The bells on the door jingled and a large, round man with a soiled baseball cap stepped out, looming over her, his fleas and lice falling from his head. Swan jumped, stumbled and looked defensively at her feet. My muscles tensed as the man leaned in and whispered something in her ear. I left my hiding spot and hurried to her. He walked swiftly away.
“Did he threaten you? Did he hurt you?”
Swan looked up at me, grinning.
“He advised me not to buy anything in there, because their merch is Crap and their prices are Bullshit.”
“You need be more careful.”
“You need to loosen up.”
“You need to look for the words for ‘radio’ and ‘Numb Skull.’”
I tried to laugh despite myself as we leaned into the window together. Maybe she was right. The man hadn’t hurt her, and we were staring at a spectacle of wonders as one would expect two normal, Human girls to do. There were mechanical lights and lamps with bubbles inside. There was a heating unit that plugged into the wall and had a fan inside of it. The radios were next to the small oven-like pots.
“I think it starts with an R,” Swan squinted at each of the words in turn.
“I think you are right, and I know it ends with and O.”
“I know that one,” she pointed to a five letter word that started with an F, “It means cold.”
“There,” I slapped the window near a big, red word on a piece of cardboard, “Do you see any other words that start with an R and end in an O?”
“No, no I don’t,” Swan clapped and bounced, “Give me your pencil, give me your pencil! Let’s write it down!”
I reached for the paper in my pocket and wrote down the word we were looking at while Swan pawed at my sleeve with glee.
“Don’t forget the D!”
Bells jingled and the shop owner stepped out, a hand on his hip, one hand on his potbelly. He looked down his nose at us and slowly rubbed his stubbly chin, “You Squatter Girls, get out of here. We’re closed.”
“Pardon me, sir, but can we buy an r-a-d-i-o here?” Swan smirked up at him.
“I said ‘We’re closed!’”
He reached for his broom and swatted at us. I jumped aside. Swan caught some bristles to the knees and leapt backwards. I grabbed her and we bumped hard into each other and yelped, holding arms and retreating down the alleyway near the shop. Swan’s shoe was untied and I dropped our paper several times. I struggled to collect it before it blew away.
“Mrrrrg!”
“Oof!”
We tripped over each other and collapsed into a pile of scarves and sneakers. I made sure that none of my skin was touching hers before I joined her giggles. She held her hand across her sparse ribs, her back arched, red hair flapping like a curtain, and she waved her finger at my nose.
She forced her arms at me like the shopkeeper's broom. I curled up and laughed into my knees, which were surprisingly Warm. Happily shocked, I stopped to push up my sleeves and slid a finger along my arm, which was Warm, too. I looked up into a light sprinkle of rain that was falling instead of snow. The drizzles bounced off of my lips and stole none of my heat to melt themselves, but I felt a draft. Swan was no longer next to me, she was brushing herself off and heading down the alley to a pile of boxes near a loading dock.
“Swan!” I hissed, spying moving lights through the rainy mist beyond her and hearing words that I couldn’t understand, “Swan!”
“Hey, maybe we could find a patch of cardboard to hang in our building that says, ‘Radio.’”
She waved me off and coughed away the last of her laughter. She was pawing over the boxes by the time I reached her, looking for a patch of garbage that might still say ‘Radio.’ I didn’t burn Books, but if she managed to find a scrap of cardboard big enough, I wouldn't spare it. We’d need to melt the wax off for candles and burn the rest. I grabbed the scruff of her jacket and spun her around to focus on the glinting and bobbing lights at the end of the alley. The voices grew louder.
“What’s that?” she cocked her head and strained her ears.
“Nothing for us. It's time to get out of here.”
“Can’t be sure,” she pulled her coat out of my fist, skittering out of arm’s reach, plastering herself to the dampening brick corner nearest the loudening murmurs, “Oh Ophelia, loosen up.”
I relaxed my lungs, but all I produced was a deeper, phlegmier rattle. The Human voices that I could hear weren’t Safe. They were gathering. They were swarming. Swan could get hurt. I needed to retrieve her.
