Consumption

by Heather Herrman

  Bunny’s head exploded.

  Chapter 21

  1

  Kill the bitch.

  Kill her.

  His own words, playing over and over, drumming against his skull. His words. His death sentence for the old woman.

  Kill the bitch.

  Beside Javier, the girl stroked his hand, like she was trying to erase something, over and over, the same slow motion.

  Kill the bitch.

  He couldn’t take back what he’d done, what he’d said. But he could keep her safe, maybe. This stranger with the brown eyes that looked so familiar he almost thought he knew them.

  Kill the bitch.

  The words came again, and just as quickly Star wiped them away with the stroke of her hand.

  “You did what you had to do. You know that,” she said.

  “That lady’s fucking crazy, huh?” Javier said, jerking a thumb back at the corner where John was bent over his wife, who had apparently decided to check out of this world.

  “Yeah,” said Star. “She is.”

  “You think that old man’s crazy too?” Javier asked

  “Not any crazier than the rest of us.”

  Javier laughed. “You got that right, mija.” He grew silent, and Star closed her eyes. He felt the warmth of her skin under his hand.

  “You know,” Javier said, speaking softly, although everyone else was occupied in their own pursuits, Pill and Riley pulling a blanket from the back of the sofa, covering Bunny’s body, Erma and John doing their death dance for sanity in the corner. The little girl sat nearby, only feet from her great-aunt Bunny’s body. She watched the goings-on without any sign of fear, her thumb tucked neatly into her mouth. “You remind me of somebody.”

  “I’m glad,” said Star.

  “Me too,” said Javier, and he pulled Star in fully against him, letting her rest under his arm.

  2

  It was the first time she’d been touched in kindness in weeks. Star knew it wasn’t healthy, what she was feeling for him. Not now, of all times. But there it was, just the same. She felt a connection with him, a desperate connection that was the only thing keeping her in this world instead of crawling into a corner and giving up like that woman, Erma, had done. Javier was so alive and so angry at the same time, it was an unworkable combination, even if he couldn’t see that. He’d get himself killed if he didn’t have someone to watch out for him. He needed her. It had been a long time since that had been true of anyone.

  In a corner of the room to her left the three men came together in a huddle. Heads lowered, John, Riley, and Pill whispered fervently, and Star could just make out the fact that they were talking about Erma. Probably what to do about her.

  Star let herself sink back into Javier, ignoring the others.

  She wanted to enjoy this.

  Because it couldn’t last. Soon, one or both of them would be dead.

  3

  Erma could hear the commotion outside of her, hear the plan to blow up the factory, could hear John calling her name. She could hear it all, but she couldn’t bring herself out of the bubble she’d built, the cocoon of silence in which she’d wrapped herself. Too much. The voices swirled around her like unwelcome flies, John’s mixed in with the others.

  Oh my God. You fucking shot her. You shot her, man!

  It’s time to go. The factory. It’s where they have to be. Together.

  We can’t! It’s suicide.

  We…

  A cold nose touched her hand, and for an instant she came back to herself. Maxie stood beside her, shoving her face against Erma’s hand.

  “See,” said John. “Maxie’s worried about you, too, baby. Come back to us. It’ll be okay,” he whispered. “I promise we’ll be okay.”

  Erma heard Riley’s voice from across the room. It sounded shaky but loud, as if trying to cover his nerves. “It was for the best. We can’t know. You heard the man’s story. She could have still been infected and just not turned all the way. You saw the signs.”

  “Sure, man.” Javier, the boy’s voice. “It doesn’t matter, hombre. We did her a favor either way. We’ll all be dead soon enough.”

  “Pill’s right,” Erma heard Star say. “It has to be the factory, it’s—”

  “Where they keep the wafers, of course!” Javier interrupted. “That’s what you said, isn’t it, Star? They changed when they ate the communion wafers?”

