Painted Red

by Kelsey D. Garmendia

  “Excuse me soldiers,” I say with my hands raised. One of the soldiers flips around and points his rifle at my face. “Please don’t shoot. I understand you’re looking for someone.”

  “A girl name Hayley and three other individuals,” another soldier responds. “They’re responsible for the destruction at the fort and hundreds of deaths.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir. We turned away a group of survivors from the fort a couple weeks ago now. Perhaps she was in that group?”

  The soldiers looks amongst each other. The one with the rifle doesn’t move the muzzle from my eye level. His jaw is clenched and the muscles in his forearms are threatening to snap.

  “Please don’t point that at me, sir. I don’t want it to go off by accident—”

  “I’m a soldier! I’m experienced with this rifle in ways you wish you were.”

  “I understand.” I nod to Nikia and Madison on the ground. “My friends are hurt. You’ve done your damage here. Please leave.”

  “Not until we search the area,” he says. “Then we’ll decide if we’ll leave.”

  “Xavier,” Nikia says.

  I glance down and catch a dark red in her teeth—blood. She’s hurt worst than I thought. Madison’s body is motionless. Hunter whines on the ground next to her. His head raises in my direction. We know she’s dead. I look over my shoulder at the house and let out a sigh. I nod once.

  Gunfire rips into the open air. The man holding the rifle at me twitches and then falls to the ground. The other men raise their rifles to the sky looking for the shot’s origin.

  “The window—” Blood sprays from his throat before another word gets out. Aisley comes from the side holding an AR15 and tosses me her pistol.

  I hear the trucks speeding towards the gate. The remaining soldiers take aim and shoot several rounds in their direction. I drag Nikia from the open road while shooting blindly at the front gate. “Help her!” she yells.

  “She’s gone Nikia!” I shout over the gunfire. The gate falls and several of the soldiers sprint through it towards me. “Hunter!”

  He latches onto one of the soldiers by his arm and tugs him to the ground.

  Another soldier jolts when he’s about three feet from me—a spray of blood rains over my face. Aisley kicks him to the side and continues firing. I hear a squeal through chaos and see Hunter collapse. “No!” My truck appears around the side of the house first. It collides with the remaining soldiers with a tremendous bang. Then, the silence falls back in

  I’m running before I can stop myself. “Hunter!” Aisley follows close behind me. I climb over the crushed bodies to where I last saw him. He wheezes on his side while letting out a high-pitched squeal. “No, no, no.”

  I cradle his heavy body in my arms. Blood seeps from a gunshot wound in his ribcage. I press down on it, and he yelps. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The blood pushes its way through my fingers. He squeals in my arms while taking dragging breaths through his mouth.

  Smoke rises from the roaring engine. I make out the driver of the car push themselves back from the steering wheel and grab their head. Nolan climbs out of the passenger side and runs to Aisley. “Mom’s in the truck,” he says in tears.

  “Mom!” Aisley sprints by me toward the truck.

  The driver side door pops open and Hayley stumbles out of the door clutching at her head. “Hayley.”

  “I’m fine,” she says pulling her hand away from a gash. I look up at her. “Oh no.”

  My heart throbs while the rest of me goes numb. Hunter licks tears from my face. I rest my head on his while his panting turns to wheezing. The brother’s truck slides in behind mine. Doc and the others file out of the truck and take in the carnage in a hushed gasp.

  “We weren’t supposed to leave each other remember.”

  Hunter gazes up at me from the corner of his eyes. His tongue continues to lick against the stubble of my beard.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Hunter.” My voice cracks. I close my eyes and rest my head on his. He’s been through the worst parts of my life with me. “Just stay with me.Please.”

  The soft scrape of his tongue stops. I pull away and open my eyes. His rib cage is steady under my hand. One more of us is gone because of the monsters in this world.

  War

  Hunter’s body feels like lead in my arms. Hayley grips my shoulder and pulls me into a hug. “We have to go.”

