by William Oday
“Get in the Bronco, Private.”
Elio appeared at the back door. “You guys about to leave?”
Theresa bounded over and wrapped an arm around him. “Yep. Someone’s got to do the manly work.”
“Hey, I’m on the injured reserve.”
Theresa pinched his cheek. “Don’t make excuses! It only makes it sound worse.”
Elio pulled her close. Their arms created a bubble that sucked the air out of the rest of the world. “I’m serious. Be safe.”
The space between them shrank and Beth waited to see what might happen. She was genuinely curious and saw no harm in it.
“We’ll be fine,” Mason replied in a flat tone. “Private Theresa, Bronco.”
Elio seemed to snap back into confused reality. “Yeah, uhh, you should get going.”
“Wait up for me?” Theresa asked.
“How could I not?”
Theresa smiled and pecked his cheek.
He was a good kid. His affection was both earnest and endearing. Beth hadn’t said it explicitly yet, but he had her seal of approval. Mason was another matter altogether. He couldn’t be blamed though. He was a father, and he’d eventually come around.
He would if he knew what was good for him.
Theresa tilted her head and kissed Elio before dashing to the Bronco’s passenger door.
Elio’s mouth gaped open.
Beth’s heart warmed to see the two in their first stumbling steps toward romance. It was sweet. It was natural. She glanced at Mason. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
He didn’t share her opinion. He needed time. A lot of it by the look of the bulging veins in his neck.
“Easy, tiger,” she said as she patted his chest. “Don’t push her away just because you’re afraid to let her go. She’s growing up.”
His eyes settled back into his head. “You’re right.”
“I know,” Beth replied with a smirk. “I thought you knew that by now.”
Mason kissed her lips and then hopped up into the Bronco. “You’re right about half as much as you think you are, and twice as much as I’d like you to be.” He slammed the door shut.
Be safe.
The words choked in her throat.
Mason nodded. “We’ll be safe.”
Beth didn’t doubt Mason’s intention. She doubted what could happen when that intention encountered the chaos in the wider world.
11
As much as she might not like to admit it, watching Iridia clean the toilet gave her a certain smug pleasure. The model’s gloved hand squeaked as she scrubbed at the stain ringing the bowl. A lock of hair fell out of her ponytail and dipped into the water. She jerked it out and flung droplets on her cheek.
“Disgusting! I need scissors! Where are some scissors?”
“Calm down,” Beth said. “It’ll wash clean.”
Iridia looked up at her in horror. “Clean? It just took a deep dive in toilet water! It’s contaminated!” She held it at arm’s length like it might try to bite her.
Beth laughed. As annoying as Iridia was, she also brought much-needed humor into the household. She was a real look on the bright side kind of deal.
The impossibly skinny and aggravatingly immodest supermodel wore a pair of Beth’s shorts and a tank top. She’d taken to wearing her clothes after Beth put a stop to her wearing Theresa’s undersized garments. Unfortunately, Iridia had almost no clothes of her own. On second thought, maybe it was a good thing she didn’t have more of her own clothes on hand.
She’d worn one of Mason’s old UCLA sweatshirts one time and one time only. After enduring the gorgeous bimbo blabbering on and on about how yummy and manly it smelled, Beth forbade her wearing any more of his clothing.
It wasn’t that she felt threatened.
It wasn’t that.
Okay, it was a little of that.
Not that she thought Mason would ever do anything in a million years. It was just that Iridia was a freaking-for-real-in-life supermodel. It was hard not feeling a scooch inadequate in her objectively stunning presence.
It would’ve been impossible not to be intimidated were it not for Iridia’s knack for sounding like a selfish idiot. That tended to put her whole package into perspective.
“Ack,” Iridia said as her body spasmed. “I’m going to vomit. I’m not kidding.” She convulsed again. “It’s in my throat. It’s literally in my throat.”
“If you puke, you’ll have to clean that up, too.”
Iridia held up a soapy sponge with a grimace on her face. A curly, black hair was stuck to the frothy white bubbles. “A pube.” She gagged again. “I mean, seriously. This is why I have weekly visits with my esthetician.”
“You used to have weekly visits,” Beth corrected her.
Iridia glanced down between her legs. “Don’t remind me. The horror.”
“Wash your sponge off in the bucket,” Beth said.
Iridia grimaced. “But then it’ll be in there… somewhere… waiting to stick to my fingers the next time I rinse the sponge.”
Beth rolled her eyes and continued wiping down the sink. “Occupational hazard, sister. Get to it because we’ve got three loads of clean laundry that aren’t going to hang themselves.”
Much to Beth’s surprise, Iridia finished helping her clean the bathroom with no more than the occasional muttered comment and the infrequent theatrical gagging. “Please put everything away while I get the laundry together.”
“Joy,” Iridia said as Beth headed to the living room, which had also become their makeshift laundry room because it was the biggest place to hang a cord to dry clothes. Beth made sure to dim the battery LED lantern to the minimum as she entered the living room. The heavy curtains blocked any light from escaping, but it was easy to miss a tiny open fold or crevice.
