by Adrian Birch
“Get her off!” Tyler screamed.
“I’m trying, sweetie,” I said. “I’m trying!”
Morgan’s moaning grew louder. I pulled at her arms with all my might, and still I couldn’t move her.
“Morgan!” I yelled. “You have to stop. Snap out of it! Morgan!”
But she just clung more tightly to Tyler’s body. She ground her pelvis even harder.
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Ashley,” Tyler wailed.
I tried again to pull Morgan off, but this only made her cling even tighter. She bit Tyler’s ear. Tyler screamed, but she wouldn’t let go. She just latched her teeth onto his flesh, started breathing heavily through her nose, and refused to release her bite.
Morgan’s moaning intensified.
If I couldn’t stop her, she was going to climax. I remembered what Chris had told me. If she reached that point, Tyler would definitely get infected.
“Get her off!” Tyler screamed.
I stood and searched the washroom for anything I could use to pry Morgan off.
The first thing I saw was the scarf my mom was making for Haley. I pulled one of the knitting needles from the loops of yarn.
Morgan was whimpering now. She was grinding on top of Tyler with a horrifying speed. She’d locked her fingernails into the back of his neck, and she still hadn’t let go of his ear with her teeth.
For a moment I thought about the night when I’d watched Mr. Hershel raping Morgan. I remembered how I hadn’t been able to bring myself to shoot him, and how Ian had needed to take the gun from me and do it himself.
But Ian wasn’t here now.
It was up to me to act.
Morgan squealed. She arched her back. Any second now, she was going to come. There was only one thing I could do to stop her. I didn’t let myself think about it.
I put the tip of the knitting needle into her ear and then jammed it inside as hard as I could. There was a faint crunching sound.
Instantly, Morgan collapsed.
Tyler slid away, backing himself into the corner of the washroom. He was sobbing.
Then, there was a loud knocking on the front door.
“Home Guard!” someone shouted. “Open now!” I heard my mom shriek with relief and rush to let them in. She must have called the Home Guard herself when she’d seen Morgan prowling around the house.
But I couldn’t move. All I could do was kneel there, frozen, while Tyler cowered in the corner and Morgan’s body lay slumped against my knee.
I’d just killed my best friend.
I tried to process this fact, but I just felt numb. I knew I needed to stand up and run, but I couldn’t.
The Home Guard’s booted footsteps pounded through the kitchen toward me, but all I could do was look mutely at my right hand. It was like it belonged to somebody else. My fingers were still tightly clasped around the knitting needle, covered in Morgan’s blood.
February 3rd, 2014
1:46 p.m.
Author’s Update
Okay, I know. So Part 5 is probably the most explicit yet. I hope I haven’t offended anyone’s sensibilities.
I have to admit that I kind of went out of my way to make this last installment pretty graphic. If my dad ever saw what I’ve written now, I’d really be in trouble. Seriously. I think he’d probably disown me or something and never speak to me again. He’d be so upset, which I think is why I wrote it like that. When I was writing the graphic scenes, I kept thinking about how disappointed in me he would be, and it made me describe the details even more explicitly. I wanted him to read it. I wanted to see his reaction. I’m not so dumb as to actually let him see any of this, but sometimes I feel like it’s the only way I could ever get back at him.
I guess you’re wondering what I mean by “get back at him.” Get back at him for what? Well…
The thing is, I snuck out again with Kyle. And this time he caught me. I’m so stupid. I should have known my dad would catch me. Kyle and I didn’t even really do anything but go for a quick drive and mess around a little. Nothing like last time. He had to be back before his parents got home from some event, so I was only gone for about a half hour.
But when I climbed back through the window, my dad was actually sitting in my room. I almost had a heart attack. He even helped pull me back inside so I wouldn’t hurt myself. It was so embarrassing.
