Dead of Eve (Trilogy of Eve)

by Godwin, Pam

  Dead of Eve

  by

  Pam Godwin

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2012 by Pam Godwin

  eBook Design by Donnie Light at eBook76.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.

  Science may have found a cure for most evils;

  but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all-

  the apathy of human beings.

  Helen Keller

  CHAPTER ONE: HANDPRINT

  “You are looking at very disturbing shots of the fighting that has erupted on the White House lawn behind me. Riots, just like this one, have ripped across every town, in every country. The situation has been compounded by the continued silence from presidential cabinet members. Their whereabouts, and their health, are still unknown. It would seem the U.S. has collapsed like all the nations before it. All we can do now is hope and pray. This is Mitch Case with MCSB World News reporting on assignment in…aaah. No. No…aaaaahh…”

  The camera angle rotated, tumbled. Mitch’s screams transformed to gurgles. The sideways view of trampled grass, smoke, and red and blue lights filled the TV screen.

  I hit the power button on the remote and vanished the clip I’d seen numerous times. News broadcasts were on continuous replay. How long had it been since the cameras stopped rolling? Four…five weeks?

  I lay in bed next to glass doors that opened to a screened sun room on the deck. The room overlooked wilting bushes, overgrown shrubs, and an algae infested in-ground pool. There was a time, not too long before then, when I loved that view from my bed.

  Lightning bugs flickered through the screen. The sun bowed behind the maple trees bordering the property. Silver-green leaves waved in the residual light. The shift from spring to summer used to be my favorite time of year in Missouri. I would prop the doors open and welcome the richness of soil and clay, the sweet smell of the earth drying out after the rainy season.

  But the doors remained closed and a musty staleness choked the room. I sank into the pillow. My hip bones threatened to poke through the cotton sheet. My dinner sat on the night stand untouched.

  Dull strands of hair knotted around me. I plucked at the ends. Only a couple of months earlier, I took pride in my fit physique. A vegetarian. A five miles a day runner. I lifted weights with Joel every morning. But that was before. In two months, twenty pounds of muscle seemed to dissolve from my body, leaving a frail shell to hold what was left of my soul.

  Hairs on my nape prickled. The shadows concealing the deck thickened and gathered. There, just beyond the sun room, a section of the darkness contracted. Was it…was someone there?

  The deck was two stories up. Joel had chopped off the stairs to secure our home from looters and other threats. He said it would take a ninja or a forty-foot ladder to access the deck from the outside.

  The only way in was through the barricaded front door. And I would’ve heard the garage doors. Certain I was alone, I hugged myself and squinted at the deck.

  A small form emerged on the other side of the glass door. My shoulders bunched to my ears against a stampede of goose bumps. The uncropped outline of a child solidified. Darkness gravitated toward two cavernous holes where eyes should’ve been. A teddy bear dangled from one hand.

  “Aaron?” I gasped and tried to sit up. My arms shook with the effort.

  The shadows dispersed into nothingness. I rubbed my eyes. Another nightmare? But I was awake. My breathing quickened and I wrestled to control it. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been Aaron. I watched my boy die two months prior.

  The silence broke with a giggle and the patter of feet. A fleshy palm flattened against the glass then receded into the dark. I gripped the sheets and worked my throat against a lump. An oily handprint remained.

  The garage doors squeaking vaulted me back to reality. Joel must be home from wherever it was he went. If not him…ah well, maybe my wish for death would finally come.

  Each lock on the interior door snicked, one by one. What incited him to leave every day? Pre-outbreak, he kept our garage stockpiled with water and non-perishables. We should’ve had another month of basic survival supplies. I knew a shit storm brewed outside, but didn’t care. Instead, I focused on the handprint—didn’t dwell on the fact it couldn’t be real—and tucked back into that safe place in my mind. The place where I climbed the corporate ladder, laughed and drank with friends, and tucked children into bed at night.

  His boots landed with purpose along the wood floors. Should I feign sleep? He’d just wake me to eat.

  The stomping stilled. Gun oil flooded the room, overlaying his usual scent of Cavendish pipe tobacco. He leaned on the door jamb. “Did you at least try to eat?”

  I bit my cheek. Maybe he’d give up and go away.

  He wore his armor carrier vest rigged with bullet proof plates and a hydration system. It outfitted a tactical custom radio, a first aid pouch, and mag pouches for his M4 carbine and Glock 19 pistol. Married to a gun dealer for fifteen years, I’d learned to catalogue the details of his equipment.

  “Ba-y.” A firm tone. He never hesitated to battle wills with me. And he used his pet name, aware the way he called me baby, silencing the b, softened my stubbornness.

  The stare down commenced. He’d win it with patience, a virtue ingrained through a lifetime passion in martial arts. I couldn’t fault him for it since he treated me to several years of self-defense tutelage. Though, indulging him meant that while my girlfriends’ husbands were pampering them with pedicures and dinner theater, Joel was grinding my face in sweaty wrestling mats and bruising more than my ego. Was the part of me that enjoyed those activities gone for good?

