”Dad…you are here…Mummy…she’s been sleeping long…” Anna continued whispering from the other side of the bed.
Her voice now seemed panicked, flustered, even as she tried to get her thoughts in order.
“It is Ok sweetheart, and I am Ok, too.” He smiled reassuringly, again reaching for Julie’s arm to wake her and have her join their little reunion. “Come on, let’s all get dressed and get going, shall we?”
The hint of a smile flickered across her face but was immediately expunged by dread and fear.
“Dad…you don’t understand…the bad people, the ones outside….” Anna stammered.
“Don’t worry, munchkin. I am here now. I know about the people outside, but I won’t let them hurt us. I promise.” He tried his best to calm her, but she continued to melt into a small bundle of misery right in front of him.
“No, dad…the bad people…they…” Her shoulders sagged, her chin dropped.
Putting one hand on Julie’s head, she began to sob.
“They hurt mummy!”
His heart, her words magnified by the horror. He recoiled, knocking over the bedside table and everything else. The clatter of pills scattering on the parquet floor reverberated through the house. Now it was Anna’s turn to put her finger to her mouth.
“You’re going to wake her, Dad. She is just sleeping. It wasn’t so bad.” She whispered, her eyes wandering over to where Julie had been lying motionless, peaceful even.
Tom did a second take.
Her shape beneath the sheet had moved. A little at first and hardly noticeable, but then more pronounced, more like someone stretching their limbs after a long rest. He let out a sigh of relief and leaned down to her, careful not to make any more noise than he already had. Thankfully nothing else had stirred in the rest of the house. Now even the shuffle of the shambling dead in the distance was but a faint background noise overtaken by the thumping of his own heart.
”Julie….?” He whispered and ran his hand through her hair. “Wake up…it’s me…We are getting out of here…”
Julie reacted to his touch and slowly raised her head.
“Oh, Julie…I am so glad you guys are ok…” He moved to embrace her, but something made him hesitate.
Anna’s sobbed uncontrollably now, and tears streamed down her face as she gazed upon her mother. Julie’s head lifted off the pillow, bringing her face closer to Tom’s. She clumsily brought up an arm and put it around him. Her skin felt clammy, but the warmth that came with the joy and relief he felt was more than enough for both of them. As he drew closer, her eyes seemed heavy, but the grin that now stretched across her face was all that he needed.
Their lips touched. And in an instant, his world collapsed. Julie’s eyes, or what had once passed for them, opened. Empty, grey, and lifeless, they leered at their prey. A mournful moan escaped her lips and, with it, a breath of decay that invaded his nostrils with pungent force. Their lips still touching, she opened her mouth, her embrace turning into a steely grip determined to keep him exactly where he was. He struggled to retreat, his face less than an inch from the gnashing teeth that glistened with hunger in the ambient light. Anna let out a panicked shriek as she tried to pull her mother away from him. Tussling for a bite, Julie snarled, tearing at Tom’s clothes. Desperately reaching behind his head, he wrestled with the cold fingers clutching the scruff of his neck, struggling to keep from getting pulled into her gaping jaws. Like foul dew, the cold damp from of her dead lungs covered his cheeks as she leaned in for a bite. With a sickening snap, two of her fingers broke. Prying open the dead hand, he pushed Julie away with the other, landing on the floor in the process.
At this, the thing that had once been his wife doubled its efforts. It lurched forward with jerky movements. Grey eyes darted back and forth across the room in search of its elusive prey. Furiously its jaws snapped, and its arms flailed, desperate to reacquire the object of its burning hunger.
Tom looked on in horror as Julie turned towards the other side of the bed. Having found her new target, she launched herself forward with uncanny precision, in a split second grabbing a hold of Anna’s arm. Anna screeched as teeth sunk into her soft flesh, and the thing that less than 24 hours earlier had still been her loving mother came away with a dripping chunk of skin and muscle tissue. Dark blood pulsed from the gaping wound, streaking across the white sheets in grotesque patterns. Anna clutched her arm and fell backward, landing on the floor with a dull thud. Her screams of terror turned to cries of agony.