He basically grounded me “indefinitely” from everything but homework. He took my phone away. He actually put a block on my window so it can only open like three inches. I don’t know if that’s even legal. He said he didn’t want me to hurt myself. At least he didn’t turn the internet off this time.
But I don’t know when I’ll be able to see Kyle again. Maybe never. I haven’t even told him what happened yet. I’m trying to figure out how to say it in an email. He’s probably tried to text me, and he’s probably wondering why I haven’t texted him back. I think I might be putting off writing to him because, when I do, I’ll have to face up to the fact that I won’t be able to see him anymore, ever, and I’ll have to stop pretending that I will.
I have to stop thinking so much about Kyle. I’m just going to write my novel. Write, write, write. Sometimes I feel like it’s the only thing I’ve got.
xxBailey
February 8th, 2014
9:33 p.m.
Part 6
Whetted Appetites
From my hiding place beside the highway, I heard someone approaching along the road.
The footsteps were slow and even, coming from way off in the distance. I sat up and stretched my back, making sure to keep low enough so that I would still be concealed behind the gully’s rocks and brush.
It was dawn.
I was still cold, but not as miserably cold as I’d been all night. The sun was about to rise over the plains. I could see now that the leaves of the cottonwoods I’d been sleeping under were beginning to turn from green to an autumn yellow. But as I peered through the branches and searched the highway, I still couldn’t see who was coming. The person was on the far side of the bend in the road and concealed by the hillside.
But they were definitely getting closer. I could hear what sounded like something being dragged. With every other footstep came the sound of a chain clinking across the road’s dry asphalt.
Finally, a tiny figure emerged from around the bend. I looked around at my hiding spot in the gully, making sure I was still concealed from the highway now that it was daylight. I was sitting a few steps from the road, but I was pretty sure whoever was coming wouldn’t be able to see me behind the cover of sage and low cottonwood branches.
It was a girl.
This came as a surprise, because the dragging chain sounded heavy. She was walking with a slow, even pace. She didn’t appear to be struggling at all. She just took one step accompanied by the dragging sound, then another quiet step, followed again by another step with the dragging sound.
As she drew closer, I could tell that she was only about eleven or twelve years old.
I didn’t recognize her. She must have been from out of town. She had long brown hair pulled back behind her ears, and she was wearing a dress. The dress looked like something she could have worn to a wedding or maybe to church, except it was filthy. What had once been white fabric was now a soiled, dull gray, closely matching the color of her equally filthy skin.
This uniform filth was probably why I didn’t notice immediately that her dress was torn. The entire front section had been ripped away, revealing everything below her belly button. And she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
My heart started racing.
As the girl came closer, I could see that her eyes were a beautiful green, but they were deeply sunken. And she was incredibly thin. Her hipbones jutted sharply from her waist. And yet her expression was perfectly calm. She was just staring straight ahead, keeping an even pace as she made her way down the empty road. She behaved as if she were perfectly clean and healthy, as if her dress were perfectly intact, and as if every
thing below her waist wasn’t exposed for all the world to see.
And also as if nothing were attached to her foot.
I could see now that a steel animal trap was clamped around her ankle. Her foot was badly broken and twisted unnaturally. The trap’s serrated jaws had dug through her skin, revealing her bone. Her toes were blackened and heavily swollen. Six feet of chain trailed behind her, and yet she barely limped at all.
“Hey!” I shouted. I stepped out from the behind the brush. “Are you okay? You need help!”
The girl didn’t respond. I clambered down the gully and onto the road.
“Stop!” I was close enough now to hear her steady breathing. “You need help. Sweetie, where are your parents? Stop!”
She didn’t slow her pace. I actually had to step out of the way so she wouldn’t bump into me. She just kept her gaze pointed at the far end of the road where it turned around the next bend.
I could smell her. Her foot was gangrenous. She smelled rotten.
She kept walking, and I didn’t follow after her. She just kept marching casually onward, mostly naked, dragging the trap with her broken foot. The sound of the chain’s jangling grew fainter as she moved on.
