by catt dahman
“Fed? Fed some of us to your infected kids,” Dave screamed with fury.
“Son, you need help. We tried to help you,” Hank said.
“You ate our food, and we offered you friendship and fellowship,” Peggy added.
“That’s what you call butchering people?”
“What are you going on about?”
Before anyone could do anything, Dave fired the pistol at Thomas; three of the bullets hit him. When the borrowed clip was empty, he stood, defeated, wanting Thomas to suffer more for his crimes. In Dave’s mind, he saw the situation over and over as they cut off legs and fed them to the monster children.
Peggy and Rachael scrambled to the ground, grasping at Thomas, but he was bleeding heavily and died within seconds.
It wasn’t the plan to kill anyone. Jet sighed. Plans never went as planned. The family seemed reasonable, but someone such as Len or Kim would have known at once if he were deceitful.
“My son,” Peggy wept, “how much more must I endure?”
Jim and Sadie traded looks; what if Dave killed an innocent person? They had no proof of anything he said. This was not right.
Hank held an arm across the other children who openly wept. “You come into my home at my invitation and murder my son? Get your mother,” he ordered Samuel and Elizabeth as his wife grabbed at Hannah’s boots, trying to reach her face and scratch her eyes out.
Hannah kicked the hands away easily. Her gut feeling was that these were very bad people, but she could see the rest had doubts.
“I regret your son was killed, but we are not here to play games. Dave asked for help to free his friends. I’d like to see your basement,” Jet said. He was also unsure of the facts. If Dave set them up, there would be hell to pay.
“I refuse. You’ve done your damage; now, you can get out of my home. My sick children are down there, and I won’t have them upset.”
“Sick with what?” Jet demanded. His stomach fluttered as he felt relieved that it all might be true, and if so, Dave did do the right thing.
“One of the horsemen galloped in, and there was plague,” Hank said mysteriously.
“Zombies? Are you talking about Red? It wasn’t a horseman; it was a nasty scientist who was a sick bastard.”
“We don’t associate with witchcraft, Boy. My children are ill,” Hank snarled, “but you do look like witches yourselves.” He looked at Jet’s dark hair and tattoos and Andie’s leather shirt and boots.
“Yep, I’m the most bad ass witch you’ll ever meet, and I wanna see the basement,” Hannah snapped.
“I just want to see it. If we are wrong, then that’s one thing, but you’re talking in circles about horsemen and sick children. Dave said they are zombies.”
“Oh, he is casting stones, is he?” Hank barked.
Dave said this was the whole family, so Hannah, Andie, and Jim went to the basement door, leaving Dave, Jet, and Sadie to keep guard. At this point, Jet wanted to keep a watch on Dave. “Let us know,” Jet told Hannah.
Elizabeth felt a sense of shame that she wasn’t prepared for. Daddy explained it all very carefully, and it made sense, and yet, she felt ashamed that they harmed anyone, much less fed the people to her siblings.
She suddenly felt guilty. She also felt angry and sad about her brother. But more than all of that, she felt dread for when the people saw what was downstairs.
Rachael and Samuel pulled Momma to the sofa; they sat in a line while Momma wept. Rebecca used a soft, pale blue, knitted throw to gently cover her brother.
Hannah carefully walked down the steps. The stench hit her first, but she breathed through her mouth and let her eyes adjust. To the left was a cage with two children; both moaned at her while reaching through the bars, their personal items untouched in the cage. They locked away two zombie children, just as Dave claimed.
“It’s like Dave said,” she yelled to her brother.
Jim leaned to the side and partially hit a bucket as he vomited, groaning from the sight and smells. He hadn’t seen his family after the plague but could not imagine his own children shambling about, moaning for flesh, staring out of the dead eyes forever. Could he have put them down? He brushed away tears. His mind filled with images of his family.
Hannah stood and watched them in sheer horror before Jim touched her shoulder, grasping her to keep his mind intact.
“Hannah?”
