly pulling the jars down from the top shelves and putting them onto the counter.

  By the time she’s got the counter filled, I’ve got two of our dwindling supply of clean trash bags out and open, ready to be filled. The lids open with little pops that tell me these people have a working vacuum sealer somewhere around here, and all the dried stuff starts flowing into my bag like a river of deliciousness. When the sweet smell of dehydrated berries hits my nose, I snatch the bag back and say, “No, let’s put those in another bag. They’ll be sticky.”

  She nods, but looks around like something might be coming for us while I open the other bag for her. Then it’s my turn to look around in paranoia while she dumps the jars of dried strawberries and who knows what else into my bag. When she’s done, we both go through the cabinets and I’m absolutely gobsmacked to find three giant, vacuum sealed bags containing some sort of dried meat.

  I hold up one bag of the dried brown strips and ask, “Meat? What kind?”

  We both know what I’m asking. Deer are almost extinct around here, so where did they get enough meat to fill up three huge bags with it? It’s gross, but in this day and age, you have to ask yourself these questions.

  Karen mutters her best curse word yet and then shakes her head. “Screw it. Bring them. We’ll figure it out later.”

  When we leave, we’ve got three completely filled trash bags and I wave at the fence where the runner is waiting and leave the bags in the yard. He takes off toward them, so I forget about him and focus on the next house.

  The music is still blaring, but so far the horn—the kind that comes from a can of air—hasn’t gone off. That means we should still be clear. Karen doesn’t hesitate before we move to the next house and I follow, my heart pounding in my chest like a hammer.

  This house is sealed up tight and tapping produces a muffled, high-pitched scream from inside. My heart sinks and Karen breathes out a whopper of a curse word. That sound is absolutely unmistakable. It’s a very young child in-betweener.

  Those are rare because most of them didn’t have nanites at the beginning, but we’ve seen a few more as time has passed. We think they get the nanites via breast milk, or maybe they’re infected in the womb. This one’s scream is fairly weak, the kind I associate with in-betweeners who are already transitioning into deader status. I’ve seen plenty of those, and they all sound the same. Frustrated.

  “This sucks,” I say. Our policy about child in-betweeners is firm, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  We tap at the other windows, but the scream doesn’t change location. The child—or one time child—is trapped where it is, probably in a bedroom or bathroom.

  “Let’s just get it over with. On me,” Karen says, hefting her poker.

  The back deck has a sliding glass door just like the other house, but this one is intact, though it is smeared on the outside so heavily that it’s hard to see through. Luckily, it’s also unlocked. Karen eases the door open just enough to get a look. When she does, the smell of feces rolls out in a rank cloud. Both of us rear back from it. There’s nothing worse than the smell of a latrine pit in summer except an enclosed latrine in summer.

  “That’s not old,” Karen says, her face going tight and her grip hard on the poker.

  I agree with her. Someone is going to the bathroom inside this space or has been very recently. While it’s possible that it’s the child in-betweener, I can’t imagine it having enough to eat unless the place it’s trapped in happens to be the pantry and there happens to be a whole lot of fresh meat inside it.

  Or a person that the in-betweener has managed to feast on. I don’t know which possibility is worse.

  “How do you want me?” I ask. I’ve only cleared spaces with Karen a couple of times. With my people, I know exactly what to do, but I’m not yet as comfortable with Tom’s group.

  “Back to back, nice and easy,” she says, easing the sliding door open further. It doesn’t squeal or make more than a small shushing noise, for which I’m grateful. The sound of the in-betweener child fades as our disturbance fades from its mind.

  Inside the combined kitchen and dining area, I’m taken aback. It’s hot and stinky, yes, but otherwise it’s in almost perfect condition. It’s like a microcosm of human existence before it became a nightmare. This place was attacked fairly recently, so the dust and rot hasn’t had a chance to set in, and the closed doors and windows helped to preserve it even more.

  A neatly folded stack of kitchen towels sits on the table, an open math workbook next to it with a few scattered pencils and crayons around it. There’s a kiddie cup, the kind with princesses in bright colors dancing around the sides, sitting close to the book. Just seeing it makes my chest squeeze painfully.

