by Tracy Sharp
The kid hadn’t made another appearance on his webcam. I hoped that someone had rescued him. How many other kids were out there, waiting for help? How many was it too late for?
Stop. One thing at a time. I tried to think through the hysteria threatening to take over. I couldn’t help the nagging feeling of urgency. The feeling that I had to move; to do something.
But what if Jessica came back?
It was a crazy thought, but she had vanished inexplicably. Maybe she would reappear the same way.
If nobody was here, then she’d be alone. A two year old toddling around, looking for me or for her parents. I couldn’t bear the thought that she’d be crying and scared, and completely alone.
So I stayed. I kept surfing the web, going back to the kid’s video.
Then I bundled up in a blanket on the couch and stared at the TV, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for some sign that the insanity was being controlled; that normalcy would be restored.
But in the back of my mind, I knew it never would be. Not with Jessica gone.
And not with the dead getting up and eating people.
This can’t be happening. It can’t be happening.
The news confirmed it. The dead were rising. If anyone had a dead person in their house, they should leave, or get the dead out. Someone would collect them when they could get to them.
That was the advice people were getting from the news.
Connected to the meteor dust.
The president called for military action.
I barked out a laugh. “Yeah. I guess he did. Smart move.”
Numbness spread over me and I let out a long, hysterical laugh, the sound of it wild and unhinged.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What I was hearing.
I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, and the shock had wiped me out. The adrenaline had been racing through my veins for so long that when I finally calmed down a little, trying to think things through, the absence of the adrenalin spikes left me exhausted.
I didn’t even realize it when my eyes closed.
* * *
“Doe-doe!”
I kept my eyes closed because I thought I was dreaming. I heard Jessica’s voice calling me. She always called me Doe-doe because she couldn’t say Zoe yet.
“Doe-doe-doe-doe!” This time the word was accompanied by a light pat on my face.
My eyes snapped open and a cry escaped me. There she was; standing in front of the couch, a big grin on her face. Her red curls had turned white blonde, and her blue eyes were now green, but it was definitely Jessica. And she seemed happy and perfect.
“Jessie!” I sat up and scooped her up into my arms, hugging as hard as I dared, afraid to hurt her. “Where have you been?”
“Seeping. I woked up!”
“I see that! Did you have a good sleep?” I sat back and looked into her now strangely pale green eyes.
She nodded. She held her white stuffed cat by the neck. “Kitty!”
“Kitty had a good sleep, too?”
Jessica nodded again, her blonde ringlets bouncing.
Where the hell had she been? Where ever it was, she had no memory of it or of who took her.
“Where mommy?” Jessie asked me.
“I’m going to see if I can get her home. Okay? Are you hungry?”
Jessie nodded. “Nana.”
“One banana coming up.” I found Netflix for her and put a children’s movie on. She didn’t need to be seeing what was happening in the world outside. Dread crept over me. How was I going to keep her safe with what was going on out there?
I found a banana for her on the counter, which was a day away from being too ripe. Peeled it and cut it up into bites-sized pieces and tossed them in one of her little plastic bowls with cute little ducks on them. I went back into the living room and placed the bowl between her chubby little legs.
“Milk?” she grabbed a slice of banana in one hand and mashed it into her mouth. While chewing she managed a gooey, “Pease?”
“Of course!” I grabbed a sippy cup from the cupboard and poured milk into it. We were getting low. Jesus. How the hell would I get her the things she needed with this chaos going on? It wasn’t like I could take a little jaunt to the corner store.
After giving Jessie her milk I left her happily giggling at the cartoon and stepped back into the kitchen. I used my cell to dial the number Rayback had given me. There was no answer. I left a message on his cell phone, letting him know that Jessie had reappeared and was safe. I left out the part about her hair and eye color changing. Right now it was the least of our problems.
Next, I called the police station. Nobody answered there, either. Ditto for Derek and Kelly’s cell phones.
I looked at my cell, frustrated, then froze.
The date on the screen said Dec 12th. I’d slept through the night and day, and it was now night time again. 7:10, to be exact.
Suddenly the pressure in my bladder was terrible. I couldn’t believe I’d held it that long.
Jessie was still happy as could be; eating bananas and watching a cartoon alien shoot and disintegrate a cartoon dog on the TV screen.
As I emptied my bladder, I tried to make sense of what the hell was going on. Why had I slept so long? Was the world in any better shape since I’d drifted off?
I washed my hands and headed back into the kitchen to check news reports on the laptop.
Before I sat down at the laptop, I looked out the living room window. There were shapes wandering the streets now; shambling. This wasn’t a normal walk. It was dark, so I couldn’t make out who the people were, or if they were really alive or dead. But by the way they were moving, a kind of mindless shuffling, I knew that these were some of the dead that had come back.
A cold chill danced over my spine. How could this be happening?
I tried the police station again on my cell. We had no home phone, as we all had cell phones and had no need for it. Nobody was answering at the police station. No answer from Kelly or Derek.