  “Dear God,” said Pill. “They mean to send them out into the world. The wafers, the sugar, and all of it contaminated. If even one batch of it gets out—”

  “But it means they’ll want to protect it. It means we can drive them there if…”

  The voices went on, the arguments, the plan forming, and all of it with Bunny’s body dead on the floor. How could they? She felt a small hand on her leg, and then the voice of the little girl beside her.

  “Bunny go boom!” Izzy squealed. “Boom. Boom!”

  Erma shut her eyes more tightly. How could they do it, she wondered again. But she knew, didn’t she? They could because no matter what she’d told herself all these years, humanity was awful. Was evil. Thank God she’d lost the baby. It could only ever have been another monster.

  Erma. This voice was different than the storm of sounds around her. She tried to shut her mind against it, but it came again.

  Erma. Stop it. Stop it and be sensible, girl. It was her mother’s voice. Firm. Reasonable. And full of love.

  But only because she had to be, Erma thought. Her mother had raised her only because she had to. If she had known beforehand that she was pregnant, known about her options back then, she would have killed Erma just like she killed her other baby. But she hadn’t. Had been too young to reason it out, and so she’d had to take the responsibility of raising Erma out of a sense of duty. Erma hadn’t understood that then, but she did now. It didn’t make her mother a good person. Love had nothing to do with it.

  Now, stop that, girl! Stop that right now. Are you saying that I didn’t love you? That your father didn’t love you? We had our problems, sure, but we loved you.

  Just a sense of duty, Erma thought. A sense of duty left over from the time when survival as humans depended on looking out for one another. They were all just stupid, ugly organisms trying to survive.

  Is that right, girl? Meant nothing at all those Sundays you and me sat up till nigh one in the morning eating ice cream and playing gin rummy? Those afternoons your daddy took you out to your grandparents’ to help birth those lambs at the crack of dawn just so as you could give them their first bottle? Nothing?

  Nothing.

  Erma stubbornly and completely pushed the voice away and let John shake her, tuning his voice out, too.

  And now John was holding her, just as she’d wanted him to on that morning so long ago.

  But it was too late now. Everything was ruined. Look at them, like a pack of dogs. With the merest scent of blood in the air, they’d attacked without provocation, attacked without investigation or calm reasoning. Attacked on pure instinct, just like Feeders. They’d killed an innocent woman.

  Erma felt the slight pressure of the little girl’s hand on her leg again, and this time she opened her eyes. Izzy stood with her thumb in her mouth, watching them. Erma looked away from the child to where the mess that had been the woman’s blood had been and remembered the story that Pill had just read to them from his dead wife’s journal. Their blood will be black. Not that it will do you any good to know this.

  She’d been right. It did her no good at all to know this and to see the blood from Bunny’s neck seeping into her fastidiously clean carpet a bright and scarlet red.

  Izzy gave Erma a small smile around her thumb and then pulled it out just long enough to speak. Erma tried to smile back but couldn’t.

  “Bunny go boom!” Izzy squealed. “Boom. Boom!”

  “Izzy, no,” Erma said. She grabbed at the little girl’s hands and pulled them down. “Shh. Don’t say those things. It’ll be okay, sweetheart
.”

  Izzy pulled away from Erma and Erma did not try to pull her back. Izzy raised her arms again and Erma watched in horror as the little girl made exploding gestures with her hands. “Pow! Boom!”

  Erma, without realizing she was going to do so before she did it, felt her hand snake out and she slapped the little girl across the face.

  “Erma!” John said, “stop it!” He grabbed her wrist, which she realized she’d raised, along with her arm, in order to slap the toddler again.

  Erma closed her eyes. Black it out. She had to black it out. Just stop thinking. Everything she’d believed in, every hope in humanity that she’d clung to despite everything she’d seen, was gone. Dead. Buried. Seeping into the ground with Bunny’s blood. Finally, and fully, Erma could see herself for what she really was.