Time stood still as Tom looked on in panic. With the relentless reserved for the dead, Julie took up pursuit. Inch by inch her pale corpse etched forward. Pushing with rigid legs, she spasmed more than crawled across the blood-soaked linen to where Anna was lying.
It took him less than a second to make his way over to Anna’s side. Anna, writhing in pain on the floor, stared up at the edge of the bed above. Renewed screams of panic as first Julie’s fingers, then her hand and finally the top of her head appeared. Her mournful moan was ever more desperate now that she sensed the presence of a living meal. Overcome by the fire of lust for flesh, dead eyes locked with Anna’s. Julie’s arm, now free from the tangles of the blood-stained sheets, flopped over the bed frame, fingers trembling, reaching like a dying spider’s legs. A perverse grin distorted her sunken features as her fingertips reached the hem of Anna’s nightgown and dug into her thigh. The deep dark hunger would soon be satisfied.
Anna writhed and twisted, desperately trying to free herself. She reached for the corner of the heavy bedside table, but to no avail. Her eyes went wide with terror as she felt the pressure of her mother’s teeth through her nightgown. A dull thump, then a stomach-churning crack. The iron grip on her thigh fell limp. Then there was silence. Slowly Anna regained her senses. A faint sound of heavy breathing came from somewhere behind her. She whimpered and turned toward the sound. Tom had reached her just in time. His shoulders sagging, his back now rested against the bed frame as he cradled Julie’s limp body in his lap. A bloodied piece of bedpost lay on the floor next to him. He had released Julie’s soul with one hard blow.
“Dad?” Anna whispered through a veil of tears, gritting her teeth through the searing pain.
Terrified, she stared at the bedpost. Bloodied and smeared with the soft matter that once made up much of what had once been her loving, caring mother, it lay there. A reminder of the humanity lost, expunged by a virus, and purged by dead. Were it not for his heaving chest, she could have mistaken Tom for one of them. She felt dizzy. Blood loss was starting to take its effect, and a thick fog descended over her mind. Her vision distorted.
“Dad!” She called out weakly, the last bit of energy draining from her small body.
As if stung by a bee, Tom snapped back into focus, his eyes began searching for her in the gloom.
“Anna…I am here. Oh my God, Anna!” He exclaimed as his eyes fell on her, now in a foetal position a few feet away on the floor.
He gently put Julie’s head to rest on the carpet and crawled over to Anna. The wound on her forearm was still bleeding heavily. Her head bobbed back and forth, dripping cold sweat onto the parquet. She was fighting to stay conscious. He knew he did not have much time. Anna was going into shock. Grabbing the remainder of the sealed bandages strewn over the bedroom floor, he ripped open a pack of QuickClot from the medkit in his shoulder bag.
Working feverishly, he sprinkled the powdery substance into the wound. He winced, as Anna convulsed from the burning pain of the anti-coagulant, but he knew he had to stop the bleeding. Applying a bandage with as much pressure as possible without causing further damage, he looked over his handiwork. Satisfied with the dressing, he picked her up and placed her on the bed, taking her pulse and feeling her temperature. Overwhelmed by the events and exhausted from blood loss, she slipped away and fell silent. In an instant, one of the two most precious things in his had been taken away. Now the other lay injured and dying. Tears of anger and loss streaming down his face, T
om scooped her up and held her.
A soft knock at the door brought him back into the present moment.
“I heard the commotion. Thought you could use some help.” Amadou stuck his head around the corner, inspecting the room and the scene before him.
Tom looked up at him, helpless. No words were necessary. Amadou lowered his head, nodded in silent reverence, and returned downstairs, where the other two, poised and weapons ready, were eagerly awaiting his report. Upon hearing the news, they dropped their packs and sank to the floor. Deflated, they got lost in thoughts of the loss their friend had suffered in that room up the stairs and the sorrow that inevitably would soon follow. Once the infection took hold of the little girl, she, too, would join the ranks of the walking dead, unless someone would show her the mercy she so much deserved. Minutes passed, perhaps hours. It was hard to tell in the darkened quiet that had fallen over the house, the shuffling of a thousand dead in the distance the only other soundscape to the men’s breathing.