“Hi, Ponce,” she managed a sickly smile for him. Jim grabbed keys and began opening the door and handcuffs. Ponce looked tired and pale, nothing like the strong man they knew before.
“Of all people….”Ponce began, “hold up. We need to soap up and wash; we stink. We can’t carry these disease germs upstairs or around these people....”
“I think so, too,” Hannah agreed.
“Hang on, let me get some stuff,” Andie said as she darted upstairs and then came back down with towels and sheets and more soap, stopping just for seconds to tell Jet the situation was everything Dave said and worse.
Only four remained: three in the cage and one in handcuffs next to a pitiful bucket of fresh blood and flesh. A man inside the cage died of a heart attack. Terror and shock took his life before the people with saws and axes could.
“A man is held prisoner by some nuts in a basement and finds his rescuer is crazy Hannah; now tell me if you’ve heard this one before, ” Hannah smiled at Ponce.
“When I heard the gunshots upstairs, I was hoping for something good, but I thought I died and was seeing a ghost when I saw you. And if you are crazy, it’s like a fox,” Ponce told her.
“I didn’t…I mean…we figured Dave was telling the truth, and we’ve seen bad things….”Andromeda looked at the moaning children with pure disgust, wondering how even parents could keep them that way.
The dead man in the cage was fly-covered, and dried feces were in both cages. The drain was stopped up with all the filth, including bits of slimy skin and clotted blood, so it slowly drained, leaving the nasty water, several inches deep in spots. It would take massive scrubbing to get the scent from her hair and the squirmy feeling off her skin.
In stunned silence, Jim looked at the children.
A woman used the cold spring water and soap to clean herself, stripping gratefully with no embarrassment, dropping filthy clothing onto the ground. She might have kept scratching and clawing her skin to rid it of the dirt if Ponce hadn’t taken her hands and told her she could bath later. She wrapped herself in a sheet and held her hands over her ears. “They moan all the time. It’s always in my ears, the noise.”
Hannah looked at the children again. Without saying anything, she shot the little girl in the head and then the little boy. The girl was a perfect headshot. To her, they were monsters released from hell on earth and could rest now. Howls came from upstairs.
Jim jumped reflexively, wiping more tears off his face.
Rachael lunged for the door, and no one shot her in the back, knowing the ones downstairs could deal with one, unarmed young woman. Jim took the stairs a few at a time, coming down to see what was happening. “You fools…what have you done? Those are my brother and sister. Murderers.”
“Ummm….” Andie shivered, “they’re infected.”
“Murderers! Killers! You killed them.”
“They were zombies. How can you let anyone you love be that way?” Ponce snapped.
“And didn’t you kill people to feed them?” Andie asked.
“They were baptized,” Rachael snapped back. Andie shrugged at the others, not knowing what that had to do with it. “And they are my family. They didn’t ask for this.”
“No one did.”
Rachael snatched the keys and began to open the cage, ignoring the other people. To her horror, she saw that Mary was no longer moving, but Aaron raised an arm to her. What kind of people killed children? She would gladly rip these fools to shreds if she could.
“Don’t do that,” Hannah warned.
With a defiant glance at Hannah, Rachael slid to
her butt next to the children.
Knowing the girl must be insane and trying to save her from a bite, Andie shot the boy in the head since Hannah’s shot just shattered his jaw and didn’t kill him.
Hannah seemed to be satisfied with only watching after she warned the girl. The boy’s head popped open in the back, splattering Rachael’s face with gooey brains, bits of skull, and stringy blood. Rachael wiped at her face but rocked the children in her arms, crying harder for her loss.
“That’s really sickening,” Andie said. Despite what she was a part of, the scene was sad to watch.
Ponce watched as he finished cleaning himself, wrapping a towel about his waist. “Rachael, did you get that blood in your eyes or mouth?”
“Shut up,” she said.
Ponce helped a man, a third person, get clean and then poured cold spring water over the man’s head. The man didn’t react too much, but tears ran down his face as Ponce helped him. He wondered why he even bothered to speak to the girl.