  There’s more too. A dish drainer full of clean dishes, a knitting project in a basket sitting in one of the chairs, pictures drawn by a small child attached to a corkboard on the wall. Everywhere I look, ther
e are signs of normal life in our decidedly un-normal world. These people were doing okay behind their fences. And then someone—these supposed military—came and killed them and ruined it all.

  It pisses me off.

  Karen motions for us to move through the wide opening into the living area and we go, back to back and stepping lightly. The floors are tile over concrete, so at least there’s no creaking. The living room shows me more of the same regular—gloriously regular—family life. There’s no evidence of a roaming in-betweener here. They make a mess and there are no messes. That’s good, because it means that wherever that child in-betweener is, it is surely trapped.

  As we step carefully into the open foyer to the house, the latrine smell grows stronger and I can tell it’s coming from upstairs. It’s sinking down the stairwell like a funky fog now that we’ve opened a door and disturbed the air. We wait there, listening, and I hear the distinct sound of small pounding feet.

  “There,” I breathe and Karen nods that she heard it as well.

  After another minute of listening, I hear the short, sharp creak of a door closing. It’s possibly my imagination, but it’s the kind of creak that makes me think of someone trying to close a door quietly and slowly, which just makes the creak worse.

  Karen looks over her shoulder at me, her expression alarmed, and whispers, “That ain’t a revived. They don’t pull doors closed.”

  “A survivor?” I ask as quietly as I can.

  “Or a raider. Or one of the ones who did this in the first place.”

  I shake my head at that. Survivors were the one thing we didn’t plan for. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. It hasn’t been that long, but it’s been long enough that anyone left here should have starved or died of thirst. Then again, I saw the catchment barrels all around the house for water runoff. And there’s a platform out back with water barrels on it. The hose snaking inside the kitchen window through a hole in a board would have let a survivor get water from those barrels.

  “We should go back, get some of the others,” I whisper, not at all comfortable with the idea of getting shot by a survivor. I know how this goes. I accidentally shot Sam when he came back into the apartment in the dark, so I know it can and does happen.

  Karen utters another expletive, but then says, “No, we got this.”

  Whatever silence we’ve been able to maintain is destroyed as we start climbing the steps. They creak like crazy. Karen curses again, then says, “Let’s just go fast.”

  At the top, we put our backs to the windows and face the short hall with its four closed doors. Just beside us is another closed door and based on our position, that’s got to be the room above the garage. No matter which direction we choose, we’ll be putting our backs to a door that could open and get us killed.

  The child in-betweener starts up again at our noise. Karen lifts one finger from her grip on the poker and points toward a door down the short hallway and to our left. I nod in response, because I can see what she’s seeing too. The shadows of moving feet match the patterns of the weak screams under one of the doors. I can tell it’s a little kid, maybe a toddler. And I can tell it’s pretty far gone as well from the stumbling pace and querulous wails.

  “There’s someone here other than that revived. I can feel it,” Karen whispers.

  “Me too,” I whisper back and repress a shiver.

  Those mental cat whiskers that have stretched as people became fewer in number are working overtime now. I can just tell there is someone nearby, taking up space and breathing. And whoever it is, they’re probably terrified.

  “Karen, don’t freak out,” I whisper.

  When she wrinkles her brow in question at me, I raise my voice and say, “We’re not here to hurt you. “We’re here to find out what happened. It’s safe. We’ll help you.”

  I can’t say more because Karen is smacking at me like I just spit in her breakfast. She finally gets a good grip on my face, covering my mouth and pressing my jaws closed.

  “Are you stupid? You’re going to get us shot!” she hisses, pushing me back toward the stairs using her tight grip on my lower face as leverage.

  I have to take one hand off my poker to try and pry her hand off and eventually, she snatches it back, her expression angry and her eyes going everywhere at once.

  “Karen, whoever it is has been hiding this whole time and hasn’t tried to make a break for it. I doubt they have weapons. It could be another kid.”

  That stops her in her tracks and she looks back down the hallway again, where the in-betweener child’s shadow feet are bouncing along the door in response to my noise. The keening has grown in volume, desperate and hungry, but even with all that noise, the sound of that same squealing door comes through.

  We both hear it and our heads swivel toward the closed door to the room over the garage. I see a faint hint of shadow under the door, as if someone were approaching from the side, fearful of what might be on the other side of the door.

