“What should I do next?” Rose thought to herself. Kate was at the top of the priority list. She was in a secure place now where she wouldn’t be able to escape, but how could Rose help her now? Kate had rejected the food Rose had given her and worse, Kate didn’t know her anymore, let alone trust her. If Rose could figure out some way to feed her, then she might be able to keep Kate alive and if Rose could keep Kate alive long enough, then maybe they’d be able to develop a cure. Rose looked down at the protein bars she’d been eating. Without even realizing, she had already finished one and moved on to another.
“If I could somehow drop these into the basement, maybe she’d be hungry enough and eat them,” Rose began, talking to herself. “I’ll have to drop them though a heating vent or…”
BLAM! BAM BAM BAM!
Jerking her head violently around at the noise, Rose could see the door to the basement, the chair, and the island behind it were vibrating with each slam. Kate was trying to break through! Rose ran to the basement door and slammed her shoulder into the door in a desperate attempt to keep it closed.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
Over and over and over again Kate was slamming herself into the door. Rose could see the solid wooden door cracking and buckling under the strain of the repeated impacts. Rose readjusted the chair and the island to make sure they wouldn’t move. Looking around the kitchen for anything else to brace the door, Rose spied a large 7 foot tall wooden hutch. Sprinting from the door, Rose ran over to the hutch in the dining room. She grabbed the side of the hutch closest to the basement door and began slowly and loudly dragging it across the floor leaving large gouge marks in the wood floor. As if knowing what Rose was attempting to do, Kate’s slams on the basement door became frenzied.
Cracks in the door were widening and Rose could see movement through them now. She wasn’t going to make it. Rose gave the hutch one last frustrated pull then ran to the opposite side. Rose grabbed the bottom of the hutch with her hands and put her shoulder into the middle. Kate screamed. Rose heaved. The hutch rocked, hesitated, then, finally toppled over.
The hutch slammed down flush with the door frame snapping off the door handle and smashing and pinning the chair and island underneath. Due to the height of the hutch, only about the top foot of the door was now uncovered, most of the middle of the door, including the large crack, were now covered. Kate continued to slam into the door, but any effort to break through would now be fruitless. Despite this, Rose continued to pin the hutch against the door frame with her shoulder panting with utter exhaustion.
The banging seemed endless. It was well into the night before the frequency and intensity of Kate’s banging on the basement door slowly began to ease up. As Kate began to put less effort into attacking the door, she put more energy into adding screams and howls to her attacks. Kate had seemed to have forgotten how to speak as she as she was completely unintelligible, but her screams made Rose shudder each time. Sometime into the night, Kate gave up on the basement door and moved to other parts of the basement. The only access out of the basement was the barricaded basement door, otherwise it was just a big cement box with windows too small for even Kate to fit through. While a reprieve from the repeated banging on the door was welcome, Kate’s screams and yells continued on and off all through the night. Rose left the barricade she’d created and stumbled into the living room, flopping down on the couch, all her energy completely spent.
A glance at the clock told her it was 2:37am. Rose closed her eyes for a quick nap, but was immediately awakened by Kate’s howls. This continued the rest of the night and into the morning well past sunrise. Kate would scream and howl like a wild animal, only taking short breaks to destroy something in the basement. Rose would close her eyes and had even fallen asleep a couple times during the breaks only to be awakened by the next round of screams and yells.
Eventually giving up on sleep as the sun rose the next morning, Rose decided to check around the house to make sure Kate really couldn’t get out of any of the basement windows. Rose was glad they didn’t have any neighbors on this cul-de-sac as the noise was loud and seemingly endless. In the back of Rose’s mind, she expected someone from the hospital or police department to show up at any time. The town was so small, everyone knew where Rose and Kate lived. The lack of neighbors was probably the only thing keeping them from being visited by her GFPD coworkers. Maybe they had other things to worry about?