I tried 911. The lines were completely jammed.
Not a big surprise.
I checked the laptop. The kid hadn’t returned to his live streaming video. A view of an empty kitchen filled the screen.
There were a lot of other pleas for help on PheedMe.
News reports were not encouraging. The dead were growing quickly in numbers. A scratch or a bite would kill you within an hour. Soon after, you turn into one of them.
The military were out in tanks and humvees, but more and more of them were being taken down. The sheer numbers of the dead were making the task of killing them unmanageable. The rapidness with which a person turned was making it near impossible to keep their numbers down.
But more interesting were the reports and videos of the children and babies who had returned. It seemed that all of the kids who had vanished had reappeared over night.
All of them now had white blonde hair and strange, green eyes.
“Doe-doe!”
I jumped up and ran into the living room, where Jessie was standing on the couch looking out the window into the street. She pointed one small finger at the glass, touching it lightly. “Oook! Oook! A boy aside!”
As I approached the window, my breath caught in my throat. A boy of about nine years old with a shock of white hair stood under a street light, staring up at the window. He stared right at me as the dead wandered all around him.
And the strangest thing was that the dead didn’t seem to bother with him at all.
* * *
My initial reaction was that the kid gave me the creeps. My second was that I needed to get him out of the street, before the dead realized that he was standing there and that he wasn’t one of them.
He was still watching me. I waved him up. “Come on, kid. Slowly.”
He just stood there, expressionless, watching me.
I was going to have to go out there and get him. “Damn it.”
“Bad word, Doe-doe.”
Jessie wagged a finger at me.
“Sorry, Jess. Listen. Can you stay in here and be a good girl while Doe-Doe goes out and gets that little boy?”
Jessie nodded. “I a big girl.”
“Yes, you are.” Watching the kid for a long minute, I hoped I wasn’t being an idiot going out there. If something happened to me trying to get that kid to safety, Jessie would be on her own.
But I couldn’t leave him out there like that. The dead could turn their attention to him at any moment. I frowned. Why didn’t he come up? Why did he just stand there like that?
He must be in shock. Must’ve lost his parents. Siblings, too maybe.
“Poor kid.” I bit my lip, heart pounding, trying to ready myself for going out there.
“Yeah. Poe kid.” Jessie’s voice was full of sympathy. “Where his mommy? With my mommy?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. I’ll just be a minute. Stay here, okay?”
She nodded her head, and then turned back to the window.
I made my legs move and headed toward the door, listening for any movement outside. I heard nothing. Slowly, I turned the knob and pulled the door open about an inch.
The smell hit me at the same time as the cold did. A strange, sulfuric smell, with the reek of rot beneath it.
If I breathed through my mouth, whatever was in the air would be on my tongue. I kept my mouth closed and dealt with the stench.
I peeked through the small opening I’d made. No one was out there.
Carefully, I closed the door behind me and walked quietly across the wooden porch and down the steps.
Nothing paid attention to me, yet. Just the little boy.
Again, I tried to wave him up. He remained still, gazing at me with those weird, expressionless eyes. With his coloring, I knew he had been one of the vanished. He had probably just come back from where he’d been, like Jessie had.
A dead woman shuffled past him, and now she was close enough for me to see that she’d been the woman who lived next door. She’d had a son.
Realization slammed into me. This had been the dark-haired kid who lived next door with her. She was a single mother. It had been just the two of them. But they’d been gone, visiting her parents in another state --- Connecticut --- maybe Vermont. I couldn’t remember.
They were back, now.
She continued past him, moving slowly under the street light, and I could see that her eyes were milky white, her skin shot through with dark veins. She made strange gurgling noises deep in her throat.
Fear clawed at my belly and my heart slammed in my chest as I watched her move past him, not even looking at him.
He had to be in shock.
Was that why all these kids had white hair now? Shock? What had they seen while they were gone? Had it been that terrible?
I waited until she had walked several feet away, looked all around to make sure there weren’t any dead near us, and moved as quickly and quietly as I could toward him.
“Hey, Danny. Are you okay?” I took his hand. It felt cold in mine.
He looked up at me, nodding slowly. His voice came out as a whisper. “Yes.”
“Come on, buddy. Let’s get you in the house. It’s not safe out here.” I gently tugged on his hand, starting to walk back toward the house, looking all around us. On the news I’d seen how fast these things could move when they had motivation to. Motivation being food --- the closest thing to eat being the living.
It seemed that the dead didn’t like eating things that weren’t moving and screaming while they tore into them, preferring instead the taste of hot blood, and the feeling of it spraying their faces.
My breaths came out in little pants, and my body broke out in a cold sweat. Just a few more feet and we’d be at the stairs to the porch.
A knock sounded above and I looked up, startled. Jessie was knocking on the window, giggling and yelling. She was thrilled that Danny was coming with me.
I turned and looked toward the street. Several of the dead were now walking toward the house, inhuman moans and grunts coming from their dead throats.
