by Brian James
The skin peels off his ankle as easily as the rind from ripe fruit and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. No matter how hard I pull, his body doesn’t budge. And when he looks in my eyes, we both know I can’t save him.
His fingers slide into my palm even as Maggie moves in to tear him open the way I’ve been torn open in dreams. I start to cry the way I haven’t cried since I was little as I feel the lighter pass from his hand to mine. I finally see what I should have seen that day in the lunchroom the first time he looked at me. I see that he is good. That he cares about me. And when he tells me, “Go!” is when I know that he will die because of me.
The skin around his eyes turns pink.
The pupils shine the color of the sky before fading into rust.
His hand falls in slow motion like the snow around my face as I back away. Wiping my eyes that won’t stop filling with tears. Shaking my arms free from the sleeves of my jacket as I sob. Pulling the sweater off over my head, leaving only a T-shirt to protect me. I let the spark of the flame touch the M and let the fabric burn as I run around to the side of the building.
It leaves my hand and takes flight.
Trailing through the night sky like a shooting star and I wish for the worst to happen as the air begins to catch fire. Sparks igniting sparks until I’m blinded by an explosion as bright as the sun landing in the forest.
Blown back from the blast, my body falls like an angel softly against the snow.
When I open my eyes, I’m surrounded by the warm glow of burning bodies that had been dead since long ago. I watch the halo of fire where the building once stood and I can’t help but notice how pretty the flames are with the falling snow. Watching the way the flames climb over one another to be the first to touch the sky.
And I watch the bricks fall the way snowflakes fall.
Collapsing at random.
Drowning the beasts trapped inside.
And I almost wish I could hear them choking on the incinerated air. The sound of them dying like the most beautiful song ever sung by the wind. Squealing as they try to slither through the cracks until their last unnatural breath is cut off in a last gasp.
“D-
“E-
“A-
“T-
“H-
“DEATH!
“DEATH!
“DEATH!”
I scream the chant at the top of my lungs. Stomping my feet to the cadence. My mouth moving mechanically until the words break apart and begin to come out only in fragments.
I sit down in the snow and let myself cry the way I’ve wanted to for hours. Crying until my nose runs. Crying until the wind freezes the tears against my face. Until my clothes are soaked through and my skin turns red as my body begins to shiver violently to fight off frostbite.
I make myself stand up.
“Just go, Hannah,” I tell myself as I hear sirens screaming on the other side of the hill. I don’t know if there are more of them. If there are other zombies left in town to come up here to help. Coming here to finish me off. I don’t know, but I know I don’t want to stay and see for myself. I don’t want to stay another second in this place.
I walk past the running engine of the sheriff’s abandoned police car, the sirens still shining a silent rotation of blue and red lights that are swallowed up by the blaze. I walk past the basement door that I escaped from, but it isn’t there anymore. Replaced with a pile of brick like everything else.
I walk back to the spot in the woods where we came from. Me and Lukas, but there’s only me now to follow the moonlight back to my house.
Walking away from the roar of fire engines.
Walking away from the heat of the explosion and into the cold of the trees where I will wear its safe darkness all around me.
I focus on the way the branches crisscross my path, thin lines slicing through my vision like the thin scratches they will make against my bare arms. I focus on the shadows that stretch as far as I can see because of the brightness behind me. I focus on anything that will make my mind blank like the clouds that crawl in front of the moon. Anything that will keep me from thinking about Lukas and how I left him to die in my place.
The snow has already covered the tracks of marching footprints through my backyard and erased all traces of being chased. Vanished like the victims that used to fill the empty houses on every street. The broken window in my front room and the mud dragged across the kitchen floor from wet shoes are the only signs that anything happened here.
I ignore them and walk over to close the front door.
Pull the curtain to close off the draft.
Slide my feet over the wet floor to the bathroom and turn the hot water on in the shower. I don’t bother slipping out of my clothes before climbing in. Before letting the water wash over me and bring a tingling feeling back to my hands and feet.
I can see myself in the mirror as I lean against the tile. All the color has drained from my face. All the color has drained from my hair, too, and I look more like one of them than myself. Look more dead than alive as I slowly let myself slip down the side of the wall and sit in the tub.
The phone rings in the hallway.
My father’s voice on the answering machine tells me he got held up. That he won’t be back tonight like he planned. He won’t be home until the morning and I curl my knees up to my chest and hold them there. Rest my head in my arms and close my eyes.
Tomorrow it will all be gone.
Tomorrow.
SEVENTEEN
I open the front door and stand on the porch in my nightshirt. I don’t remember sleeping or waking, but at some point night became morning and I missed it.
The sun has already melted the snow from the blacktop. Water drips off the roof above my head and sounds like birds chirping as it runs through the storm gutters.
