“Yes, those are for you. Let’s put them on.”
I laid them out in the order that I would twist them onto her, then grasped her and winced when my fingertips touched her bare skin, blushing and cursing my squeamishness. I couldn't Infect her anymore. I held her tighter and pulled the rag dress off. She didn’t need the costume anymore.
She shredded the freshly repaired hem of my tank top while I stuffed her head and then her arms into her favorite, freshly patched t-shirt, the one with a horse running underneath a smiling globe of sunshine. It rolled up to her ribs and flashed her concave belly until I could pin her and tug it down over her jagged shoulder blades. The pants were more difficult. Every time I got one leg in, she thrashed and rolled, threatening to rip the seams and her skin open on the cement.
“Now Swan, you’re too big for that. Listen to me, you need to settle down.”
I braced her against an old tarp. I sat on her belly and heaved the pants up to her hips where I buttoned and lashed them with a length of twine. She scrambled away from me, after a raccoon scurrying along the cinder blocks.
I struggled to catch her attention with our favorite picture Book. Even when she had been alive it had been one of the only things to keep her still. I cleared my throat and opened to the first page.
Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong.
A tiny, red train rumbled over the tracks.
Her fiery hair clung to her slick, slimy forehead, barely wavering in the heavy heat. She snapped at a surprised bug that flitted past her face. She missed it and it hurried on its way, ten feet higher in the air. I cleared my throat and carried on.
The toys were not the only thing carried
by the tiny, red train.
The tiny, red train carried all sorts of good things:
big golden oranges, red-cheeked apples and bottles and bottles of creamy, fresh milk.
She snarled at me and leapt for the Book. I stood up and stomped my foot on the empty crate that was my stool. The boom rang out and echoed off of opposite walls. She crouched and sprang at the splintering corner of the box. She grabbed my pant leg in one hand and shook it back and forth, reaching higher and higher for my waist. She bit my thigh and sank her teeth into my green muscle, ripping out a hunk and chewing it lasciviously.
I knocked her on the head with my fist and punched her off of my knees.
“Stop! Stop it! Swan, you are too big for that. Now stop. I said stop!”
She clawed at my shirt, reaching higher and higher, groping for my neck and then my face. One of her fingernails ripped my bottom lip in half. I slapped her hard across her left ear. She spun around with the force of it.
An empty, rolling bottle caught her eye and she was off like a fly on a dead cow, racing across the roof on all fours. It rolled out of her reach over and over again. The bandage on her hand came loose and trailed behind her.
“Swan, Swan, I’m sorry. Come here and let me fix that.”
She growled and gnashed when I held her between my knees and re-wrapped the un-healing wound on her hand. I wondered if it still tingled. I hoped not. I couldn’t hold her for long. She was bigger than Juliet and wriggled herself loose. She tackled me by the ankles.
“Ok, ok,” I chuckled as she worked her way up me, “That’s enough rough housing. That’s enough.”
I rolled onto my stomach, pushing myself up with her on top of me. She wouldn’t let go.
“I said that’s enough!”
I slammed my back into the wall that enclosed the stairway. She writhed and lost her grip on my neck. She fell to the ground where another empty bottle caught her eyes and she scampered away after it. I sighed. She needed a distraction, something to chew on that wasn’t me.
I ducked below the roof, prying half-rusted nails out of the walls of the abandoned rooms. I collected broken table legs, handrails, cords, ropes and tacks on a makeshift sled of moldy cardboard and hauled it up to the roof. Swan pulled a flap of braided cord off of the sled and ran away with it, ravaging the center of the otherwise un-ruined piece. I chased her and took it back before she could rip it into too many places, tethering her to a mountain of broken cinder blocks.
I built the base first, using some of the heavy bricks that were usually only useful for smashing toes. I coughed a cloud of dust and my chest tingled. I wondered if zombies could get asbestos poisoning and I tied a rag around Swan’s mouth just in case. I stopped using my lungs while I was building.
