by Cass Kim
The next morning Alyssa left as soon as the sun came up. Then Diamond and Benjamin told Renna they’d gotten a gig a few towns over, at a new place that was about an hour closer than Albany. Renna knew that was Benjamin’s way of letting her know that she’d be alone to deal with their Mom when she came home that afternoon. At least he wasn’t going to be gone the whole night like when they played the city.
When their mom got home she didn’t even speak to Renna. She just grabbed Tim Tam and marched straight through the house to the sliding door and carried the cat like a sack of fluff out to the garden, where she locked herself and the cat in and began to viciously pull weeds. Renna peered out the window as her mother savagely yanked and tugged and dug, then chucked the weeds over the fence in large clumps. She chewed on her lower lip as Tim Tam batted at roots, slunk along logs, and then positioned himself in the same spot as he had the other day, his gaze deep into the forest. He didn’t seem as alert this time, just curious.
Knowing she would have to face her mother’s wrath eventually, Renna slid the copper slider back and stepped outside. She figured twenty minutes of vigorous weeding had probably dulled her mother’s temper. She studied the inward curve of her mother’s shoulders. The white streaks threading through her sandy hair, almost able to be mistaken for blonde highlights. As she approached, her mother turned her face into the sunlight. The fine lines and wrinkles were a clear map of how hard her life had turned out to be.
“Renna, I can’t even talk to you right now. I’m too angry.” Renna was surprised to see tears floating in her mother’s eyes.
“But Mom, I-“
“No Renna. I want you to sit here, in your father’s garden, and think. Think about how it must have felt for me, not knowing where you were. Not getting an answer on your phone. Do you know how I felt? What I was thinking?” Her mother’s voice broke and she turned from her again, shoulders shaking.
Renna stood helpless. She wanted to comfort her mother, but she didn’t think she would welcome it. There had been a time, when she was young, that she had felt safe and warm just being near her mother; being near either of her parents. But that was before. She had two mothers. The mother from before her father’s death and the mother she would forever have after.
Renna had been five, and Benjamin seven when the change happened. They probably should have referred to it as an outbreak or something more accurate, but everybody just called it the change. Before the change, parents went out on dates and left kids home alone with baby sitters. Kids played hide and seek outside, and stayed up late to catch fireflies. Houses weren’t locked tightly and bound up in copper.
They never reported exactly where or how the virus got loose. News stories started in several major cities at one time. Out of nowhere, several people in multiple areas of the world started attacking anything and everything around them. Renna remembered her mother quickly ushering her and Benjamin from the room when the news stories came on. She remembered the jerking movements. The blood.
There was panic as people cleared store shelves of canned goods and water and filled up gas tanks. She heard the echo of her parents arguing over the best course of action. Her memory played back the final decision her father had made: that they would stay and see what happened. After the initial outbreaks, things were quieter for a few weeks. Then more people started changing. There was no cure for the disease and over a decade later, there still wasn't a vaccine.
Initially, they had tried holding the infected that they could capture. But, people in hospitals were killed or infected trying to keep them alive. The policy became to shoot on sight. The infection spread, but it spread slowly, in waves. Children started going back to school. News reports, teachers, cell phone alerts, every possible way of reaching the public urged them to report. Report any signs of infection.
Renna, at age six, had learned to recite the symptoms by heart. Sweating. Fever over 104.0. Mood swings. Rigid posture. Foaming of the mouth. The pupils of the eye turned reflective and copper colored. If those symptoms were present, it was too late. It was too late the second you were infected, really. However, if you saw those symptoms, you were legally required to call emergency services. You should seek a barrier between you and that person. Something strong. Something metal. They knew that the changed avoided three things. Metals with high conductivity, high concentrations of electricity, and sunlight. Some militia groups had assumed that because of the aversion to electricity, tasers would be an ideal weapon. They found out the hard way that all it did was enrage them further.
