by Jason White
“Take me with you,” she hisses. “Please!”
When Max came, an air of dread followed. It was a living, breathing thing, this dread, it hung about him making the immediate air surrounding him hard to breath. He smiled and knelt down before me. His fingers brushed my cheek, his eyes dilated.
“I think I’m gonna keep you around for a bit,” he said. His deep voice was low, dripping with desire. “You’re so tight,” he said. “So hot.” And here, he shouted, “UHH! I could go for another round right now!”
Thankfully he was still smiling, a look of mischievousness in his eyes. There was true hunger in those eyes as well. Make no mistake about that. I’m certain, if he had the time, he would have stayed. Would have had his way. Not with just me, either.
“You’re sister’s good, too,” he said. “At first she screamed, which as you know, I like, but now she lies there like a corpse.”
He shook his head, clucking his tongue.
“This won’t do,” he said. “I don’t like fucking corpses. I kill all the walking ones I can. And I’ll kill your little retarded sister, too.”
It amazed me how someone could say such horrible things while wearing a smile like the one Max was smiling right then. He could have been talking about plans to go fishing with his son the next day, or something menial like the weather.
I shivered. No wonder people followed this man. You had no choice but to do what he wanted if he got hold of you.
His fingers brushed my cheek again. The gesture was almost loving, a proud father, a doting lover.
He stood up and circled the room, his fingers on his lips, head tilted forward. When he spoke, it was in that same conversational tone he used when telling me that he’d kill my sister. “You know what I did before the dead rose?” he asked the three of us. He waited for an answer. After a long silence, he opened his arms and raised his eyebrows, looking all three of us in the eye.
“No guesses?” he said.
“You were in the army,” the blond said. Her voice cracked and tears ran down her cheeks.
“No, not the army,” he answered her.
“No,” the redhead said. “You were a rapist and a killer, just like you are now.”
The dread that surrounded Max thickened with her words. She looked up at him, her eyes dry. Instead, her eyes were smeared with a deep, unforgiving hatred. I remembered last night, the things he did to her after he was done with me and the blond. He might have made her bleed, and perhaps that’s why she had been allowed track pants.
Max tilted his head, the smile on his lips slowly dying.
“I bet you were a salesman or something,” the redhead went on. “Something that involved regular travel. I’ll also bet that you had a wife who never slept with you and that you were obsessed with the History channel. That you couldn’t help but dream that you were a soldier, raping and pillaging villages and cities. I’ll bet you read military books and didn’t speak much. I’ll bet that you were a loser who took the apocalypse, of all things, to his advantage. You were probably on the road when it happened, weren’t you? I bet you didn’t even go home to see if your wife was okay. Or maybe she’s in one of these houses now, forced to sleep with you now, or with one of your men—”
The soft crack of Max’s fist smashing the redhead in the cheek stopped her. He had moved like a viper. Across the room in less than a second, and the redhead was lost for words while she held her cheek.
“Not bad,” he said. “Wrong, and yet right.” The smile returned. He clenched his fists and went to work. Apparently, he did have the time. When he was done, the redhead’s eyes were already swelling shut, her nose was a bloody mess, her lips like stepped on worms. He was sweaty and breathing hard as he got off her. He fixed his hair, his pants. He threw the beaten girl’s track pants across the room at me. He said, “You’ve graduated.” Then he left the house.
Graduated from what, I don’t know.
“Take me with you!” the blond hisses. Her eyes and cheeks are soaked with tears, with panic.
“What about her,” I say, motioning to the redhead. She lies on her cot, naked and bleeding. She moans and makes odd huffing sounds. I think it might be that she’s crying, but it’s hard to tell with her swollen eyes.
The blond looks relieved that I’m even talking to her. I have yet to put on the pants Max had tossed me. Doing so would feel wrong somehow. Instead, I drag my cot over to the redhead ’ s and drape them over most of her beaten and bruised nakedness. I then slide it back and look at the blond, my eyebrows raised.
