Ophelia Immune: A Novel

by Mattson, Beth

  “Flutterbies,” Juliet crooned and Hector hummed.

  “No, those are moths,” I said.

  They pointed and jostled to see the insects fleeing from the earthquakes of their tapping hands. There was another porch off of the back door, bigger and clear except for stray sticks and leaves. There was a view of the tall tangles and vines that used to be a garden. A tan and white bunny hopped tentatively out of the weeds and looked over its shoulder before nibbling on a thistle. The bunny didn't seem concerned. It could run fast enough to escape anything that came its way.

  The cobwebs and rodent droppings that Mom cleaned away through the open doors told me that house had been empty for a long time. There had been no living food inside to tempt the zombies to enter – no human noises, smells or sounds, nothing they would have wanted to eat – just skittering pests and a faded poster of pheasants taking flight, tacked crookedly to the rough board wall. Now that we had arrived, though, we would call the monsters to us like a trumpet, all of our noises and smells. We couldn't run or hide as well as a bunny.

  “It was probably just a hunting cabin,” Dad said, tugging on a ratty curtain covered in antler patterns, “Or a bachelor pad. They didn't leave much behind, did they?”

  There was an enormous kitchen with a view North up the driveway, over an empty sink with no pump handle. The kitchen floor was wide enough that two of me could have laid down across the speckled vinyl. It was wide open without a fourth wall between it and the plain living room . An empty, upright white box with a heavy door loomed big and tall, just like the miniature ones that some of the Rangers used to store food next to their generators, cold enough to hurt your teeth. A two-burner stove gaped with its well-cleaned, sootless mouth, missing a chimney. Six cabinets, three drawers and one shallow closet were more shelf space than we could ever fill with our belongings. A small wooden chair was leftover and hadn't been burned for fuel, but a mouse had stolen the padded seat and nested in it beside the door to the indoor latrine.

  “Wow,” I let the white porcelain call me across the room.

  The latrine door was propped diagonally, hanging from one un-rusted bottom hinge, exposing a squat toilet without any cracks. The seat was almost aligned with the bowl and the lid was still squarely on top of the tank, but it barely held a rusty puddle of water and there was no pit beneath it to catch all of our waste. I wondered where the working outside latrine was. How far would we have to walk through the weeds to get eaten while trying to pee?

  “Watch this.” Dad said, grinning and picking up a full bucket of almost transparent water, “There are some old rain barrels outside. See what happens when I pour in the water.”

  He tilted the dented aluminum pail sideways and let the barely orange water slide away into the toilet. It rushed in a spiral until it became a tornado. Without flipping any latches or pulling any releases, the water filled up to the top of the bowl and then gurgled away with a little clank when it was finished. Around the side of the porcelain pot, a simple metal pipe disappeared into the wall.

  “Where does it go?” I asked. I hadn't seen a sloppy shit hole poking out of the external siding.

  “There's a septic tank buried out back.” Dad smiled.

  “Septic tank?” I asked, my nose wrinkled.

  “It's buried in the ground. You'll never smell it. I'll show you the lid later,” Dad patted the top of my head, happy as could be.

  Hector squealed with delight and propelled himself across the floor on his bottom and one hand. He pulled on Mom's skirt to come see the miracle toilet, but she had already seen it and was busy re-tying Juliet's mismatched shoelaces.

  “Oh, Hector,” she sighed, “I could use some time to set up dinner and the bunsen burner if we're going to eat before dark rolls in. Why don't the four of you go explore upstairs?”

  “Let's go!” Dad pumped his fist in the air. He beamed widely and only managed to clap his hands once before Juliet launched herself into his arms. Hector scuttled for the stairs, but Dad held him back by the straps of his filthy overalls. I crossed my fingers and toes as I crept cautiously behind him to the staircase beside the front door.

  “Ophelia, you go first,” he suggested, “It'll be good practice. Do you have your hammer, Little Bean?”

  I nodded slowly yes to the hammer and then no to the stairs, but his warm fingers on my back propelled me forward, the chipped blue handle of my hammer sweating in my palm.