The woman sat on a pallet, unable to go up the stairs. “They cut people up and fed them to those things,” she said dully.
“I know. But that’s over. Dave came and got us, and we are here to help you,” Andie said, “how ya doing, Ponce?”
“I’ve been better,” the man admitted, his eyes haunted by what he had seen. He worried about how dull all the rest seemed: so depressed and hopeless even though they were rescued. “Rachael?”
The young woman turned to him. Her blue eyes were filmy and leaking yellow pus-like tears.
“Ah, shit,” said the other man, waiting to get clean, who backpedaled but wasn’t fast enough. Rachael, mostly turned but still human enough to move fast and feel fury, made a frantic leap at him. She simply attacked the first person she saw.
They rolled together in the nasty water.
“Get her head up,” Andie ordered, trying to get a shot. But Rachael’s face was near his neck. Ponce slammed into the pair, punching at Rachael; she sank her teeth into his arm. He pried her jaw loose quickly and fell back as she took another chance to lunge at the man beneath her. His blood poured out of his throat.
Andie yanked the woman in the sheet up the stairs, pushing her when she faltered. The man who was clean ran after them, tripping a few times but getting to the top of the stairs. He couldn’t imagine feeling those teeth on his flesh.
Hannah shot as did Jim, both hitting Rachael in the head and killing her. The man on the ground looked up at them with his hand on his own neck; he tried to stop the blood flow while suffering from pain and fear. Jim hesitated, but Hannah stepped up and shot the man twice, wincing as she did. “Go on up; we’ll be there in a minute,” Hannah said.
“Why?”
“Would you just go? I bet they need you, and it’s just Ponce and me left. He can’t turn, Jim; he was inoculated and is immune to the bite.”
Jim didn’t like the idea, but he couldn’t think of why he shouldn’t go upstairs. He kept looking at the dead children even as he tried to drag his gaze away from them. After he left, Hannah looked at Ponce.
Hannah pointed to the bucket of flesh and blood. “I imagine you’re starving.”
John Ponce rubbed his aching, cramping stomach without thinking. He hated the craving and the need for raw meat. It might be a long time before he could find an animal.
To eat human flesh, especially the ones who were prisoners with him, was unthinkable. Still, his stomach ached, and the prions in his brain, although altered, made the sight of meat like a drug he needed.
Many times, he wished he died and was not changed. He sat with a gun to his own head and pondered firing. He hated being a prisoner, hated the family and the zombie children, hated what they did, but Ponce also understood in some way how they felt. His eyes were full of guilt and shame.
“I need you strong, not weak and craving,” Hannah told him. She knew allowing the eating was kind, but to invite him to partake of the flesh was cruel, also. She was curious to see what he chose; would the need be strong? How tough was this man?
He scooped up a piece of a body and ate, watching Hannah thoughtfully. “You know a lot about it.”
She shrugged. “It pays to know things. I’m not judging you. You didn’t ask for the inoculation, right?” She was faintly disappointed in him for his choice. Some would die before giving in.
“They said it was an inoculation. I guess at that point, only Diamond himself and those who received the treatment knew the side effects, but, my God, we were all so scared of being bitten and turning.” He wrapped part of a clean sheet around his wound. It would heal. “We were scared, and we trusted him.”
“You didn’t understand it?”
“Not really.” He swallowed greedily, feeling the cramps begin to abate. “I’ve never hurt anyone to eat raw meat, for it wasn’t hard to find, and anything seemed better than becoming a zed. But, here I am.”
“She can’t feel it now anyway…that girl…she’s gone. You aren’t like those things,” she said.
“Doesn’t make me feel any better. I feel like a monster most of the time.”
“That chick, who is with us, the pretty black woman, Andromeda, she calls me a monster, but she doesn’t even know the half of it,” Hannah told him.
He had tears in his eyes. “I hate this.”
“I do as well.”
“Henry Diamond destroyed the world and our humanity with it. I always wished I could have just hurt him over and over. It was not enough that Len killed him; it was too easy compared to what he did and what he made me into. I’m weak.”
