by Zuko, Joseph
“I think he’s handsome.” Valerie confessed. Karen pulled back. Valerie’s face looked like she had dished the juiciest of gossip. Karen rubbed Valerie’s little shoulder.
“That’s a good secret. I won’t tell anyone. Now I have to go help him.” Karen turned and headed out of the bedroom.
When she got back to the kitchen Steve was slumped over the sink. His injured arm hung at his side. The bite mark had risen and become swollen. The tear in his skin had darkened in color and black lines had spread up his forearm. It added to the intensity of the tattoo that spiraled up into the sleeve of his blood soaked shirt. The water poured out onto the back of his head. Steam rose off him. It must have been blistering hot. The infected monster banged at the back window. Karen couldn’t think straight.
What was the plan?
Was there a cure for this disease?
Could she save him if she stopped the bleeding?
Or should she drag Steve out the front door and leave him to die?
Why wasn’t Jim here to help her?
Steve’s body twitched.
Karen was frozen.
Steve’s body shook violently against the sink. The bowls and glasses rattled in the cabinet above. The puddle of blood pooled from the sink across the floor all the way over to the refrigerator.
“Steve?” she called to him with a whisper. His head turned immediately to face her. Steve had the same black eyes as the man she shot. Karen reached for the gun in its holster. It was not there!
“Shit!”
It was on the range behind Steve.
Chapter 6
Steve lunged toward her. Karen sped back down the hall for the bedroom. She couldn’t let him into the room with her children. She grabbed the knob and pulled the bedroom door shut closing her children in behind it. The doors in this apartment were practically made of paper. A notch above cardboard at best. It would take nothing for Steve to smash it down. The sudden movement scared both girls. Their startled little screams made her heart ache. Karen took a protective stance outside the door. She reached into her back pocket for the knife.
Steve stumbled down the hall. She worked the blade open and snapped it into place. At the exact same time Steve hit her. He shoved her through the doorway that led into the computer room. Infected-Steve’s teeth were so close to her face that she could feel the heat from its open mouth. It landed on top of her as they crashed to the floor. The knife was knocked from her hand and lost. She forced her knee up and in between their chests. It gave her a little extra space to work. Karen anchored her elbow into its neck and pushed away its jaw. For years Jim had tried to get her to go to his Krav Maga class, but she was never interested. She now realized what a mistake that was.
When Karen was a kid she wrestled her older brother and father. Plus Jim loved to wrestle and show her some of the moves he had learned in class. She was slightly aware of where to put her legs and hands to keep his mouth from tearing into her. Infected-Steve weighed so much and he forced himself onto her. Her lungs were crushed as the top of her thigh was pushed deeper into her sternum. She couldn’t breathe. Her arms were going to give. She couldn’t push him away for much longer. Behind infected-Steve the bedroom door opened. Valerie stepped out into the hall.
“MAMA!” she cried. The child had no sense of the danger she just stepped into. All she could see was her Mama getting attacked by a scary man. Valerie walked into the room and turned on the light. It got infected-Steve’s attention and he sat up.
Valerie let out a terrified high-pitched scream. The monster was easily distracted and it shifted its focus to the little one. In an instant Karen went from pushing it off of her to fighting to keep a hold of it. It reached and clawed at the five-year-old. Karen wrapped her legs around its waist and threw her arm around its neck. She hit it so hard in the neck with her forearm that it would have killed a regular human. Robin came out of the bedroom to see what all of the noise was about. She joined in with her sister’s howling.
Seeing her children with tears running down their horrified faces gave Karen a reason to fight harder. A parent’s worst fear. The thought of it hurting or killing her children sent shockwaves of dread into her soul.
With the light on she could see the knife laying a few feet away. Karen stretched across the floor and her fingertips touched the blade. His powerful body pulled her farther away from the weapon.
“VALERIE! Get out!” Karen struggled to form the words over her strain.
The child was frozen with fear.
“RUN!”
Valerie’s little legs backpedaled as fast as they could for the bedroom. Karen wanted its full attention so she open hand struck at its head.
Valerie pushed her sister back into the bedroom and closed the door. They banged at the barrier and called for their Mama.
The sound tore through Karen’s psyche. She slapped harder at the side of its head. One of her fingers hit a home run and found its eye. She forced her finger deep into the socket. The slimy squish and wet pop turned her stomach, like sticking her hand into a bucket of snot, but now she had a handle to yank its skull around with. She pulled it backwards and twisted its neck so that its teeth were away from her. The more they fought, the farther away from the blade she got. The only move she had left was to let go of it. If she landed a kick she might get enough distance to reach the knife, but if she missed the kick or the knife…well, she pushed that thought away.
She shoved it with her hands and then rolled up onto her back. She tucked both knees to her chin, and then mule kicked him as hard as she could. She landed it and slammed infected-Steve’s head into the sheetrock. Its skull left a divot. The force of her kick slid her across the carpet and Karen reached out for the knife. She fumbled it. The infected got out from under her boots and climbed its way back up her body.
