by Cass Kim
“Oh No. No, no, no, no, no. Where’s Benjamin?” She dashed to the kitchen, shoving papers around and knocking his charcoal pen case to the floor. “Where were you playing today?” she muttered to herself as she searched. She was sure he’d left a card for the bar, or a flier for the show or something.
Behind her the newswoman continued to enumerate the facts in a jarringly calm voice, “There are at least forty-five confirmed deaths, and an unknown number of injuries. Witnesses are claiming that some of the infected began changing even as officers arrived.”
“Where the fuck were you today, Benjamin?” Renna shoved the piles around on the counter, her breath coming out in gasps. She exploded in frustration throwing her phone charger over to the couch where her stupid dead phone was silent and accusing.
“All citizens in northern New York are required to shelter in place. Authorities are requesting that all individuals within a three block radius of the Crow’s Nest bar today from 4pm to 5pm turn themselves in for testing. All other citizens must remain in their homes.” Renna looked back to the TV in time to see the CDC contact number flashing across the screen. Yeah. She knew what that number resulted in.
A glossy black magnet in the shape of a crow on the fridge caught her eye as she turned back to the counter. Beneath it was a slip of paper with the date on it, and the words “first trial set: 3:30pm to 5pm” in Diamond’s looping cursive. She snatched the magnet and the scrap of paper off the fridge, diving back to sit in front of the TV. Hope and fear warred within her as she shoved the charger for her phone into the wall and plugged it in, praying to anyone that would listen that it would have some kind of message from her brother or Diamond.
Flipping the crow magnet in her hand, she held it up to the sign behind the anchor on TV. Yep. Same. “Please be okay, please be okay.” She clutched the magnet like a talisman, re-reading the scrap of paper over and over. The date was the same. September 6th. She checked the TV screen again, hoping that maybe she was off on her days somehow. The date and time stamp in the lower left corner read ‘September 6th, 5:50pm.’ “Oh God, oh God, not you too Benny. It was daylight. It’s still daylight.” She was rocking in place typing her passcode into the phone when she heard it.
Tires on the gravel. Maybe mom had heard the news and come back. She should have been at work before the reports came out. Maybe Benjamin was fine after all. Maybe through some fluke of beautiful luck they’d never even made the gig. She threw the phone and magnet down, racing to the door.
It was her brother’s old Toyota Camry in the drive. Heart bursting with relief she unbolted the heavy door, swinging it back, and then unlatched the more complex copper screen door. As soon as she had that door open, Tim Tam shot out toward the car, faster on four legs than she was on two. She dashed after the cat, all fears of the looming shadows far from thought. Her brother was okay. He wasn’t at the bar.
But why wasn’t he getting out of the car? And what was that shape in the passenger’s seat? She slowed as she saw a smear of red along the bottom of the white car door, a few streaks further up on the door near the handle. Tim Tam was now stalking toward the car, back arched and lips peeled back from his teeth. Renna swallowed hard and started slowly retracing her steps backward, when the driver’s side door swung open and Benjamin staggered out, his hands and shirt covered in blood.
“Renna! Renna Thank God you’re here. I’m so tired. I didn’t know what to do. Did you see the news?”
Renna nodded mutely, shocked at the amount of blood. Wondering what or, maybe who, was in the passenger seat. If they were alive.
“Mom’s not coming home,” He continued in a weird voice. “There’s a shelter in place order. The radio said anybody on the roadways would be shot on sight.” She couldn’t stop staring at all the blood. On his jeans. His shirt front. His hands.
“Benny, that’s not infected blood, right?”
He shook his head, hands spread in front of him, “Renna, give me your phone. Where’s your phone?”
“I… it’s in the house. Are you…are you hurt?”
“Just get your phone. Mine’s not working anymore.”
Renna ran back to the house obediently, yanking the phone off the charger. When she turned, Benjamin was right behind her.
