Notes from a Necrophobe

by T. C. Armstrong

  And yet I find myself jealous of Mr. Fiennes. He was cold and he was alone, but he was free. If we could safely get off this roof we could search for food and survive. I think of him out in that winter wasteland and imagine that he suffered the same things we’re suffering. There’s the nonstop shivering and the constant chattering of teeth fit to break. There’s the shockingly pale skin, what little we can see that is that isn’t covered up. There’s the cracked and bleeding lips despite having wrapped our faces up in scarves with only our tired eyes on show. There’s the mental confusion that turns our brains into slush. And just to prove we really are at death’s door, there’s the hallucinations.

  Hallucinations that we’re still home. Hallucinations that we’ve been rescued and we’re being interviewed on TV about our ordeal. Hallucinations that this never happened at all and I will need to get up for school soon. Hallucinations where my father arrives with the real army and takes us away. Hallucinations where I’m able to talk with the dead below and beg them to let us go. Hallucinations where Ghost is still alive and we’re dancing to our song. That’s my favorite one. I’ve starting to like these hallucinations instead of fear them.

  We face inwards leaving our backs to the wind that whips us cruelly through the tent and blankets. We keep Jesse and Sarah at the middle so their small forms will not surrender to the frost, but they’re so still it’s hard to tell if they’re alive or dead. I look at our hunched figures and think of all those penguins on National Geographic huddling together with their young trying to survive the howling winds and snow that white-out their world.

  And then, almost as suddenly as it began, it’s over. The cold that is, not our edge-of-existence crisis. The winds die down, the sun comes up, and the tent warms to the point where we are able to peel off layers and layers of filthy clothing. It takes a while to do this; it’s hard to do anything when you have no energy.

  We feebly crawl our way out of the tent into the blinding sunlight. If we were fit and normal it would probably feel good to be able to move without all those layers of clothes; but our lack of energy holds us back. I struggle to focus as I try to get used to sunlight again. I blink and blink to make my eyes work again, and when they finally do, I wish they didn’t.

  The dead are out there in droves, looking up at us, waiting. I’m not surprised at that. If anything, I bet they’re surprised we made it through the last three days. (I think it was three days. It’s hard to tell when you’re drifting in and out of reality.) No, the thing I’m surprised at is how much we resemble them. Starvation has robbed us of any sign of life. We now sport the same hollowed-out eyes and cheeks as the gaunt faces below. We hold ourselves the same way they do, which means we barely hold ourselves together at all. We’re slack-jawed and slump-shouldered, our arms dangling with no energy to lift them. And we all wear that permanently haunted look.

  Jesse’s the first to speak, her voice so hoarse she sounds like our ninety-four year old grandfather before he passed away with emphysema. “Mom, is there anything to eat?”

  My mother, who bears the most pained expression of all, hardly has enough voice to muster the expected, “No.”

  “Anything left to drink?”

  “No.” There it is. No comforting deceptions, no lies left to be told. Just ‘No.’

  “I’m going back to bed then,” Jess croaks. But she doesn’t have the energy to make it back to the tent. She just turns away from the sight of the dead in the courtyard and rolls onto her side. Mom crawls over to Jess and does the same, enveloping my little sister in her arms. There’s a part of me, the part that learned first aid from those summer camps and more first aid from Notes From A Necrophobe, that wants me to shake them and yell, “Wake up! You’ll die if you don’t wake up!” The rest of me says, “What for?”

  I watch Mr. Cromwell sit Indian style next to Mom and Jesse while holding Sarah in his lap. I turn away from the scene and look out into the distance, vainly searching the horizon for a sign of anything that could save us. That was when I felt Houston tap me lightly on the shoulder and point to a spot below the edge of the roof. “Listen,” he says gently.

  It takes me a little while to hear it and when I do I feel compelled to crawl over to the sound. It’s a ground-thumping whump! It sounds like big sacks of flour are being loaded onto a truck. Doom is already there on the edge looking over with Mouse and Nemesis and I think to myself, “Is this really all there is left of us? Of our neighborhood? Of Mclean High School? Of Mclean?”

