Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  “They’re leaving.” He flipped off the outside light and came back. “I noticed they’re doing that more—traveling in packs. Sit over there.” He pointed towards the couch with her rifle.

  She waded through the debris and pushed more aside to sit on the ratty couch with a faded floral pattern that looked like it was decades old.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cheryl. What’s yours?”

  He sat on the adjacent matching love seat, laid her rifle on his lap and began to stroke it. “An AK-47. Cool! You some sorta Army brat?”

  “No. The clothes and the gun belonged to my fiancé.”

  “Fiancé, huh? What happened to him?”

  Cheryl looked down, pretending to study the oversized blood-spattered boots on her feet. “He got sick.”

  “Hmm…you got any ammo for this?”

  “No…I used it all,” she lied. “You going to tell me your name?”

  He paused for a second, wrinkling his nose. “You can call me Sting. Yeah, Sting…that’s it.”

  “Like the rock star? That’s not your real name.”

  “Don’t matter what my real name is. This is my house, and all guests will live by my rules.”

  Cheryl liked this inn less and less. She found herself fidgeting and feeling very uncomfortable. Morning couldn’t come soon enough. In the meantime, she’d have to make small talk with this self-absorbed freak and try to find a clean corner to curl up in for the night.

  “So, you just holing up here all by yourself?”

  He switched guns and started playing with his shotgun, swinging it around with the barrel pointed perilously close to her, then strumming it like a guitar. “Yeah, just me. Lucky me. I got lots of food, water, and beer. It’s a party until the government figures out how to round up all those sickies outside and put ‘em in a pen somewhere. Meanwhile, I don’t have to go to my stupid job bussing tables, I don’t have to mow the lawn, I don’t even have to wash my damn underwear if I don’t want to. It’s like finally getting some time off for good behavior.”

  Her first impression was right; this guy was just a few licks short of his sticky chocolate center, and he was oddly relaxed, considering the apocalypse that was going on outside. Or…maybe he was high on something.

  “You got power. Has it stayed on, or do you have a generator somewhere?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Stayed on, I guess.”

  “What about water? Is that still running?”

  “It was last time I took a dump.”

  Nice. At least it was good to know that civilization hadn’t completely broken down. That meant there was a better chance that she might still have family alive. When this had all started, and she was holed up with a group of survivors, she had assumed the worst. Now, it seemed possible that miles away, in Arizona, her father and her aunt might still be alive.

  “Hey, you hungry?”

  She had to think about that for a moment. She hadn’t eaten anything since earlier that day in the church shelter when she’d snatched the moldy donut, an event that still worried her. Had it been nerves, a survival instinct, or…a sign of sickness? Truthfully, at the moment, food was the last thing on her mind. Her stomach felt a little queasy, and she wondered if it was from the brew of smells in the house. “Not really.”

  “Well come check this out anyway.”

  She rose and followed him, noting that he’d left her rifle lying on the love seat.

  They went into the kitchen that turned out to be an even worse smelling room filled with piles of dirty dishes, empty milk cartons, and soda cans. All along the counter top, there were raw hamburger patties lined up in a row. Flies danced gleefully around them like they were patrons at an all you can eat buffet.

  “I brought the grill inside, ‘cause I figure a back patio party isn’t really an option tonight.”

  “Ya think?” This idiot might just be the needle that would pop the bubble-thin remains of her sanity. It was obvious that he’d given in to every hedonistic urge since the Eaters epidemic had spread like some teenager who had the house to himself for the very first time.

  “I don’t like the idea of dining with some soldier chick. Don’t you want to get out of those clothes and into something a little more ladylike?”

  She shrugged. As hot as they were, the fatigues were kind of a security blanket, and her last link to Mark. And, unbeknownst to Sting, there were magazines in the pockets.

  He pointed down the hall. “There’s some lady clothes in the closet down that way. You might find something a little cooler to wear or at least make you look more like a girl.”