  Good, Erma thought, squeezing her eyes more tightly shut. Good. They were all her father’s children after all. Each and every one of them with that seed of evil buried beneath their skin, and if there was a demon who wanted to feed on that, then let him.

  “Erma!” John shook her again. “Honey, we’ve got to go. Please! Wake up! Wake up!”

  She couldn’t hear anything. Nothing at all.

  Except…

  The voice of her mother would not stop talking. Erma fought against it, tried to shake it away, but just as she’d been when she was alive, her mother was stubborn.

  I’m talking to you, Erma.

  No. I won’t listen. Can’t listen. Everything is black. So black.

  Oh, you’ll listen, young lady. You’ll listen and listen good. All those times you wanted to go out to the barn to feed those baby sheep your dad made your grandpa get long after he retired just so that you could know something of farm life? You saying you don’t remember that?

  Go away, Erma told the voice. Just go away.

  And oh, how you begged and begged him not to sell those babies because you were so in love with them…

  Oh, God, the sheep. Erma remembered them now, their soft, sweet wool, how her father, her own father, despite all the terrible things he did and had done, would wake her to visit them, would carefully place them in her arms…

  And your dad would sit out there with you in the barn for hours talking to—

  No! It was too much to remember!

  —you about them, helping you—

  No!

  Yes!

  Stop talking at me! Easier to make everything black. Ugly.

  The voice went on.

  —to nurse those babies with that bottle you got up after the mama fell sick…

  How could Erma ever have forgotten this?

  Oh, how you loved them. Loved them, loved them…

  She’d loved them.

  Of course she did. She had loved her parents. Both of them, even her father, no matter his shortcomings. And she loved her husband, loved what they had created and lost between them. All of a sudden, she could feel John again, his weight pressing against her back.

  And she allowed herself, her true self, the self that was Erma, to press back. The self that she’d begun to suspect was maybe just a front, just a pitch she used to sell the beat-up women and kids she worked with on the possibility of hope. But no. It was her. This, now, was her. She believed all those things she’d told them. She had to. And now she needed to tell them to herself.

  Yes, there was dark in this world, a great lot of it, in each of us, probably, enough to make us kill one another without ever knowing if it was the right thing to do, but doing it not always with hate, doing it sometimes, every great once in a while, with love. Because of love. Because you wanted so much to protect somebody or something. Because you loved them. And yes, the killing was a darkness, a sin, but it was the coming together, the idea that you could save someone that mattered. The fact that anyone ever wanted to save someone else.

  Like those lambs. She’d wanted to save the babies so much even after the mother died, and her dad had helped her not because he loved the lambs, but because he loved her, Erma…For hours, you two, her mother’s voice said, you’d mind those babies for hours.

  The room in front of Erma began to clear. Her mind stopped spinning and the cottony fog she’d wrapped herself in lifted.

  Baby.

  Mind the baby.

  Erma looked at the little girl sitting splay-legged in front of her. She had her thumb in her mouth, and she was watching Erma warily. She was a cute little girl. Erma wondered, for the first time, if her own child would have been attractive.

  The red mess of blood in the toilet flashed before her.

  Mind the baby. Mind the babies, Erma.

  Yes, she’d have to take care of this little girl now, watch her for the others. She wouldn’t let this one die.

  Mind the baby, Erma. MIND HER.

  A command now, from her mother. No gentle reprimand, this. Erma looked harder at the girl. Izzy was her name, she remembered now. Erma reached a hand out to her, and the little girl reached her own hand out in a mimicking gesture.

  “Hey,” Erma cooed. “Hey, it’s all right.”

  “Erma?” John spoke above her, but Erma ignored him. She stretched her hand forward and then stopped. The girl wore no socks or shoes, and Erma stared at her left sole.

  On the bottom of her foot was a raspberry-colored birthmark in an indistinct, ugly shape.

  Izzy smiled at her.

  “Erma?” She thought it was John at first, but then understood it was Riley, back from upstairs. He bent down to kneel beside his daughter. “You doing any better?” he asked Erma.