One oversight and a spotlight would pour out advertising to the world that they were a juicy target. That there was more than a looted house of decomposing bodies to be had by those bold enough to enter.
Elio brought out a tub stacked high with wet, clean clothes from the kitchen. “I squeezed them out the best I could.”
Beth finished securing the cord across the room and joined Elio in draping sheets and clothing over the taut line. A few minutes into the task and Iridia joined them on the other side of the line. She knew the drill. Beth had walked her through it a couple of times already.
Five people in a house that all worked hard and didn’t take showers like they used to. Clothes got stinky fast. But Beth was determined not to live in a sty, even if the world was collapsing around their ears. Perhaps even more so then.
“I hate doing laundry,” Iridia said as she hung a sock that looked like it needed another soak. “Does it really happen, like, every few days?”
“Do you wear clothes everyday?” Beth asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, then you make dirty clothes everyday. Times that by five people and that turns out to be a lot to do by hand.”
“Fine, then,” Iridia said. “I’ll fix that.”
Beth laughed. “Yeah, that would be great. Fix the electricity so I can have my washer and dryer back. Do that and I’ll take bathrooms for a month.”
“In my dreams,” she replied.
“Mine too,” Beth agreed.
Elio continued to hang up things in a daze. His mind was clearly elsewhere… with her daughter.
They finished hanging everything and they all paused to admire their effort. Looking over a hanging sheet, Beth saw Iridia cradling her hand and peering closely at it like it was injured.
“Something wrong with your hand?” Beth asked as her doctor instincts kicked into gear. What medicines did she have on hand? Not much. What gear? Did she have a splint?
“Yes,” Iridia said, “my cuticles are growing in!”
Beth’s doctor mind dropped into annoyed pseudo-parent mode. “Did you know your cuticles are there to prevent fungus and bacteria from getting in?”
Iridia s
tared blankly. She looked back at her hand. “They’re hideous!”
Elio slipped under the sheet with the empty tub and then froze in his tracks. His eyes went wide as dinner plates. They were locked to Iridia, to somewhere below her eyes.
Beth dipped under the laundry line and came out face to crotch with Iridia’s naked body. Not believing her eyes, she did a double take. Yes, naked. And she did have hair growing in. “Why are you naked?”
“Laundry is too much trouble. I’d rather go naked.”
Elio didn’t move.
“That wasn’t the solution I asked for!” Beth said.
“I know,” Iridia replied. “But I’m creative like that.”
Beth grabbed her shoulders and turned her around. She marched her out of the living room and noticed Elio frozen like a statue the whole way. They arrived at her room and she guided Iridia inside.
“You are not to leave this room without clothes covering your body. Do you understand me?”
Oh.
Em.
Gee.
She was such a parent! She was being forced to parent a twenty-five-year-old supermodel! How screwed up was that? One daughter was hard enough to handle.
“So, you’re saying I can hang out in here naked, right?”
12
THERESA WEST peered out the passenger window of the Bronco as they slowly wound through a maze of abandoned vehicles, discarded furniture, decomposing bodies, and random junk that littered the street. Her dad drove with the Bronco lights off, but the last tendrils of twilight still revealed more than she wanted to see.
Her heart pounded in her eyes. At first, it was from the burning touch of Elio’s lips on hers. But over the last few blocks, it had shifted much darker. Lost was the warmth in her belly after their brief kiss. Lost was the giddy glow of his reflected desire.
She felt cold now. Deathly cold.
It was the evidence of suffering that surrounded them. How odd that some blocks could seem almost normal where others were like this one.
The faint scent of smoke reminded her of weekends at Tito and Mamaw’s house. Of how Tito would work up a roaring fire in the stone pit he’d built decades ago. Of how the flames would spit out little glowing fireflies that would shoot up and twirl away into the black sky. She always wondered if any of them made it to wherever it was they were going.
Or if every last one was sooner or later snuffed out and forgotten.
She looked down and noticed a bloated body lying face down next to the curb. A woman. More than that was hard to tell. Maybe it was a trick of the gathering darkness or maybe it was a simple defense mechanism, but none of it seemed real.
It felt fake.
Like it was a huge set in a Hollywood movie, maybe Death Before Life. She could almost see Ryan in his leading role step out of the shadows after defeating the enemy once and for all. His shirt torn off. Carved chest and abs throwing off sex appeal like nothing else in the world mattered.
But Ryan didn’t appear.
And this reality didn’t have an upbeat, sexy ending. One where she and Holly could clap and hoot like crazy, finish off the last kernels of popcorn, and then head home going over every second of a totally kickass two hours.
Because Holly was gone. Her best friend since third grade.
Buried in the ground in the Crayfords’ backyard.
Gone.
It couldn’t be real.
Her dad said something from the driver’s seat.
“Hmmm?” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t think so.”
He squeezed her knee and didn’t say a word. He saw exactly what she saw. What could he say? If this wasn’t a movie, what could he do to change what had already happened?
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to visit Holly’s house. See if her parents are alive. It’s on the way to Rite-Aid.”