  “Nice and easy,” he said, “We're just going to go check it out.”

  Dark green curtains flapped at me from the window that Mom had opened for fresh air halfway up the stairs. They were hardly tattered or stained, almost like new. They coated my fingertips in dust that I used to trace the sharp outlines of the pine trees that towered over the driveway. We lived in a forest of green teeth now. At least we would have plenty of firewood. Firewood was hard to find in the Campgrounds.

  The first five stairs did not squeak under the toes sticking out of the ends of my tennis shoes, but the sixth stair groaned when I put my weight on it. I winced. Something upstairs shuffled across the floor. Probably just a mouse. Or a rat – at least those have some edible meat on their bones, the biggest ones anyway. Or a raccoon. If we could catch it, each of us could have a decent dinner. I thought of Mom with the propane stove warming the pans downstairs. I licked my lips and tiptoed over the twelfth stair into the hallway. It was probably just a small animal that we could catch and eat. Probably.

  There were five suspicious doorways, two on each side and one at the end of the hall. So many rooms. So many places for creatures to hide, some that I could eat, some that would eat me. I prayed for chipmunks or ferrets.

  Not all families were as brave as us. It was brave of Dad to drive his ax through Immogen's head when she was bitten. It would have been brave of him to drive one through my head, too, if I had been foolish enough to try to stumble away with my sister. It would have been unkind to let us wander off together to decay in unison. We wouldn't have been ourselves. We would have chased people, eaten them if we could, hurt them. We would have destroyed other peoples' families just because Dad hadn't had the courage to immediately drop a sharp blade through the tiny skull that he had once held in the palm of his hand, damp with amniotic juice, his first born. My Big Sister.

  Not all families were that brave. Some people let their Loved Ones suffer to the end, all the way through the bloody lungs, vomiting, and seizures. Once they paused to give the bitten a goodbye hug, they lost all of their momentum and when the Infected finally died and looked at peace after all of the grey-faced, pneumoniaic rattling, it was tempting to take a long series of moments to hold their hands, stroke their cheeks, whisper them sweet nothings for just a few minutes more. Even when they sat up and gurgled with cold limbs and green cheeks, that beast still looked familiar. The ex-human didn't have many wounds yet. How could a mother drive a pike through her darling's yet unscathed temples? Some would rather die. Some did. Some would rather lock them in a closet and leave them there until they looked like nightmares. So I would have to check all of our new closets for peoples' abandoned dreams. Make sure they're empty. Make sure they're safe. Or let our family get destroyed just like theirs.

  The fifth room at the end of the hall was itself a big closet and I only had to take a couple of tip-toes to see that it was empty aside from a three-legged stool draped with cobwebs. The first room to my the right was old-butter yellow, stale with matching curtains and its closet door wide open with nothing inside. An easy pass. Dad herded Juliet and Hector into the empty butter room to wait while I checked the other three.

  The second room on the right was huge – a nice campsite cage size, big enough for a compact hatchback to fit with a little space remaining on the sides. The walls were the pale emerald color of duckweed in July. A single golden drape hung from the rod above the window all the way to the floor, drifting in the little tumbleweeds that we hadn't swept yet, with nothing but a spider hidden behind it. The double closet space h
ad no doors – just empty shelves – nothing to creak or conceal. I turned my back to the empty green room, to peer across the hall.

  A floorboard yelled and groaned when I pressed on it to cross to the other side. I memorized it, flattening myself against the creamy hallway paint, willing my lungs to stop sprinting away without me. It was time to look into the next room. My nose and my lips went first, the rest of my face gingerly clearing the sight of another wide open closet in a room covered with floral wallpaper. A tiny chest of drawers hunkered in the corner, not big enough to hold a dangerous body.

  My diaphragm begged me to breathe more deeply. I didn't dare pant as loudly as I wanted to as I entered the last room. The corners of my mouth stuck shut with their own organic paste. There was only one place left to check. Just one room left to go. Make it clear. Be sure. Be safe. Take care of it.

