by Sarra Cannon
Her heart beat a little faster as she passed through the door to Noah’s bedroom. Being invited in to his private space felt so intimate.
Noah’s room was messier than she expected. It was probably exactly like a typical teenage guy’s room, but for some reason, with the way Noah’s father was always so strict, she just expected every inch of their house to be immaculate. Of course, Noah’s father was behind a glass wall in the basement—hardly in a position to yell at his son about having a messy bedroom.
Parrish leaned against the wall, suddenly so exhausted she could hardly stand.
“Here.” Noah squatted down and opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. He pulled out a blanket and a couple of sweatshirts and set them out on the bed. “I think I have a few more in the closet.”
Parrish moved aside as he brushed past her so he could get to the closet. His hand touched hers as he passed and her skin tingled. She stepped away, toward his dresser, and picked up the first thing she could put her hands on. It wasn’t until after she picked it up that she really saw it.
A picture of Noah when he was a little kid. He was sitting on the lap of a beautiful woman with long blonde hair. She had her arms wrapped around him and was looking at him with a huge grin. “Is this your mom?”
He stopped and turned, a handful of shirts in his hand. A sadness crossed his features, but then he smiled and nodded.
“I love this picture,” she said. “There’s so much love in her eyes. I can’t think of a single picture where my mother ever looked at me like this.”
She set the picture down, her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud, but it had just come pouring out of her. She sounded like a martyr. Her eyes searched for anything else in the room she could talk about. Anything to change the subject.
A baseball pennant was tacked up on the wall above his desk. Atlanta Braves. She pointed to it. “Are you a big Braves fan?”
Noah set the last of the blankets on the bed and walked closer to her. “You never really talk about her,” he said, obviously ignoring her attempt at diversion.
The room suddenly felt smaller. Hotter.
Parrish grabbed a strand of hair and pulled it in front of her face, wanting to hide behind it. “What’s there to talk about?” she said. “She died. End of story.”
Noah shook his head and took another step closer. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “Just because she’s gone doesn’t mean you don’t still think about her or wish she was here. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to talk about it sometimes.”
She didn’t say anything to him. She just backed up a step, wishing he would give her more space. He was standing between her and the door and if she backed up too much farther, she’d be squished between his bed and the wall. She felt like she couldn’t breathe in this room.
“When my mom died, I didn’t really know how to talk about it,” he said. “My dad was really closed off about it. I think he felt like it was his fault. He spent a lot of time working back then, and I spent most of my nights alone. I really wished I would have had someone to talk to, you know?”
Parrish swallowed and looked down at her shoes. “What happened to your mom?”
Noah picked up the picture she’d just put down. He ran a fingertip across his mom’s face. “Dad had this trip to Africa for work. It was part of some kind of study of a bacteria that had gotten into one of the water supplies. It was kind of a charity mission, too, in a way, and my mom was really into that kind of stuff. They left me with my mom’s sister for a month and went over there together,” he said. “She got Meningitis and didn’t take it seriously at first. She thought she was just tired from all the traveling and the work. By the time they realized just how bad it was, it was too late. My dad never really forgave himself for that.”
He set the picture back down, then looked at her. “Did your mom die that night? After I helped you get her to the car?”
Parrish nodded. Tears welled up in her eyes and she tried to fight them back. Why cry over something she couldn’t change? Hadn’t she cried enough?
But the tears came anyway.
“I had no idea what was going on,” she said. “I thought I’d get her to the hospital and they would give her some kind of shot or hook her up to an IV and everything would be okay.”
She leaned against the edge of the dresser, pulling her arms in tight against her body, wanting to somehow hold it in. To keep herself from unraveling.
“I had to wait in line forever,” she said, the memory still so fresh in her mind. It seemed like yesterday. And it seemed like forever ago. “All those people. It just didn’t make any sense to me how so many people could get sick so fast. It still doesn’t make sense.”
She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and Noah reached out, putting both hands on her arms.
“She died in the car before we even got to the front of the line,” she said. “She died right there, inches from me, and I didn’t even know she was gone.”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She let out a sob, then quickly covered her mouth, not wanting to cry in front of Noah, but simply not able to stop herself. He wrapped his strong arms around her and pulled her tight against his chest.
Noah held her like that for a long time. She could feel his steady heartbeat against her cheek, and she wished he could hold her there forever. Anything not to have to face the reality of the world outside his bedroom door.
Karmen
In her dream, the microwave was beeping at her. When she opened the door, the decaying head of her father stared up at her, his mouth open wide.
Karmen woke up in a sweat, bolting straight up on the couch in Noah’s living room. It was only a dream. She breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her blanket tighter around her body.
Then the beeping was back. Only it wasn’t coming from her dream this time. She was almost certain she was awake now. So what the hell was beeping in the middle of the night? She glanced around in the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Someone must have shut off all the lights down here before they went to bed. She reached over to turn on the lamp closest to her, but when she turned to knob, nothing happened.