  “Ladies’ clothes? I thought you said you lived alone.”

  “Yeah, I did. She bailed on me. You know how chicks are…the going gets rough…” he shook his head.

  “Your wife? Girlfriend?”

  He turned away. “You could take a shower if you want. If you’re going to hang out here, I don’t want no skanky smelling thing having dinner with me.”

  Skanky smelling? She decided that a retort wasn’t worth it. And, take a shower in some stranger’s house? She didn’t care how bad she smelled, no way in hell would she be doing that. On the other hand, any chance to get away from him for a few minutes just to try and refocus sounded like a good idea. She forced a Cheshire Cat smile.

  “Alright, but make sure you cook those burgers good.”

  He gave her a salute after pointing her towards a bedroom a few yards down the hallway. The door was closed, and she hesitated with her hand on the knob for just a second, worried that he might have steered her into some sort of trap. For all she knew, there could be a gang of men on the other side…or Eaters waiting for room service.

  When she finally opened it, however, she found a sparsely furnished room, with a feminine touch. It had rose-colored paisley curtains, a full-sized oak bed with a matching bedspread, and a cheap-looking dresser made out of a darker wood. The nightstand held an alarm clock radio, a pack of cigarettes, an overflowing ashtray, and a romance novel with a silk ribbon bookmark placed in the middle. There were clothes and towels scattered all over the floor and on top of the dresser.

  She must have left in a hurry. Cheryl figured that was the case, or that the two of them were just everyday slobs.

  In the walk-in closet, she found multiple sizes of women’s clothing, but all of them were at least three sizes too big for her. It was so hot, her skin seemed to have a perpetual sheen of perspiration, and Mark’s heavy uniform really was uncomfortable, so she decided on something lightweight. It was a large white t-shirt that said, “Ladies Peak Gym” in pink cursive letters above a black outline of mountain peaks. All of the pants on the lower rack were impossibly big, and she decided that Sting wasn’t going to get his wish of seeing her in a dress, if that was his fantasy, so she decided to stick with Mark’s camouflage pants. The blood splatter on them wasn’t as bad as it was on her shirt, and the belt was adjustable, so it could be kicked up a notch to make them stay up better.

  Mark. Wince. Stop thinking…stop thinking…he’s gone.

  Before changing, she decided to take a peek out the window. She brushed the curtain aside, just enough to see out. In that instant, she had a flashback to the sandwich shop where she’d been on watch. That last time, an Eater had been right there on the other side of the glass staring back at her. She was glad that she was on the second floor now, so there was little chance that she’d find dead eyes looking back at her.

  It was too dark to see much, but every few seconds she thought she saw shadows move near the streetlight down the street. One shadow morphed into two then they morphed into larger shapes.

  They’re out there…just waiting.

  She backed away from the window, not wanting to see more. If there was any chance of sleeping tonight, she didn’t need to see anyone being eaten…or hear any screams. Just a few hours of pretending that life was semi-normal might give her the boost she needed to go on.

  She locked the bedroom door t
hen began to unbutton her shirt. She stopped half way down, staring at the bathroom door.

  When had she last had a shower? Well let’s see…this must be Wednesday night. She’d taken one on Monday morning after the drive down from the mountains with Mark, before she’d gone into work. It had been a couple of days, and she could definitely smell the funk on her. She was so tired, maybe a super quick shower would re-energize her. Just in and out like a quick car wash, before butthead even had a clue. Then, she could play nicey-nice to Sting, just long enough to get some sleep, get some supplies, and get the hell out at the crack of dawn.

  She went into the bathroom door and locked the door behind her.

  Just as she finished undoing the last buttons, she made the mistake of looking in the mirror.

  Oh God.

  She looked bad. Her blonde hair was a mass of tangles, and there were dark purple circles under her eyes, streaked with zigzags of mascara that looked like deep cuts in her skin, especially with the dried blood splatters on her cheeks (from that guy she’d killed…er…re-killed?).