She writhed and wormed underneath him. Its teeth couldn’t find a target. Losing its eye had thrown off its aim. Karen finally got a grip on the knife’s old wooden handle. She fought for millimeters to get some distance from the monster. This wouldn’t be the end. She would not fail. There was no way she was letting Jim come home to find them dead.
The infected leapt onto her as she stabbed into the side of its skull. The blade drove through skin, then bone and finally his brain. The full weight of its body buried her. She struggled out from under him.
The hot sting of tears filled her eyes. Her clothes were wet with water and blood. Her whole body felt sticky with sweat from the exertion. She hopped up to her feet and kicked at the dead body to make sure he was truly dead before she opened up the bedroom door. Karen did not linger. One last harder kick just to be sure. Poor Steve, he was always such a good guy.
She closed the door behind her and opened the one that separated her from the children. She swung the door open a little too fast and it pushed the girls back. Karen fell to her knees and clutched her babies.
“It’s okay! It’s okay! Mama’s okay!” The three ladies poured tears over each other. The little ones couldn’t form even the simplest of words. Every part of her body shook, from fear, from exhaustion, from the horror movie flashes that played out in her mind if he had gotten hold of the girls. She wasn’t given a moment of peace. The infected at the back door kept slamming its hands over and over into the glass.
The three ladies had the full on snubs. “Snubs” was when you couldn’t talk because you were crying so hard that your body fought to take in large breaths of air. Karen’s family had called it that her whole life.
For a long time she held her children. Their wet tears fell onto Karen’s neck and they wiped the snot that accumulated on their upper lips across her shoulders. She did not care. Ever since Valerie was born, Karen had called them sugar boogers. A little snot was a small price to pay for this priceless embrace.
It might have been twenty minutes before any of them were willing to let go of each other. The infected man at the back door had lost interest and finally shuffled away to find easier prey.
>
Valerie got her breath under control, “Mama, I don’t think he’s handsome anymore.”
“I think you’re right baby.”
“Mama, what happened to him?”
How do you answer that?
What should she say? There were no parenting books for this kind of situation.
“He was bitten by a man that was sick and then he got sick.”
Valerie thought about what her Mama had said, “Did you get bit?”
“No.”
“Has Daddy been bit?”
Karen coughed up some more tears. Her features distorted into the saddest face possible, “We have to think good thoughts, okay. Tell yourself Daddy will be home any minute and he just might.”
Robin pointed at her new tears, “What? You sad?” was the best she can muster.
“Yes, baby, Mama is very sad, but I’m happy that I have you two,” she said as she pulled them in for another hug. Her knees ached so she pulled them up to the bed. There laid Botchy. Asleep. She was blind, deaf and would have barked at the wrong person anyway. What a crummy attack dog.
Karen got everyone, including herself, calmed as much as possible. It took a little time to get the girls back into the computer game.
“Mama needs to get something from the kitchen. I will be right back.” Karen stepped into the kitchen. She moved so fast she slipped on the blood and almost fell on her ass. Karen slid the gun back into its holster. The water in the sink was running the whole time. Karen turned off the hot tap. Even with all the blood on the floor and the shock she was almost certainly suffering from, she still felt hungry.
“What a weird time to be hungry.” It was normal for her to talk to herself. The girls needed to eat for sure. Eating would make her feel better. It always had. She found a pizza in the freezer and fired up the oven. A few of the towels that hit the floor earlier had sopped up some of the mess, but she would need to clean it all.
Who was going to clean up Steve’s body?
There was no way she could drag his body anywhere.
Fuck, what a horrible day.
“Where are you Mama?” Valerie asked from the bedroom.
“I’m cleaning and making pizza. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Play your game and I’ll be there in a minute.” She pushed the towels around on the floor with her foot. Then Karen remembered she had rubber gloves in the bathroom for when she dyed her hair. Karen put on a pair and lifted the heavy, wet towels into the garbage can. She was on the verge of puking the whole time she cleaned the bloody mess. She sprayed bleach all over the floor and used a whole roll of paper towels to clean the last of the crimson goo.
A few minutes later she snapped off the gloves and tossed them into the garbage. She placed the pizza into the pre-heated oven. The bleach smell gave her a headache. Karen did not want to open a window so she flipped on the exhaust fans to vent the room out. Her mind was all over the place. She couldn’t focus.
She wondered if she could pull the knife out of Steve’s head?
She needed to carry another blade, but what if she pulled the knife out and he came back alive?
Does it work that way?
Fuck!
Karen wanted to punch something! She did not have another sheathed knife in this house and she couldn’t carry a blade in her back pocket. She could slice her ass cheek off. Then it hit her. She knew what she could do. Karen opened the drawer and pulled out a handful of butcher and steak knives.
She left one on the counter by the sink. Karen then stabbed a knife into the sheetrock by the backdoor. She stabbed two more into the wall close to the front door. The last three she forced into the wall in the bedroom. It felt great to stab the walls of the shitty apartment. It also felt like the act of a crazy person. Stabbing the walls just so she had a knife at the ready.
“What are you doing? Do you hate the wall?” Valerie looked up from the game.
