TWENTY-TWO
Dan jumps down from the harvester and runs to his dad, embracing him. “I’m so glad you guys are safe!”
“Me too.”
His dad reeks of sour sweat, but Dan doesn’t mind at all, he breathes in the smell deeply, savoring it, as his dad squeezes back.
Not until Dad lets go and Dan steps back a little does he realize his dad’s shirt has streaks of dried blood on it.
“Is that …?”
“It’s not mine,” Dad assures him. “I’m not hurt. Well, except for my hand. But that was a knife that did that.”
He shows Dan his right hand which is bound up with a cloth of some kind. Some blood has soaked through.
Jens comes jogging up. “Nice to meet ya’ll,” he says, tipping his cap, then bending down and releasing the hook from the car. “Don’t mean to be rude, but I’ll be off now. You folks take care!”
“Thank you!” Dad exclaims. “Thank you so much!”
Jens sends him a quick, crooked smile. “Don’t mention it.” Then he runs back to the idling harvester blocking the empty road.
The sound of another engine, as William’s car rolls up next to them. “Hate to be the buzzkill here,” he says from the rolled-down window, pointing backwards with a thumb, “but the dead fuckers haven’t given up.”
Dan turns to see the oncoming group of zombies.
“He’s right,” Dad says. “We need to get out of here.”
“Where’s Mom?” Dan asks, looking towards the blue car, but only sees a young woman and a boy whom he recognizes. “Is that … Nasira and Ali?”
“It is,” Dad says. “I’ll tell you about it once we’re safe, Dan.”
“Great idea,” William says, leaning over and pushing open the passenger-side door. “Jump in, everyone!”
Nasira and Ali head for William’s car and get in. Dad tugs at Dan, but Dan looks back at the blue car again, frowning. “But … what about Mom, Dad? I thought you said … weren’t both of you coming?”
Dan looks at his dad’s face, and even though he doesn’t say anything, Dan reads something from his dad’s eyes he cares very little for.
“Did … did anything happen to Mom?”
“Not now, Dan.”
Dad avoids his eyes, pulling him along.
Dan rips himself free with a jerk, his heart being faster. “Tell me! Tell me now, Dad! What happened to her?”
“Dan, come on!” William calls from the car. “There’s no time! They’re coming!”
Dan doesn’t care about the zombies. He doesn’t care about anything at that moment. All he sees is his dad’s lips, trembling, as he still avoids looking at Dan.
Dad throws out his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. “She didn’t … she couldn’t … she couldn’t, Dan … I’m so sorry.”
“Couldn’t what?” Dan hears himself say, as the daylight suddenly fades and a suffocating darkness creeps into his field of vision. “Couldn’t what, Dad?”
Finally, Dad looks him in the eye, and Dan sees the tears spilling over. “She couldn’t go on.” Then, his expression turns from agony to concern. “Are you … all right … Dan?”
The words drop several octaves and get drowned out before they reach Dan’s ears. The darkness swallows up everything now, and Dan feels the road sway below him as though he were at sea. The last thing he sees is Dad jumping forward to catch him before he collapses.
Then, there’s only darkness for a long time.
Or maybe it’s only a couple of minutes.
Dan can’t tell.
It’s not complete darkness, though. It’s like a thick blanket. Muffling sounds. Shutting out most of the light. He can still pick up bits now and then. People talking. William’s voice. Dad’s voice. Someone talking in a foreign language. The sound of an engine. The gentle rocking as the car turns. The rumbling of gravel below the tires.
Dan fights to open his eyes, to get back out from under the blanket. But part of him doesn’t want him to. That part wants to stay here, to sink down deeper, to never wake up again. Something happened. Something too terrible to deal with. It’s easier to just stay here. To not suffer anymore. Dan has suffered plenty already.
He doesn’t want to live in a world where both his sister and his mom are dead. If that’s his only option, then he prefers to stay right here, in the empty darkness, where no pain can reach him.