As I approached, I closed my eyes to better focus on my ears. I could hear the tide of the pool inside of my chest and Swan’s smooth, clear breaths. Around the corner was a crowd of people, twenty or thirty of them, all facing the same direction, away from us, all looking at the same attraction – something about thirty yards away, something … or things, quiet and scared. Something in danger, like us.
I motioned to Swan that we should slowly lean around the corner and use our eyes as well as our ears. As we did, I was not the only one who choked on the fluids in my throat. There were seven little girls of varying heights and shades arranged left to right on a rashly constructed, uneven stage, shivering in their rags. They were all starved and some didn’t have shoes. A robust man in a dusty business suit hit his gavel on a podium. Another, wearing a wrinkled top hat, stepped up to collect the scrawny girl farthest right. He paid the business man with a handful of coins and wrapped a blanket around the girl’s trembling shoulders. He lead her away to a long line of cargo vans that were parked by a valet with a handful of keys.
“At least she is Warm now,” I offered.
Swan shook harder than the girl who had been sold. The little girls were for sale, like apples or tins full of beans. But they were not full of beans, nobody had been filling them with anything. By the way that they swayed in the breeze, they were barely full of themselves. On discount. Empty and sold as is, objects with holes that nobody would patch. One of the girls reached up into the air and lashed out at something that wasn’t visible. I knew what she was grabbing for – a Cure, a weapon, something to steady herself, an end to the Auction. But how could there be a Cure for this? What could make people so sick in the first place?
A bald man in overalls raised his paddle. A round woman in a grubby shawl raised hers higher. Overalls raised his again. Back and forth, back and forth, until Grubby Shawl spat on him and stormed away. When he smiled, his teeth were oranger than mine. He grabbed his girl by the arm, pulled her down off of the stage and pressed his mouth down on hers. She didn’t move away or reach for anything else, she just conceded. Overalls put her in the back of his truck that was waiting in line with the other vehicles. A long caravan streamed down the alleyway, waiting to transport their purchased goods. Waiting to collect the little girls.
I felt a hand on my jacket. I turned as far as I could strain my neck. I was being held by the Electronics Shop owner. He had traded his broom for a firm grip on my collar.
“Hey,” he bellowed with a snort, “I’ve got two more for the sale block.”
The crowd turned to see us.
“I know that one,” a filthy man with a crutch waved a fungusy fingernail at Swan, “I already bought this one from her family. That little one is mine.”
“And I know the other one. She is definitely mine.”
Uncle Donnie stepped out of the crowd and showed us his yellow teeth, with spinach or something green stuck between his teeth. Something rotten.
“Yes,” he shoved his uneven mustache with a spec of spittle close to my face, “I know this one. She looks just like my first wife. She shot my daughter, with a fucking gun. In the head. She’s mine.”
His hands were no longer in the miniature pockets of a dirty sweater. He was licking his lips, chapped, clammy slugs, as always. The alcohol on his breath was rougher than moonshine. He traced the orange flower on my sweater right above my left breast bud. I kicked at his arm, but I missed because I was still dangling b
eneath one meaty ham.
“Yes, she’s mine,” he glared and grinned, “She took my daughter. She ruined my first wife, who died of a broken heart after our daughter. My poor Judy was so messed up after that that I couldn’t even let her in the house anymore and then she got eaten. When I confronted her parents about this little bitch killing my daughter and making me leave my wife outside overnight to get eaten, do you know what they said? They said she had already run off like the shame that she will be until she finds a decent husband to fix her up. We all missed her then, and now I’ve found her. She already looks half dead. But I bet I could bring her back to life.”
The crowd cheered when he ran a rough hand up the thigh of my jeans. Even through two layers of long johns, my skin crawled.
“You’re not decent,” I screamed despite the tight grip on my braids, “And I didn’t kill your daughter!”