“Sorry, Sis.” He said reflexively as she jumped, startled at his proximity. Grabbing her phone he typed in the emergency code, leaving smears of blood across the screen. After listening for a minute his hand dropped from his ear, the phone falling limply to the ground. “It says all circuits are busy. It’s been saying that for an hour now. I thought maybe it was just my phone. Renna,” his eyes met hers, frightened and suddenly so young looking, “this is bad. This is really bad.”
Renna stared at her big brother, covered in blood, standing in their living room, terrified. What exactly had he seen? What had happened? Why did he come home instead of going to a hospital? He must not be thinking straight.
“Let’s try to wipe some of this blood off. Maybe…maybe if you take a shower you’ll feel better.” Renna tried to think of where the box of emergency latex gloves might have ended up during their mother’s last frantic cleaning spree between work shifts. She didn’t think she should be touching him, or now her phone, without the gloves on.
“Yeah. Maybe I should do that. I just need to take a minute. I just need to think.” He started to sit on the couch, and then seemed to think better of it, standing awkwardly, one shaking hand pressed to his forehead.
After a long moment of him standing there like that, doing nothing, Renna softly asked, “Benjamin… who… who’s in the car?”
He began to cry then, at first softly, then in large gulping sobs. He started toward the door of the house. “Diamond. Diamond’s in the car. I got her out. I got her out, Renna. It all just happened too fast. But I got her out.”
“Is she alive?” Renna frantically ran out to the car, peering through the window. If Diamond needed emergency care, she should have been doing that from the start. She used a small towel she’d grabbed from the kitchen to open the door handle without touching the blood smears streaking the door. What she saw looked like it belonged in a horror movie, not her brother’s old car. There was no way Diamond was alive. Her head was lolled back against the seat, face splattered with speckles of rusty dried blood. Below her chin her throat was a mess of torn tissues with blueish white cartilage hanging lopsidedly against her spine. Renna bent over and puked onto her flip flops.
“Renna, I didn’t do that. I swear. I just.. I couldn’t leave her there. There were so many. I don’t even know where they came from. I don’t even know where they went. They shot some. But I know some made it out. They just ran out into the sun, like it was nothing. People started fighting each other. Like, the bar people too, not just the Wilders. It wasn’t like the drills in school, Renna. There wasn’t any safe place to go. Nothing was orderly. There weren’t any lines, or, or people just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.”
Renna dimly heard Alyssa’s voice in her head from the party I bet people would pay a lot for a toothbrush when the world finally turns into a full apocalypse instead of this half-pocalypse. She fought the laughter she felt bubbling up. Alyssa the prophet. Her fingers tingled, her lips stretching up at the corners. She wanted to laugh and laugh. This couldn’t be real. Oh God, this couldn’t be real. She wanted to cry with her brother. She battled it down. She couldn’t lose it. She knew she would, and soon. But not just yet. Right now, Benjamin was losing it and she had to be the voice of reason.
“Did you try calling Mom, Benny?”
Benjamin was sitting on the ground beside the car, sobbing. “Her voice. Her beautiful voice is gone. Just gone. He just grabbed her throat. Like it was nothing. Like it was made of tissue paper. They’re really strong, Renna.”
“Benny,” she tried to make her voice firm. She wanted to hug him, to sit and cry next to him, but they had to figure out what to do. They had a dead body, her brother was covered i
n blood, there may be Wilders running lose in the surrounding areas, and they had no way to get ahold of any real adults.
He looked up slowly, his tears making pale streaks down his cheeks. “Yeah Renna?”
“Let’s go inside, okay? How long did you drive to get here?” She thought maybe if she asked him some simple, everyday questions she might be able to snap him out of it.
“Uh..” he hiccupped in a breath, “like almost an hour. I tried not to speed. I didn’t think it would be good to get pulled over.”
“Yeah, yeah that’s smart. Good job, Benny. Let’s stand up now and walk inside. We’ll get you a shower. Some fresh clothes.” What Renna wouldn’t do for this to have been one of the days Alyssa’s parents had fought. She could really use somebody who would take charge here. This wasn’t her job. She wasn’t ready for this. She had no idea what to do next.