  “I can’t just leave him here.” I pull my hand from the sticky blood and squeeze her back. She winces, but doesn’t pull away. “Theykilledhim.”

  I want to rip the soldiers’ throats out with my bare hands. Hunter didn’t do anything to deserve a death like this. I look over my shoulder at the blood from the soldiers soaking into the ground. I can’t even take the satisfaction in killing them now.

  The youngin’s pick up the rifles and ammunition the soldiers were carrying. Doc and Tristen tend to Nikia’s gunshot wound. Everything at this moment feels surreal. Like I’m watching my own personal hell play on a movie screen. Hayley lays a hand on mine and my gaze floats back to her. “We have to get away from here. Those things out there, they smell blood don’t they?”

  I feel a rumbling in my chest that sends a chill down my spine. The growling rips through the forest in an instant. “Get to the other truck!” I yell. Tristan appears next to me carrying Nikia in his arms. The others sprint off and climb into the truck. I look over my shoulder and see the skeletal bodies of the wendigos stalking through the woods. “Go!”

  Nolan holds onto my left hand while I grip Hayley’s in my other. Aisley takes off ahead of us to Two’s truck. We pile into the bed until we’re all squished together so tightly that I feel people’s pulses thumping against my skin.

  “Two let’s go!” I yell through the rear sliding window.

  “There isn’t an opening! If I go now, my truck will end up like yours.”

  Nolan leans his head into my chest soaking my shirt with tears. Hayley turns to me with a grim look plastered across her face. She weaves her fingers in between mine and squeezes.

  “She’s not breathing!” I look over to Tristan who shakes Nikia in his arms. Her head bobbles as if it’s on a loose hinge. Aisley tears Nikia’s shirt where she’s been shot and pushes her her hand down on the wound.

  The growling makes everything else silent—Nolan’s crying, the youngin’s screams from inside the cab, and Aisley’s shouting all seem to go quiet. I look around the corner of the truck and see several wendigos inside the fence’s perimeter.

  This is how we die. This moment. Right here.

  Fit Right In

  Gunfire pierces through the growls. Hayley’s grasp of my hand twitches. “Get down!” I yell. Everyone scrunches down as low as possible. A wendigo grabs at Tristan’s shirt. He throws an elbow back connecting with the bridge of its nose. Nikia’s eyes shoot open as the wendigo latches onto her leg.

  “No—”

  Gunshots force us all to take cover. I close my eyes and hug Nolan tighter into my chest. The growling dissipates until all I can hear is the pounding of my heartbeat in my own ears.

  “Everyone in the truck, please step out into the open.”

  I look at Hayley. Her eyes are wide with fear. I mouth the words “stay here” and slide Nolan to her. Two and the others slip out of the truck with their hands raised. I follow behind them.

  “Have any of you been bitten?”

  We all shake our heads. The voice echoes from somewhere in the trees. It sounds like it’s coming from a bullhorn. “Are you friendly?”

  One by one, soldiers filter through the trees. These ones are dressed in different uniforms. Their weapons are lowered. A man, in what I can only assume is an officer’s jacket, leads the group towards us. “Thank God,” he says when he’s within arms distance from us. “We didn’t think we’d ever find anyone.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re with the Coast Guard, sir,” the man responds. “You can call me
Roger.”

  “Coast Guard?” Two says glancing over at me. “Kinda far from your neck of the woods, ain’t ya?

  “We were assigned to do search and rescue here because we were the closest military branch that could get the job done,” Roger responds. “To be honest, we lost hope seeing the fort the way it was. Didn’t see any survivors—”

  “That’s because we’re already here.” Hayley carries Nolan until she’s next to me. Blood makes her long unkempt bangs stick to her forehead. “We escaped before they could do anymore damage.”

  “I take it those soldiers back there tried to come in here?”

  “Yes,” we all answered.