I watch the car inch along Walnut Cove. The familiar stuttering of its engine comforts me. The rust stains in the paint remind me of soft, spotted stuffed animals and don’t embarrass me the way they have so many times before, sitting in the passenger’s seat. They used to feel like black eyes as we drove through towns. Telltale scars of how poor we are and how much I didn’t fit in with the kids who got everything they wanted simply by asking for it. But I don’t care about any of that anymore. None of that matters as my dad pulls into the driveway, because seeing the car parked there is like coming back to life, a little piece of something normal.
He waves at me through the car window and I run out to meet him. Running over the wet cement in my bare feet, unconcerned about the cuts opening up again or the cold that turns my toes bright red. Running toward him the way survivors run to their rescuers in the movies, throwing my arms around him before he has the chance to steady himself and we both fall back against the car.
“Glad to see you, too,” my dad says, laughing.
I only bury my face further into his coat and hold him tighter. Holding him long enough for the steam of our breath to rise up and become part of the clouds. Pressing my face against him hard enough to where everything goes black and somehow wishing I could hide there forever.
My dad lets go of me and holds his arms out to the side, letting me know it’s okay for me to stop hugging him. I pull back a little bit and look him in the eyes. I see myself there, looking up at him. I see the swollen skin under my eyes from staying awake all night staring at the bathroom tile and all the color stripped from my hair and my complexion. My reflection is Madison’s reflection and I realize just how close I came to becoming her.
“Is everything okay?” my dad asks. Wrinkles appear in his forehead as he looks at me, really looking for the first time. “What did you do to your hair?” he asks, his fingers touching at the blond streaks that have made each strand brittle and dead like those who made it that way.
I’d thought about it all morning. I thought about how I was going to tell him what happened but there is no good place to start. No sane way to tell him all the things that have gone wrong. So I
say the only thing that makes sense to me. “You’re late,” I say.
My dad laughs again. He tells me the same thing he’s told me for years, how sometimes he’s not sure which of us is the parent and which is the child. Normally I would snap at him. I’d tell him the uncertainty was because parents aren’t supposed to leave their teenage daughters to fend for themselves for almost two weeks. But I realize that some things don’t matter anymore. Getting mad at him for something that cannot be changed is one of them, so I stay silent, shivering in the cold.
My dad leans into the backseat to retrieve the bags lying across it. I keep glancing around for any signs of strangers watching us. For any hidden spies in the scenery studying us. Hunting us. Waiting for just the right moment to strike, because I know deep in the pit of my stomach that it isn’t over. I can sense it. I know there are more of them running around. Lurking behind every vacant window of every house for sale, just waiting to take the places left behind by those who burned in the fire.
“There was some kind of commotion in town,” my dad says.
I didn’t let him finish.
“Dad, we have to leave,” I say. The fear in my voice is fresh. A new fear. A fear of being discovered. Knowing that they will find out I’m not dead. They will find out what I did, that I killed the others.
My dad smiles in the confident way he always does when he thinks I’m overreacting. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he assures me. “Just some sort of accident at an old plant.” He comes over to me and puts an arm lightly on my shoulder. He says it was just a fire. That no one got hurt.
“No one got hurt?” I ask, terrified that an army of vengeful, badly burned cheerleaders will suddenly come marching up our street behind the blare of police sirens.
“That’s what the deputy sheriff told me,” he says. “But they did have to cancel the school’s football game because of it. He said the fire department needed to use the parking lot for a staging area.”
“Deputy?” I ask.
“Yeah, that’s the other good news I have,” he says. “It seems there’s an opening right here in the police department. I guess they’re looking for a new sheriff and once I told him about my qualifications, he told me I should apply. I might actually get to be a cop again. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, too distracted trying to figure out what’s going on to argue.
Slowly I begin to piece it together. What the deputy told my dad about no one getting hurt is a lie. So is the excuse about the game. There is no game today because there is no team. There is no sheriff because he was in that building. They are lying to cover it up because they know what the others were. They all must know or they’d be asking questions. They’d want to know what happened to everyone else, all the new missing people of Maplecrest.
Maybe they’ve already been replaced.
Maybe nothing has changed.
Maybe they still want me. Maybe if they make my dad the new sheriff, they think they will be able to make me the new Maggie.
“Dad, listen to me,” I plead. “You can’t take that job! We’ve got to get out of here!” I start pulling him into the house. Telling him that I’ll get my stuff and be ready to go in a few minutes. That we have to go now before it’s too late.
“Hannah, what’s got into you?”
“You’re not listening to me!” I shout. “We have to move!”
My dad grabs hold of me and keeps me still.
“We’re not moving anymore,” and when he speaks, his tone is firm and strict in a way I’ve never heard it sound before. “This is our chance to make a home.”
I shake my head. The tears start over again, coming as freely as if they’d never stopped from the night before. “No,” I whisper. “No, it’s not.”