  Doom looks up at me as I reach the edge of the roof and whispers, “I told you so.”

  “Yeah, Doom, it’s your dream come true,” says Nemesis sourly. I peer over to see what has her in such a bad mood, and then I see it.

  The dead are stacking themselves like cords of wood, one on top of the other, right next to the side of the building. It’s slow going at first—they’re still thawing out, but soon they’re joined by the Infected from inside the building, the ones who were protected from the elements and probably never fully froze. They started throwing themselves one on top of the other, but the pile of pungency is so high now they have to resort to climbing up the stack before they can lay themselves down and add to its height.

  “I’ve still got a lighter in my bag,” suggests Doom. “If we light up the paper in your books and throw it down on them, it will probably at least light their clothes up...”

  “…and then they’ll set the whole building on fire,” finishes Mouse in a deadpan voice.

  Suddenly, they stop. I don’t know why they’ve stopped. Maybe they heard our plans. They look up expectantly while we look down on them in despair. What are they waiting for?

  As if hearing my thoughts, Houston says, “I think they’re waiting to see how we choose to die.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Doom.

  “Well, they’ve been studying us, right? Right from the very beginning they’ve been studying us. They’re in no hurry to get to us. How much longer can we last now that we’re out of water? I think they’re curious to see how we choose to die.”

  “Lucky us, we have so many choices” Nemesis says, defeated. “We could have another temperature drop and finally freeze to death. We could drink the infected water and be free from suffering within seconds, or we could choose the most slow and agonizing option: death by dehydration.”

  “Dorothy looked pretty peaceful to me when she died,” I say without thinking. “Just saying.”

  “What would your father do in this situation?” Mouse asks Doom.

  “He’d probably shoot each one of us in the head to keep us from coming back and then do the same to himself.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  “Would you do that to us, Doom, if you had a gun?”

  Doom appears to think for a moment and then with finality in his voice replies, “No, I couldn’t do that to you guys. It was hard enough doing something like that to Sarah and the others the first time.”

  For some reason this makes us all relax. I don’t know why. It’s not like it makes a difference anymore.

  The stacking seems to have suspended itself indefinitely. The strength of our will must fascinate these creatures. How many others did they observe giving up? How many people chose the quicker path to death? How many just lay down and died? Do they place bets on how much we’re willing to suffer to put off the inevitable? My eyes close with the weight of these thoughts.

  I don’t know how long we must have sat there that way, close to each other yet lost in our own thoughts, but it must have been hours because when I open my eyes again it’s because I feel the temperature drop. The sun is going down and we will need to put our layers back on if we’re to survive the night.

  Except that no one moves. We all know we’re supposed to do something to endure, but we don’t. Houston fixes me with a look as I let out one big sigh.

  “So we’ve chosen.”

  So we have.

  RENEE

  I’m not sure what woke me up first, t
he dramatic drop in temperature or the rib-rattling boom! I heard in the distance. It felt like a Mack truck had plowed into one of the gates, something that would have brought me to my feet in the past but barely registered in my muddled brain now. I can’t even bring myself to open my eyes. I just hold onto Jesse tighter and wait for whatever it is to pass.

  But that boom! is followed by another and another until it’s impossible to ignore. Even Jesse raises her head and asks, “Is it over yet?”

  Mr. Cromwell answers, “No, I think something else is just beginning.”

  The sun has started its descent, which explains the drop in temperature, but there’s still enough light to make out the line of our little group huddled together at the edge of the roof. It’s eerie to look at them. Their hunched figures remind me of Dorothy when we found her lifeless body. By the time I crawl over to the edge to see what they’re looking at, there’s a distant flash, followed by an even deeper baritone boom.

  “What on Earth?” I say with a start. Houston points up at the sky and I see a streak of silver zoom past us.

  Jets. Fighter jets. Fighter jets dropping bombs.