I made six-foot piecemeal poles and hefted them into place. The second and third poles weren’t difficult to prop together after I wrestled the first one to stand up in the base. I used bent and broken nails to pin the metal and plastic pipes into a tripod. I reinforced the peak with rag lashings and the base with hefty clumps of debris. With my pencil in mouth, my fingers framing it, the tripod looked stable. I grinned at my work and set about the last piece of the new toy.
I emptied a plastic bottle of its scummy rainwater. It was crinkled with holes in the neck and bottom. Perfect. I sliced fins from can lids and aluminum scraps and stuck them into the bottle. They jutted out at complimentary angles that I sanded to be smooth and dull. I dangled the spinner by one end of a rope that I tied securely to the top of the pyramid. The fins caught the wind and spun the bottle around and around, darting back and forth between the poles. It was the perfect zombie toy.
I untied Swan so that she could get a good look at it. She sprinted to her new challenge, leaping at the spinner, dancing up on two feet, hands in the air. She caught it and wrestled it into her teeth. It snapped out of her reach. Surprised, she looked about and found it out of the corner of her eye, and lashed out again. She chased it in circles, back and forth as it bounced and jerked away. She was happy with her new toy, as happy as a zombie living on a roof with two torn hands and rats for company could be.
The Killer
I split my awake time between mending and reading to myself, Juliet, and Swan. I spent daylight, evenings, and mornings with Juliet – watering her, petting her, helping her stay tidy, and smoothing the edges of our home to keep her from scraping open any new wounds. Plus, I couldn’t go anywhere else during daylight hours. Even without dreaming, every time I lay down in the closet to rest, all I could see playing on the back of my eyelids was the Rangers finding me, finding us.
They’d have checked dozens of other Squatter buildings already, poking through Squatters’ belongings, stealing things that no well paid Ranger would even need. And it wouldn’t be just Rangers. It’d be the grimy brothel owner with her frayed lace scarf, the fat, greedy van owners we had torched, and The Boss twirling his sticky cane. They wouldn’t even try to be quiet as they banged into the building, up our stairs, and began pounding on doors. They’d stomp around like they owned the place, like they own all places. Our locked and blocked door wouldn’t stop them for long. They’d bust through with crowbars and machetes while they sent somebody up our fire escape. The window would slide open and they’d cuss about trying to get through the nailed-down curtains, where I’d be waiting, with my hammer and ax, one in each hand. I’d maybe take out one before they sent two in. They’d have me pinned while they opened the closet door, found Juliet where I’d hidden her. Her head would crush so easily while they laughed and then turned to eye me. They wouldn’t chuckle and swear long before they bashed my head, too. The end of it all.
I should run. I should take Juliet and flee. But where? Back to the woods where I could hardly keep us defrosted and Juliet in one piece? Another Squatters’ building, no better than this one? Just to get our heads bashed how many days later? I should get our heads bashed in. I know better. I know our heads shouldn’t be whole. But the Cure. If we can just avoid getting caught until the Cure is ready. We could go Home and be done with Sellers. And get answers to why Dad had failed shooting us or why Uncle Donnie said it was me using the gun. Had he said that he had thrown us in the stream?
I shook my head. When the tornado cleared, I tied Juliet car
efully with her ribbon leash and left her. Swan received the middle and late portion of my night, when I could re-bandage her hands and sit with her in the peace and quiet before dawn, tell her of the Cure that was coming, if I could get my hands on it. Would I have to rob the Clinic again? Surely Jim and I would be friends again when the Cure was done.
When I sat perched five crates high, Swan couldn’t reach me. I couldn’t snuggle her without getting mauled, but I hoped that she still enjoyed the sound of my reading voice while she leapt and whirled after her tripod or a pigeon foolish enough to land on one of her patrolled surfaces. She still liked tea that I brewed it in a pot at home, making sure that it tasted only slightly of oranges and cherries – nothing too sweet. Juliet and I loved the watery brew too; the cool fruit essences felt better on our parched Summer throats than coffee. Juliet only got a hold of a tea bag once, and I was able to pull it right back out of her mouth by the string and the little paper tag.
