“I think he’s it,” Kyle says, and points back to Candidate A. “Think he’s a screamer, or do you think he’ll go quietly?”
We both assess Candidate A playing with another boy that looks similar to him. I seriously hope this other boy, Candidate E, isn’t here with Candidate A. It’s been a long time since we’ve tried to take two at once, and years of practice has demonstrated it’s easier to focus our energy on one, not two. Patience is a virtue, and taking too many at once not only raises suspicion, but makes things difficult when we get them home. One screaming kid is easier to deal with than two.
“I have a gag and a blanket in the bag if he doesn’t,” I say, and sit cross-legged on the ground while Kyle goes back to distracting our prey with cookies, juice, and the soccer ball.
After an hour, the other kids have started to disburse, like they always do when Kyle singles out one kid to give attention to. I’m not sure how he does it, how he separates these “fun” times with them, to the ultimate goal. But I’m thankful that he does. If he wasn’t here to help me, I’d never be able to fulfill the promise I made to my mother.
“Ready to sit for a little while?” Kyle asks Candidate A when he comes over to get more juice.
“Yeah, I’m so tired.” Candidate A yawns, and it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day. It’s almost time to go. He’s worn down. We are by ourselves with very few parents and kids still running around. Most are at tables, enjoying their lunches, completely unaware of what is about to happen.
“Here,” I say, handing him the thermos with an extra special mixture of Kool-Aid and a concoction that Dad specially formulized for just this purpose. “This is something special my dad used to make me. It gives you strength.”
“Reeeally?” Candidate A says with wide eyes and wraps his tiny hands around the plastic thermos to take a large drink. Just a little more, and he’ll be putty in our hands.
Three more gulps and A’s eyes are drooping. One more, and his head is nodding. Another half sip, and he’s completely slumped over onto Kyle’s shoulder. We sit another few minutes to make sure he is really out.
“Okay, he’s in,” Kyle says after he’s buckled A into the benchseat of the mini-van. It seems almost counter-productive considering what his purpose is.
We drive in silence, like we always do, all the way back through the seemingly unassuming streets of suburbia. We’ve moved six times in the past year, and after this kidnapping, we will have to move again. After the first few times, we learned not to stay in one area more than three kids. People start to look at us funny when we are new in town and don’t go to work or school …especially when news reports start popping up of missing children in the neighborhood.
“Got the blanket?” Kyle asks, and starts pushing A down on the seat so we can cover him and slip unnoticed into the house. I pull the heavy gray blanket from the bag, and he wraps up our new houseguest like a tasty burrito.
This time has gone well, too well, and my nervousness is starting to show with tremors vibrating my hands as I unlock the front door. The shanty of a house we are staying in has no furniture and won’t have any either. We’ve given up on ever having anything of value after the first few times we had to flee.
Kyle goes to the small fridge and pulls out one of the remaining vials of antidote. After our next move, I will start collecting the supplies to make a new batch based on Dad’s formula. Unfortunately, it’s not potent enough to completely undo the sickness, but, it is enough to keep Kyle and me from becoming victims.
“Sorry,” Kyle says as he withdraws the needle from my leg. The whole time I was growing up, I was deathly afraid of needles…now, I welcome them. They are saving my life and making this existence possible; even though it’s a crappy existence, I’m still alive, and we were able to escape the genocide of Southern California. I’ll take a needle poke over death, any day.
“Ready?” I ask with shaky voice and hand. Taking aim, I pull back and flick my wrist forward to puncture Kyle’s skin. It is miserable to watch him just coping with everything the way he does, blissfully ignorant and supporting me in whatever crazy idea I get. But Kyle is my rock, and the only person I can depend on now that my family is gone, and his is, too…thanks to mine.
“Okay, let’s do this.” Kyle picks up Candidate A and heads down the hallway to the reinforced garage door. The walls are covered in insulation and extra blankets to make sure no one knows what we are doing in there. Just for good measure, we always blare loud death metal music. Sick, I know.