“Maybe so,” Hannah said.
“Monsters, all of us,” Ponce said.
“Angels. He says hybrids are Angels, the new species evolved to take over the world,” she quoted from memory. “What would this family make of that? I bet they would think Angels are terrifying, beautiful, strong beings who strike down the demons.”
Ponce laughed without much humor. “You think? I’m curious as to what they’d think, too.”
“Because they don’t love us, we’re all monsters. People are scared of me anyway, Ponce. I’m quick to action; I don’t think; I’m violent; I am trouble, but my parents would die for me. They’d feed me, no matter what I was; it’s all about perspective and who you love.”
“Shades of grey.”
“For the most part. You break your own rules and beliefs when you love someone, and you can do terrible things and justify them.”
“You’re a smart girl, just like I remember.”
“Smart? Very screwed up in the head.” Her big blue eyes were full of pain and sadness.
Hannah walked to the bucket and pulled out a small slab of flesh, looked at it curiously, and began to eat it. Ponce watched her.
Very gently, Ponce brushed her long blonde hair to the side from behind her and bared her neck; she allowed it, like a kitten pacified. He stroked the scar that lay in a patch across the back of her neck, rubbing the flesh tenderly with his thumb.
“Who did this for you?”
“My mother, Beth.”
“She despises hybrids.”
“Yes, she does.”
“And yet, she did this for you.”
“She removed my number that the bastards tattooed on my skin. Number twenty-two.” Hannah licked the blood from her lips.
Ponce thought about that. “Beth is a complex woman; I knew that from the second I met her. She never hesitated to kill hybrids or to call us abominations and vowed to kill all she found. But she was always kind and respectful to me, and she removed your number and kept your secret.”
Hannah let tears fill her eyes. She hated being this vulnerable, and yet, it was also a relief. “She loves me.”
“I’m twice your age, and I want to talk more. I have a lot to learn from you, Hannah. Would you kill hybrids, too? Your own kind?”
“Yes, I’ll kill Zs and hybrids and insane people…my own family. If anything, Ponce, it’s gonna take a lot of blood to soothe what I kno
w I am. I’m all messed up.”
“And how does your mother, Beth, feel about that?”
“I am her avenging Angel,” Hannah said as she turned to look at him, her eyes endlessly deep. In them was a place no one would want to go. She was rage and compassion, fury and love. In her soul was a pure insanity that nothing or no one could touch but could only look at from a distance. “Let’s go. We have the rest to deal with.” Her insanity vanished behind the mask she wore.
Upstairs, the groups’ members stared at one another. Andie and Sadie helped the man and woman find clothing while Jim, Dave, and Jet kept watch on their prisoners. Samuel, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Peggy, and Hank looked haggard and pale with sorrow. The parents now lost four children to this group.
After Ponce dressed, they told him they waited to see what he thought should happen to the four left. “They’re misguided and crazy with grief,” Ponce said, “but they are very dangerous because of their beliefs.”
“The drugs barely took away any pain; they felt each and every time someone cut off their arms and legs or when they burned them; they screamed until their voices went hoarse, and they suffered,” Dave said.
“We had no choice. Do you think we asked for this? I am just a man; the end of the world is God’s plan.”
“That’s bullshit,” Dave said. “If you think any god would do this to people, then you are really warped. It is a disease made by a man; man did this to man. And you are a man who killed other men.”
“No,” Hank said simply.
“Would you do it again?” Sadie asked dully.
“Yes. Those were my children,” said Hank, looking askance.
“Shelly, the girl you had in the barn, I saw her flesh; it was bruised and bitten. You bit her. Are you a hybrid? Inoculated?” Ponce asked.
“A what? What’s a hybrid? There’s a cure? Where?”
“Not a cure…an inoculation against the infection. I received the inoculation. I can’t be infected, but if I bite you, you will be infected by my saliva,” Ponce said.
“You’re a liar.”