I motion to the redhead. “What about her?” I say again.
The blond blinks, shakes her head and looks at the redhead. “I … I don’t know.” She says. For a moment her eyes drift down to my briefs. Up until I had given the pants back to the redhead, I had used them to cover my own half-naked self. Now all I have is my hands.
She looks up at me. “I don’t know,” she repeats.
The sun is sinking. Pretty soon, if things work out, we’ll be on our way.
After Max had left, Eve had come downstairs, looking at us. She whispered only one word to me. “Tonight!” She raised her eyebrows in what could have been sympathy or nervousness. I don’t know.
“My name’s Charlie,” I tell the blond.
She smiles. “That’s a nice name,” she says. “I’m Dawn.”
I’d have to convince Eve on the subject, if she hadn’t planned it all ready. But for some reason, I think that she’s only planning on getting me, my sister, and herself out of this house and town tonight. But there’s yet another we have to rescue. There’s no way Bill’s little girl can grow up with a bunch of feral, violent humans such as these. I’m certain Eve knows where she’s being kept.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I tell Dawn.
“Dawn wants to come,” I tell Eve.
“Dawn?”
I point over to Dawn, who’s sitting on her cot, that disease of hope plaguing her eyes. Eve sighs and wipes a hand over her face.
“And I want to find Bill’s daughter, too.”
“You know that we’re putting our lives on the line,” she hisses at me, trying to hide her words from the guard outside. “The more of us there are, the more we go looking around for infants, the more easily we’ll be seen!”
“I won’t get in the way,” Dawn says. Her eyes are puffing up with tears again, and I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to be left behind. “I can help. Give me a weapon, I’ll kill one of the fuckers.”
“We’re going to try to get out of here without having to resort to that,” Eve says. She’s no longer angry and her voice comes out soft, almost naturally. Again she sighs, a gesture of defeat, then she says, “No. You’re gonna just have to find your own way out. We’ve got enough trying to handle his sister.” She nods towards me. “And we’re going without any screaming kids.”
“If you don’t want to do this, then why are you?” Dawn says. “You got it good here, for whatever reason.”
Eve looks at Dawn and crosses her arms. “I have to do this,” she says. “This whole mess is mine to clean up, and you’re not invited.”
“Fine then,” Dawn says. The expression on her face changes from hopeful anticipation to something else entirely. Her cheeks burn red, her lips and jaw are set tight. The tears continue to flow, but they’re angry, frustrated. “I can play this game. I’ll just call you out, and if you try anything on me, I’ll yell out right now. You think Max might want to know just how trustworthy his highest whore is?”
Eve goes at her with her fists clenched. Dawn backs up as Eve grabs a handful of hair and begins punching her in the face. Dawn makes a high-pitched sound—the promised scream?—and punches back, mostly getting Eve in the ribs.
“Stop it!” I hiss.
Outside, the man guarding us shifts and turns. I can only see his silhouette through the frosted glass, though, so I can’t tell if he’s been alerted or if he’s just shifting his position. There’s no telling what would h
appen if he were to enter and see the women going at it.
Across from the fight, the redhead remains silent, unmoving.
From upstairs, I can hear Cindy moving.
I want nothing more than to go to my sister, collect her in my arms and get the fuck out of here. The inability to do so right at this moment is, perhaps, the most frustration I’ve ever felt.
“Fucking stop it!” I whisper. Nearly a yell. The guard’s silhouette shifts again. His arms move up to his face and a flame flares to light a cigarette.
Both women, however, stop and look at me in the fading light.
“I want her to come,” I say. “She’s right. She can help me with Cindy if nothing else.”
Dawn pushes Eve away.
“Fucking bitch!” Dawn says.
“Don’t push it, cunt!” Eve replied.
I rub my face. I almost hope that we get caught in our escape. Shot on sight. It might be better than surviving with these two.
After a long moment of silence, where Eve composes herself and goes outside to check on the smoking guard and the town, she comes back into the living room. She looks at me, ignoring Dawn. What is it with these two? I wonder. Is there something more between them, something I don’t know about?