Anna drifted in and out of consciousness a few times, her head jolting left and right as her feverish mind tried to cope with the unthinkable. Tom ran his fingers through her sweat-soaked hair, whispering in her ear with love and reassurance that all would be Ok. It was the only help he could offer. It would change nothing about what was to come. He knew that when the time came, and death took his cherished daughter, the virus would begin its diabolical work. It would chew her up and spit her out. She would become but a ghoulish version of her former self, devoid of any of the love she had felt and expressed for him and Julie.
The virophage would purge all human qualities and leave behind but a rabid animal-like husk with nothing but unquenchable hunger for the living. A fresh stream of tears trickled down his face as he got lost in loving memories of life with Anna and Julie before all this. Lost in thoughts of what could have, what might have been if the world had turned out a different place than it was today. Her breathing slowly but surely became more and more rapid and shallow. Struggling to stay open, her eyes rolled back in her head. What had been a sweet and innocent face full of life now increasingly took on the pale and waxy appearance of a corpse.
Soon the fever would burn through her like wildfire and destroy what was left of the person he knew. Then it would be a matter of hours before death and, with the virus seeking to spawn its own kind, after that her unholy rebirth. She would no longer know him as her father or even as a human being.
Tom gazed at her in desperation. She would simply rise and take a chunk out of him. And he would have to let her. The alternative as clear as day as it was abhorrent, he was all out of options. Since tending to Anna, he had not dared look over at Julie’s crumpled shape sprawled out on the bedroom carpet. He had loved her more than anything in this world and still did. Dispatching her evil incarnation the way he had, had been but a reflex, a defence mechanism devoid of rational thought or emotion. But now watching Anna turn was different. She was living, breathing evidence of the love he and Julie had shared. First as a couple and then, later, as a family. Now he would not only have to watch the remains of this love with all its memories and emotions, wither and die but worse, it would fall to him to destroy its most important physical reminder.
The prospect of her death at his hands was as surreal as unimaginable as the rest of what he had endured these past weeks. The images ever-present like the hate-child of a daydream and a nightmare, his mind had stopped processing trauma. For the time being, it had shrouded itself in the numbness of detachment. He felt his PTSD return like hot needles through his head. This time, he would not fight it. Compartmentalization, for once, would be his friend.
It seemed like hours had past when the orange embers of the fading sun cast crept through the curtains, threatening to banish daylight and recasting the first shadows of a new night. He heard them on the stairs well before they entered the room. His friends, exhausted and weary, were far less careful in their steps than he had been during the early hours of the morning.
Tom relished the warmth of the dying light and couldn’t help but feel amazement at how the end of a day changed all things, brought rest, and solemn reprieve. To most including himself and except perhaps for the dead outside, light had meant hope. Yet now he felt kinship with the shadows. If light meant hope, at least dark meant peace.
The others dropped to the floor and sat in a semi-circle, quietly watching him as he watched Anna’s life ebb from her by the minute. No one dared speak, no one dared move. It was her last gasp that made them all sit upright and Tom spring into action.
“No, no, no!” He released her from his hold, placed her on her back, and immediately began CPR.
“No, no, no…you don’t get to do this to me…!” He shouted again and again as he rhythmically compressed her chest, just as he had learned and practiced back in the field, where life and death had been as fickle as a coin toss and emergency skills the only way to flip it in anyone’s favour.
He continued the compressions until rivulets of sweat poured down his forehead, back, and spine. The futility of his actions written across their faces, Amadou and Papillon stared at the floor. He breathed heavily under the strain, but he refused to give up. ‘Not now. Not ever.’ Tom fought against the inevitable. Another 30 compressions. Another 2 breaths.
"Breathe!" He heard himself yell again and again.
“Let her go, Tom. You have done everything you can. Let her go…” It was Amadou who first broke the silence, putting his hand on Tom’s shoulders as he worked away on Anna.
