Notes from a Necrophobe

by T. C. Armstrong

  I hope it’s not this stressful tomorrow.

  HOUSTON

  On the first day we slept. Well, I stood guard for a while but then my mother relieved me and I joined the others for a much-needed deep sleep.

  On the second day we played another version of “What’s in my bag,” although this version was really about counting up how much food and water we had left. A dark foreboding look crossed my mother’s face as she surveyed the stash, but she quickly replaced it with her it’s-going-to-be-all-right mask. From the look of things, we have a week left on what we’ve got. Mr. Cromwell tried to keep the kids busy with some card tricks, Doom did his “We’re all doomed!” shtick, and we played Uno for a super-squished chocolate bar KC found in a book she started reading. Of course, most of us were trying to let Jesse or Sarah win, but Nadia didn’t seem to get that telepathic memo because she ended up winning the tournament. She did seem to get the next telepathic memo we put out because she grabbed the bar, started unwrapping it before our disgusted eyes, then broke it in half and gave a piece to both Sarah and Jesse. She didn’t even take the tiniest piece for herself. KC looked suspicious at this, but I was impressed. I personally believe there’s a good person under all those layers of ego.

  On the third day it snowed. It was all we could do to keep Jesse from running out of the tent to play in it. She just couldn’t believe it was dangerous to make snow angels or even a snowman. Mom had to explain to her over and over and over again that once the snow touched her skin it would melt and turn her into a zombie. Jesse still seemed to doubt this, but she grudgingly listened and stayed in the tent. As soon as it stopped snowing, Mom had us go out and push/kick/feet-sweep as much snow as we could into the empty swimming pool. We couldn’t clear our section of the roof without snow shovels, but at least we were able to kick a few paths from the tent to the perimeter of the roof we were on so we could still keep lookout over those below. Mom also made us promise to never take our boots or raingear off. She needn’t have worried. We put on all the clothes we could—layers and layers of the stuff—until we reached the point we could barely fit in our waterproof pants and tops. We look like overstuffed shiny burritos, something that was not lost on KC when she said, “Why, Nadia, have you put on weight?”

  Nadia doesn’t seem to care about KC’s jibes anymore; she just wants to be warm like the rest of us. It does mean we’re not able to move as freely as we once did, and the waterproof rubber makes a lot of rude and embarrassing noises when we do. Well, actually, it’s only embarrassing for the girls. Jesse and I find it quite funny. If we weren’t so tired from the lack of food and water, we’d find it impossible to sleep amid all the plastic shifting sounds we make.

  On the fourth day, we lost Dorothy.

  RENEE

  Kaboom was the one to wake me up this time. “Something’s wrong with Dorothy! I can’t get her up!”

  It takes me a few minutes to get my bearings. I was having such a lovely dream. For a moment I was with Grant on a romantic drive to see the fall colors on Shenandoah’s Skyline Drive, the next moment I’m freezing in a tent with kids layered so deep in clothes and blankets they lie like pupae. No one else moves, but several pairs of eyes pop open at Kaboom’s announcement. I look over to see if Jesse and Sarah are awake, but they’re happily slumbering away…

  …under Dorothy’s blanket.

  She’s supposed to have it with her on watch! We need every item of cover we can get to survive this cold. If we look like overweight deranged superheroes walking around with quilt-capes then so be it.

  Fearing the worst, I slowly rise to my feet and follow Kaboom out the door, carefully zipping it up behind me. We silently crunch our way through the snow towards the tiny figure hunched over the edge of the roof. I feel stupid even as I say it, but I say it anyways: “Dorothy, are you okay?” I start to shake her gently, and she falls over in one solid piece.

  Ice crystals have already begun to form over her face and in her eyes. Her frozen stare is permanently fixed on the Infected below and beyond, and they stare back with the same frosty expression. She must have died about halfway into her shift to be in this state now.