The changed were inhumanly strong, inhumanly fast, and seemed impervious to pain. You could shoot them in the body and they would keep coming. If they didn’t die from a head shot, or bleeding out, the early captive ones died from heart attacks in the hospitals. The virus had a one hundred percent fatality rate. It wasn’t like the zombie movies where people were bitten and changed immediately. It was a bloodborne pathogen. Public places stopped carrying AED machines, and started stocking latex gloves on the walls. Just in case. People started calling the changed “Wilders” because they weren’t like humans anymore. They were wild animals, with no reasoning ability left.
The terrifying part was that it didn’t take much blood to be infected. It could be a papercut worth. Or the amount on the tip of a needle. And it had an incubation period that varied. Some people took days to show symptoms, while some took weeks. But from what was known, you were always contagious within hours of infection. There were rumors that some strains took only hours, even just minutes to manifest symptoms and turn the infected into a Wilder.
They never knew how long her father had been infected before his symptoms showed. Everybody else in the family tested clean after. Nobody even knew if he himself had known. Nobody except Renna. Renna, who as a seven year old, was home alone with him when the symptoms started to manifest. She knew that he’d suspected. A few days before he had drilled her with response techniques. That’s what they called that class at school. Guess it sounded better than “How to Avoid Getting Your Throat Ripped Out By Your Friends or Family”. He had her hide the spare car keys for each car in the house, and made her swear not to tell him where they were. He must have known.
Renna was seven years old when her mother was at work and her brother was at their friend Johnny’s birthday party. When her father began sweating and jerking, being pulled rigid by tense muscles. She did exactly what she had been taught. She grabbed the hidden car keys and the emergency cell phone, and she ran to the car. She locked herself in. She called her mother crying. She was told to stay still and to stay quiet. She hid under the blanket in the back seat and ignored the repeated return calls from her mother. She called emergency services, as she had been drilled over and over. Renna screamed as the car rocked back and forth with the force of her Wilder father slamming into it relentlessly, scrabbling at the handles, pounding his fists bloody against the windows that showed spidery cracks from the strain. She was seven years old when she stared out from the blanket and watched the bullets from the policemen she’d called burst through her father’s torso until he was finally dead. Renna was seven years old when her stunned and panicked mother arrived, Benjamin in tow. When her mother, hugging Benjamin to her, had turned away from Renna as she crawled out of the back of the bloody and ruined family car.
Renna stared at her mother’s back now, still turned to her years later. She thought about the missed calls that day in the car. The missed calls two nights ago at the party. She felt sick to her stomach all over again. She reached a shaking hand over to her mother, intending to comfort her. To try to bridge a gap a decade in the making. But just as she brushed her palm on her mother’s shaking shoulder, Tim Tam began growling low in his throat.
Both women froze, then whipped their heads toward the cat, crouched at the edge of the fence again, with fur puffed threateningly.
“Renna,” her mother said hoarsely, “go to the house. I’m right behind you.”
“But Mom,” she
whispered, “what about T?”
“He’s a cat, Renna. We’re humans.”
“But-“
“For once in your life just do what I tell you to, damnit.”
Renna jerked as if slapped. She was the rule follower. Since that day when she was seven, this party was the only time she had broken a single rule. And it hadn’t earned her, her mother’s love back. What was the point?
“No, mother. You go. I’m grabbing him.” Renna’s eyes remained trained on the woods as something red flashed between pines a few rows back. She blinked twice, staring hard. Was that real, or just adrenaline?
Then, as quickly as the tension rose, it fell flat. The mail man’s car crunched on the gravel in the drive, and Tim Tam shook off his posture, prancing over to Renna as if nothing had happened. Maybe it had only been a cardinal.
Her mother gripped her arm painfully above the elbow and dragged her bodily through the door of the fence, with Tim Tam following merrily in their footsteps.
“You, young lady, are grounded. No more fun times with Miss ‘I ignore my parents’ Alyssa. No going to your brother’s shows. You will have no life outside this house except for school. No friends over, no Renna out. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Mother.” Renna jerked her elbow out of her mother’s pinching grip and ran up the stairs. In her room she slid the window sash up and peered out into the backyard, listening intently. She was sure she’d seen something in the woods. Something bigger than a cardinal.