Hot fear shot through my chest. My mouth went dry. “Come on, Danny. Better move a little faster.”
Then his hand was gone from mine and he was like a blur, moving toward the door.
I’d never seen a person move so fast.
He looked at me, and a slow smirk lifted the corners of his lips.
* * *
This definitely wasn’t like the polite kid who lived next door and sometimes came over to the porch when Jessie and I came out here to play. These kids were different. I hadn’t had a chance to look up what people were posting about their kids. But I sure as hell would now, the minute I got Danny settled in.
The kid gave me the creeps, but I couldn’t just leave him outside. He was still a kid. Wasn’t he?
I opened the door for him, and the second he walked in the apartment, Jessie was laughing and clapping. Her personality hadn’t changed. She was still the bright and cheerful little girl she’d been before she’d vanished. Thank God.
“Danny! Yo hair aw white!” Jessie apparently didn’t know that her hair had changed color, too.
But now looking at it, I realized that the eyebrows and eyelashes of both kids were also white. It wasn’t so much that their hair had changed color as that the color had leached out of it.
Spooky.
“Have a seat, Danny. Would you like something to drink? A juice box? Milk? Water?”
Danny sat on the couch next to Jessica, who ran her fingers through his white hair.
“Nana, Danny?” Jessie asked him.
He looked up at her and said nothing, but Jessie stopped moving, staring back into his eyes. In a moment, she nodded, then climbed off the couch and toddled off into the kitchen.
I frowned, following her. She opened the fridge and grabbed a juice box in one small hand, then closed the fridge and toddled past me, back into the living room, and handed the juice box to Danny.
Again, he looked into her eyes.
Jessie smiled. “Yo welcome, Danny.”
Danny hadn’t said a word to her.
“How did you know what Danny wanted, Jessie? Did you guess?” I asked, already dreading her answer, because I knew what it would be.
“I just knowed.” Jessie resumed playing with Danny’s hair as he watched me silently with those eerie, pale eyes.
* * *
The creepy kid wasn’t talking. Not so that I could hear him, anyway. I found some cookies in the cupboard and put a bunch on a plate, putting it on the coffee table for him and Jessie.
Jessie beamed. “Choca ship!”
Danny looked down at the plate, then back at me.
I backed into the kitchen. Whatever his dealio was, he seemed to really like Jessie, and even be protective of her. But he looked at me like he didn’t trust me.
Given current events, and God knew what else had happened to him, I didn’t really blame him.
No. He’s looking at you like he knows something you don’t.
Just hang in there. Check the news. See what’s up. You can figure out what to do with him later.
I tried my cell and got a message that the provider was experiencing technical difficulties. Wonderful. So even if I got a phone number from Danny for his grandparents in Connecticut or Vermont, or wherever it was he and his mother had been, I couldn’t call them.
I googled ‘vanished kids return’ and got a ton of hits; blog entries, videos, and people posing questions on forums.
All saying the same thing.
My kid is back but is different.
I viewed several videos of people recording their returned kids with their blank expressions and their eerie smiles. Kids seeming to talk to each other without moving their lips. Siblings having entire conversations without opening their mouths.
Parents were scared.
I saw more videos of white haired children walking the streets, some alone, and some in groups, amongst the dead.
But the most frightening thing I saw were videos, more and more of them, of children watching, completely emotionless, as the dead tore the living apart before their eyes.
With my hands pasted over my mouth, I watched in utter horror as a group of four siblings watched their parents, who were rushing them to the family car in their driveway, overcome by a large herd of the dead, tearing chunks from their flesh, taking them down as they shrieked in terror and agony.
The kids simply stood and watched, completely unaffected.
The person filming was a neighbor across the street, who kept saying, “Oh, my God. Oh, God. What the hell is wrong with these kids?”
I heard a gasp as one at a time, each of the four children lifted their shocking white heads, looked straight into the camera, and gave the same, creepy smirk.
As if they’d heard him.
“Jesus Christ almighty,” the man recording said. “Save us all.”
* * *
Where the hell were Derek and Kelly?
Deep down, I knew that something had happened to them. Rayback had said that he’d come back and check on me and see if Jessie had been brought back, by some miracle, sometime today. Unless I’d slept through his knocking earlier, he hadn’t come. Neither had Derek and Kelly.
They aren’t coming. You’re on your own.
I sat in a big, fluffy chair in the corner of the living room while Jessie slept curled up to Danny on the couch. Danny lay behind her, one arm around her, eyes closed.
Do they still dream? How else had these kids changed? Would they ever be normal again? As normal as they could ever be after what had happened to them? Whatever that had been.
Happy that his spooky eyes weren’t on me, I closed my own eyes and began to drift. The chaos and constant fear and worry had left me jittery and so tired. I was trying to find an answer, thinking of what to do. Ask Danny where his other family lived, like grandparents, aunts, uncles. I didn’t want to be responsible for him.