  “She was supposed to come and get me!” cries Kaboom. “She said she’d wake me up when it was my turn! I can’t believe she didn’t come for me! Why didn’t she trade places with me when she started to get too cold? Why isn’t she bundled up like the rest of us?”

  I can only second-guess what Dorothy was feeling last night. Was it unbearable hopelessness? You can’t tell if that was it by her expression because she actually seems happy, like she was looking forward to the next big adventure when she died. I don’t know how to respond to her passing at this moment, and I don’t know how I’m going to break this to the others without breaking morale. Right now I feel as numb as Dorothy looks. Most of the others are used to death, but I don’t want the youngest to get that way if I can help it. I’m still trying to be like the father in Life Is Beautiful by making this look like a game, anything to protect their innocence, anything to shield them from what’s really going on. But I’m fast running out of ideas.

  Houston arrives on the scene as I’m mulling over what to do and starts asking the hard questions. What are we going to do with her body? Are we going to remove her clothes so the others can use them? Should we have a service? And then he says something that should comfort me but instead chills me to the bone. “Maybe she removed herself so we could stretch our resources for another day.”

  I hope he doesn’t start seeing individuals in terms of useful and dead weight.

  We call Mr. Cromwell out to help us make a decision and leave Nemesis in charge of tent morale. I don’t know if it’s the low rations we’re trying to survive on or the cold, but my mind has slowed right down. I don’t think intelligent thought is possible when the brain is slowly turning into slush. I know we need to stay warm, but do I have it in me to remove some of her clothes? Do any of us have it in us to wear the clothes of the deceased? Oh wait, we already do. Will we even care about this in a few days? Do we even have a few days? I’ve looked at our rations and I’ve looked at methods of escape, but my only idea—get off the roof and onto the walkways on top of the walls—has been foiled by physics and gravity. There’s simply too great a distance between the rooftops and the top of the gates. For the life of me I can’t figure out a way to get to them…they’re much farther away than I imagined they would be.

  What are we going to do with Dorothy’s body? If this was one of the soldiers I could easily dump it over the side. Heck, after what they’ve done to us I could happily remove its head with Cromwell’s axe before dumping it over the side. But this is Dorothy, not some unknown brute, and to us she’s family. She was always straight with me back when I only knew her as “the little old lady,” back when everyone else was too scared to speak out of turn and let me know how things really worked around here. She was a comfort to us, always ready with a kind word or a positive comment. And she was as tough as any of us, out-surviving those half her age. She didn’t make it this far just to lose her body to the parasites below.

  Yet if we roll her in a shroud and place her on another level of the roof, one of the levels we no longer go on, we risk her becoming one of them when the snow melts or the rain returns. Dorothy will no longer be Dorothy; she’ll be one of the Infected bent on infecting us the moment she reanimates. I don’t think I can handle the sight of a dead Dorothy coming after us. I think that would be something that could break our brains.

  We decide to duct-tape her hands, feet, and mouth together—just in case she reanimates— and then duct tape her into one of the tarps brought up in Doom’s kit. Doom wasn’t very happy about sacrificing a waterproof cover for someone who can no longer make good use of it, but he acquiesced when Nemesis reminded him it was the least he could do after slamming the door in her face and leaving her to the zombies. We also decide we can’t keep her on the roof—our eyes would always find their way to her cocooned form and if
the parasites manage to get through the tarp we’d have to deal with the unbearable sight of her writhing to break free from her plastic shroud. At first Doom suggests that we place her on the edge so if she does reanimate and start wiggling around, she would wiggle her way right off the roof.

  This kind of talk is starting to make my head hurt.

  In the end we decide to slowly lower her by rope into the same bushes that Ghost tore his parka on. It’s around the back of the school, and the bulk of the zombie horde is concentrated at the front. The few frozen corpsicles on the other side have their backs to the bushes; hopefully they can’t see her nestled between the wall of the school and the dense thicket of thorns.