Rose sure did. Confident the barricade against the basement door would hold, Rose checked around the house finding all four of the small basement windows smashed out. Each were lined with shards of broken, blood-smeared glass. Not hearing anything from the basement, Rose got close to one of the windows but as she approached, Kate screamed and frantically began groping out of the window for Rose. Rose couldn't see her face, just her arm up to just before her shoulder. Her arm was covered in cuts and gashes and was slick with blood. Kate’s fingers were ground down to about one knuckle on each finger and her thumb was completely gone. The entire time Rose stood outside the window, Kate continued to scream and howl, flailing her arm wildly. Taken aback by Kate’s gory hand, Rose decided to go back inside so she’d not cause Kate to harm herself further. Back inside, Rose went into the living room and sat down on the couch. What could she possibly do now to help Kate? Kate’s madness was beyond anything Rose had expected when told about this disease at work. In her wildest dreams, Rose couldn't have possibly thought that she’d lose Kate this way. That realization shook Rose to her core...Kate was beyond help and there was nothing she could do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The day had continued on and on and moved into night with more of the same: howling and smashing and yelling coming from the basement. Evening came marking the fourth day since Rose had last seen Kate healthy. How distant four days ago seemed. Rose felt as if she had lived a lifetime in the past four days. Rose had barely slept, ate, or drank anything. How could she? Her wife had become a raging rabid monster locked in their basement.
The clock on their DVD player in the living room had just clicked over to 12:17am when Rose noticed a distinct increase in the noise coming from Kate in the basement. She seemed to have gone from the typical craze Rose had almost become accustomed to and was now raging at a level previously unattained. Kate sounded like she was in a frenzy, sprinting around the basement constantly without stopping and howling at a louder, higher pitch than Rose had ever heard. Rose knew that Kate couldn't escape, but this sudden change unnerved her to the point where Rose felt she needed to move to the barricaded basement door again. The frenzied rage Kate was experiencing in the basement came to a fevered pitch a few minutes later as Rose huddled against the hutch. Kate was now letting out an almost constant scream. Anything that wasn’t fully destroyed before, was now being completely obliterated as the destruction continued. Rose looked around the corner at the clock and saw that it was now 12:22am. It’d become so loud that Rose put her head down between her knees, covered her ears, and cried. What had Kate become? Her heavy sobs drowned out by Kate’s rage.
Just as Rose thought that the screams were too much for her to handle, they came to a sudden, unexpected, and jarring stop. If Rose thought Kate’s screaming was deafening, the silence that followed it was just as much so. Rose should have been relieved by the silence, but she wasn’t. The noise coming from their bedroom or the basement had , in some small way, been reassuring. While Rose knew that Kate was sick, she was still Kate in there somewhere and Rose knew that the noise meant her wife was still with her. Now there was nothing but silence that seemed to stretch on long into the night. Was this the end Dr Knight had predicted?
Rose couldn't move. Couldn’t breathe. She was frozen, huddled next to her barricade in front of the basement door, tears still wet on her cheeks. Rose’s brain was just starting to process that her wife, her Kate, the love of her life, was gone. Rose found herself wishing for just one more crash, even one scream from the basement to let her know her wife was still alive.
Rose sat in the silence wishing and waiting, straining her ears to listen for a sound that, deep down, she knew was never going to come.
Time dragged on and finally, the sun began to rise in the windows of the house, the first piercing rays filtering through the trees outside. Rose felt as if she had barely breathed since the silence in her house had begun, grief heavy on her chest. Moving felt like betrayal, like she was giving up on Kate. If Rose moved, if she resumed her life, she’d need to accept that Kate was gone. If she could just sit there forever, maybe Rose could somehow prolong Kate, somehow will her back to life.
But it was not to be. Rose took a few deep breaths, pulled her legs up underneath herself forcing her muscles to move, and then stood up slowly. Rose felt as though she was wearing weights on her shoulders. Moving forward felt like she was slogging through swamp water. Rose felt fuzzy and disconnected as if her head was in a fog. Kate was gone. Her Kate, her wife. Rose had never gotten to say goodbye. Kate had been lost before she knew it and in the end, Rose had become just a stranger to her. Rose made her way to the living room and laid down on the couch.
