by Aaron Dries
She hit the pin-pad’s CLOSE key and stepped beside the seven-foot-tall fence, ensuring the gate didn’t side-swipe her as it shut. Were the bone-eater to take Emily as it had her husband, at least Lucette would be safe within the car on the other side.
But what if I die? What if Jordan does, too?
Emily had an answer for that one, too.
The Crookenbacks walk this road multiple times a day. Their doctor told them to exercise more, and they have been! They stopped to chinwag just last Sunday, remember? You were out here at the time, fishing bills from the blue mailbox.
The mailbox Jordan had decorated with a stick-figure family. Mom, Dad, and Bub etched in yellow paint.
Yes, Emily prayed. The Crookenback’s will come.Just please, don’t let it come to that.
The gate clicked into place, locked—as did her plan. She wouldn’t run to her husband empty handed. Jordan had been doing some landscaping the prior afternoon, and had left a wheelbarrow and shovel by the flowerbed. Emily had scolded him for leaving it out at the time. “I’m all for roses, Jordan. Just put your stuff away, okay? It makes the place look messy. The Crookenbacks will see it all when they go on their walk. They always peer in.”
He’d looked so handsome there in the twilight, dirt on his face. Even with the stupid moustache that wore him and not the other way round. Even though she was annoyed. But staying mad at him had been too difficult. It always was. Love was better.
Jordan’s screams stretched on.
Heart pounding, mouth dry, she ran to the flowerbed and picked up that shovel, a splinter spearing the palm of her hand and going unnoticed. Emily’s adrenalin shifted into overdrive.
How on earth did it get in here? The perimeter is fully secured. Or at least it should be.
“Hey!” she yelled at the creature, standing her ground and holding the tool like a spear. The viciousness of Emily’s voice shocked all three of them.
Because Emily wasn’t a violent person.
Never in her life had she seriously hurt another living thing, except for once when she was a teenager, the night she’d struck a possum while driving her father’s car to the Dairy Queen where she worked. The animal had dodged out from between two trees, a white blur in the headlights, clipping the grill. Emily had screeched to a halt and saw the possum on its back, its broken legs kicking. Still alive. Disgusted by what mercy dictated she must do, she opened the trunk and took out the tire iron her father kept in there.
For emergencies.
She beat the possum to death and went to work with red splotches and possum fur across her uniform. There she broke down.
Emily clenched the shovel now and called her husband’s name. The vibrations in her throat reminded her that yes, this really was happening. And that yes, there was the potential for violence in all things. Even her.
She’d seen enough infection-orientated documentaries to realize that this was a textbook attack. The zombie wanted one thing: to devour the bones of living humans. Authorities had tried dead animals, live ones too, with no success. This had been a phenomenal realization, one that echoed in Emily’s mind in a David Attenborough-esque voice-over: “Thus, the species that had mastered fire, visited the moon, and created the atom bomb, found its place at the top of the food chain compromised.”
And that last comment had almost proven correct. It took four years for the outbreak, which was suspected to have originated in Central America, to be brought under control. Time enough for millions of casualties. Time enough for the human race to trick itself into thinking they still had ‘control’.
But things slipped through.
Textbook.
The preliminary bite had been to her husband’s neck, the aim being to bring him down. If she didn’t act quickly, the zombie would use its calcified fingernails to slit open his arms and legs, gaining access to the goodies underneath. Alternatively, it would roll him over and rip out his spine.
The spines, said the voice over, are their favorites.
Emily gagged. That this could be happening in quiet Charleston struck her as impossible—let alone to them. This kind of thing happened to those who let their guards down, people who had grown complacent.
And that’s not us!
Or was it?
(Did you grab the card, babe?)
That simple, innocuous question rung again. A death knoll.
Perhaps they had grown complacent, snug within domesticated denial. The bank-owned home; the car (such good mileage!); beautiful Bub, who —if all went as planned—would have a brother or sister within a few years’ time; their visits to see friends for birthday parties; babysitters; news rants; wives harping at their husbands for not putting away their tools—
Emily clenched the shovel. Roared.
She jumped, aiming for the zombie’s head but striking its shoulder instead, snapping the collarbone. It shot its glare at her, eyes glassy and black. They didn’t blink. Emily watched its skeleton contort beneath the drum-tight pull of its skin. It looked so frail; only it wasn’t. But worst of all was the way the muscles around its mouth had drawn back in a permanent smile, revealing all those elongated teeth.
A smiler. A bone eater. A zombie. No matter what it was called, the outcome was the same. Jordan was bleeding, and if he was bleeding—
(don’t say it!)
—then he would, in time, become one of them.
Emily swiped again, connecting with the side of the creature’s head. A chunk of decomposing flesh with an ear attached slapped the earth, maggots flew through the air. The man rolled off her husband’s chest. Blood jetted across Emily’s sneakers.
The bone eater thrashed, long legs kicking, revealing the nub of its cock and withered balls. That’s where Emily aimed her next swing. Thud. She castrated it with a single arc, drew the shovel back and ground the genitals into a pulp. Inky soup ebbed from the mess left behind, slow as honey, and her victory just as sweet.