“It is!” he yells, raising his voice at me for the first time I can remember.
I pull free, still shaking my head. Searching his eyes for any sign telling if they already got to him. If he’s already not my dad anymore. I back away from him, backing toward the house as he starts to talk again. Calmer. As if he notices a mistake he might have made.
“Hannah, listen to me,” he says. “You know how you get when I’ve been gone like this. Your imagination runs wild with all sorts of ideas. That’s why I’m doing this. For you. You won’t have to go through that again.”
He walks toward me, holding his hands out like I’m something fragile that he needs to handle delicately or I will shatter.
“It’s different this time,” I say. “I swear.”
“You’re right, this time we’re staying.”
My legs give out under me and I have to lean against the front door to stand up. Covering my mouth to keep the screams from flooding out. Letting only the whimper of tears choke through as my dad begins to run his fingers through my hair.
“Think how nice it will be not to run anymore,” he says. “You won’t have to worry about starting a new school or making new friends. We’ll be happy here. I can finally do something that I enjoy and you won’t have to quit the cheerleading squad that you told me about.”
I turn my head to look at him when he says the last part. Something about the way he says it. Something like he knows. And when my eyes meet his, I expect to see them shining with the bright blue spark of electricity of someone already infected because, sooner or later, we will all become zombies in this town.
BRIAN JAMES
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Like most kids my age, I wanted to be a Jedi Knight, or space smuggler with my own spaceship and a furry alien as a best friend. Alas, technology didn’t advance as rapidly as my imagination anticipated.
When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
I was around eleven years old when I started wanting to be a writer. It was sort of an odd desire considering that, at the time, I didn’t really like to read all that much. But I loved coming up with stories that I used to create while playing with action figures. I’d set up these elaborate plots that would take days and days for me to play out. Around that age is when I began to have the urge to write these stories down.
What’s your most embarrassing childhood memory?
When I was in fifth grade, my best friend tape-recorded a phone conversation where I admitted to liking a certain girl. Of course, I knew he was recording it. It was actually a plan that we came up with together. The second part of the plan was getting him to play it for everyone at recess. It seemed easier to admit that I liked her if I could pretend I was being betrayed. However, that didn’t make it any less embarrassing when the whole fifth grade heard it the next day. The girl handled it with class, which only made me like her more.
As a young person, who did you look up to most?
My mother. She did everything.
What was your worst subject in school?
I was lucky enough not to have any “bad” subjects. I always did well in school. But, ironically, my worst subject was definitely Spelling. I’m still a horrible speller, so I’m very thankful for spell check.
What was your best subject in school?
Probably math and science, though I never really enjoyed either of them. But for some reason, they both came easily to me. English classes took much more effort on my part, which is most likely why they kept my interest.
What was your first job?
Babysitting. I have two younger brothers and two younger sisters. So I was a de facto babysitter very often. But my first real job was as a lifeguard when I was a teenager. I also taught swimming lessons to toddlers; the patience required for that job certainly helped prepare me to be a writer.
How did you celebrate publishing your first book?
Honestly, I’m still celebrating. Every time I look at any of my books, I’m very thankful.
Where do you write your books?
I have an office in my house where I do all of my work. The room is filled with books, music, and toys. All the walls are covered with photos, pict
ures from magazines, drawings I’ve done, and letters from kids . . . it’s sort of like an external portrait of what goes on in my head.
Where do you find inspiration for your writing?
Anywhere and everywhere. I get inspiration from other art, be it music, literature, film, or visual art. I also find inspiration in the world around me. Any little thing can be inspiring if you take the time to look at it. I like to keep a notebook on me at all times and write down ideas because I never know when a passing stranger or a bit of conversation will spark my imagination.
Which of your characters is most like you?
In varying degrees, all of my characters are somewhat based on me, or aspects of my personality. However, Brendon from Pure Sunshine is very much me. It’s the most autobiographical book I’ve written.
When you finish a book, who reads it first?
My wife is always the first person to read anything I write. After she reads it, I usually do another draft before anyone else ever sees it.
Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Certainly NOT a morning person . . . in my younger days, I’d say I was a night owl. Though now, I’m solidly a day person.
What’s your idea of the best meal ever?
A twenty-course dinner with every kind of food . . . so much food that I’d explode if I ate it all. There’d have to be Asian food, Hispanic food, seafood, gourmet dishes, and good old American cuisine like pizza, burgers, and fries. Then I’d wash it all down with a sundae of chocolate chip ice cream, hot fudge, peanut butter topping, whipped cream and one of those fake cherries on top.
Which do you like better: cats or dogs?
Growing up, I was always a dog person. I had two dogs as a child. Now I have two cats. I could never choose between the two. They’re both so different and both have so much to offer.
What do you value most in your friends?