  Yeah. Just a quick scrub. She’d count to twenty and be out.

  She was half undressed when she noticed the medicine cabinet. There was no use in trying to talk herself out of peeking. She opened the mirrored door. On the lower shelves, there was aspirin, sleeping pills, cough syrup, Band-Aids, and dental floss. But up high, she saw brown plastic medicine bottles. She pulled the first couple down. They were prescription medicines for someone named Rosemary Livingston, pills for high blood pressure and cholesterol. The third bottle she looked at was for Barry Livingston. She didn’t recognize the medicine, but the label said it was for psychosis. Judging by the full bottle and the refill date, she guessed that he hadn’t been taking it. Well, Sting…Barry…maybe we could slip a couple of these in your burger tonight, doctor’s orders.

  She grabbed a handful of them and put them in one of the front pockets of her borrowed shirt.

  She quickly finished undressing, pulled back the dingy yellow shower curtain, and turned on the water in the shower, trying really hard not to look at the black mold covering the grout. Okay…start counting…twenty…nineteen…

  She was covered in suds and only at twelve when the lights flickered. Oh please…not now. She sped up her counting, desperately trying to finish before the lights went out.

  The room went dark.

  Shit.

  It took a few seconds to wipe the soap out of her eyes, turn off the water, and step out of the tub into sheer darkness. She fumbled for the t-shirt on the counter. As she pulled it over her head, the lights flickered again, sputtering, as if they were trying to come back on, but just didn’t have the juice to do it.

  Please.

  She didn’t want to be stuck in this house with Barry at all, and especially not in the dark. Anti-psychotic med? This was some sort of bad nightmare—all of it—every last bit and piece of the last few days! She was getting angry now, angry enough to shout and spit, and end up curled into a ball on the floor sucking her thumb until she cried herself to sleep.

  And then there was light—the full white glow on the row of round bulbs. God did have mercy.

  Her own image in the mirror startled her. She was still dripping wet with stringy hair like a drowned rat, and makeup was still smeared underneath her eyes. She realized that she’d forgotten to look for a towel, so she put her pants on, tightened the belt then dripped her way back into the bedroom in search of something to dry her hair with. She spotted a dark green towel on the floor next to the bed. Not clean—gross. Oh well, squeamish needed to be eradicated from her thought vocabulary. After all the literal blood and guts she’d seen over the past few days, if she was bothered by a dirty towel, well that was just laughable.

  She picked it up and saw that it had been covering a big reddish-brown stain on the floor. She didn’t need to stick her finger in it like some fool in a late night B-movie to know that it was blood. Neither did she need to touch the feet sticking out from underneath the corner of the bed or give them a kick to see that they belonged to a dead woman. They were bare with toenails painted cherry red and attached to white swollen ankles with blue bulging veins.

  Okay…dead body under the bed. What else wasn’t he telling her? She really needed to get out of this house.

  She tossed the towel back on the floor, deciding to drip dry. After washing her face clean with a bar of hand soap, she borrowed a brush from the bathroom counter and began to work on some of the tangles in her wet hair. There’s a dead body in the bedroom…and I’m brushing my hair. Had this crisis made her indifferent to just about anything?

  It was so hot and humid in the bathroom, the heavy cargo pants clung to her legs, feeling heavy and stifling. There was no chance that she was going to trade them for something else, so she decided to roll the cuffs up higher and take the magazines out of the pockets. She wrapped them in the matching camouflage shirt and tucked the whole bundle underneath the cabinet, behind the wastebasket. Then, she put Mark’s oversized combat boots back on.

  Before leaving the bedroom, she glanced back towards the dead feet. After a few seconds of watching to make sure they didn’t move, she emerged from the room with her hands clenched into fists and ran smack into the wannabe rock star.

  “Well… hot damn! You clean up good.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me there was a body in there?”

  “Didn’t seem important.”