  He hit the quick release on the vest and slid it off. His fatigues rasped at his thighs as he crossed the room.

  Did he glance at the glass door? At our boy’s handprint? Nah, I was the only head case.

  The mattress dipped. He scooted next to me and scooped a spoonful of corn. “Open.” The spoon floated an inch from my mouth. “We’re not doing this tonight.”

  The heart-breaking look dampening his blue eyes made me wince. His face aged so much in two months. Wrinkles creased his forehead. Dark circles furrowed the tender skin around his lids and silver streaked the goatee under his scowl.

  He was ruggedly handsome. Built like a wrestler, his strong neck and big legs intimidated lesser men. Thick brown hair curled on his shoulders, contrasting his graying facial hair. He reminded me of a mountain man. Fitting, given our living conditions.

  He adopted survivalist ideals years prior. I used to tease him for his fascination with it. He consumed every book and documentary he found on the subject. A garage loaded with medical supplies, gloves and masks prepared us for the threat of bird flu. We caught rain water in barrels around the house. Supplemented electricity with solar panels on the roof. Self-sufficient and ready for world abolition. He’d claimed, “Lack of preparation can wound the strongest families.” I accused him of suffering from paranoia. Two months earlier, I ate my words.

  “Evie.” His impatient tone snapped me back to the hovering spoon. “I’m not asking again.”

  That was true. In a few moments, he’d be shoving the salty corn down my throat. I opened my mouth and swallowed the cold mush.

  He handed me a glass of water. “Keep it down this time.” His eyes searched my face.

  In the
years I’d known him, I’d never seen him so sad, so detached. We met in high school. Together longer than apart, we both turned thirty-three that year. And I blamed myself for putting the pain in the stare that held me.

  I surrendered and choked down the last of the corn, salad and black beans. The corner of his lips levitated as I ate. So loving, that smile. How long had it been since we kissed? Damn, I missed our passion and spontaneity.

  The tiny handprint glinted on the glass behind him. Should I tell him about it? I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth. It would confirm his suspicions about my state of mind. He’d make me talk. About the nightmares. About everything.

  “Thanks.” I rolled to my side and breathed through the nausea that came with eating.

  “I pulled some mint from the garden this morning. You want hot tea?”

  I nodded. We grew our own produce in our backyard greenhouse. Another convenience owed to his survivalist foresight.

  He kissed the crown of my head and stalked to the kitchen with my dishes. I grated my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t understand his drive. How could he keep going through the motions every day? He did everything essential to keep the two of us alive while I lay in bed and aimed for the contrary. I died the day our children died. And I committed to dying every day since.

  The covers tangled around my legs as I fought sleep and the awaiting nightmare. My nightmares didn’t kill me. They just reminded me why I wanted to die.

  “Joel?”

  His head poked in the doorway. “Going to sleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  He put his pistol on the side table. Slid off his boots. Dropped his fatigues with riggers belt still attached. Arranged the pants over the boots to ensure quick dress, fireman style. Then he settled behind me and pulled me close. His finger traced circles on my back.

  I laid my cheek on his chest and paced my breaths with his. Within minutes, sleep took me.

  I perched on the floor in Annie’s room and brushed her doll’s hair.

  She bounced in her closet, picking out a dress to wear. “Round and round the garden. Like a teddy bear.” Her angelic voice pealed behind me. “One step…” Her feet rustled on the carpet. “Two steps…”

  The corners of my mouth tugged up. I braced for the tickle.

  “Tickle you under there.” Her tiny hands squirmed along my sides.

  I twisted to return the tickle.

  All white eyes sunk into her skull. Spiny pincers replaced dainty hands. Pus oozed from her pores and plastered her hair and dress. Her skin glowed green, covered in tiny hairs and thin enough to reveal the fluids pumping underneath. Dusty lips cracked and fell away. A spear-shaped tube emerged from the hole that disfigured her mouth.

  She held out her arms. The claws snapped open. Black blood leaked down her chin and the mouth-like thing moved. “Will you sing the Teddy Bear song with me, Mama?”

  I jerked out of her reach and screamed.

  As if increase of appetite had grown

  By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—

  Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman!—

  William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 144—146

  CHAPTER TWO: FRAILTY, THY NAME IS WOMAN

  Arms hooked under my knees and back, lifting, pulling me close. “Shh. You’re okay.” Joel rocked us and murmured words I didn’t hear. When my shivering tapered off, he whispered, “Talk to me, Ba-y.”

  “Just another dream.”

  He stroked a finger down my cheek and raised my chin. “Tell me.”

  I shook my head and screwed my eyes shut.

  “Is it the A’s?”

  I slid off his lap and lay on my side.

  He rested a hand on my hip. “I’ve let you have your silence for two months. We’re going to talk about Annie and Aaron very soon.” I cringed when he said the A’s names.

  “But there’s something more urgent we need to discuss.” His voice was grim.

  I rolled back. His fingers thrummed his knee. Shadowed eyes flicked back and forth.