Crap. Was the bulb burned out?
She had no idea where to find replacements and Noah was probably sleeping. Which is exactly what she wanted to be doing right now. But there it was again. The beeping sound.
Annoyed, Karmen pushed her blanket aside and felt her way along the wall toward the kitchen. She opened the microwave and checked the display, but it was dark. Okay, so it wasn’t the microwave. Was the power out?
She groaned. Please, please, no. Don’t let the power be out.
She walked to the edge of the room and flipped the switch up. Nothing happened.
You’ve got to be friggin’ kidding me.
She let her head fall back and made a crying sound. Why did this have to be happening? Without power, there would be no air conditioning. No hair dryers. Half their food would go bad. This sucked. At least it was only a day until they evacuated.
The beep sounded again and Karmen turned around, trying to figure out where in the world it was coming from. If the power was out, what could possibly be still beeping? She waited for it to come again so she could guess just which direction it was coming from.
The basement?
Oh, God. Seriously?
Of all the places in the house, it just had to be the basement. The one place she had no idea how to find her way around in. But she needed to either find the source of the beeping or she was going to have to wake Noah up and get him down here to do it for her.
She felt her way along the edge of the island, her arms stretched out in front of her. Then, she moved her hand to the wall where she’d seen Noah fiddling with a keypad about a thousand times in the past week. As she got closer, she was positive that was where the sound was coming from.
When she found the door, she ran her hand along the edge until she found the knob. She tried
it and was surprised it turned easily in her hand. With the power out, the locks must have been disabled, too.
It was just too bad she’d be completely blind down there and wouldn’t be able to see whatever it was that had Noah so preoccupied these days.
She hesitated at the top of the stairs.
A gust of cool air floated past her as she opened the door. Noah must have been keeping the basement cooler than the rest of the house, because it was freaking cold down there. Karmen shivered, but she wasn’t entirely sure it was just the cold air that was making her tremble.
Something didn’t feel right.
Something didn’t quite smell right, either.
A rotten stench blew past her and her heart jumped into her throat. Scuffling sounds at the bottom of the stairs kicked her pulse into overdrive. No, maybe scuffling wasn’t the right word. It was more of a dragging.
A tiny squeak escaped from her and she froze. More dragging sounds. This time closer. Coming up the stairs. She almost peed her pants. For the first time, she let herself think the unthinkable. What if one of the rotters had gotten inside?
Another dragging sound, like someone pulling a heavy sack of potatoes up the stairs.
Karmen felt hot tears of terror burn a path down her cheeks. She was too scared to move. Her legs just wouldn’t work. She could barely force a breath into her lungs.
This is not how I am supposed to die.
She tried to scream, but it came out as more of a wheeze.
Below her, something groaned. It sounded hungry. And it was closer than before. Karmen stumbled backward, knocking over one of the stools that sat in front of the island in the middle of the kitchen. She nearly fell over, but was able to scramble back to her feet and around to the other side of the kitchen. She tucked herself into the corner and slid down the wall, holding her legs tight against her chest, whimpering.
The zombie was moving again. His lame leg dragged across the tile floor. Her nostrils were filled now with the rotting stink of him.
I don’t want to die.
She didn’t want to die, and she definitely didn’t want to become one of those things. A tingle of energy traveled up her arms and she shivered.
Please, don’t hurt me. Please stop.
The thoughts poured out of her silently, and she imagined that she was communicating with the zombie. She wanted it to hear her. To listen to her. The electric feeling in her arms surged through her chest and all the way down to her toes. Maybe she was going insane, but she had this sudden feeling that it really could hear her. That it was listening to her thoughts.
You are not going to hurt me. Stop right there. Don’t come any closer.
The dragging halted.
Karmen waited, unable to breathe or move. The rotting thing had stopped somewhere in the middle of the kitchen, close enough she could just make out its tall form in the darkness.
For a minute, she thought maybe she wasn’t crazy. Maybe it really had heard her thoughts and was doing what she asked. But then it turned back toward her, its moaning louder as it reached out for her.
Karmen sucked in a terrified breath and screamed.
Noah
Noah jolted awake.
He had heard someone scream. Karmen?
He raised up on the bed. Beside him, Parrish stirred.
“What was that?” she whispered.
His first thought was that their barricades had failed. He pictured a window somewhere in the house with rotters pouring through it, nothing to stop them. His gut churned and he felt ill down to his core.
“Oh, God, Karmen,” he said.
Noah jumped up from the bed and bolted down the hallway. He took the stairs so fast, he practically glided down them. The house was veiled in pitch-black darkness and by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he knew.
He reached for the light switch in the hall as a test, praying for light. But no light came. The sickness in his stomach doubled.
The power was out.
The door on his father’s containment unit was powered by electricity. If the power went out, it opened as a safety precaution unless someone was there to override it.
He wanted to throw up. What if Karmen was hurt? Or dead? He would never be able to forgive himself. He’d brought them in to this house and whatever happened now was his fault.