  “So that’s how we’re going to die,” says Doom in a hollow voice. I can imagine that thought echoing around his barren mind. Normally I would chide him for that thought and sternly say, “That’s enough of that! We will survive!” But there’s nothing to say that will rally our spirits—our feelings left with the last of the food and water. There’s no more excitement or fear, just acceptance.

  “Are those fireworks?” Jesse’s weak voice can barely be heard over the explosions.

  “Yes honey, that’s what they are. Let’s watch them together.”

  Mr. Cromwell joins us, carrying Sarah in his arms. Sarah’s awake, but she’s screwing her eyes tight against the fiery vision before us. As I watch I can see that it’s not just in my head, the explosions are getting closer. In fact, I can hear a whumping noise in between the explosions, probably from a series of smaller bombs. So this is how we end, not in a whimper, but with a bang. Jesse has curled herself onto my lap so I hold out my hands to KC and Houston. They sit so close I can get an arm around each one of them. If we go, we go together. No more pain, no more fear, and no bodies left behind for the parasites to conquer. In a way, we won.

  “Mom, they’re getting closer. Isn’t that dangerous?” Jesse asks, her voice void of emotion.

  “Not as much as you think sweetie. Don’t worry about it.” Jesse twists herself in my lap like she’s trying to get more comfortable and then asks a question that proves her life is winding down, because only a person caught up in a death’s-door hallucination would say:

  “Why don’t we take that helicopter out of here?”

  “Oh Jess…” I start to cry, if it can be called crying when there’s no more tears. Why can’t those jets hurry up? Why did I have to live long enough to watch my children die? I know I must be going downhill too because now I’m hearing a helicopter.

  “Mom! Jesse’s right—there is a helicopter!”

  We all jump to our feet and spin around to see a chopper approaching us as fast as possible. Can it be? It’s not one of those bright orange rescue copters that take people from the scene of an accident to the hospital. It’s not the coast guard copters that scoop people up from the sea, and it’s not one of those private helicopters that Harrison Ford would fly around to rescue a stranded hiker…

  “It’s the soldiers!” shrieks Doom. “They’ve come back to kill us!”

  And just to prove his point, they start to fire on us.

  KC’s eyes are fierce with anger and defiance. She shakes her fist at the helicopter with its guns and shouts, “I made my choice! You can’t take that away from me! I chose to freeze to death, not be cut down in front of my family! Not this!” She brings her fist up and down like a tomahawk, as if standing her ground will make it turn around and leave us to our fate. “Not this!”

  “Maybe they think we’re zombies too!” shouts Nemesis. She starts jumping up and down waving her arms and screaming at the top of her lungs “We’re alive! We’re alive!”

  “Not for long.” Houston’s tense voice cuts through the sounds of the helicopter blades and the ping of bullets. “The dead are stacking themselves again.”

  So they are. I look over the side and see an ever-growing pile of bodies. When did they start doing that? They’re much higher now; they must have started while Jess and I were asleep. I find myself wishing the bombs would reach us before the bodies or bullets.

  “They’re not shooting at us!” Mr. Cromwell calls out. “They’re shooting at them!” He points towards the growing mountain of flesh. I should have picked up on that. They would have hit us by now if they really wanted to.

  The last words I hear before the descending helicopter blasts out any other sound is Jesse calling out “Look—it’s Ghost’s ghost!” I look up to see what she is talking about and find myself looking straight into tear-filled eyes. Grant’s eyes.

  KC

  It is Ghost’s ghost! Only this version looks healthier. This may be my wildest hallucination yet, and it’s my new favorite—Ghost is coming in on a helicopter like a knight on his white horse, here to rescue us. Apparition or not, I can’t help but run my fingers through hair that hasn’t been brushed or washed in two weeks, hair that’s being blown every which way but loose by the propellers, hair that I half pull over my face, trying to hide my skeletal visage. Would he even recognize me looking like this?