Dan lets himself sink deeper down.
TWENTY-THREE
Dennis watches from the upstairs window as the girl comes up from the underground tunnel and quickly slips into the backseat of the red car. Even from up here, he can see the woman in the passenger seat turn around to embrace her daughter.
He gets one last glance of the girl in the backseat as the car drives off out of the courtyard and disappears from sight. He’s a little sad she left, but also a little relieved. She was very pretty, and Dennis always gets nervous around pretty girls.
The floor creaks behind him. He turns to see Mom standing there, looking past him and out through the window.
“She just left,” Dennis says.
Mom nods once. “Good.”
“Why did you want her to leave, Mom?”
“It’s better for her that way. She’s with her family now.”
Dennis considers for a moment if it’s wise to say what’s on his lips. Then he decides to chance it. “I didn’t … I didn’t know you ran away when you were little.”
Mom looks at him. “Did you eavesdrop?”
Dennis shrinks a little. “I’m sorry, Mom, I couldn’t help it. I got really scared when you said Grandma had died. That’s not true, is it?”
“No,” Mom says, breathing deeply. “None of it was.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“I told the girl what she needed to hear.”
Dennis frowns. “They told us at school you’re not supposed to lie.”
“That’s not always true, Dennis. Sometimes, telling a lie is better than the alternative.”
“What was the ulterma… that thing you said?”
Mom doesn’t answer; instead, she asks: “Where’s Holger?”
“He’s down in that underground room he’s got. Did you see it, Mom? He has this supercool secret hatch in the bedroom which leads down there. I really wish I could see it, but he didn’t want me to go with him.”
Mom shakes her head slowly, then says: “He doesn’t trust us.” She sounds absentminded, like she’s thinking.
For some reason, the look on her face makes Dennis ill at ease. These last few days have more than proved to him what his mother is capable of. And Dennis himself isn’t exactly innocent. The things he has done have already given him nightmares.
The poor animals he caught, knowing what Mom would do to them. The dead body he buried in Esther’s backyard. And now the man he had clubbed in the back of the head.
He sure hopes he didn’t hurt him too badly; he was only supposed to knock him out, so they could get the car. That was what Mom had instructed him.
All the bad things Dennis has done, he has done because Mom told him to. Part of him didn’t want to do any of it, but another part would do anything Mom told him to.
Still, what haunts him most in his dreams isn’t really the violence. It’s what Old Niels said just before he died.
“I thought you were a good boy, Dennis.”
Dennis had thought so too. All his life, he had tried to be good, to treat animals and other people well—even his classmates, who would often tease him because he was a little slow.
But Dennis isn’t a good boy, not anymore, not by a longshot. Good boys don’t take part in murdering animals and people. They don’t cause dead people to wake up and begin eating each other either.
Because this was all their fault, his and Mom’s. People on television were talking about society collapsing and all the thousands of people who had already died.
The guilt was almost too much for Dennis to handle. If he thought about it, he woul
d begin to shake uncontrollably all over. He had no idea how Mom could be so calm about it.
After they left Esther’s house that morning, they drove back home, and Dennis slept for twenty-four hours straight. That wasn’t really that surprising, as he had been up all night long.
Then things got back to normal. Kind of, anyway.
Dennis spent the next few days like he used to; or at least he tried. He played in the garden, he went down to the lake for a swim, and he played his online games. He tried not to think about what had happened. But the nightmares had reminded him every night.
Mom seemed almost normal. Except she watched the news a lot closer than she used to. Dennis couldn’t help but pick up on how the situation escalated. He understood how the living dead people could make other people into living dead ones, too, if they bit them; that was what happened to Esther.
He hoped very much the police would deal with it.
But they didn’t.
And it soon spiraled out of control.
Until finally, this morning, Mom told him to pack all of his things. They would be leaving the house and they wouldn’t come back for a long time. She didn’t say where they would be going, and Dennis didn’t ask.