  Juliet and Hector stood on their tiptoes behind me, peering out of the old butter room, waiting to see what I would find. Dad stood ready in the background, anxious to see how I performed, if my furrowed brow was as thoughtful as his, my aim as true.

  The walls were baby blue, as pale and as calm as the soft clouds outside, just like my hammer. The checkered gingham shades were cast open to let the sunlight in, but the closet door, which was badly fitted to its frame, was wedged closed. The brass doorknob was crooked but somehow holding it shut by the tip of its latch. I wheezed and curled my toes as far into my shoes as they would fit. Where had the rat that I had heard gone? Had it been a rat? What was scuttling? Who had made that noise?

  “Go ahead and check the closet,” Dad eased me forward with a hand on my lower back, “Just like we've talked about.”

  I inched closer to the doorknob and reached out my fingers, shaking. I closed my eyes and thought about what Dad had told me.

  It’s not a real person anymore. Not human. Aim at its temple with the broad end of the hammer or the top of its head with the sharp, hooked side. Swing hard. Swing again. Don’t stop. Unless there’s another one. Then knock the first one down as well as you can but go after the second as well. If there are three, keep moving back as you swing. Dispatch them one at a time. After all three are down, finish them off and dispose of the remains. Don’t get the blood on you. Wear gloves if you can. If there are four … Oh Gods, where were my gloves? I had gloves, but I wasn’t wearing them. No gloves.

  I backed away from the closet, shaking my head.

  “Ok, Little Bean, let me show you.”

  Dad took my hammer, leaving me to guard Hector and Juliet empty-handed.

  He walked firmly to the closet door, twisted the knob, and swung it open with my hammer held high above his head. The door flew open and Dad peered inside. Nothing. It was empty. I breathed. Juliet and Hector chased each other down the hallway, squealing and bumping into the walls, grabbing at the dust mites floating in the sunbeams.

  “Here you go. All safe, Little Bean.” Dad pinched my cheek with his warm fingers, “I think we're all going to sleep in that big, green, duckweed room. We'll carry all of the blankets in there and spend the night all together, just like in The Car. But maybe during the day times, this could be your room.”

  “My room?”

  “Sure,” Dad thumbed his jaw line, “Everybody needs a little bit of space of their own. You're fifteen now, almost sixteen, practically an adult. I thought you might enjoy some space.”

  I bit my lip. What would I do with it? Hide alone and listen to everybody else getting eaten? I was scared of falling on the huge, flat floor that was much bigger than a backseat. I could skin my knees. The little kids could break their legs.

  “Wouldn't it be nice to stretch out,” Dad asked, “Without anybody else's elbow in your ribs?”

  “The elbows aren't so bad.”

  “Bean,” he cupped my chin, “Isn't your favorite color blue? Look at this paint. It matches your hammer. I think it should be for you.”

  “Ok,” I said, not yet swallowing.

  He went on.

  “But it comes with responsibility, Ophelia, this whole farm does. I'm going to need your help. This farm is going to be hard work. Really hard work. We'll be lucky to make it.”

  I nodded solemnly. Finally, he was making sense.

  “But we can do it, if we all work together. You're not a little girl anymore, Ophelia. It's time for you to learn how to take care of yourself and the family.”

  Like I ever did anything else.

  “There are no cages here but you can't be afraid all of the time.”

  I looked at my feet. How did he know? I tried to be so careful.

  “While I am away working, or even just looking the other way, you are going to have to help your mother watch the kids and defend the farm.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding furiously. Itching to run down the hallway and see what the kids were getting into now.

  “I will teach you how to live out of cages. I will show you how to chop wood and kill zombies, but it's going to be hard work. Work that I think you are ready for.”

  “I am but the cages were much better for …”

  “NO.” he cut me off, “We're done with cages.”

  “Hmm.” my palms grew sweaty. Should I accept this big, empty room greedily, happy to have a place, pretending to be permanent and safe? Should I fall on my knees and beg to remain small forever, claiming not to be brave? If I begged, would he take us back to a Campsite? Should I go to a Campsite by myself with the kids until Mom and Dad came to their senses? Would my spine ever straighten from the curve of the backseat? Could I keep us safe long enough? Could I swing my hammer hard enough to save Hector or Juliet just because Dad asked me to?