Chapter Four
Renna stayed upstairs until well after her mother left for work. Once she’d heard the door shut and the car start, she closed the window and abandoned her post, taking a short nap. She’d stared for over two hours and seen no other indications that there was anything out in the woods. It was getting near sunset when Renna woke. Surely Benjamin would be home within the hour. Maybe he was picking up something for dinner on his way home. Sometimes he’d use his half of the gig tips to bring them something hot, greasy, and way better than either of them could cook.
Anticipating his arrival, Renna settled in to watch some TV. Her favorite old movie had been on two nights ago, and she’d recorded it on the DVR. That seemed like a perfect way to pass the time. When she clicked the TV on, the red alert banner was scrolling and the warning alarm was blaring. She felt the skin on her arms prickle. Before even reading, she knew this wasn’t going to be a weather alert. Why hadn’t her phone gone off? Thumbing the screen she realized she’d let the battery run out. Her stomach dropped.
Tossing the useless hunk of metal and plastic aside she gripped the remote, white knuckled, flicking to a channel with live coverage. The anchor stood in front of a bar, with the words, “Unprecedented Wilder Attack in Amsterdam, NY” in blue and white text beneath.
“Oh No. No, no, no, no, no. Where’s Benjamin?” She dashed to the kitchen, shoving papers around and knocking his charcoal pen case to the floor. “Where were you playing today?” she muttered to herself as she searched. She was sure he’d left a card for the bar, or a flier for the show or something.
Behind her the newswoman continued to enumerate the facts in a jarringly calm voice, “There are at least forty-five confirmed deaths, and an unknown number of injuries. Witnesses are claiming that some of the infected began changing even as officers arrived.”
“Where the fuck were you today, Benjamin?” Renna shoved the piles around on the counter, her breath coming out in gasps. She exploded in frustration throwing her phone charger over to the couch where her stupid dead phone was silent and accusing.
“All citizens in northern New York are required to shelter in place. Authorities are requesting that all individuals within a three block radius of the Crow’s Nest bar today from 4pm to 5pm turn themselves in for testing. All other citizens must remain in their homes.” Renna looked back to the TV in time to see the CDC contact number flashing across the screen. Yeah. She knew what that number resulted in.
A glossy black magnet in the shape of a crow on the fridge caught her eye as she turned back to the counter. Beneath it was a slip of paper with the date on it, and the words “first trial set: 3:30pm to 5pm” in Diamond’s looping cursive. She snatched the magnet and the scrap of paper off the fridge, diving back to sit in front of the TV. Hope and fear warred within her as she shoved the charger for her phone into the wall and plugged it in, praying to anyone that would listen that it would have some kind of message from her brother or Diamond.
Flipping the crow magnet in her hand, she held it up to the sign behind the anchor on TV. Yep. Same. “Please be okay, please be okay.” She clutched the magnet like a talisman, re-reading the scrap of paper over and over. The date was the same. September 6th. She checked the TV screen again, hoping that maybe she was off on her days somehow. The date and time stamp in the lower left corner read ‘September 6th, 5:50pm.’ “Oh God, oh God, not you too Benny. It was daylight. It’s still daylight.” She was rocking in place typing her passcode into the phone when she heard it.
Tires on the gravel. Maybe mom had heard the news and come back. She should have been at work before the reports came out. Maybe Benjamin was fine after all. Maybe through some fluke of beautiful luck they’d never even made the gig. She threw the phone and magnet down, racing to the door.
It was her brother’s old Toyota Camry in the drive. Heart bursting with relief she unbolted the heavy door, swinging it back, and then unlatched the more complex copper screen door. As soon as she had that door open, Tim Tam shot out toward the car, faster on four legs than she was on two. She dashed after the cat, all fears of the looming shadows far from thought. Her brother was okay. He wasn’t at the bar.