Was she next? Was this fog the beginning? Was this how Kate felt before she was lost to this disease? She could end all of this right now, they had guns and knives, this nightmare could be over before it started for her. She was so drained, so empty though, the effort even to kill herself was beyond her. She was done, defeated. Rose could do nothing more than lie on their couch and give up. All she could remember as she was hungrily devoured by sleep was how much her eyes stung and how empty she felt, more so than at any other time in her life.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sun was rising again when Rose woke up. The fog that had been so heavy the night before had burned away and she felt more or less herself again. Despite being very sore all over from her struggle with Kate, Rose felt physically better. Sitting up on the couch however, Rose was slammed with the memories of what’d happened the last four days and the crushing loss of Kate, whose body was still locked in their basement somewhere. Standing up and stretching, Rose went to the kitchen and drank some water. The thought of suicide, still present somewhere in her mind, seemed to erode as she stood there drinking. Rose opened another protein bar and took a large bite moving over to the basement barricade. Kate was still her priority. Once Rose had made sure Kate was taken care of, then she could think of herself. Kate was her sole focus.
Grabbing and heaving the hutch up and away from the door was a much more difficult task then toppling it over but on the third attempt, Rose was able to get it back to a standing position and drag it out of the way. Rose assumed that much of the dinnerware they’d gotten for their wedding, which was stored in the hutch, was likely now broken but on her list of priorities, that was nonexistent. There was something more pressing to deal with.
Wheeling away what was left of the island and pushing the broken chair aside, Rose yanked open the door. Rose had been to several major crime scenes and suicides in her career so the sight of blood didn’t really bother her that much; however, the smell of death was something completely different. It’s a smell unlike any other and very distinctive. Rose knew that smell the second she opened the door and she knew it was coming from Kate.
Swallowing hard and preparing herself, Rose had to hold onto the railing as she took the first few steps down the basement stairs as there was so much debris everywhere. Rose flipped the switch to turn on the lights, but it seemed only one bulb had survived the rampage. Blood was smeared all over the inside of the basement door with many gouges and splinters of wood from Kate’s assault on it. The evidence of Kate’s rage on the door, blood still shiny and congealed, was unsettling and Rose shivered as if a cold wind had just blown by. The stairs were slippery with blood and the railing was broken off about halfway down. Luckily it was bright enough outside to illuminate the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, Rose looked around assessing the damage which was extensive. There didn’t appear to be any structural damage that Rose could see in the low light, but everything else was completely and utterly destroyed. Boxes of Christmas decorations, winter clothing, a tool bench, the washing machine and dryer; all had been mangled to the point of being utterly unrecognizable and the debris littered the entire floor of the basement covering it like a wall-to-wall carpet. Rose moved cautiously through the carnage looking for Kate. There was part of Rose that hoped Kate had escaped somehow, but she knew that she’d eventually find Kate’s body down here. Rose started in front of the stairs and moved around the basement in a clockwise direction searching for her.
Rose had made it almost all the way around the basement and back to the stairs when finally, near one of the far corners of the basement, Rose found Kate. Rose had almost missed her, crumpled in the corner, but the smell had confirmed it. The odor of blood and death hung in the air around her body like a perverse perfume. Rose knelt down and brushed Kate’s hair away from her face. Deeply gashed, it was covered in dried blood and salt from dried sweat and tears. Rose barely recognized Kate in death. She was so pale and lifeless, the exact opposite of how she had been in life. Tears rolled off Rose’s face and splashed onto Kate’s etching wet lines across Kate’s dry, blood-stained cheeks as Rose bent over and picked up her body. Kate was so limp and fragile feeling, such a change from the last time Rose had held her. Rose made her way through the mess of the basement and up the stairs into the house, carrying Kate as though she were a newborn baby she didn’t want to wake.