“No baby. Mama is just trying to be prepared.” She forced the last knife into position. Outside Karen’s apartment some tires screeched across the parking lot. Karen stepped to the window. She peeked without disturbing the blinds and giving away that she was home. The neighbors’ van ripped into the parking lot. It was Cliff and Tina.
Chapter 7
Blood coated the front of Cliff and Tina’s van. Chunks of human remains were wedged into the grill. The infected man that was banging at Karen’s back window stood in the center of their parking space. Cliff spotted the infected as it bolted for their moving vehicle. When he got closer to it Cliff popped open his door, swerved the van and the open door knocked the shit out of it. He jammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, then put the van into reverse and backed over the dead body just to make sure the job was done.
Cliff did a sloppy job backing his van into his parking spot. The back wheels hit the curb hard. Cliff and Tina looked around. They made sure the coast was clear.
Inside the van Tina gave Cliff a nod, “Let’s go!” she clutched the bloodstained butcher knife and was ready to strike. Cliff hit the button to power the sliding side door and helped the oldest child, Eve, out first. Tina took her by the hand and pulled her toward the stairs that led up to their place. Cliff scooped the two younger girls out of the van but took care to angle his cleaver’s blade away from their soft skin.
He tapped the button on his keys and the van’s door powered shut. He stomped up the flight of stairs two at a time. The noise boomed throughout the complex. If there were any more of those monsters close by, Cliff just rang the dinner bell.
Tina got the door to their place open and the five of them scooted safely into their home. Cliff set down the two girls and they ran off to play with their sister as if it were any other day. Cliff felt a little lightheaded. It was only one flight of stairs but he did not normally do them two at a time with a girl in each arm. He only had to climb the stairs about twenty more times to unload the van.
He was super stoked about that.
“Be my lookout from the bedroom window,” Cliff asked his wife as he gave his back a stretch.
“I’m coming with you,” Tina said in a way that told Cliff not to argue the point.
“Eve, watch out the window for any of the sick people. Only call down to us if you see them. Do you understand?” Cliff waited for her head to nod before he headed back out the front door. On the trip down the stairs they did a better job of keeping quiet. Cliff took the lead as they crept to the main floor. The window opened above them.
“I don’t see anything,” Eve whispered down to her parents. From this window she could survey the entire complex.
Cliff hit the button to open the back hatch and put the keys in his pocket. The giant pile of food waited to be lugged up the fifteen steps behind them. The boxes of beer were on the top of the pile so they took them first and dropped them off in the front hallway.
Up and down the stairs they went. Nothing was bagged at the store. On the second trip they brought a set of tote bags to help load out more. Sweat dripped from their every pore.
During one of the drop-offs, Eve’s panicked voice called them from their bedroom, “Mama, Daddy someone’s taking the food!”
“Motherfuckers!” Tina darted out and down the steps.
Cliff was on her heels.
“Get away from our van!” Cliff threw his dad voice at the twenty-year-old guys standing at the back of their van. One of them had a neck tattoo just below his ear. He had a big bag of rice tossed up onto his shoulder. The other had long black hair and an armful of steaks.
“Holy shit!” screamed Tattoo Neck.
A couple of steaks hit the ground as Long Hair retreated. “Move it, bro!”
The guys took off running the second they saw Tina’s knife. Cliff spotted a rock the size of a baseball in the flower garden in front of the apartment. As he zipped by the rock he snatched it up. Every spring Cliff played centerfielder on the company softball team. They were six games into the season and undefeated. Cliff
planted his leg and fired the rock. The thing was a heater. A definite strike. The rock hit the small of Long Hair’s back. It knocked the wind out of Long Hair and he dropped to his knees. The packages of steak tumbled to the ground as he fell to his face. Cliff and Tina closed the gap between them.
“Jesus, Cliff!” She couldn’t believe her husband almost killed a man over thirty dollars worth of meat. Cliff couldn’t believe it either. He was not thinking straight. He knew you needed a certain amount of calories a day to survive and the primal part of Cliff’s brain equated this theft to his family’s premature death. Maybe he overreacted a little, but after the shit day he was having who wouldn’t want to kill someone?
Neck Tattoo dropped the bag of rice and tried to help his injured friend. Tina and Cliff were too close for him to get his buddy up.
Neck Tattoo put his hands up in the air, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Don’t kill me!”
Long Hair writhed on the ground in agony. Cliff and Tina’s knives were at the ready, but they were not exactly sure what the hell to do.
“Our kitchen is empty! We don’t have any food! I’m sorry!” Neck Tattoo screeched.
Cliff and Tina shared a quick glance. Neither of them had ever been in a situation like this.
What is the right move here? Tina thought as she lowered her knife and squatted down next to Long Hair.
“Let me see it,” she said as she pushed him to his stomach and lifted up his t-shirt. A dark red circle had already formed next to his spine.
“Do you live around here?” Tina asked.
“We just moved into D eight.” Answered Neck Tattoo
“If you have any spare ice or a cold pack you should ice this to keep the swelling down. Take a few Tylenol. I hope this is a lesson to you. Don’t steal someone’s food. They might fuck you up big time.” She stood back up. Tina aimed the tip of the blade at the food on the ground. “You can have this, but that’s it.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Cliff took a step closer to his wife.