  “I’m listening.”

  He cleared his throat. “Have you turned on the CB radio? Do you know what’s going on out there?”

  “CB’s been silent for days.” Maybe weeks.

  His mouth tilted down. “There’s no kids, no old people…no women.”

  No kids. Somehow I knew. Didn’t stop the burn simmering in my chest.

  “Evie, they’re saying women didn’t survive this thing.”

  I shrugged and waved a hand over my body. “Obviously they are wrong.”

  “Women are gone. Dead.” His eyes blazed. “And those who didn’t die…their fate was worse.”

  “A fate worse than death.” I whispered it, lived it, despised it.

  He sucked in his cheeks. “Don’t. Don’t go there.”

  No, I’d plunge back into my fated solitude later. After I convinced him to leave me be. “Then get to your point.”

  “I’ve done my own investigation. In the two-hundred mile radius of this house, the rumors are true.”

  “You know this because you’ve searched through every house in the metropolitan area.” Fucking melodrama.

  He stood and swiped a hand over his mouth. “I knocked on doors and talked to men passing through from other cities. No one has seen another woman or child in at least four weeks.”

  “What about broadcasts from other parts of the country?” Surely the radio or internet would’ve debunked his fears.

  “Same thing. The amateur radio stations claim this is a world-wide phenomenon.”

  A knot formed in my belly. “The ham operators are now our only source of communication?”

  He rubbed his nodding head. “Attacks by the infected have grown out of control. They call them aphids and say they hunt in packs. The stories I’ve heard, the things I’ve seen…”

  The things he’d seen? Unease stole through me. What risks did he take to get that information? “Aphids? Like the little green bugs in our garden?”

  “Yeah, the ones that suck the life from our plants, infecting them with viruses at the same time. There’s a strong resemblance between the mutated humans and those bugs.”

  I knew my arched eyebrows gave away my disbelief. I dreamt that shit. It wasn’t real.

  “We’re talking parasitic feeding, Evie. Resilient defenses. And they look like them.”

  My curiosity piqued. I remembered the initial medical reports speculating that the nymph virus was designed to attack victims with low testosterone. The virus targeted human women, and a group of Muslim extremists topped the list of suspects.

  His downcast eyes reflected the worry I felt. “No one knows if the virus was targeted at women intentionally.”

  I fought a hard swallow.

  “Or if part of the plan involved mutated women spreading the infection to men,” he said.

  I tensed against a shiver as I replayed the frantic phone call from my brother-in-law announcing my sister’s infection the day after their children passed. That night, he put a bullet in my sister’s head and one in his own. I should’ve expected it. His was the typical response. Those early reports claimed mutated women—nymphs, they called them—attacked their own husbands, fathers, brothers.

  “Do they know how the infection spread from women to men?” My voice was thready.

  He nodded. “An infected woman changes, mutates…whatever you want to call it. And because of this mutation, she has these altered mouthparts.” He wiggled his fingers in front of his mouth and dropped his hand. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “I can handle it.” Perspiration formed on my spine.

  “Okay, before the Internet went down, I watched a home video of this woman in bed. She looked like she had the flu. You know, sweaty, face all sunken in, lethargic, that kind of thing. Then a man knelt next to her and wiped her face.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, waited for me to tune him out or tell him I’d heard enough. “Th
is foot long tubelike thing shoots out her mouth. You could see the pointed end. But the man just fucking sat there. Even when it stabbed him in his chest. The camera was jerking around, darting out of the room, but you could still see that tube stuck in the man’s chest. It was like a straw sucking up his…juices.” His lips pinched in a line, eyes locked on mine.

  Maybe he expected a shocked reaction. But I’d seen it before. In my nightmares. “The infection is transmitted during this feeding?”

  “Yeah. The nymph injects some kind of wax-like compound that turns man into aphid.”

  “Have you seen this in person? The mutated mouth?”

  “Not close up. They’re impossible to run from because they move too damn fast.” He paused as if replaying a specific memory. “You can’t see them move. A fucking feat so terrifying, it feels like a trick on the eyes. I’ve kept my distance.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands. To think he’d been worried about my safety when he left me alone to take these day trips. “Jesus, Joel. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “I’ve only crossed paths with one a couple times and not until recently. I heard the rainy season kept them at bay. Water may be a weakness worth investigating.”

  I sagged against the headboard. Insectile humanoids. No women. Joel seemed so convinced. How did I avoid the infection? Just staying secluded? Maybe there were other mothers holed up like me. But my A’s…the virus had been in the house.

  His bright eyes roamed my face. “It’s just you and I left in Grain Valley. Maybe in all of Kansas City. It’s so desolate out there.” A shadow passed over his face. He lowered his head. “I need you, Ba-y. I need you to help me figure this thing out.”

  Guilt squeezed my chest. I’d abandoned him and he didn’t want to deal with it all alone anymore. “Okay. Help me take a shower and tell me more.”

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed. From the corner of my eye, I caught him staring at a rose etched hair-clip on my night stand. Annie’s clip.