They went to the car and drove away.
But they only made it a few miles down the road when a dead person waddled out in front of the car and caused Mom to crash into ditch—at least that much Mom had been honest about, when she told Holger how they ended up here. She didn’t mention anything about how they stole the car from the man and the young woman and the little boy, however. Dennis feels bad for them. He sure hopes they got away before the dead people got to them.
Then they had driven to Holger’s place in the stolen car.
Once they got close, Mom had decided that Holger shouldn’t see them coming by car, so instead of driving into the courtyard, she had parked behind the garage. And that’s when they saw the boys come up from the secret hatch.
Which reminds Dennis of something he almost forgot to tell Mom.
“Mom?”
“Hm?”
“One of those boys that were here—I recognized him. He was at Esther’s place that morning. You remember? He was the one that brought the newspaper.”
Mom looks at him. “You sure, Dennis?”
“Uh-huh, hundred percent.”
Mom bites her lip. “Do you think he saw you too? When they came to the house?”
Dennis hadn’t even considered that. “I don’t … I don’t think so. I mean, they didn’t look in our direction or anything, not as far as I remember anyway, but …”
“But what, Dennis?”
“I don’t know, maybe he looked out of the windows when we left—I couldn’t tell, Mom. Maybe he saw me. Maybe he didn’t. I just don’t know!”
Mom breathes through her nose. “This is not good, Dennis.”
He lowers his head. “Sorry, Mom.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s just pure bad luck.”
“Why is it so bad if he saw us?”
“Because if he did, and he comes back here and recognizes us … he might figure out we had something to do with how all this got started. He might decide to call the police.”
Dennis’s eyes grow wide. “Oh, no. I don’t want to go to jail, Mom!”
“You won’t. We’ll just have to make sure that kid doesn’t get back here.”
“But how? They could be here any minute. And what will we tell Holger?”
Mom ponders for a moment. “I’ll figure out a way to convince Holger it’s not safe letting them in. That won’t be a problem. While I talk with him, you go back down that tunnel we came in through, and you find a way to jam the hatch. You understand? Use anything you can find, just make sure it won’t open from the outside.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Go now. There’s not much time.”
She ushers him towards the door.
Just before Dennis can leave the room, she hisses: “Dennis, wait!”
Dennis stops and turns back around. “What is it, Mom?”
Mom isn’t looking at him; she’s staring up into the corner. Dennis follows her gaze. From the ceiling hangs a tiny surveillance camera. A tiny red diode tells them the device is on.
“Oh, that’s just one of Holger’s cameras,” Dennis says. “He told me he can watch what happens in every room, and also outside, from down in the underground room. It’s very cool!”
Mom looks at him and says, in a very low, almost inaudible voice: “Do they also record sound?”
“Oh, yeah, they record anything that—” Dennis finally realizes why Mom looks so disturbed, and there’s a deep, sinking feeling in his gut. “Oh. Oh, crap. As soon as Holger hears this, he’ll know—”
“Shut up,” Mom tells him. “Don’t say another word. Just go, Dennis. Go and seal that hatch. Now!”
Dennis wants to obey Mom, but he hesitates. “But, Mom, what about Holger?”
Mom glances back up at the camera briefly. “I’ll deal with him. Don’t you worry about it.”
Dennis swallows dryly, then turns and runs downstairs. He heads for the hall and is just about to open the door under the staircase, when a voice says from behind: “Stop, Dennis.”
He turns around and gasps.
Holger is standing there, pointing at him with a handgun. Dennis has never seen one outside of movies; it looks smaller but just as dangerous. For a moment, he’s sure Holger is going to kill him. He instinctively raises his hands.
“Please … please don’t shoot me, Holger,” he says, his voice cracking.
“I heard you just now. I know what you’ve done. You and your crazy mom. I know you started all this. I knew you were lying all along; I just knew it.”