“Fuck you!” Emily screamed.
Jordan joined her side. He stunk of cut grass, copper, sweat. “Give it to me,” he said, snatching the shovel. The creature pivoted up onto its haunches. It perched, frog-like, fists punching the ground. Its hands and arms were stained with earth.
You dug under the fence, Emily thought. Like the dog you are.
“Go to the car,” Jordan said. “Protect our girl!”
Emily, her blouse doused red, ran for the gate, thumbed in the code. She glanced behind her and watched Jordan beating the zombie to death. At first his blows were aimless and punishing, connecting here and there, until he delivered the first debilitating carve to its neck, flipping the still snapping head back on its shoulders.
Emily almost laughed, delirious. The gate swung inwards.
Jordan knocked the man who had attacked him flat onto its ass. He severed the skull from the rest of the body—brutal, crunching. It was the only way to kill them, that’s what that calm and collected voice-over had whispered on those late-night documentaries. And her husband knew this because he watched them with her, the two of them laying there in bed, clicking their tongues, shaking their heads, thinking: Well, it’ll never happen to us.
Emily stepped out onto the footpath. Turned a final time. Saw the man she loved, one of Charleston’s most up-and-coming accountants, grind the creature’s head to a paste.
Bone dust and flower spores.
BREAK DOWN
“Mom? Mom?”
Emily was on her hands and knees, searching under the bed for her other shoe amongst the dust bunnies and pre-packed suitcases when she heard her daughter’s call. To some degree, she was a bit of a Doomsday Prepper. Of course, anyone who had suffered losses to the outbreak over the past decade would understand. Sure, the Ministry played a pretty song about control measures, which everybody loved to dance to, but in the back of Emily’s mind there was no doubt that it would all come crashing down. One day.
If something could happen, it eventually would happen.
So Emily Samuels w
asn’t ashamed of those three suitcases under the bed—there was pride in batteries and canned sardines, even if the blessed of this cursed shit-hole thought otherwise. Her clumsiness, however, was a different story. That, Emily was not proud of. She’d half-tripped getting into bed the night before and kicked her shoe to Kingdom Come.
“Mom!” Not a question this time.
“Jesus, Lucette. I’m running late. Whatever it is, can we talk about it when I pick you up from school this afternoon?”
“No, I have to give you this before you leave.”
With an exasperated sigh, Emily lifted herself up, faced her daughter, and in doing so, happened to spot her elusive Reebok wedged under the dresser. Like socks, like the television remote, she suspected her shoes came alive at night and tripped the light fantastic, finally giving in to the exhaustion of their explorations and coming to rest in unlikely places.
“Mom, you have to take this to work with you,” Lucette said, buzzing around like a mosquito that wouldn’t land anywhere long enough to swat. Emily snagged the shoe and sat down on the bed to slip it on.
“What?” Emily snapped with more bite than she’d intended. Fatigue always brought the gorgon out in her, some awful creature born of the nightmares that kept her awake. “I’m sorry, darlin’. You know how much I hate being late for work. Come here. What’s it you want to give me?”
Lucette hesitated, and then pulled her hands out from behind her back, presenting a jumbled origami attempt. As to what animal it was supposed to be, Emily wasn’t sure. “Oh, it’s lovely. You’re really coming along with that.”
Lucette raised an eyebrow, a look of skepticism that so resembled her father Emily had to turn away. “If it’s that good then tell me what it is.”
Emily stared down at the crumpled paper, trying to decipher some shape in its clefts and points. Why did kids have to insist on testing their parents like this? But then again, Emily had been the same to her folks, too. “Giraffe?”
“It’s a crane, Mom.” The girl stroked the paper, a makeshift pet. “I know I’m not very good. I’m working on it, though.”
“It’s lovely. I don’t have an office or desk to sit it on. I guess I could put it in the break room.”
“Oh, it’s not for you. It’s for the boy you told me about. Robby.”
While she’d displayed some prudence—glazing over how the young boy contracted his infection, for example—she shouldn’t have told her daughter about Robby in the first place. Confidentiality laws. But sometimes, like all nurses, Emily needed to debrief, and since she lacked adult companionship her daughter became a substitute confidant. Was that wrong? Selfish? Emily couldn’t tell, or maybe she just didn’t want to. Lucette was her only real friend, and there were times, just as before when she’d evoked her father’s expression, when her little girl really didn’t seem quite so little.
Or perhaps I just need to get back in the saddle.
Christ.
The world’s scary enough without having to date.
“I thought it might be something nice to put out in his room, to cheer him up,” Lucette said. “Tell him I’ll send some more once I’m better at it. Once I’m a pro.”
Emily’s smile was melancholic. Lucette Samuels was a flower growing through concrete, blooming into a world that had no time for pretty things anymore.
“He’ll love it,” she said. “He doesn’t have much in his room right now, just a few comic book posters we managed to scrounge up. I’m sure he’ll be pleased as punch.”
“Maybe I could go visit him sometime? He’ll need a friend you know.”
Her daughter’s compassion and generosity was almost blinding. A child’s purity could be very delicate, a thing that should be nurtured, yes, whilst shielded at the same time.