  We’re not having a service for her because as Doom put it, no one else’s family got one.

  We spend the rest of the day in the tent. As I leave to keep watch I can hear the beginnings of witless banter, the kind that will temporarily distract them from the horrors below. I sit down just a little to the left of where Dorothy spent her last moments and try to imagine what kind of conversation I would have if she were still here by my side.

  JESSE

  Today is a really sad day. Mom told me that Granny died of old age in her sleep last night and that I was to stay in the tent while they found a way to keep her safe from the parasites. I’m okay with that. It’s still too cold to leave the tent.

  I was thinking we might play some more Uno, but no one feels up to it today. I’m wondering what we’re going to do to get our minds off of how hungry we are when Nemesis speaks up. “Hey, KC, don’t you think it’s time we found out what your initials stood for? I mean, how bad can it be? Were you named after someone who turned out to be a mass-murderer?”

  I tense up at this. For some reason KC is really sensitive about her real name. Most of my life I didn’t even know that “KC” was a nickname; I thought a name could be just two letters. But KC doesn’t seem to be bothered this time. I’m glad that Nemesis asked because I don’t want to talk about Dorothy or how much I want to eat more than one granola bar a day or drink more than half a bottle of water a day.

  “Well, after all that’s happened I guess it’s no big deal now.” KC says in a neutral voice. Houston’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at this. I guess he’s been guarding the secret of KC’s name for so long and he can’t believe she doesn’t care anymore.

  “I was named after my aunt Katerina Clark.”

  I don’t know who Katerina Clark is, but Nadia sure does. Her eyes get real big when KC says this and she squeals, “Katerina Clark is your aunt? The Katerina Clark?”

  “Who’s Katerina Clark?” Doom asks. Cool, I’m not the only one who doesn’t know. And hey, if she’s KC’s aunt then she’s my aunt, and if she’s my aunt, then why haven’t I ever met her? More importantly, why have I never gotten a Christmas or Birthday present from her?

  Nadia doesn’t seem to believe that Doom doesn’t know who this Katerina is. “Don’t you home-school types ever watch movies?”

  “Well, I did watch Red Dawn…”

  Nadia rolls her eyes. “No, not old conspiracy movies, real movies! She was in all the blockbusters when I was little and she was a big style icon. She was at the very top of the fashion industry, and then suddenly she disappeared.”

  “She disappeared because she killed a whole family while driving drunk and high as a kite!” Nemesis snaps. “She was totally unrepentant through the whole trial. She deserved what she got: twenty years for manslaughter. She won’t be as pretty as she was before when she gets out; she’ll be a bitter old crone.”

  “Oh.” Sounds like the wind just got sucked out of Nadia’s sails.

  “My mom used to be really close to her sister, but right after she gave me her name her life started going downhill.” Nadia laughs at this and KC shoots her a warning look. “My aunt’s, not my mother’s! She got onto the cocaine party circuit and listened to her own press. My family started to distance themselves from her after that. My mother said she was never the same after she got a big head.” I had to stifle a giggle at that as a picture of a cross between my mom and KC with a big cartoon head entered my mind. “My aunt killed that family when I was two, and my parents started calling me KC so I wouldn’t be associated with Katerina Clark.”

  “Well I don’t think you have to worry about that!” says Nadia. “You’re nothing like her.”

  “Did Nadia just insult KC?” I whisper to Sarah.

  “It’s known as a backhanded comment, but KC should take it as a compliment.” Sarah’s only a year older than me, but she sounds like a grown-up already. I look at KC and see that she doesn’t care either way.

  “Where is Katerina now?” asks Mouse.

  “Don’t know. We haven’t had any contact with her for ages. Mom wrote to her sister in prison, but the letters were all sent back unopened and she refused to see my mother when she tried to visit.”

  “Maybe she’s one of those inmates that were thrown out when the guards turned the prisons into their personal fortress” Doom suggests. “Maybe she’s a roaming zombie like the others.”