  Cheryl’s eyes widened. “I don’t think she was your girlfriend or your wife. Who was she?”

  “My stupid mother.”

  “What happened to her? Was she sick?”

  “Nope,” he said simply, picking at his lower teeth with a toothpick. “I shot her.”

  Okay, here we go. Cheryl took a deep breath then asked the inevitable. “Why?”

  “Bitch was raggin’ on me nonstop. Do this. Do that. Freaking out. Yelling. Screaming. I just had enough.”

  He killed his mother? She made a mental note: Don’t complain and don’t try to boss him around. He hasn’t had his pills today.

  “Our whole block left, went to some shelter. She wouldn’t go. Said she didn’t think things were that bad. Thought the people on the news were just trying to scare us. Hey, do you like video games? I got Death Masters. Wanna play?”

  “No thanks.” Her nose started to wrinkle at an acrid scent. “What’s burning?”

  “The burgers…” He rushed down the hall, past the kitchen, towards the back dining room.

  Cheryl followed on his heels as he ran to the smoke-filled room. Amidst the haze, she could see a large oval table and chairs pushed back against the walls, and a large gas grill in the center of the room. Flames shot up from the center of the grill, four feet high, causing a growing black circle on the ceiling above them.

  “Do something! Do something!” he screeched like a banshee, grabbing at his hair and doubling over like he was going to pass out.

  She glanced around the room looking for…what? A fire extinguisher? There was nothing.

  Then it dawned on her. Maybe the output was just set too high. She covered her nose and coughed then crouched down and made her way closer to the grill. The flames disappeared instantly as she twisted the front dial to the off position.

  “There,” she said.

  He remained crouched, with his head down, in an upright fetal position.

  “Barry, it’s okay. I took care of it. It was just the—”

  He looked up at her with one watery brown eye through a dark curl of hair. “H-how did you know my name?” His right index finger lifted and pointed at her. “You’re a witch, aren’t you?”

  The laugh came out of her so hard and high-pitched, she covered her mouth, fearing that it sounded like a cackle. “A witch? Seriously?”

  But the look in his eyes was serious. He cocked his head and studied her as he rose to his feet, and she couldn’t tell if it was fear or if he was scrutinizing her like a bug under a microscope.

  “I�
�ve met witches before. My mother was one. All those monsters outside, they sprang from witches—bad ones. They eat children and people. If you’re one of ‘em, I’ll gut you like a fish.” He stuck out his finger and twisted it like a knife.

  She held her hands out in front of her. “Hey, it’s okay. I just guessed your name from a bottle I saw in the bathroom. I’m not a witch. Really. The idea cracks me up.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You saw my meds and think I’m crazy now, don’t you?”

  She shook her head, and brushed away his statement with her hand. “Are you kidding? What do those head shrinks know? You seem alright to me.” Keep smiling Cheryl. Keep smiling.

  The air was still thick with smoke. They both coughed. Then, he studied her for a few seconds longer before deciding to back up towards the grill, keeping one eye on her.

  “Dammit!” he said as he glanced at the remains of the burgers, fourteen hockey pucks, charred to solid black, with smoke rising from their centers. That’s all the meat left in the house.”

  She shrugged, silently thankful for the accident that rendered them inedible.

  “So that means we gotta eat them anyway.”

  No.

  “Of course, if you’re a witch, you could change them back to medium rare.”

  “Too bad I’m not, then.”

  “Go get some plates and forks from the kitchen. We’re going to eat in the living room and play Death Masters.”

  She gave him a weak, very forced smile then coughed her way into the kitchen. There wasn’t a clean plate to be found in the cupboards. She decided to wash a couple from the mound in the sink, but when she turned the faucet on, no water came out. “Oh, that’s not good,” she muttered. What did it mean? Had the water facility been abandoned? Had the supply been disrupted by hordes of Eaters? Whatever had happened, it could only mean that things had gone from bad to worse.