Rose carried Kate upstairs toward their bedroom, now destroyed. Pausing at the door, Rose decided she didn’t want to bring Kate back to that room, bringing Kate into one of the guest rooms instead. The room was always made up for easy use should Andy need a place to crash for the night or if friends or family decided to stop by for a weekend. The sheets and blanket were hand-me-downs from Kate’s parents and were white with a blue and pink flower pattern all over them. Kate had hated these sheets but had found a use for them in the guest room where she didn’t have to see them often.
Rose laid Kate down on the bed and crossed what was left of her hands across her stomach. Kate was filthy, bloody and completely disheveled, but seemed to be more at peace lying on a bed far away from the destruction she’d known at the end of her life. As Rose stood above Kate’s broken and lifeless body, she decided she needed to do something more for her. One of the reasons Rose had been attracted to Kate was that she’d always kept herself clean and presentable. Sleeping in on a Sunday morning was one thing, but otherwise Kate always wanted to look her best.
Rose again scooped up Kate and moved her into the upstairs bathroom turning on the shower. Rose spent the next half hour cleaning Kate’s body the best she could gently removing the grime and dried blood she had accumulated the last few days. Rose even took the time to wash Kate’s hair so it’d be nice and clean. After drying her off, Rose brought Kate’s naked body back into the guest room and searched for an outfit that she could dress her in. All of Kate’s clothes in the bedroom were destroyed and Rose was content to not go in there again, at least not yet. Hanging in the closet of their office was a bridesmaid’s dress Kate had worn to a wedding at the beginning of the summer. It was purple and simple which was just Kate’s style and that’s exactly why Kate had hung onto it. Rose grabbed the dress and after some struggling, was able to dress Kate in it. Now with her hair washed, her body clean and dressed, Kate looked closer to her former self.
It was about midday and now that Kate had been cared for, Rose felt as if she’d turned a significant corner. Restoring Kate, even just a little bit, to her former self, had been therapeutic for her. Sitting around and doing nothing had just dragged Rose further into a pit of despair, but she realized that even just washing and dressing Kate had been enough to snap her out of her paralyzing grief and suicidal despair.
Stroking Kate’s hair before leaving the room, Rose went out into the hallway and stood in the doorway to their bedroom. The pain here was still too fresh and Rose couldn't tackle clean
ing this room yet. Rose instead closed the door and made her way down the stairs. All the hanging pictures, mostly from their wedding, had been smashed as they had tumbled down to the landing. Rose took the time to clean up the glass and rehang the pictures that hadn’t been completely destroyed. Rose did the same with the kitchen throwing out most of the broken dinnerware from inside the hutch. It took some effort, but Rose was able to get the door to the basement closed again. The basement was a place Rose preferred to never go again, let alone clean up. Rose made herself a ham sandwich and ripped open a bag a chips from the pantry. Sitting at the table and eating, it could’ve almost been a normal day. With Kate working, and Rose on days off, she sometimes would sit and eat lunch in the kitchen by herself. This was no normal day though, nor would any day from here on be normal again.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rose caught sight of a flashing light on her cellphone. Rose had absentmindedly left it charging on the kitchen counter like she always did when she came home; she hadn’t even remembered doing it. Picking up and unplugging the phone, Rose realized she had 47 missed calls and 22 voicemails. Rose had put her phone on silent when she went to the hospital and never remembered to turn the ringer back on. Scrolling through the missed calls she saw that many were from Andy but most of the missed calls were from work.
Rose went though the voicemails, starting with the oldest ones. Work was asking where she was, why she hadn’t come into work, why she’d missed her shift, and if she was coming back to work. Most of the messages, the various callers had sounded angry or annoyed, probably because they were going to have to be held over to cover her shift. However, the last few messages, the callers seemed to be much more desperate. “Get your ass in here! We need all the help we can get!” or, “If we could spare someone to come out there and drag you in we would, but we’re flat out. Rose, we need anyone we can, please call us back once you get this...or better yet, come in!”
Break Away (Jordan Rose Duology Book 1) Page 6