“If we’re going to leave,” Eve says. “We have to do it, and soon. They’re already drinking down the street. It won’t be long before they come here.”
Outside, the winter twilight has cast the sky into a deep, frozen purple. I remember when I didn’t trust Grant. When I just wanted him to go somewhere else. Now I wish he was here with me. He’d know how to handle these women. He was also a good killer. I miss his presence for many reasons, but right now those are the biggest.
My heart pounds when Eve pulls the keys out of her pocket and comes towards me. My breath catches when the set of handcuffs clicks, freeing my wrist from the cot.
“What about her?” I say, rubbing my wrist and motioning toward the unmoving redhead.
“We leave her,” says Dawn. Eve releases her and raises her eyebrow at the other woman’s words.
“Look at her,” Dawn says. “She’s already gone, otherwise I’d demand that she come with us, too.”
She rubs at her wrist just as I have been. Eve turns and looks at the redhead. The redhead hasn’t moved since Max’s last visit. Her eyes remain open, staring at nothing, my track pants draped over her in the same spot from when I had put them there. Her breathing is the only indication that she’s still alive.
Eve looks down at her and I know that I see sympathy in her eyes. Then a hardness crosses them and she picks the track pants off her body and tosses them to me.
“Our winter clothes are upstairs,” she says to me. To Dawn, she says, “You’re going to have to fend for yourself. We need to be quiet so we don’t disturb anyone else. Otherwise they’ll all want to come.”
“Wouldn’t expect more from you,” Dawn says.
I shake my head as we go upstairs. I lead, anxious to see my sister. We walk slowly in the dark so as not to alert the guard. I want nothing more than to run.
“What about the guard outside?” I whisper.
Eve’s voice comes from behind as we reach the second floor.
“We’re going to have to kill him,” she says. “As quietly as possible.”
The butterflies in my stomach flap their wings violently at this. I know that that job will fall into my lap. I think of old war movies and wonder if I can grab the man from behind and slit his throat. It’s not like I haven’t killed another man, but that was with guns. This is more intimate, and I don’t know if I’m up for the task.
The worst that can happen, I remind myself, is that we get caught and killed.
There are worse fates that could happen to us, I know, but I ignore those awful thoughts. And I let Eve take the lead as she lights a lantern and heads for the room containing my sister.
I knew that Cindy was in a bad state of mind. I could tell just by the sounds she was making. Moans and sudden cries, but no constant crying. No happy sounds either. This was unlike her, and I worried. When I finally see her, my heart breaks.
She lays curled in the fetal position, her thumb in her mouth. She looks a lot like the redhead downstairs, her eyes open and staring at nothing. Just like the redhead, the only way I can tell Cindy’s alive is that she’s still breathing. She doesn’t respond to our presence. What’s worse is that she doesn’t respond to me. At all.
“Cindy,” I say, stroking her arms and back. She moans as though stuck in a bad dream, but otherwise is motionless.
“I didn’t want to bring this up downstairs,” Eve says, looking at Dawn. “I don’t think we should bring Cindy, either.”
I stand back and turn to her. “What the fuck?” I say. “You want to leave her here, to these men?”
A tremor pulses through Eve’s bottom lip. “No,” she says, looking at the floor. She pulls out a switchblade and opens it.
“You have no idea what I went through to get this.”
Dawn scratches her head and then leaves the room.
“I’m not killing my sister,” I say.
“Listen, I know that you love her,” Eve says, “but do you think keeping her alive in this world, the way it is today, is good for her? Look at her, Charlie. She’s comatose. She’s nearly dead. She won’t eat, and she doesn’t move. I was hoping that she’d respond to you. But she doesn’t even do that. We take her with us, we’ll get caught. If not, she’ll die anyway.”
“I don’t care,” I say, my own voice breaking now as my vision blurs with tears. Will the tears ever stop? I wonder, wanting it all to end. But, I already know the answer to that, and so I turn my thoughts to Cindy, and I gather her in my arms.