“Darlin’, the hospice isn’t a place for children.”
“Robby’s a child and he’s there.”
“Yeah, but he’s sick. Everyone there is sick.”
“You’re not.”
“You know what I mean, young lady.” She puffed out her chest, standing tall. “I’m a trained professional who knows how to protect myself.”
“I know all the safety rules,” Lucette said without a sense of play. “You drilled them into me enough times.”
(a yellow stick-figure family painted on a blue mailbox)
“I’ll think about it,” Emily said.
Lucette jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “That’s not a no.”
“And it’s not a yes either, but we’ll discuss it.” Emily tousled Lucette’s hair. “Now I’ve got to get going. You make sure you’re ready when the bus gets here.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“And don’t you leave this house until Mr. Reynolds pulls up outside.”
“I know.”
“Check the windows before you go outside, and if you see anyone that seems off, you stay in this house. I’d rather you miss a day of school than—”
“I know, I know. You go over this with me every single morning. Do you think I’m dumb or something?”
Emily didn’t think her daughter was dumb, but she hadn’t thought she and Jordan were dumb, either. She knew that the bus drivers for the district were trained to handle ‘situations’ if they encountered anyone infected on the route, but Emily didn’t like leaving Lucette’s safety in anyone else’s hands. “It’s important to be careful. Never forget that.”
“I won’t. And don’t you forget to give Robby the crane, okay?”
“Promise, I’ll do it first thing when I get to work.” Emily kissed Lucette on the forehead, pinching her cheek. “Love you, darlin’.”
“I love you too, Mommy,” she replied, wiping the kiss off her skin.
In the living room, Emily shrugged on her coat, grabbed the keys from the coffee table, and slung her purse over a shoulder. She had one foot out the door when Lucette said, “Please don’t forget.”
“I told you, I’ll be sure to give him the crane.”
“Not that. Don’t forget that you said we’d discuss me going to visit Robby.”
Winter’s breath blew at Emily’s neck. The girl before her in her stocking feet seemed so trusting. Guileless. Just as she imagined Robby’s must have been. Back before the night of the Halloween festival.
I’ve got to keep her safe. No matter what.
I have to keep her safe.
Emily sat in her car, staring at the origami crane perched on the dash like the statuette of a Hawaiian hula dancer from another time. The honeymoon that never happened; another pipedream down the drain. And no doubt, once Lucette’s interest in Japan had expanded into full-blown obsession mode, there would come a conversation Emily was already dreading.
Mom, I’d really love to visit Tokyo.
It’d be such a great experience to see another country, don’t you think?
But, Mom, all my friends are doing it!
To some degree the answers to these questions were already written.
We don’t have the money, sweetie. Your friends’ folks have good jobs; they’re not slumming it like us. I know it’d be a great experience—but who can tell what outbreak security is like in other countries?
Emily shook her head, acquiescing to the terrible realization that she was turning into her own mother. The more things changed, the more they remained the same.
Raise your angels just to clip their wings later.
It was a harsh way to live, though fair—one of her mother’s favorite expressions. It might as well have been etched into her tombstone.
Thankfully, the travel conversation was still far off. Emily had to get through the current workday first, and like those that had preceded it, this morning was beginning the same way. Emily had pulled into the parking lot fifteen minutes earlier, cut the engine, and started to cry. This was her new routine. She hadn’t been running late for work, not really; the truth was that Emily liked to arrive half an hour early so she could spend time in the car preparing herself for the shift ah
ead.
Robby weighed heavy on her thoughts.
He was a bright boy, smart and funny, and Emily enjoyed being around him, but just as Lucette was never going to get to Japan, Robby was never going to become a paleontologist, or get married, or have kids of his own. All he had ahead of him was a painful death without his family by his side.
There was one silver lining in Robby’s short future though: His incubation period wouldn’t be long. The neglect he’d suffered, both at the hands of those who’d kicked him to the curb and that he’d self-imposed, had led to a serious case of pneumonia. His immune system was shot to hell.
Robby was already refusing solids. His hair was falling out. The night staff reported screams coming from his room. It was all there in his notes.
Emily popped open the glove compartment and drew out some napkins from the stash she’d collected from various fast-food restaurants, using them to wipe at her eyes and blow her nose. She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror, glanced out the windshield at the Right-to-Lifers, already gathered outside the hospice at this hour.
If there was one thing she truly hated about working here, it was that the parking lot was across from the facility. Sure, she’d heard there was a side entry into the building you could sleuth into, but Emily had yet to find it. Not that she minded the few extra steps; she just dreaded having to pass the protestors every day. And they were always there, rain or shine or sleet, more dependable than the mailman.
Ha. Another one of Mom’s expressions.
Emily recognized a few faces in the crowd, including the old woman who’d accosted her on her first day. But it wasn’t always the same people each morning. It was almost as if they had a rotating schedule in place.
Full-time prejudice came with part-time commitments.
Emily wondered if Robby’s parents were in the group today, if it was theirshift, or if the fact that their son was now a ‘guest’ would keep them away. She couldn’t see them, thank God. As terrible as it sounded, their absence was preferred over Robby’s incarceration serving as greater motivation for their protests.