“You lying Cunt,” the spittle from his mustache jumped to my cheek. He clenched my sweater instead of groping at it. “You picked up a pussy little girl’s gun and you splattered shit all over my car. Mine. Do you know how hard that was to clean? And they were mine. I couldn’t even punish Judy for it properly, because it had been you ruining my things and she done gone crazy on your account. And then I couldn’t punish you. Because you ran away after one little toss in that pitiful stream on your pitiful farm. And you was so ashamed you run off with no word to anyone. But you’re mine now. Now I can deal with you the way someone should have a long time ago.”
He punched my right cheek, but only my scalp tingled where I swung from my hair. He undid his belt buckle, but I didn’t miss with my next kick. My foot caught him right in the his balls. Swan laughed and twisted against the grip on her own red curls and bit our captor hard on the wrist. He dropped us hard on our feet and screamed next to Uncle Donnie curled like a baby on the pavement. The crowd lurched away from our rabid forms, too stunned to grab at any creature who had just drawn blood with its mouth.
We scrabbled and ran as fast as we could, before their shock could wear off and they could raise real weapons. We ran, believing that we were being chased. Past the Rope Factory, past the Propane Fillers, past the still bustling Market, past our Neighbors returning from the jobs that didn’t pay them enough to buy the food that they were carrying home. Past all of these people we ran, none of them stopping to see if we were ok. All of them just trying to get home as well. Everyone trying to escape from something just as bad. All of them hiding us from anyone who was behind us, less motivated to run as quickly.
We didn’t stop to see if we were alone until we were panting on the floor with Swan’s door locked and blocked behind us. I began packing our most important goods so that we could flee the rampaging knocks that wouldn’t be far behind us. They would steal Swan, put her up on the stage and bash my head in. And Juliet's.
Swan laughed hysterically, maybe retching. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and screeched even harder when she saw blood there.
“He didn’t taste half bad,” she braced her ribs against her guffaws.
I tried to pull her to her feet.
“We’ve got to get out of here. They could have followed us.”
“No, they didn’t,” she brushed me off, “We’re all alone. Just like the girls on that stage.”
I stopped and listened. There were no heavy footfalls trampling up our stairs to capture us. I held my ear to the sealed door, trying to listen for any captors over Swan’s sobbing. No one moving faster than a limp was visible in the alleyway out her window. Still, I knew we shouldn’t sit and wait for them to track us.
“They knew you. They knew me. They’re coming for us,” I rasped, desperate.
She just wiped her mouth again. More blood.
“Is this even mine? Or the guy I just took a bite of,” she winced at a side pain from laughing or running or adrenaline or being grabbed and hit, “What in the whole entire world?”
I slumped against the wall with no answer for her. How could I tell her that girls got hit or sold or worse all over the countryside everywhere? In large batches, like cans of creamed corn. Only most canned goods didn’t get plowed by bulls who called themselves Husbands. And they were coming after us. To take care of us, because we couldn’t take care of ourselves. There was no saving us. It was only a matter of time.
“Who was that man who wanted to buy you? Did he say you shot somebody? He threw you in a stream?”
“Oh,” I winced and felt my own surface wounds, “That was, uhm, that was my Uncle Donnie. But he wasn’t really my uncle. He married … he bought my cousin Judy, and then, when their kid got bitten he didn’t have the good sense to kill her, so I … I ...”
What had I done? What had he said? What was it about that rifle? It was mine. I had used it. But hadn’t Dad used it to chase me into the stream instead of kindly finishing me off? I ran off after what? What had Donnie said? I had, yes, I had had a rifle. I did want to take mercy on Hannah when Donnie was an idiot … with my gun. It had been mine. Donnie had thrown me into the stream? What had he said about my family? They had missed me? Dad had missed me with the gun when he didn’t know I was a zombie and also wasn’t good enough to kill me with a shot? But if Donnie had thrown me into the stream and the gun was mine …
I shook my head to clear it. A small piece of my scalp was flapping loose where I had ripped as we had dangled. It didn’t feel as slimy as the places where Donnie had touched my chest. I began to remove my tainted sweater, but I remembering the ragged garments on the girls. They would die for a sweater this warm and nice, I shouldn’t cast it aside. I remembered Swan cornered by the three men who would have sold her on the auction block if I hadn’t stopped them, how she would have shivered then. My horrible cousin Judy, married so young – was it for a good price? -- who had been groped by the same beast who had just touched me. Had claimed me. Would come for me. Would come for us.