This time she responds. Mechanical and with no emotion she wraps her arms around me, lays her head on my shoulder. I look down at her face. The light from the lantern shows me that there’s no change in her face, the blank dead look in her eyes.
“Fuck,” Eve says from behind. “I guess we’ve got no choice.”
We dress into the winter clothes Eve has gathered for us. I’m not surprised to see that they’re our old clothes we were captured in. She then passes me with a speed to her step that demonstrates her frustration. She still holds the switchblade open in her hand. When she’s out in the hallway, she goes to the hall closet and grabs a third winter coat. The house is somehow still and quiet. I wonder if there are actually any other women in the house at all, despite what Eve has said. Eve then throws the coat at Dawn and hisses, “You want to join us, you take care of the guard out there.”
Eve hands the knife over to Dawn. Dawn looks down at it, and there’s a new life there, a look of fear and vengeance both rolled into one exasperated expression.
“I … I’ve never killed a living person before,” she says.
“Then this’ll be your first,” Eve says. “You better get to it before they get here and we’re stuck for another night.”
Dawn looks dazed. She also looks eager. Slowly she goes down the steps, cradling the weapon Eve gave her with both hands. When she gets downstairs, however, she grips it in her right hand and stares at the front door.
“You can do this,” I hear her whispering to herself.
“Come on,” Eve says. “The sooner you do it, the sooner we’re out of here.”
Dawn looks back at her, the dazed expression still there.
Cindy moans at my throat. Her body is getting heavy and I heft her up and shift my feet. “You can do it,” I tell her, glad that the responsibility is no longer mine. “Just think of what they did to you.”
This is the spark that lights the fire. She nods at me, and I see the uncertainty melt. Now there’s anger, rage, and she moves to the front door, opens it and steps outside.
She pauses only for a second, but it’s long enough. The guard turns just enough so that Dawn can’t get her arm around his neck to silence him. Her adrenaline must be pumping through her veins, though, because she steps
up and wraps her arm around his neck anyway so that it looks like she’s trying to hug him from the side. The knife strikes right into his stomach and blood splatters onto the frozen deck.
Eve and I are forced to watch the grisly murder. They’re too close to the door to go around them, but we’re too transfixed to look for the back door. The knife tears out from the guard’s stomach and strikes again. This time the guard screams, and the knife tears out and this time lands in the man’s neck, causing his screams to turn to gurgles. He collapses, holding his throat, trying to keep the blood that spurting from the gaping wound there inside. It squirts from between his fingers, and he coughs it up. There’s blood everywhere, and Dawn isn’t finished yet.
“So you like raping women, hey,” she says, standing over him. Within seconds, she’s on his stomach, the knife going up and down, up and down. The sound of it piercing the winter clothes, and worse, the flesh and bone beneath, is almost too much to take. Soon, the gargling stops.
Eve and I exchange a nervous look. Who is this woman? What have I invited into our party?
Shouts from somewhere down the street interrupts our eye contact. We’ve been caught, or will be soon if we don’t get a move on.
Eve scrambles by Dawn, searching. She comes back with a flashlight, a gun—which she hands to me—and a submachine gun. Dawn is still on top of the man, still stabbing him while making horrid animal-like sounds.
“Come on,” Eve says. “We don’t have much time.” She hoists the lantern up, shoulders the submachine gun, and heads for the kitchen and the rear exit.
“Dawn,” I say. “Dawn!” But something in her has changed, transformed. It’s as though she’s become one of the zombies, except, unlike the zombies, she has a knife and knows how to use it. She looks back at me, and all I see is madness in those beautiful, crystal blue eyes.
“You need to come with us now!” I say just as the flashlights swinging from down the street focus on her. Bullets follow, tearing into the door and windows. Blood and chunks of flesh with wooden splinters spray at me. Dawn’s body flies back and off the dead guard. The bullets, however, do not stop.