  Then a small voice, a girl’s voice, makes it way to my ears. Her words are spoken in a voice that’s tremulous and terrified, but definitely human. “You’re really not going to hurt me?”

  Karen lets our her breath in a whoosh and when I look at her, there are tears already filling up her eyes. I know Karen lost her family in all of this, but she’s been rock solid since I’ve known her.

  While Karen sucks in another shaky breath, I say, “We’re not here to hurt you. But we can maybe help you get out. If you can look out a window, you might see our friends. See how they made all the sick people go to the other side of your neighborhood?”

  There’s a pause, then, “Is that why they’re playing that loud music?”

  “That’s right!” I say, then move up closer to the door so that I can speak more quietly. “But we do need to hurry so we can get you safe. Can you open the door?”

  I don’t want to push her or scare her further by opening up her door. This is her place, her little area of safety, and it has to be her choice. Well, her choice as long as she makes the choice to open the door and does it in a hurry. And, she sounds weak, maybe sick. If she’s in bad shape, depending on how big she is, it might take some effort to get her to the fence and then over it. So we have lots of reasons to hurry.

  Karen looks out the window over the stairs, but it only shows the back side of the property and the fences beyond. It’s not in a position to let us open it and wave at those near the ladder, or even see what’s going on where they’ve got the music blaring. When she turns back from the window, she’s almost back to her same, stoic self. She mouths the word, “Hurry!”

  “Listen, my name is Veronica and the other person is Karen. We don’t have much time, so please, open the door so we can bring you someplace safe.”

  There’s a moment of silence, then I hear her brush against the door on the other side. Her shadow shows under the door and there’s just an inch between her and I.

  She says, “There’s no place safe.”

  It’s such a sad thing to say for someone as young as she sounds.

  I put my hand against the door, palm flat, and lean close. “Maybe not, but it’s much safer than here. And there are other children there. My boy, Jon and another little girl named Maribelle. She’s very bossy, but she’s super fun to play with. What’s your name?”

  Maybe it was those words that did it, because the door cracks open and I’m surprised to see one big eye on a very short, little girl in the crack. She says, “Laura. How old are they? Would they like me?”

  She can’t be much older than Maribelle, certainly no more than eight. “I think they will like you very much,” I say, smiling at the frightened girl. I can see the tracks of tears through the dirt on her face and the smell that comes out of the door is almost overwhelming. This child needs care and soon.

  I step back and hold out my hand just like I would for a child to take while crossing a busy street. “Want to come and meet them?”

  Just like that, she open
s the door and slips out to tuck her hand into mine. She’s absolutely filthy. Her hair is a tangled mess that looks more like a bird nest, her face is nearly gray with dirt, and she smells worse than any human I’ve encountered before. She’s thin, but not overly so and she doesn’t look like she’s sick—though it’s hard to tell through the dirt—so despite her age, she’s clearly been able to take care of her basic food and water needs, while remaining hidden inside an enclave full of in-betweeners.

  As I look her over, letting her get a look at me, I glance into the room where she was. The stench is overpowering, but what I see is a floor half covered with empty glass jars, a quart jar still half-filled with home-canned tomatoes resting near a little nest in the corner. I’m guessing there won’t be much left in the pantry, not that we have time to look anyway now.

  She looks down the hall at the door with the tiny foot shadows and asks, “What about my brother?”

  I look at Karen and she at me. How do we explain this?

  “Do you understand what’s wrong with him, Laura?” I ask her.

  She nods, looking down, but doesn’t say anything.

  Karen points toward the stairs with her chin, urging me to take her down, and says, “I’ll do it.” Her face is set like she’s shutting down all her emotions and humanity. This is going to be hard.

  Laura must have been creeping around the house this whole time, and she’s very quiet. She steps only on the edges of the steps and makes not a single creak as she descends. I, on the other hand, make a good many and that causes her to start in alarm more than once.

  We can’t leave the house yet, not without Karen, but I take her to the kitchen, which is as far as I can get from the room upstairs. When noises start upstairs, Laura hugs me around the waist, burying her head in my stomach, and cries hard in the way only a little girl can. I wrap my arm around her head to cover her ears, but I don’t think it works.