And I couldn’t forget all of the girls who wandered the woods and forests alone forever because their families sold them in order to buy food for the rest of the people they tried to cram into their Cars or Campsites or Cabins or Condos. How soon we would rejoin the other lost girls. Nobody really ever taking care of anybody else.
“Well, whatever. You kicked him right in the nuts,” Swan pipped, still pink with excitement, so unaware of how close she had just come to her blood being finished flowing. “You saved me again.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said, “I really didn’t. But I will. We have to. We have to get out of this mess.”
Her giant eyes got even wider, if that was possible.
“We will? Yeah! We will! We’ll kick and bite all of them. How? How could we possibly stop them?”
“You’re not thinking clearly,” I told her, waving a hand in front of her face.
She looked up at me, the corner of her mouth still streaked with blood. I hoped that the man she had bitten was Healthy. The last thing we needed was some kind of other illness. I dabbed the dark flakes from her puffy lips, starting to bruise from the force of her own attack on the guy’s arm.
“I’m not so fragile,” she murmured fiercely, but she was starting to seem concussed.
Her eyes crossed a little and she vomited a small pool of bubbly stomach acid onto her floor.
“Woah there, you’re a little fragile.”
I eased her into her bedroll. She dry heaved, but she didn’t have a fever. She had probably just been handled too roughly. She hadn’t eaten yet tonight and I couldn’t feed her now, now that she might pass out. All I needed was for her to aspirate while I packed us all up to leave. If we were going to be destroyed just like everyone else, it at least shouldn’t be alone, choking on vomit during a head-knock seizure. If Uncle Donnie and the Sellers found us tonight, it might as well be together so that they wouldn’t even look into my apartment and find Juliet.
I lay down next to her, and wrapped my arms around her, touching only her blanket as she twitched. I could smell her hair through the hat I tucked d
own around her ears. She smelled of ash soap and nettle tea. She was so Warm and small. Her room was warmer just because she was in it. She trusted me to be the Big Sister that I should be. I held her while she convulsed a few more times, chewing on my own lips.
How was I going to save us before Donnie and the Sellers found us? Where would we go? Just another apartment building where they’d hunt us down and grab us anyway? How would I save us from this if I couldn’t even escape the foulest brute I’d ever been forced to call family?
How could we possibly continue to exist in the face of men selling girls? Humans selling Humans? Owning people? Hunting people? Zombies were supposed to be the only ones sometimes missing their hearts.
I rose at sundown, after Swan had cried herself sound asleep. The last of the sun’s rays still did not reveal anyone lurking in our alleyway. No unfamiliar Neighbors. Nobody walking with more than a sack of grains or can of food in their hands. Everybody anxious to be more safely in their Squats before true night.
I listened to the hallway through Swan’s locked door for five full minutes before I opened it. Nothing but the dim hallway with shabby flowers twining the walls. The stairs were clear, too, empty except for dust bunnies. My own door was locked securely, as expected, and Juliet wasn’t making any noise. Guilt washed over me, but I offered her no kind words about her boredom, for as long as she lay still, nobody would hear her rustling and try to break past the deadbolt and shelving.
I checked the alley again. It was clear, and Swan was sound asleep, not restless or sickly, and without ever developing a fever. I hardly waited for the shadows to fully cover the ground before I checked her locks, jumped down the fire escape, and left her lying there, nervous that she would wake up alone, but more afraid that I would never find a way for any of us to escape anything at all.
The Plan
Ophelia Immune: A Novel Page 15