I pull out the keys to undo the chains that are holding the first section of sheet-metal against the door. Three more locks and the next door opens. One more, and we are to the regular wooden door the house came equipped with. We’ve done everything we can to make sure what happened in Upland doesn’t happen here in Texas. I’m sure the local authorities wouldn’t be so easy on us. Then again, they weren’t really easy on us in California when they figured out what Mom was doing with Dad’s special drink for my brother’s classmates.
“Got the lights?” Kyle asks, and Candidate A starts to stir with his body draped over Kyle’s shoulder. “We need to hurry.”
“Yeah.” I flick the modified light switch on the wall, illuminating the inside of the garage with million watt candle power lights to temporarily blind the waiting monster on the other side of the door.
“1…2…3…” I count quickly and throw open the door with another powerful light in my hand, ready to blind him or hit him back if he has gotten anywhere near the door.
My brother, or what’s left of him, is huddled with a chain fastened around his ankle in the corner next to the garage wall, just so he is out of reach from the door. His gaunt appearance haunts my dreams, and it never gets any better. For five years I’ve heard his moans, his weeps, but not a single word from his decrepit, bloody lips. He’s shaking today, a sign that we’ve waited too long to let him feed. The half-eaten, rotting corpse of Candidate A from two weeks ago is laying in a heap in the corner. All of Aiden’s favorite parts are gone, the ears, stomach, and thighs are always the first to go. And once he’s gotten the pieces he wants, he no longer wants the bodies. Although this time he thought it would be fun to use the leg bones as modified drum sticks. He kept us up most of the night playing a fiendish melody of blood, muscle, and bone thumping against the garage wall. I guess that it was either to annoy us, or show his appreciation for the fine meal. Either way, I wanted to kill him…but he’s already dead—so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You can only really die once, right?
Aiden shifts onto his heels, like a kid getting ready to enter a candy store, anxiously awaiting what he knows is coming. Kyle gets within range to toss the new Candidate to where Aiden can reach it, and Aiden looks like he is ready to pounce. He is starving this time. He reaches for Candidate A before Kyle can fully pull himself back.
Even if Kyle made contact with Aiden, he wouldn’t come down with the illness thanks to the shots that we take daily, but neither of us is willing to take that chance. We know that Aiden can turn on us at any moment like he did to my mother, and all she was doing was trying to keep him alive like I am. But his hunger for human flesh grows, day by day, even though his body doesn’t. In another month, he would’ve been eleven years old. Instead, he is trapped in time, the living among the undead. And I am trapped with him—the keeper of the key and the flesh—upholding the promise I made to my mother to keep him alive until a cure can be found. But after the outbreak, destruction seemed to be the only answer, and the one everyone focused on whole-heartedly.
Now, the only chance at a cure relies on me and the research journals my father left unfinished before he was killed. Everyday, I spend reading and researching the journals. We are getting closer to the cure, but further away, too, as Aiden’s body deteriorates along with my will to continue this chaotic life. I know I made a promise to my mother, one she forced me to make while she lay dying on our kitchen floor, but I don’t know how much longer we can
keep him a secret from the rest of the world or how many more children we can steal to satisfy his hunger. At first, one a month was enough, but with the recent Candidate A, this makes three kids in a month and a half, and it’s not like we can collect a few and freeze them for later.
I am the zookeeper to the undead, and next week we will make preparations to move our ghoulish family to yet another unassuming neighborhood. In another two weeks, I’ll be back on the prowl for a few good Candidates. It’s a never ending cycle; one that will continue until the cure is found and what is left of my family, is saved. I refuse to give up on Aiden, no matter how many children we watch him eat, he’s still my little brother.