  Roger nods and then turns away from us. Humvees barrel down the gravel driveway as well as a few armored trucks. “Listen, we’re here to take you out of these woods. Get you to a safer location until the rest of these monsters are taken care of—”

  “How do we trust you?” The words make it out of my mouth before I’m sure even Hayley had the thought cross her mind. “I lost my family to a bunch of psychopaths the first time. How do we know you’re not setting things up like they were?”

  Tristan lowers Nikia to the ground while Doc examines her wounds. I can hear him whispering to her, but I don’t hear her respond once. Aisley takes off towards Doc’s guest house before I turn back to the soldiers.

  Roger lets out a long sigh. “You don’t. The only thing I can offer you is to come and see our stronghold we set up—”

  “To be honest sir,” Doc says stepping forward. “We’ve survived here for nearly five years without any disturbances. You may not have known the soldiers that just try to barge in here, but they shot and killed some of us. Now, you all come along and we’re just supposed to what—blindly follow you?”

  “No,” he responds. “Just give us a shot.”

  Doc returns to working on Nikia while shaking his head. I have my doubts. Hayley’s hand strangles my fingers with fear. I can practically feel her body wanting to take off into the woods. If it were just me, things would be different. I’d tell them to go screw themselves. But I have my family with me now. A family that has been broken and stretched thin for years.

  “Listen, you don’t have to stay,” Roger continues. “We allow anyone who comes into our safe zone to come and go as they please. We obviously recommend that you stay within range of the sharpshooters because of the disease—”

  “So a disease caused all of this?” Aisley’s voice makes me jump. She stands on my right side and folds her arms across her chest. “You do realize that there was a much bigger problem that started before the cannibals, right?”

  “What about the food going missing?” Joshua says from behind me. “That part of the disease too?”

  “We don’t know,” Roger responds. He lets out another long sigh. “I know my answers aren’t good enough. Intel says that it was a very well orchestrated terrorist attack. The disease believed was to be injected into government officials without their knowledge—”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  The shouting from what’s left of our group bangs around inside my skull. I make eye contact with Hayley again. The fear is gone from her eyes. Her face remains halfway in between curious and enraged.

  “If we go with you,” she says. “And we don’t like what we see, we can leave?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Hayley’s shoulders rise and fall with a sigh. She glances over Aisley, Tristan and Nolan planting a firm kiss on his forehead. Then, her eyes find mine. The fear seems to drain from them the longer she stares. With one slight nod, I know she wants to go check out the area the Coast Guard has secured.

  “Xavier,” Doc’s voice cracks when he calls to me. I turn and make eye contact with Nikia. Her face is no longer the olive complexion it was before. “We need help.”

  “What’s it going to be, sir?”

  I scan our entire group. All of them look to me to answer the officer. I swallow down past my cotton mouth and return my gaze to the group of soldiers. “Let’s go.”

  Apocalypse: March, 2018

  “Sir.” A strong hand shakes me awake. I cock my fist back, but my arm is stopped before I can lay into whoever it is. My eyes open to a uniformed soldier. “Just me again.”

  I look behind me and see Hayley holding my arm back. “Don’t need to get kicked out on the first day right?”

  “Sir, the female from your group who was injured wants to speak with you.”

  I nod and look back at Hayley. She releases my hand and puts on a half smile. “Go. I’ve got us taken care of here.”

  I nod once and push myself from the bed.

  The safe zone was set up in a warehouse about three and a half hours back downstate. We slept in cots lined up next to each other while the sick and injured were taken to a different end of the metal building. Nikia landed herself in a injured zone—she nearly died from loss of blood.

  “Didn’t think you’d show,” she says when I walk through the gap in the privacy screens. Her arms strapped to the bed. “With you having your family back and all.”

  “Why are you strapped in?”

  “Doctor’s marked me as a fall risk,” she responds. “I kept trying to get up.”

  “Rebel ‘till the end huh?” I laugh and sit down next to her. “Anyway, given the situation we’re in, a walk across some concrete in a metal building is more than doable.”