What more could I do?
I was in no position to help her. I had no idea how I was going to keep myself alive today.
The girl was obviously TGV-positive and far advanced into stage three. She must have been dumped into the quarantine zone from the outside, then left to fend for herself. It was possible that she’d stumbled onto the animal trap in the woods, but I suspected that someone had set traps around their property, afraid of wandering positives. She must have been caught in it, then pulled the chain free from wherever the trap had been staked into the ground.
And now where was she going, this little girl? With such a blind purpose?
I watched as she disappeared around the bend.
I couldn’t be sure, but my only guess was that she was moving toward what the Home Guard had called a “cluster.” The pathogen must have given her an ability to sense where other positives were gathering, just like I’d seen other positives gathering in a cluster days ago, before Jason had swathed them down. If I closed my eyes, I realized I too could feel a strange sexual pull from the direction the girl was moving in. The pheromones released by the men in the cluster, wherever it was, must have been affecting her so strongly that she hadn’t even been able to register my presence as she kept moving onward.
My God. She was so young.
I’d been standing exposed in the middle of the road for too long. I made my way back up the gully to my hiding place in the cottonwoods. I couldn’t let anyone see me.
I sat on the ground. It was morning now, and I had no food, no plan, and, honestly, no hope at all. I had no idea what I was going to do.
But as I tried to pull myself together, I became certain of one thing.
I no longer regretted what I’d done to Morgan.
If Morgan had known that her fate was to become like that desperately blank body I'd just seen walking along the highway, she would have wanted someone to end her existence.
Or, at least I hoped she would have wanted it.
If she would have chosen that over death, I’d wish I were dead myself.
But as I thought about how Morgan had been locked away in that silo during the last days of her existence, surrounded by her collected trash, I suddenly knew exactly what I had to do.
I’d been trying not to think about what had happened the day before. Now, I let myself remember the moment I shoved the knitting needle into her ear: the moment I ended her life—or expired her…whatever they called it.
I remembered how I knew I needed to stand up and run, fast, but that I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but stare at the bloodied knitting needle in my hand. I remembered the bootsteps of the Home Guard pounding through the house toward me. I remembered the ranger racing into the wash room, leaping past me, then kneeling beside Tyler, clutching my nephew in one arm while discreetly helping him pull his jeans back up with the other.
I remembered realizing, slowly, that it hadn’t been the Home Guards’ boot steps that had been pounding through the house.
They had been Ian’s.
Ian had discovered that Morgan was missing and had run straight from the granary to the house. When he’d heard Tyler crying out, he’d shouted “Home Guard!” to try to scare Morgan, probably not realizing how far progressed she’d gotten and that she had no capacity left to fear anything.
I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to move at that point. Morgan’s slumped, naked body lay awkwardly at my knees. Her elbow rested limply on my thigh.
I watched Ian taking in the scene of Morgan lying dead, Tyler still sobbing, mortified, and me dumbly holding a blood-soaked knitting needle.
“I stopped her in time,” I mumbled. “She didn’t c—” I began. “She didn’t finish. Tyler should be okay, I think.”
Before Ian could say anything, Danielle arrived in the laundry room, practically tripping over me as she came in. She saw Morgan’s body, then she saw Tyler buttoning up his jeans. For a moment she looked like she might pass out, then she bent over and put her hands between her knees. She started sobbing without making a sound. It seemed as though this was all more than she could take and she was about to completely break down.
“What have you done!” she suddenly shrieked at me. “Why didn’t you let them take her away? Now…this! She did this to my son! Your own nephew!” She gestured toward Tyler indignantly and held me in a hateful glare. “What have you done?”
Ian grabbed Danielle as she started to pitch forward, crying so intensely now that her words became unintelligible.