Once they’d walked slowly inside, Renna said soothingly, “Benny, try Mom okay? Maybe the phones will work again soon. You take my phone and you keep trying. Every five minutes, okay?” She nodded as he walked over and bent to pick up her phone. Renna stared down at her wet toes, and kicked her flip flops back out the door, reaching for the hose beside the stoop. She tried to listen to the news behind her as she rinsed off her feet and sandals in the cold water.
She could barely hear the drone of the news anchor, catching words and phrases like “Cell Phone towers are too busy.” And “Shelter in place,” and “full shoot on sight order.” She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard “Worst attack in over eight years.” She shuddered, thinking back to the panicked days when people barely left their houses; of her Father coming home and acting strange. She wondered what her mother would do if she were home with Benjamin. Would she stay with him, without trying to call emergency services? Renna, listen to me. Do not call that number from the TV. Whatever you do, just wait and stay quiet. I’m on my way. Don’t call them, Renna, they’ll kill your father. She wondered if her mother would have that same advice now. If she herself would disregard it again, now that she knew how it would turn out.
Renna slipped her feet into her fuzzy pink house shoes, almost numb from the cold hose water. She started toward where Ben sat on the floor in front of the TV, remote in hand. He must have muted it. Something about his posture was weird. Maybe he was just uncomfortable, trying not to get blood on the carpet. She looked past him, to the TV, where his gaze was riveted. The images on the TV seemed surreal with no sound. The news anchor was gone from the screen, and the camera was at an odd angle, feet running past. As she watched, a body was dragged to the ground and bloody hands tore at it before it stopped moving. Abruptly, the screen went dark.
There must have been another Wilder attack. But that seemed impossible. Renna’s thoughts flashed back to what the news anchor had said just before Benjamin had pulled into the drive, witnesses are claiming that some of the infected began changing even as officers arrived. Renna swallowed hard. A change had never happened so quickly. Just in rumors. And when the crazy doomsday prepper people made up stories about how the world would yet turn into a zombie apocalypse like in the comic books.
She started over toward Benjamin, planning to switch to a different channel on the tv when Tim Tam slowly edged around Renna, pushing on her knees with his body. Urging her away from Benjamin and toward the door. His fur was fluffed up, and he continued to press against her. She eyed her brother as she backed slowly away, realizing that he could well be infected. He was covered in blood. It would only take a single hangnail, or a papercut. Maybe he’d nicked himself shaving that morning. It took such a small amount of blood to spread the virus.
What if he was? What should she do? He was already inside the house. That was the plan, right? Get to safety inside the house. And he had the car keys. She couldn’t get in the car with Diamond’s dead body anyhow. She couldn’t sit in a car cowering again. She tried to stay very still and very calm.
“You weren’t injured, were you Benjamin?” Renna watched him carefully for his tell. He wasn’t a bad liar, but he still used the old ‘look just above the eye’ trick. She watched him contain his shaking for a moment. She waited as his eyes snapped up to meet hers and then drift ever so slightly up.
“No. No, I don’t think I was.” His eyes had a weird sheen, almost like there was a film over them.
Renna took another half step away from him as a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face. Tim Tam pushed more insistently at her legs, shoving her a step further back, beginning his low rolling growl.
“Ben?”
“Yeah?” His teeth were gritted, fist clenching and unclenching.
“Don’t hurt Timmy Tammy, okay?” Her voice came out smaller than she intended it to.
He grunted, “I’m not going to hurt either of you.”
“Then why’d you just lie to me? Why’d you come home? You should’ve gone to a hospital.” She looked around for something, anything she could use to defend herself. Could she bring herself to kill her brother, to save herself? Maybe if she kept him talking his rational brain would hold on just a little longer. There had to be police patrols out on a night like this one.
“I just didn't know what to do. I’m scared, Renna.” His body spasmed hard as he fumbled toward the cell phone again before jerking to a pause, spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth.