He didn’t answer and so Theresa prepared herself to battle over it.
“Okay.”
That was a surprise.
“Thanks.”
She really did want to check on them. Maybe they’d survived. But she also wanted to be in Holly’s room. Just be for a minute. She longed to feel connected to her best friend again, if only through the things she’d left behind.
They cut over a block and headed up Holly’s street. It wasn’t as chaotic as the last one was. That one looked like a war zone. This one looked like the morning after a block party. They stopped in front and Theresa saw a large red triangle sloppily painted on the front door, the sign that the house had been touched by the Delta Virus.
In the first days of the outbreak, an attempt at a coordinated response had been made. The national guard had rolled through Los Angeles marking and cordoning off infected zones, trying to impose order where none would take root.
She wondered if the Pearson’s door was painted by a soldier as a warning to others to stay away, or, like their house, someone had painted it as a deterrent to looters. Like a sign in your yard of an alarm company that didn’t exist. She looked at all the nearby houses and saw the same spray-painted, red triangle on each of the doors.
It didn’t look like a trick.
Mason cut the engine and she grabbed the door handle to exit.
“Wait,” he said. “Put on your respirator mask and latex gloves. A virus isn’t supposed to be able to live for more than twenty four hours outside the body. Then again, the world has never seen a virus like this so we’re going to play it safe. Got it?”
“Okay.”
Theresa dug through her backpack and pulled out a white N95 respirator mask and secured it to her face. She pulled out blue latex gloves and stretched them over her hands.
Her dad checked the mask and tightened it a little. “Let’s observe first.”
She nodded. Made sense. If anyone or anything came after them, good luck messing with the Bronco. This old tank could probably bulldoze through a house in a pinch. They watched in silence for a few minutes. She watched how her father turned his head back and forth, constantly scanning in every direction.
“Seems quiet,” he said in a hushed tone. “This is how we’re going to do this. I want you right behind me at all times. If I stop, you stop. If I get down, you get down. If I run, you run.”
He flicked a look at the holstered Glock at her hip. “You only draw that if I am unable to defend us. Understand?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Good. Get your headlamp and backpack on.” He looked her over and blew out a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
He met her on the passenger side and they crept toward the house that held so many happy memories for her and, yet, now seemed so full of nightmares. Her dad moved with his gun drawn and pointed a few feet in front of him.
She watched him and marveled at the transformation. He was no longer the annoying father that snooped through her texts or shoved his overprotective nose in where it didn’t belong.
He was an animal in his element.
He moved like a predator on the prowl. A creature of the night welcoming the end of day and the return to the shadows. It sent chills up her spine and set the hairs on the back of her neck on end.
He appeared deadly calm, which made the hammering in her chest all the more violent. He stopped at the door and dropped to a knee. She did the same. He held his finger to his lips while listening through the door.
They stayed there for a few moments. She started to wonder if maybe he’d forgotten what they were doing and was lost in thought or something.
He tapped her shoulder and brought her attention back to the present. He nodded and tried the doorknob. With the faintest click, it opened a sliver. He paused to listen again.
Nothing.
In a burst of speed, he swept inside, flicked on his headlamp and scanned the front room with his Glock following his eyes back and forth.
Empty.
He eased the door shut behind her and brought his mouth t
o her ear. “Leave your light off until we need it.”
She nodded. She took a deep breath and immediately regretted it.
Even through the N95-rated filter, the air stank of rot and disease. The Pearson’s didn’t have a pet, so the most likely source of the stench wasn’t hard to figure out.
Mason tapped her shoulder and waved for her to follow.
As they moved deeper into the darkened house, a wild scream bubbled up in her throat and threatened to tear free.
13
In the living room, cords hung out of the wall above the fireplace where a huge flat-panel TV once hung. All of the family pictures that had lined the mantle were now on the ground, images trampled and glass shattered. The cabinets on either side were either open or missing the doors altogether. Old VHS tapes and newer DVDs were scattered all over the carpet. A large, irregular patch of charred black in the middle evidence that a fire had briefly burned.
Mason motioned her on. She took a step.
CRUNCH.
A plastic DVD case cracked apart underfoot. The sound shattered the silence like the gunshot that starts a horse race. They both froze, expecting a response and thankfully not getting one.
They moved through the kitchen and on toward the back of the house. The stench grew stronger. They encountered nothing living through the remaining rooms and finally came to the closed door that was Holly’s parent’s room.
The odor was so thick Theresa could feel it on her skin.
Mason turned to her and whispered, “Stay out here. You don’t need to see this.”
She nodded. She had no desire to add some gruesome scene of decomposition to the material that already invaded her nightly dreams.
He opened the door just enough to slip through and disappeared inside. The light from his headlamp bounced dimly back into the hallway through the opening.
Theresa’s chest started to hurt. A dull ache that squeezed tight, making it difficult to breathe. She sucked hard through the filtered mask that was beginning to feel like a plastic bag. Her fingers tingled and her head swam. Her pounding heart echoed in her ears. She leaned against the wall trying to catch her breath.