Dennis gapes, unable to answer. He can’t take his eyes off the gun.
“You’re going to leave here right now,” Holger says, nodding towards the front door. “You and your mom. I want you out of here.”
“But … the dead people outside …”
“I don’t care. That’s your problem. You’re not welcome here. Where’s your mom, Dennis?”
“She’s … I don’t know …”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not! She was going to find you and talk with you, but I don’t know where she …”
Dennis breaks off as something catches his eyes behind Holger. Mom comes into view, gliding across the floor, silently approaching Holger. It takes all Dennis’s will power to not look right at her. Instead, he looks Holger dead in the eye.
“Tell me where she is, Dennis,” Holger demands, and Dennis realizes Holger’s jaws are shaking. Large beads of sweat have formed on his forehead, too. He’s obviously very nervous. His hand—the one holding the gun still pointed at Dennis—is shaking. “No more lies!”
Dennis decides to go for one last lie, recalling in a flash what his mother just told him about it sometimes being the better choice. “I’m sorry, Holger,” he whispers. “But I don’t know where my mom is.”
Holger squints his eyes, apparently nonplussed at the sudden drop in Dennis’s voice.
Mom is less than ten feet away from him now.
Maybe there’s a sound. Maybe that’s what alarms Holger. Or maybe he just senses something is wrong. Whatever the reason, he suddenly whips his head around and stares directly at Mom.
Dennis looks at her too, seeing the dagger in her hand.
“Mom!” he shouts. “Look out! He’s got a—”
Dennis never gets to finish that sentence.
Holger turns the gun on Mom, and Mom throws the dagger. It flies through the air just as the gun flashes, and the sound is so deafening, it feels like someone slapping Dennis on both ears.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dad’s voice is what calls him back.
“Dan?” it says softly, very close to his ear. “Can you hear me? We’re here, now. We need to get out of the car.”
Dan opens his eyes with an effort. Dad’s face appears, smil
ing tentatively. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I had to wake you. William tells me we have to climb down a shaft, and I can’t carry you.”
“What happened, Dad?” Dan croaks. “How did Mom die?”
He can’t believe how calm his own voice sounds.
Dad’s face reveals a stab of pain, and his eyes flicker for a moment, and Dan becomes more aware of their immediate surroundings: they’re still in William’s car. Dan is lying halfway leaning against his dad who has an arm around him. Next to them is Ali, and in the front seat sits Nasira. Behind the wheel is William. None of them are looking at Dan, but he can tell they’re all listening. The car is idling.
“It … it was my fault,” Dad whispers. “I should have checked on her. I should have known she couldn’t cope.”
“What happened?”
“She … she took her sleeping pills. All of them. She died in her sleep. Peacefully.”
Dan closes his eyes as everything within him turns to emptiness. Something big opens up in his chest, a pit of some kind, bottomless. And something is swallowed up by it, never to return. It feels like part of Dan.
“It’s not fair,” he whispers.
“I know,” Dad says, straining to keep from crying. “I know it isn’t. But we’ll get through it, Dan. Together.”
Dan begins sobbing, and Dad holds him awkwardly.
Several minutes pass by, as Dan cries from that deep hole in the middle of his chest, the tears never seeming to end. Dad strokes his hair and tells him it’ll be all right.
Finally, Dan feels the gap shrinking a little; not closing all the way. He doubts it will do that for a long, long time, but enough for him to stop crying, wipe his eyes and look around the car.
Nasira has turned in her seat and is looking at him, a consoling smile on her face. “I’m so sorry for your loss. But just know that it’s all God’s will. Your mother is in a better place now.”
“Oh, cut that out,” William blurts out.
Nasira looks at him like he just slapped her. “I … I was just trying to—”
“To make the poor guy feel better by telling him a fairy tale,” William cuts her off. “God’s will, my ass. Your god’s got nothing to do with this.”
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6 Page 14