  “I think she’s doing a little better, thanks,” said John, answering for her.

  “She’s had a shock,” said Riley.

  “We all have.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it’s gonna get any better, does it?”

  “Nope.”

  Erma watched as Izzy pushed herself to a standing position, wobbling on her chubby legs and hiding her mark against the carpet’s fuzz.

  “The baby.” Erma pointed.

  “Who, Izzy?” Riley asked. “You want to hold Izzy?” He scooped the girl up and brought her toward Erma.

  Erma tried to shake her head no, but it felt attached by immovable weighted hinges. She could not move it.

  “Here,” Riley said, pushing Izzy toward her. “You take her. Izzy, go be nice to Erma here. She wants to say hello.”

  In response, Izzy bounced in her father’s arms and stuck her hands out to Erma. “Hi!” she squealed. “Hi! Hi!”

  Erma tried to back away, but John was holding her there. “No,” she managed. “I don’t want her.” She turned into John and lifted her face toward him. “She’s marked,” she whispered.

  “Hold on a second,” John said, putting his hand out to stop Riley from bringing his daughter any closer. “I don’t think she’s feeling up to it yet.”

  Erma felt Maxie’s nose on her hand again and she looked down, grateful to have her companion beside her. But looking at her more closely, she saw that the dog was shivering.

  “John. Something’s wrong with Maxie.”

  Riley took a step forward. “I’m good with dogs. Let me see—”

  Izzy screamed. “No! Back, Daddy. Bad dog! He bites.”

  Startled, Riley pulled away. “Shh. It’s okay, baby. I’m sorry. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  Erma pushed John’s hands off of her and took a tentative step toward the cop. “Riley. I want you to listen to me.”

  “Sure, Erma. Just a second. Let me get Izzy calmed down here.”

  “Put her down, Riley. Right now, just put Izzy down.”

  “What is your problem?” Riley asked. He turned to John. “Your wife’s crazy. You know that?”

  “Erma.” John tugged at her sleeve. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. Only once, but it was all John needed. He ran toward Riley, charging him. Erma never knew what he’d planned to do with the little girl because in that second, seeing John charging, the toddler turned into her father and b
it Riley’s neck. With one bite, she severed his windpipe.

  4

  Riley looked at Izzy with astonishment and still, somehow, complete love before dropping her, his arms falling uselessly to his sides as he sank to the floor.

  “Ighz…hy” Riley managed his daughter’s name despite the windpipe, the sound coming out of him guttural and bruised.

  Izzy fell into a crouch on the floor and arched her tiny back, facing the rest of the room before saying, in perfect, unbroken English:

  “We will feed on you, and your bones will succor my children.”

  Then, with the quickness of a chased spider, Izzy scampered on all fours, her sweet toddler’s body twisted into an unnatural form as it headed for the door to the stairs and out of the basement.

  Chapter 22

  1

  If Bunny’s death had been complete chaos, Riley’s took place amidst utter calm. John saw Erma turn to him and say two words:

  “Catch her.”

  Without a word of protest, John squeezed Erma’s hand, dropped it, and ran toward the stairs. Behind him, Javier followed without needing to be asked.

  Pill, Erma, and Star all ran to Riley. The man lay with his hands to his spurting neck, and even as Pill tied the remains of a couch pillow’s cover around the wound, Riley’s head fell limply to the floor. John saw all of this seemingly in slow motion, but he did not stop running.

  Behind him, he felt a presence even before he heard Javier’s voice. “I got your back, man.”

  John didn’t answer. He was already growing winded, taking the stairs two at a time. He didn’t answer, but he did have the briefest of moments to think, I hope you don’t have my back like you had Bunny’s, hombre, before arriving at the top of the stairs.

  He pushed through the door with a rush, not bothering to check the other side.

  She’d been waiting for him. He felt her soft and spindly body as it lunged itself through the air and collided with his own, knocking them to the floor.