  The look on his face says yes. I’m suddenly aware of frantic movement around me. First our tent blows over. Then it seems as if everyone else moves at once. I watch in a daze as everyone stumbles into and over each other in a mad scramble to get to the helicopter. But wait, if everyone else is seeing what I’m seeing, then what I’m seeing must be real! I watch as Mr. Cromwell lifts Sarah, Nemesis, and Doom inside. I watch Mouse hand the book she’s been clutching—the Book of the Forgotten—to Doom and then get inside herself. I can barely hear Jesse’s cries of “Daddy! Daddy!” over the noise of those propellers as she skips and jumps her way to the door and into my father’s waiting arms. I watch as he kisses her on the top of her head and then hands her to others inside. I see him turn to my mother and throw his arms around her. And I watch as Ghost walks towards me with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.

  But the moment doesn’t last long. Ghost’s smile turns into a look of horror and he breaks into a run. I can hear a chorus of voices staggered by the rotating blades. They’re all screaming, “Run! Run!” My trance is broken. I try to sprint towards Ghost but am stopped short by something grabbing my ankle. I pinwheel my arms in vain to steady myself but I come crashing to the roof and fall flat on my face.

  I turn to look behind me. It’s one of them! When the helicopter landed it stopped firing on the Infected. When the Infected stopped being blown apart they started stacking themselves again with much greater urgency than before. Their quarry is about to get away, and they’re not willing to give up what they waited for so patiently. I try to wriggle free and look back to see what’s holding me knowing full well what it is and I scream. I scream because there’s a dead thing clutching me by the ankle. I scream because it’s pushing my trousers up my leg to expose enough skin to bite. And I scream because I’m looking into the empty eyes—and open mouth—of Nadia.

  I kick at her head but it only breaks her jaw, not her grip. What am I going to do? What can I kill her with? What can I use to kill the other ones who are still climbing up onto the roof? Where’s the shard of glass, the can of nitro, the tent stake to push through their eye sockets and into their soft brains…I can’t think, I can’t think, I can’t think…I can only hear Doom’s words from the other evening in my head, “Welcome to Bite Night.”

  And then Houston is with me and he’s jumping with his full weight on Nadia’s head, but she’s got such a thick skull it only interrupts her from sinking her teeth into me. I realize that Hou’s been here the whole time, holding
up the rear, keeping his eye on the danger creeping up behind us, facing it on his own so the rest of us can make it to safety. I look at him gratefully and I relax a bit. Mom’s safe, Dad’s safe, Jesse’s safe, and Ghost is safe. If it’s Houston and my turn to go, then we go together.

  But not tonight. A shot rings out and Nadia’s pretty face is removed in the first blast. The second shot takes out another grasping body and then another, releasing the Infected that got a hold on Houston while he was trying to stomp Nadia’s brains out. I turn my face back to the others and see Dad and Ghost advancing on us, shooting the Infected as they come up over the ridge. Dad brandishes a massive machete and hacks the hands off at the wrists that were holding onto Houston. I look away as he chops off the dainty wrist of the hand that still holds on to my ankle. I look away not because I can’t bear to see any more gore, but because I want to look into Ghost’s eyes and know that this is really happening. His eyes are scary-bright with pure adrenaline and his pursed lips relax into the jubilant smile I had been enjoying earlier. It’s a fleeting moment like before because before I know it, Ghost is pulling me to my feet and yelling urgently into my ear ,“Come on Katerina Clark, we don’t have long before they take this area out as well! We’ve got to go. Now!”

  Suddenly my feet no longer touch the ground—Ghost has scooped me up in his arms and he’s carrying me back to the others. Dad and Houston are already there, pulling Ghost and me up into the belly of the beast and clipping us into our harnesses. It’s so hard to hear anything with the shrill whine of the helicopter as it takes off, the whumping of its blades and the thumping of the explosions coming ever closer, but I have to try and ask Ghost something. Nothing important, just something petty, the only thing my brain can manage at this point. As we start to pull up off of the roof, I place my cracked raw lips against his ear and ask, “How do you know my name?”