“Listen, Danielle.” Ian spoke firmly, wrapping his arms around her. “It wasn’t Ashley. It was me. Do you understand? I’ve been sheltering Morgan. This is all my fault. Not Ashley’s. I think Ashley may have just saved Tyler. She stopped Morgan just in time, before it was too late. Tyler’s safe.”
My sister jerked away from Ian’s arms. “Safe? How can you possibly know that for sure?” Then she slumped forward again, sobbing. “I’m just so scared,” she said. “So scared. Things are only getting worse.”
Now that Tyler had his pants on, he hurried off to his room, shaken and embarrassed. He refused to look anywhere near Morgan’s body as he rushed away.
Ian walked my sister into the kitchen. I still hadn’t moved from the floor. From the dark washroom, I watched my brother-in-law embracing Danielle, stroking her hair, whispering into her ear as he comforted her.
For a moment I would have given anything to trade places with my sister.
I knew I couldn’t stay at the house long.
Luckily, it turned out that Shawn wasn’t there. He was still required to bunk at the Home Guard Center, even with his wounded hand. Still, it wasn’t safe for me to be at the house. Ian took Danielle to talk with Tyler in my sister’s old bedroom, and I decided I should give them a few minutes alone together, as a family. Then I would ask Ian what to do with Morgan’s body and leave as quickly as possible.
I had to think calmly and practically, or I knew I’d go crazy. For now, I tried not to let myself think about Morgan as a person or as my best friend at all. If I let myself feel anything, it was the vague desire to have Ian to myself for a few minutes, for him to put his arms around me, and to let him give me a little comfort after what I’d just done. I’d lost my best friend. If anyone could understand what that meant, it would be Ian.
After fifteen minutes or so, I lightly knocked on my sister’s door.
Soon after my knock, Ian stepped out into the hallway. He closed the door softly behind him and sighed with a look of utter defeat.
I said, “I have to get going. Right away.”
“Look, Ash,” he started, then he sighed again. He had something to tell me that he didn’t know how to say. “Danielle knows everything. About the granary. The others. Everything. I had to tell her.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “But why? I left Morgan’s door unlocked. It was my fault, not yours. You didn’t place your family in danger. You know Danielle will report the granary to the Home Guard,” I whispered. “You know she will!”
“She will.” Ian nodded. “You’re right. She will. And I should have let her do it a long time ago.”
I was so confused and taken by surprise at what Ian had done, I didn’t know what to say. I realized that I could faintly hear my sister through the door speaking on the phone.
“Look, Ash,” he whispered. “I’ve put my family in danger. I don’t know what I was thinking. Hiding refugees on your parents’ property? While my kids are staying at the house? If we tried to keep this up, more and more refugees would arrive. There’s nowhere to put them—not right now, anyway. Who knows what would happen next? I hope to God Tyler’s okay, but what about the next time someone wanders up here? What then? What about Haley?”
Ian gave me a stern, hardened look. I hadn’t realized until now how angry he was at me.
“And what were you thinking, sleeping with Bryce like that this morning? What were you thinking? Am I going to have to protect my family from you next?”
I didn’t think it was possible to feel any lower, but my heart sank. I didn’t know what I would do if Ian wasn’t on my side. But he was right. I’d let him down. How could he trust me now?
I tried to blink back my welling tears. “You said you didn’t want to lose me,” I whispered. “You said you couldn’t lose me.”
“I don’t want to lose you, Ashley. But I think, maybe, I already have.” He stared straight into my eyes. “Look, we’ve always had a connection,” he whispered. “Honestly, there are things I can tell you that I couldn’t ever tell Danielle. That’s a fact. But your sister’s my wife. My kids are my kids. And I’m their father. I’m the only one they’ve got to protect them. And they come before anyone else. Get it? And now, here you are, sleeping with Bryce fucking Tripp again?” he stammered, his voice cracking. “That puts all of us in danger. Don’t you see? Are you going to end up like Morgan now? Can I let you around my kids? How could you do this to me, Ashley?”