But why wasn’t he getting out of the car? And what was that shape in the passenger’s seat? She slowed as she saw a smear of red along the bottom of the white car door, a few streaks further up on the door near the handle. Tim Tam was now stalking toward the car, back arched and lips peeled back from his teeth. Renna swallowed hard and started slowly retracing her steps backward, when the driver’s side door swung open and Benjamin staggered out, his hands and shirt covered in blood.
“Renna! Renna Thank God you’re here. I’m so tired. I didn’t know what to do. Did you see the news?”
Renna nodded mutely, shocked at the amount of blood. Wondering what or, maybe who, was in the passenger seat. If they were alive.
“Mom’s not coming home,” He continued in a weird voice. “There’s a shelter in place order. The radio said anybody on the roadways would be shot on sight.” She couldn’t stop staring at all the blood. On his jeans. His shirt front. His hands.
“Benny, that’s not infected blood, right?”
He shook his head, hands spread in front of him, “Renna, give me your phone. Where’s your phone?”
“I… it’s in the house. Are you…are you hurt?”
“Just get your phone. Mine’s not working anymore.”
Renna ran back to the house obediently, yanking the phone off the charger. When she turned, Benjamin was right behind her.
“Sorry, Sis.” He said reflexively as she jumped, startled at his proximity. Grabbing her phone he typed in the emergency code, leaving smears of blood across the screen. After listening for a minute his hand dropped from his ear, the phone falling limply to the ground. “It says all circuits are busy. It’s been saying that for an hour now. I thought maybe it was just my phone. Renna,” his eyes met hers, frightened and suddenly so young looking, “this is bad. This is really bad.”
Renna stared at her big brother, covered in blood, standing in their living room, terrified. What exactly had he seen? What had happened? Why did he come home instead of going to a hospital? He must not be thinking straight.
“Let’s try to wipe some of this blood off. Maybe…maybe if you take a shower you’ll feel better.” Renna tried to think of where the box of emergency latex gloves might have ended up during their mother’s last frantic cleaning spree between work shifts. She didn’t think she should be touchi
ng him, or now her phone, without the gloves on.
“Yeah. Maybe I should do that. I just need to take a minute. I just need to think.” He started to sit on the couch, and then seemed to think better of it, standing awkwardly, one shaking hand pressed to his forehead.
After a long moment of him standing there like that, doing nothing, Renna softly asked, “Benjamin… who… who’s in the car?”
He began to cry then, at first softly, then in large gulping sobs. He started toward the door of the house. “Diamond. Diamond’s in the car. I got her out. I got her out, Renna. It all just happened too fast. But I got her out.”
“Is she alive?” Renna frantically ran out to the car, peering through the window. If Diamond needed emergency care, she should have been doing that from the start. She used a small towel she’d grabbed from the kitchen to open the door handle without touching the blood smears streaking the door. What she saw looked like it belonged in a horror movie, not her brother’s old car. There was no way Diamond was alive. Her head was lolled back against the seat, face splattered with speckles of rusty dried blood. Below her chin her throat was a mess of torn tissues with blueish white cartilage hanging lopsidedly against her spine. Renna bent over and puked onto her flip flops.
“Renna, I didn’t do that. I swear. I just.. I couldn’t leave her there. There were so many. I don’t even know where they came from. I don’t even know where they went. They shot some. But I know some made it out. They just ran out into the sun, like it was nothing. People started fighting each other. Like, the bar people too, not just the Wilders. It wasn’t like the drills in school, Renna. There wasn’t any safe place to go. Nothing was orderly. There weren’t any lines, or, or people just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.”
Renna dimly heard Alyssa’s voice in her head from the party I bet people would pay a lot for a toothbrush when the world finally turns into a full apocalypse instead of this half-pocalypse. She fought the laughter she felt bubbling up. Alyssa the prophet. Her fingers tingled, her lips stretching up at the corners. She wanted to laugh and laugh. This couldn’t be real. Oh God, this couldn’t be real. She wanted to cry with her brother. She battled it down. She couldn’t lose it. She knew she would, and soon. But not just yet. Right now, Benjamin was losing it and she had to be the voice of reason.