Swan smelled even more like tea than when she had been alive, because she stuck her whole head down in the pot. I wished that I could get close enough to snuggle her and sniff her fluffy mane, but by the time I had changed her bandages she usually had a mouth full of my entrails and enough fingertips between her molars that it took me days to grow them back, so I often stayed up on top of my crate tower, reading to her while she gallivanted back and forth, splashing in her drinks and racing against ferrets who darted from crow’s nest to crow’s nest.
Whenever I read “The Little Engine that Could,” I made sweeping hand motions to get her attention and then snapped to let her know when she should leap for her favorite parts. But I couldn’t always read her favorite story. Sometimes I sat quietly, listening for the boot steps and the guffaws of the Rangers and minions who could hunt us down at any time before we were Humans again, bash us instead of selling us.
But the only sound was Swan, scratching at a beetle that she had picked and prodded out of a cement crack. The beetle darted in front of her, flexed its wings and spun into the night with her right behind it. They disappeared behind a pile of rubbish.
“Swan? Swan, please come back where I can see you. The beetle is gone. Come back and play with your spinner. Swan? We could spell ‘train’ again. T-r-a-i-n.”
There was a loud thump from the corner.
“Swan? Now that’s enough! Come back here please. Where I can see you.”
Heavy boot falls that were not mine rang out across the concrete. It wasn’t Swan or a rat or any stray animal that lived on the rooftops of Turington. I jumped off of the crates and ran to find her.
“Swan? Swan where are you?”
I bolted around the old chimney where she liked to play with the rodents. There was a tall form bent over her writhing frame. That was it then. We were found. I was sorry to abandon Juliet, but the jig was up. Someone would finally take care of us.
I lunged fists-first at the tall figure. Its long arm raised a sickle, glinting in the low light. I leapt to catch it, but I was too slow. The blade slashed across Swan’s throat. Her head lolled off to one side. I shoved the sickled figure off of her, black puddles flooding between my fingers. I couldn’t stop the gushing with my bare hands, but I was glad to feel that Swan’s teeth could still latch securely onto my arm.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve got you, I've got you,” I said to her head.
The black, lashed boots of her Killer kicked her head away from me. I tried to hold onto Swan, but she was too slippery. Her head rolled away and the attacker jumped on it, slamming a sledgehammer down on top of her skull so that she could no longer bite.
I screamed and dove, slicing the air near the Killer’s torso, willing my ax and hammer to connect with a chest, stomach, or shoulder. The Killer’s arms swung in one wide half circle and I was hit – with something dull, blunt, and heavy. I fell backwards with a crack, my tools clattering away from me, my tailbone tingling loudly.
“WHY? Why did you do that? Why did you kill her?” I wailed.
I stretched for my hammer and launched it at the shadow towering above me. The Killer didn’t duck and my hammer connected solidly with her shoulder. The Killer moaned. A high-pitched, sing-song moan. I froze. I looked up the outline of the Killer, at her long, flowing hair, and her pants tight on her round hips.
She stepped into the glare of the Clinic’s dim lights. She spoke.
“Sorry. I didn’t know that It was your pet.”
“She wasn’t a pet. She was my Friend!”
“Sorry kid,” the Killer swung her mallet above my head and stepped over to look at Swan’s body, “You’re going to have to learn that once they are Infected, they aren’t who they used to be. Once they Turn they’re not much of anybody.”
“Except for me,” I howled and leapt at her.
She ducked when I went after her head, thumping me in my chest with the end of her sledgehammer as she dodged. I stumbled but didn’t fall, clubbing her on the leg and taking aim at her brains again while she was rubbing at the charlie horse I had given her. She bounced nimbly aside, even with her new bruise, and rattled her throat at me, long and loud.
“Stop attacking me,” she brushed the dust off of her jacket, “I don’t like killing Humans.”
“I’m not Human,” I spat.