Rebecca Snow got married in a cemetery. To her knowledge, there were no zombies in attendance. She lives in Virginia with her husband and an inheritance of geriatricats. Zombies have intrigued her since she saw the original Dawn of the Dead on video when she was 11 years old. She still devises plans to outwit the zombies in the movie to make sustainable mall living a viable option.
"Take another little piece of my heart now, baby." Janis Joplin.
If only all could be so selfless. Unfortunately, all are not.
Our lovers remain with us long after they no longer hold the title. Open yourself to another, and an exchange is made, pieces of ourselves that can not be replenished. So casual we regard these intangibles, do we even value them at all? Too often, the answer is no. Too often, we are ignorant of so much as their existence, much less the pain we inflict upon their donors. Too often, we award each other only heartbreak.
But, surely, this does not involve you. You've never betrayed a trust, indulged selfishness, declined another's most darling gift? No; not you.
Good thing. Sometimes those heartbreaks come home to roost.
Pieces
By Rebecca Snow
My heart was broken. It had been breaking for twenty years, but had shattered into an unmendable mess when Doug strolled into our kitchen on the first day of spring and told me he wanted a divorce. He poured out all the typical excuses with a cup of coffee. It wasn’t me; it was him. He loved me; he just wasn’t in love with me. He’d thought long and hard, but he just wasn’t happy.
“Do you think counseling would help?” I asked in spite of knowing that I wasn’t as perky or as nimble as the nurses.
He looked down at his tasseled loafers, going so far as to kick an invisible piece of dirt. Peeking from underneath his boyish bangs, he looked like a seven-year-old trying to get out of cleaning his room.
“No, Nell,” he said. “I don’t think that will help.”
I went back to wiping the counter, turning the towel, and folding the cloth as I tried to clean up the mess he’d made of our life. He slurped his coffee.
“Nell, look at me.”
I stopped shoving the terry cloth back and forth. I inhaled…exhaled…and began scrubbing the grout line next to the sink.
“Nell. This is why I’m leaving,” he said in a last-ditch effort to get my attention. “You pay more attention to the Scrubbing Bubbles than you do to me.”
That was a lie. I paid too much attention to him. I was always washing the stench of strange perfumes from his sweaters, bleaching unknown stains from his underwear, and scrubbing the unfamiliar lipstick shades from his collars. Just because I didn’t say anything didn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention.
He tossed his half-empty mug into the sink. The handle broke and disappeared into the disposal. He picked up the duffle bag he’d dropped next to the trashcan and placed his free hand on the doorknob.
“Don’t worry, you can have your precious house,” he said. “I don’t want to spend another second here with you. I’ll pick up my car later.”
When he slammed the door, the knives flew from the magnetic knife rack. Cutlery slid over the counter and the kitchen floor. The butcher knife twirled on the cold ceramic tiles. I watched the blade slow until it stopped; the tip glinted in a patch of sun and pointed at my feet. Picking it up, I knew not to cut across my wrist. Lengthwise was the only way.
***
I opened my eyes. From the predawn light creeping through the kitchen window, I could make out a large, dark puddle pooled around me on the floor. I sat up and leaned my back against the cabinets. It took a few moments to remember where I was. Running my fingers through my hair, I dropped my hand when a flap of skin hit my face. I squinted in the dim light trying to see my wrist. Then I remembered why I was on the floor. The memory didn’t come rushing back; it trickled in like a leaky faucet filling a swimming pool.
I reached up, gripped the side of the counter, and pulled with all my strength. I was surprised to find that I wasn’t weak after losing so much blood. Peering through the kitchen window, I saw pink ribbons of clouds streaking the sky. It was a new day. I would have sighed if I’d been breathing.
A picture frame sat on the mantle in the living room. I could see it through the doorway. Taking a step forward, my legs felt as though I had just gotten off a boat after a two-week cruise. I took the shortest route through the puddle on the floor. My bloody, stumbling footprints followed me onto the tan carpet.