  “I'll try,” I whispered, my mouth dry.

  “Good.” Dad beamed again, “I have a special gift for you. A gift only for fifteen-year-olds.”

  He pulled a used but polished blue ax with a leather blade guard out of the back of his suspenders and placed it across my palms.

  My jaw hung open like I had died.

  “An ax? For me?”

  He stooped to kiss my head just as Hector stumbled past and grazed his knee on the cracks between the floorboards, just as I had feared. He wailed big tears, but it was just a tiny scratch. Juliet blew him kisses and Dad scooped them up, one under each arm and turned to take them downstairs.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “Stay up here in your room. Make yourself at Home.”

  Was I Home? Did I want to stay by myself and watch him walk away? Afraid that I would refuse my new gifts and follow him, Dad smiled and gently closed my door behind him. I heard his feet on the stairs, and Hector's feet kicked at the wall as they descended. Surely, Dad could keep them safe for just a few minutes while I tested myself. While I showed him that I wasn't so scared.

  Slowly, I felt each plank of the floor with hard pressure from my foot, from the door to the window and back again. Most of the boards squeaked, but only lightly, nothing loud enough to be heard from outside of the house. They were smooth in most places, thinly varnished but not likely to cause splinters on bare feet unless you kicked at them. I removed my sneakers to feel the real wooden boards on my soles, disbelieving that they hadn't been pried up and burned as fuel. This whole house could practically be burned as fuel. Maybe we'd need to during the winter, and end up back in The Car.

  I wiggled my toes at the spackled white ceiling. It was so clean and tall. I would need a ladder to reach it if I wanted to hang a stick and leaf mobile for Hector and Juliet, if Dad had any brass hooks to spare, or I could make one out of some old barbed wire.

  I fingered the blue and white curtains that hung limp around my four very own squares of unbroken glass. I tested their shimmering surface with my fingertips before forcing the slightly tarnished lock. The window opened unevenly from seasonal swelling. When I pushed it further it popped wide to let in the warm breeze. A few white paint chips floated onto my feet. If I closed my eyes it wasn't completely unlike standing safely in the middle of a campsite cage, sturdy substances a
ll around me. Spaces that I could invite my loved ones into.

  I paced into my very own empty closet and shut the door. I didn't like the squeak of its hinges, and would need to fix them, but the knob latched and held solid, tiny cracks of light peeking around its crooked frame. Once my ears adjusted to the quieter noise level, I could block out the thuds of Hector and Juliet's feet across the floors downstairs and focus on the sounds outside: the trunk unlatching, Dad's heavy footsteps in the gravel, his arms wrapping around crinkling tarps to carry our supplies inside from the car. The click of the front door, the tiny bang as it slammed shut behind him. Nobody was screaming.

  The narrow boards were not as comfortable as the soft upholstery of the car, but now there was a whole floor of the house, full of my parents, between me and the outside world. Plus, a staircase and two closed doors. The dark was quiet and completely free of teeth that didn't belong to me. I was safe, but only I was safe. I had no way of knowing that everyone else was safe. What if they all got eaten while I was hiding in my very own space and I had to listen? I would never sit by while that happened. I would leap out with my hammer held high. If they got eaten, I would cast myself among them. I would not go on alone. I would not make my Immogen mistake twice.

  It wasn't a mistake, I reminded myself. It hadn't been her anymore. Once it was bitten, it wasn't a human anymore and it didn't matter who crushed its skull anymore. All that mattered was who was left behind. That was me. I was left behind. Right here, in my very own closet.

  My heart hammered in my ears and my tongue grew to ten times its usual size. I felt my throat gurgle, but I couldn't hear it, because my ears were full of cotton. I clenched my hands open and shut, open and shut and tried to breath. In and out, in and out, sucking air through my teeth. I dropped my ax; fumbled to untangle my hammer from my belt loops. It was warm and solid where I pressed it against my forehead, the smooth, shellacked handle tacky against my lips. In and out, in and out. I would keep breathing.