Black blood splattered out of my mouth and fireworked through the air. She caught a bit of my spittle on her palm and examined it. She turned it slowly toward her face. She sniffed it. She licked it slowly, savoring it, and smirking at me.
“Well, well, well. I’ve been looking for you.”
I clutched my head between my raw knuckles and turned my eyes toward the limp remains of Swan’s body. I needed to wrap her up in a strong tarp, find a nice Burn Pile to put her in and take care of her. I said I would keep her. I said I would take care of her. But someone else had. I had gotten Swan killed. Again. My entire head tingled. Someone had finally found us.
“Well, I’ve been looking for anyone really,” the Killer stood between Swan's body and I, picking her teeth with a long, glossy nail, “Anyone who moans like me and swings a hammer half as well.”
I ground my teeth and braced for the tingle I would get when I plunged my bare hands into her skin and pulled out her still-beating heart. But then I saw it – her skin. I saw her stomach poking out from where I was going to plunge my fingers. Her skin was green, grey and green. She moaned again and pushed me backwards when she saw my jaw drop in recognition. She was Immune, too. The Killer was Immune.
“Took you long enough to figure it out.”
I looked back and forth between the Immune Killer and Swan – poor, poor Swan laying there in pieces on the roof. Rage took me again.
“Why? Why did you kill her?!”
She glanced over her shoulder at the corpse. She shrugged. Her dark brown waves cascaded from her shoulders to the small of her back.
“You of all people should know – there was nothing that could have been done for It. They're brainless machines after they Turn and I've been killing so many that there are hardly any left. Everybody's getting wise to how to slaughter them. They'll be gone soon, and you should be glad I dispatched It. But I am sorry that I didn't know it was your pet.”
“Not ‘it!’ Not a ‘pet!’ She was a … ‘She!’ You idiot! There was something that could have been done for her – and they will all be gone soon, but not because everybody is finally learning how to fight them – a Friend of mine, a Doctor, is working on a Cure.”
“Ha. No.”
She threw her head back and laughed at me.
“Yes! Right down there. He’s right there! A Doctor working on the Cure!”
I whirled and pointed my finger over the edge of the building at Jim, in his white jacket, tearing a receipt from some boxes of gauze, a bright silver thermos poking out of his pocket, his straw hair sticking up in beautiful bales. He scratched at a bug bite, yawning, sleepy from a long night of work. It was almost time for him to go home. The Killer peered at him and snorted
again.
“That’s no Doctor.”
“Yes, it is, and he’s working on a Cure.”
“No. That is no Doctor. Look at him. Doctor’s don’t work that late. They don’t wear the polyester jackets of assistant lackeys. They don’t get sent out to retrieve delivery boxes in the middle of the night. And they don’t make friends with Infected slime like you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh really? Let’s just see.”
She caught a death grip on my wrist, so that I couldn’t even feel my hand tingling, and jumped over the edge. I could hear her shoulders popping as she swung down the fire escape with me in tow, a useless rag doll in her grip. We landed boots-first on the alleyway, grey tears sliding down my cheeks. Poor Swan. Poor Jim. She was going to hurt him now, too. No Cure for any of us then.
“Hiya,” she stalked him from across the pavement, her pale neon skin glowing in the exit light.
He was on his feet quickly, dropping a rumpled, yellow invoice. I winced for him.
“What’s your name?” she poked him in the breastbone with a green, manicured finger.
“Holy …” he looked at me, questioningly, “There are two of you. I knew there must be more! Is this your Friend, Ophelia? I knew you were alive! I’m so glad you came back. I hope not to rob us this time.”
He tried to laugh. I tried to go to his side, but she cut between us and snarled through her teeth.
“I said, what’s your name?”
“Woah, hey. Are you for real mugging me, Ophelia? I’d just give you supplies. Again. There’s no need for this.”
“Name,” she commanded.
“Jim, I’m Jim. It’s nice to meet you,” he offered his right hand to be shaken.
“Jim, are you a Doctor?” she slapped his lapel.
He frowned and stepped away from her.
Ophelia Immune: A Novel Page 21