Karmen screamed again and Noah took off toward the kitchen.
There was no room for hesitation and indecision.
On his way in to the kitchen, he grabbed his baseball bat from the corner. He swallowed back tears. He knew what needed to be done.
He smacked the bat hard against the wall, wanting to get its attention away from Karmen. If she was even still alive. Behind him, Parrish came running up, a flashlight in her hands. She swung the light wildly around the room until it landed on the figure against the far wall.
His father.
Karmen was curled into a tight ball on the floor and his father lunged at her, his hands scraping against her skin. Noah ran forward and slammed the bat against the top of the island. His father turned then, his face a grotesque mess of bruises and sores and decomposing flesh.
A moan escaped from Noah’s throat. God, he didn’t want to do this. But the thing standing in front of him wasn’t his father anymore. It wasn’t.
A single tear fell across his flushed cheek. The zombie staggered toward him, its blood-caked hands reaching forward. Noah hesitated, his hands gripping the bat so hard it hurt. His hands went cold and a light frost coated the bat. He reared back and with a terrible cry, he swung as hard as he could.
The thick part of the wooden bat made contact with the thing’s head and blood splattered in an arch across the back wall. The zombie’s head separated from its body and fell to the floor at Karmen’s feet. She wouldn’t stop screaming, but Noah could barely hear her. His heart thumped against his temple and he staggered backward. He dropped the bat and brought his hands up to his head, crying out as he bent over in agony.
On the floor, the thing that used to be his father shuddered and shook, then went still as it died for the second, and last, time.
Parrish
No one spoke for a long time.
Parrish did her best to try and calm Karmen down. It took ten minutes just to get her up and out of the kitchen so she could get her cleaned up. Parrish guided her to the bathroom and used one of the hand towels to wipe the blood splatter from her legs and arms and face. The blood was dark and thick and sticky.
Without power, she had to use cold water, but Karmen didn’t complain. Karmen didn’t say a word. She just sat on the end of the toilet seat, staring forward, her body still shaking with fear.
Noah stayed in the kitchen until the sun came up.
Parrish thought that maybe she should try to get rid of the body, but she wasn’t really sure what Noah would want her to do. If he needed time to sort through his feelings, she wanted to give him some space. Killing your own zombie father had to really mess a with a person’s head.
Once the sun was up and some light had filtered into the house again, Noah finally appeared in the doorway of the living room where Parrish and Karmen had spent the night. His eyes looked tired and red from crying.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. His hand gripped the edge of the wood. “I put you both in danger by keeping him here. I never really thought of what might happen if we lost power and he got out.”
Karmen was sitting on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her body. She pulled it tighter. “That thing was your father?” she asked. “That’s what you were hiding in the basement this whole time?”
Noah walked into the room and sat down in the recliner across from the girls. His shoulders hunched over and his lips turned down in the corners. “I should have told you about it,” he said. “I knew it was crazy to keep him down there like that, but I just couldn’t let him go. I guess there was some part of me that was hoping for a miracle. Like maybe one of his buddies from the CDC would show up sayi
ng they had a cure or something. I mean, I realize how stupid that sounds, but—”
“It’s not stupid,” Parrish said. She was sitting on the floor, her legs stretched out across the carpet. She wanted to move to him. To put her hand on his and tell him it was going to be okay. But she wasn’t used to comforting people. She didn’t really know how to put herself out there like that.
“It is,” he said, an edge of anger in his tone. “There’s never going to be a cure for something like this. These people are dead. Whatever it is that’s made them come back to life, it isn’t natural. It isn’t something that can be undone and we all know it.”
Parrish ached for him. Pain soaked in to every word he spoke and there was nothing she could do to take it away. They’d all lost people who were important to them, but losing someone you loved was very different from killing someone you loved. How could she possibly comfort him after something like that?
“What are we going to do?” Parrish asked.
“What do you mean?” Karmen asked, shaking her head. “What can we do? We follow the plan. Evacuate to whatever safe zone they have set up for us. It’s the only way we’re going to survive this.”
“I didn’t say anything earlier, because I didn’t want to argue about it, but I think we’ve got to talk about this.”
“About what?” Noah asked her.
“About what we’re really thinking, deep down. No matter how crazy it might seem. I think my sister might still be alive. I don’t have my cell phone, so I haven’t been able to try and call her, but I talked to her a few days ago. She was fine. What about her? Am I just supposed to abandon her?” Parrish asked. She turned to Karmen. “What about your parents. Your brother? Don’t you want to try to find them? If we go to the safe zone, we might be cut off from everyone we love for the rest of our lives. We’ll be giving up all our freedom.”
Karmen rolled her eyes and Parrish wanted to slap her across the face for it.
“You need to face reality,” Karmen said. Her tone was biting. “Your mother is dead. Your father is dead. And your sister is dead. That’s if you’re lucky. If not, she’s become one of those things just like Noah’s dad. Just like my brother. Just like probably half the world by this point.”