  “Doom!”

  “It’s okay, like I said, I never really knew her. From what I hear she was really good at manipulating people and making them believe they needed her. Besides, the guards only turned out the dangerous criminals. I don’t think my aunt can hurt anyone with her driving now.”

  KC

  It’s my turn for guard duty. I’m not really needed because it’s warmed up enough for the others to leave the tent, so we’re all out here. On the plus side it means we get to stretch our limbs and walk around in the sun with a few less layers to stifle our movements. Mom, of course, had to remind Jesse not to splash around in the melting snow and to keep her boots and waterproofs on at all times, but it’s hard not to splash with so many puddles about.

  On the minus side it means the Infected have thawed out. They animate the ground below as they mill about circumnavigating the school. Since there are already so many eyes on our surroundings, I turn to the book I brought with me and start transferring the best bits from it to Notes From A Necrophobe.

  Nemesis plops herself down next to me and says, “What is this?” She reaches out and turns the book over to see the title page. She reads aloud, Bodies We’ve Buried: CSI Training School and I can tell by the look on her face she’s intrigued. Before I have a chance to say anything about it, Doom and Houston have joined me. “Why would you read that?” Nemesis asks. “There’s not much of a career in CSI these days. I think we’re more concerned with what happens after they die than how they died.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t waste time writing it out in Ghost’s book if it wasn’t important,” says Houston.

  “Okay then, KC, enlighten me. But don’t bore me with the technical stuff—just give me the Schoolhouse Rock version.”

  “Um, I don’t think Schoolhouse Rock covered that subject,” Kaboom quips as he joins our little group. This is shaping up to be another meeting of the Dumb Luck Club. I look away from my friends to the dead below and think aloud, “I wonder if they know what’s in store for them come Spring?”

  “What do you mean?” asks Nemesis.

  “Well, the reason why this invasion has carried on for so long is because it’s been too cold for blowflies to do their work. They need it to be above fifty Fahrenheit just to fly.”

  “So?”

  “A corpse’s worst enemy is bugs. Blowflies will fly miles to a corpse. They’ll arrive in the hundreds and lay eggs in the thousands. Those eggs can hatch in as little as four hours.”

  “…which is how they guesstimate the time of a victim’s death, by studying fly stages.” Houston finishes. “I saw that CSI episode. I don’t need to read your book to know that.” A disgusted look comes over Doom’s face at this and he’s onto his feet like he’s forgotten something. He stomps away without another word or glance back.

  “What’s with him?” I ask.

  “I think he just realized that his family
could be down there among the Infected. I don’t think he wants to see that.” Kaboom states.

  “You have to remember,” says Houston gently, “most of the people up here have not seen a cadaver until recently. People like Mouse were taken straight here. The first time she saw a corpse was when she saw Ghost, and then she didn’t see any more till I left the gate open…” Houston stops talking, overcome with guilt.

  “Stop that Hou. We would have died of dehydration had you not fetched those kits!” I remind him. “Anyway, the thing is, a combination of bacteria inside the body and the work of maggots turns the organs and soft tissue into a liquid which begins to seep out of the body…”

  “Ewwwwwww!” Nemesis groans. She scoots a few steps away from me, but sticks around to hear what I have to say.

  “…and that’s the start of Putrefaction. Then things get really gross.”

  “Are you kidding me? How can it get worse?!” Kaboom sounds disgusted and curious at the same time.

  “Well, when it warms up enough for the Blowflies to be active, they won’t be picky. They’ll choose any moist area to lay their eggs in. Including us.”

  “What? Why us?” Nemesis shuffles one step further away.

  “Because we’re so close to the dead. This book I’m reading has a whole chapter from the point of view of those who work…um, worked…at the Body Farm in Tennessee. You know, that place where people would donate their bodies so the CSIs could train themselves for real murders. That way the students could observe the bodies in different states and learn how to predict time and cause of death, etcetera.”