  “I’m sorry for how shitty I was to you and your family back at the house.” She looks down at her hands. “I was jealous. That’s what it really came down to. And I was furious about Keturah dying. I didn’t know how to make sense of it all.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  She laughs and nods. The smile doesn’t last long. “There’s something I need you to do for me.”

  “Sure,” I respond. “What is it?”

  “Promise that you’ll say yes.”

  My heart drops. “What happened?”

  She points with her finger to her leg closest to me. I reach for the blanket grasping the fabric in my sweaty palm. Her jeans are stained a deep red surrounded by lighter patches from earlier. Reaching for the bottom of her jeans, I roll them up past the darker spot—the perfect outline of a bite mark glares back at me.

  “It’s like a sick joke, huh?”

  “Does anyone know about this?”

  “No, not yet anyway.” Her bottom lip trembles as tears roll down her cheeks. “They’re saying that anyone that comes in with a bite is put into quarantine. A quarantine where we won’t get medications we might need. Medications like insulin—”

  “You’ll die if you don’t get that!”

  “I know.” She sniffles and looks up at me. “I need you to give me this.” Her palm opens and syringe of liquid rolls toward me on the bed.

  “What is it?”

  “It pentobarbital,” she says. “Doc got it for me.”

  “Pentobarbital?”

  “It’s an anti-anxiety medication. But this is a lethal dose of it.”

  “So you’re giving up?”

  Nikia laughs and shakes her head. “I already had to beg Doc to get this for me. He wouldn’t do it. I’ve got about one more day before they find that bite. I will not sit in quarantine and go crazy like the rest of the world has or die feeling like my blood is on fire.”

  “Please don’t make me do this—”

  “You’re the only who can.”

  She’s right. There were two people in me now. One who could be human—laugh, smile, show compassion. Then, there was the other side. The one that was a ruthless and brutal killer just so that I could live another day. “Nikia—”

  “If you don’t do this for me, I’ll suffer until I go into a coma. You and I both know that.”

  I grip the syringe and pop the needle protector off. Nikia lays her head back on the pillow and closes her eyes. The needle pricks into the vein in the pit of her elbow. She smiles while it’s emptied. “You’re a good man, Xavier.”

 
* * *

  “What was that about?” Hayley says running her finger through Nolan’s hair.

  “Nikia’s dying.”

  Hayley nods her head. Tristan looks up at me from his pillow and holds Aisley tighter against him. “Blood loss?”

  I shake my head. My eyes gaze up at Hayley and a flash of recognition crosses her face. “She was bitten by that wendigo back at the house.” I answer her question that I know she won’t ask.

  “Shit.” Tristan lets his head thump back down on the pillow.

  I lay down next to Hayley. The warehouse is quiet which only contributes to the weight I carry getting heavier. Hayley grabs my hand while Nolan lays on my chest.

  “She asked me to kill her.” My voice is flat. It takes all my strength to get the phrase out.

  “I know.” Hayley kisses the scruff on my cheek. “You did the right thing for her.”

  Maybe Hayley was right. For the first time, I wasn’t empty anymore. I wasn’t running blindly into a dark room full of broken glass. Killing Nikia wasn’t the worst thing I’ve done; it was compassionate in merciless world.

  That’s just the thing though. Our world was always filled with nightmares. I never noticed it before the food went missing because things were stable. Calm. But now I can finally see it. I can finally look at this monstrous humanity because I’m part of the reflection.

  Acknowledgements

  When I started theBurn Our Houses Down Series, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The idea popped into my head during my senior year of my undergraduate career. I jotted it down in a notebook to keep until I could figure out what to do with the random thought.

  After graduating, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and wroteBurn Our Houses Down.My original idea was to end the entire story in one book. One thing lead to another and nowPainted Redis completed. A trilogy—this flash-fiction writer never would’ve guessed it.