But Tom only renewed his efforts. Howling in agony, he hit Anna’s chest with his bare fist, as if to drum the escaping life force back into her. Amadou tried to hold him back, but it was no use. Tom continued for a few more minutes and then collapsed next to her in a blubbering heap.
“Who is going to do it?” It was the first time Nadia had spoken since they had reached the house.
The others grimaced back at her, expressing their distaste for the lack of tact, a trait that often came in handy, but equally made her seem abrasive and cold when it came to emotionally charged situations.
“What?” Nadia shrugged.
Papillon pushed himself off the floor and went to the curled-up ball that was Tom. Using his big arms to untangle his limbs, he slowly lifted him into a seated position.
“We need to go, Tom.” He said in the kindest tone he could muster.
“I know…I know what I need to do.” Tom looked up at him with bloodshot eyes and shook his head.
It was all he was able to say. He dropped himself back to the floor, but Papillon wasn’t about to relent. Using all his strength, he managed to lift Tom clean off the floor, but Tom resisted.
“We need to go, Tom. And you don’t have to do anything right now other than come with me.” Teeth clenched, he groaned under his breath as he started dragging Tom out of the room.
Meanwhile, Nadia nodded over to Amadou in silent understanding. She unsheathed her knife, furrowed her brow, and looked at the blade in a mix of sorrow and determination. Amadou shook his head and turned away. He had seen enough violence, had experienced enough heartbreak for several lifetimes. He wasn’t about to add the image of what was about to happen to the list.
Nadia edged towards Anna’s limp and lifeless body. She cast an eye back to the door and readied herself.
Having been dragged outside the room, Tom realized what she was about to do. He increased his efforts struggle, but Papillon’s neck-hold sent his head spinning and his vision blurry. He knew it would not be long before he would pass out from lack of oxygen. Meanwhile, the Frenchman stayed true to his objective and tightened his grip even more. Tom twisted and watched in horror as Nadia raised her knife above Anna’s head. He attempted to scream, but with Papillon’s forearm squarely across his throat, all but a desperate gurgle escaped.
Nadia crossed herself and kissed the little talisman around her neck in silent prayer. With the blade high above Anna now, she steadied herself for the move. Tom br
oke Papillon’s nose with the back of his head, just as Anna let out a loud gasp.
The crunch of bone and gristle distracted both Nadia and Amadou long enough for him to lunge forward. Kicking the knife out of Nadia’s hand, Tom followed through with a straight fist to the jaw. Nadia bowled over without a sound, her head smacking against the chest of drawers in the corner of the room. Amadou swung around in time to witness the punch, but without time to react all he could do was watch. Slack-jawed he looked on in disbelief. Above Papillon’s cursing as he tried to stem the flow of blood shooting from his broken nose, another sound started to fill the room.
A rasping breath, then nothing. Then another. Then, suddenly, with one deep gasp, Anna’s eyes flung open and she sat upright as if jolted by an electric shock. Tom, having quickly regained his balance, was already by her side. Eyes wide open, she stared at him with disbelief. Tom shrunk back, fully expecting her jaws to seek out his flesh at any moment. Her eyes opened slightly and her mouth gasped as she took another deep breath. Holding her at arm’s length, he cast a fearful look over her features. And yet, nothing else happened. She sat there, first looking at him and then at the others and then at the chaotic scene around her. Her gaze fell upon her own body. Holding out her hands and arms in front of her, she inspected them with childlike curiosity.
The others, having retreated as far as they could the moment she had sat up, were sittin or standing with their backs to the wall, ready to run or fight, whichever things played out. And then it happened.
“Dad?”
Tom shook his head, wanting to pinch himself. Her voice had been barely audible, but it was definitely her voice!
“Dad?” Anna uttered before falling back down onto the floor.
“Holy shit!” Nadia summed up what everyone else was thinking.
They rushed to Tom’s side, kneeling down and checking Anna over in a hurry as best as they could.
“Merde, la fille est en vie!” Papillon mumbled, still holding his swollen nose, momentarily forgetting all English.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 2): Dead Hemisphere [Keres Rising] Page 11