When I reached the porcelain frame, I thumbed the intricate, raised grape pattern. Two sparkling faces smiled at me through the glass. I was almost certain I was the one in the white dress. Turning the frame over, I fumbled with the latches as I tried to release the photo. The picture tumbled from my hands. The glass shattered as the frame collided with the brick hearth.
All the broken pieces glittered in the morning light. As I stood there, I thought of my heart. My chest didn’t ache like I remembered when I thought of previous broken hearts. I guessed it was because there weren’t any pieces left to break. I picked up the frame and peeled the photo out from underneath the jagged pane, not noticing the slivers of glass that stuck in my fingers.
Trudging up the stairs, I flopped on the floor next to my bed. I flailed my arm until it collided with a sharp corner. I grabbed the corner and dragged a box with a white swirl and red background into the light. Pulling off the lid, I saw three tabs. Each partition was filled with pictures. I would have to add a fourth tab for Doug.
Armed with the bloody butcher knife and a picture from each section of my shoebox, I searched for my office. I knew it had been behind one of the doors on the first floor. Grabbing the knob at the end of the hall, my fingers locked. I twisted my body to make the knob turn enough to disengage the latch. When I was able to pry my cramped fingers from the handle, the door swung open. My computer sat dormant on the desk. I stared at it for a moment before remembering I had to press a button.
The machine powered up, and I searched the names scrawled on the backs of the pictures. I had to use my shoulders and elbows to move my locked fingers around the keyboard. It would have taken even longer if typing hadn’t been something I could do in my sleep. I had learned to type in high school, correct fingers on correct keys. I seemed to remember thinking of it as a lost art form. Finding the first name, I gripped a pencil between my palms and scribbled an address onto the back of the corresponding photo. I thought my sight was failing me as I wrote down the final address until I realized it was past my usual dinnertime. A vague thought flitted through my brain that Doug should be home soon before I remembered that he was with his harlot.
The phone on the desk next to me rang. I would have jumped if my reaction time hadn’t been hampered. As it was, I flung my arm sideways to pick up the receiver and missed, sending the handset flying across the room. Screeching sounds came from where it lay on the floor.
I fell to my knees when I tried to stand. I groaned and crawled toward the phone as I tried to speak.
“I’m coming,” I tried to say. I succeeded in grunting some incomprehensible syllables.
The screeching continued as I approached. I got close enough to drop my body to the floor with the phone near my head, and I grunted.
“Nellie,” my mother’s voice echoed from the phone.
I grunted
again.
“I’m so glad you’re okay. Have you seen the news?”
I grunted what I thought was a negative sound.
“Dear, the dead are walking. Your father arrived twenty minutes ago. I knew it was him because he was wearing that hideous suit we buried him in. Other than that, he’s unrecognizable.”
I groaned in sympathy.
“I won’t let him in the house, though. He’ll mess up the carpets. What do you think I should do? They’re telling us on the news to stay in our homes and lock the doors. Is Doug home with you?”
I gave her another negative grunt.
“I hope the poor dear is all right. Call me if you hear anything.”
I lay on the floor until the deafening, quick busy signal jarred me out of my stupor. I was trying to remember why I was on the floor when the thought of my father digging out of his grave and walking thirty blocks from the cemetery to my mother’s house seeped into my head. Why wasn’t I moving like that?
The phone went silent. By my calculations, Doug had been gone since yesterday morning. I died the same morning. I could only guess that I had risen that same evening. Otherwise, my mother would have been screaming about my having been out of touch for more than a day instead of screeching about my father coming back from the dead to visit her. By the time I’d come to that conclusion, dawn had come again.
I rolled over on my back and prepared to struggle to my feet. But after a few pops and cracks, my joints moved almost as well as they had before I’d died, barring the slight jerkiness in my gait.
Stumbling around the room, I caught sight of the small stack of photos and the butcher knife and remembered my quest. I flexed my fingers, and found that they had unlocked sometime during the night.
Hell Hath No Fury... Page 14