Renna turned and ran as fast as she could toward the road, hearing Tim Tam’s growls intensify, then cut off in a hissing shriek. Don’t turn around, don’t turn around she wished she’d put real shoes on before dashing outside instead of running out in her slippers. She could hear footfalls catching up to her, inhumanly fast.
Wilder fast.
Desperately she veered into the woods. Maybe she could find a stick or something. Anything. She felt a hand snatch at the back of her shirt as she dove through pine branches, and leapt over a log, darting to the left, hoping to loop around the back of the house. If she could just get inside she would be safe. She could close the screens, and turn on all the lights and wait until morning.
But every time she tried to turn toward the house, Benjamin was there, just on the yard side of her. She kept pushing deeper into the woods, only remaining ahead of him because her smaller size allowed her to dodge through and under branches that caught him up as he tried to charge straight through them. As she ran she dimly caught a flash of red, the same color from earlier, ahead of her. Then a person in a red shirt was rocketing right toward her, from the woods. She faltered, unsure of which way to dodge.
That one faltering step was her undoing. Benjamin knocked into her, sending her tumbling to the ground. She rammed the heels of her hands in the dirt, ripping a hole in the knees of her sweatpants and lost both slippers as she skidded to a stop. She felt a hard tug and heard the ripping of hair as it was pulled from the roots, jerking her head around hard. This was it. She was going to be ripped apart by her own brother.
Or maybe she’d survive and turn. She’d rather just die. Still, her hands scrabbled for a stick, a rock, anything, as she was dragged to her side by her hair. She hoped he killed her fast.
Abruptly, her hair was let loose as the red shirted figure from the woods slammed into Benjamin. They wrestled, both inhumanly strong. Panting, Renna crab crawled back from them, scrambling through blueberry bushes and leaves, deeper into the forest. She couldn’t see the yard anymore; didn’t know which way to go. She was barely able to see much of the figures as the sun had begun to set. She scrambled to her knees and then her feet, running headlong away from the fight.
Chapter 5
Renna tripped hard, hitting her head on a rotting tree stump. She didn’t know how long she’d been running, she just knew she was afraid to stop. Bringing a hand to her head, it came away damp with blood. With a grunt she pushed herself into a sitting position. She was deep in the woods. She blinked, bringing her eyes into focus. She took a few deep breaths, trying to bring her heart rate down and to get some focus. She’d been running in a bl
ind panic with no thought of what to do next. Now she had to figure it out. She was in the woods. At night. There was another outbreak. Benjamin was infected. Diamond was dead. She had no phone, no flashlight, no real idea of how far into the woods she’d run. She was bleeding.
“One step at a time,” she mumbled to herself. “Just hold it together for now.” She shoved herself painfully to her feet, angry all over again that she’d run out of the house in her slippers. Slippers that were now lost somewhere in the forest. Renna gazed up to the stars, hoping maybe they would have secret map for her. She’d taken a sky navigating course once, online. Just for fun. She was pretty sure she needed to know what direction she wanted to go for that to be helpful. It was a night marked by heavy clouds anyhow.
Her parent’s old hiking guides always said to stay put when lost, since you’d have a better chance of being found. That was before the change. Now they did not send out search parties. Even worse, on this day, anyone found out of their shelter was deemed “shoot on sight” for law enforcement or local gun owners. She felt a burble of choking sobs sitting just below her voice box.
“Get it to-fucking-gether Renna. Think. Think! Where should I start?” She spun in a slow circle, looking for any lights glowing through the trees. She could barely even see more than two trees past where she stood. Start by not talking out loud to yourself, she bit her lip to keep the thought from being voiced. Gingerly, Renna slid a foot forward through the undergrowth, feeling for sharp rocks or sticks before placing her weight on it. She shuffled the other foot forward, in the same painstaking process. She’d never get anywhere at that rate.
Plopping down on the rock next to her, she ripped at the holes in the knees of her dirty sweatpants, tearing sideways around her legs until she was able to rip the material apart. She used the portions of the material below the knee of each leg to wrap and re-wrap her feet for protection. With her new ‘shoes’ she stood and started past the rock, in the direction she hoped would be toward home.