by Ponce, Jen
“Take the next dirt road then,” Ivy said. “We want one off the highway. More isolated, less chance of a bunch of them being around.”
We drove about five miles before we found the first farmhouse. We pulled into the drive and parked in front of the house. I turned off the engine and we sat, waiting for one of them to appear.
“What are we doing, Daddy? I’m hungry,” Owen said. His shyness at the strangers in the car had worn off and now he felt free to be himself. Being Owen involved a lot of questions and a fair amount of whining. I reminded myself that Jackson and Tucker had done their fair share of whining when they were little.
I had to remind myself of that every time Owen found something new to complain about.
“Maybe you should honk the horn,” Ivy said.
“If there are any in there, it’ll let them know we’re out here,” Lana said.
“It’ll also let any living people know we’re out here. I don’t want to get shot.”
Ivy had a point, so I beeped the horn once.
We waited.
I didn’t want to get out of the car, golf clubs or not. It was too open and the crazies had already proven their hide-and-seek prowess earlier. Dan had said it was good to know your prey. It was good to know your predator too. I tried to think like one of them, but I wasn’t sure how much they actually thought. Did they think in complete sentences? Was it all fragments up there? How did they know to call our names? To cry, to act sad, to act crazy? To sing songs?
“Barn’s all locked up. And look. There’s one of the gas tanks I was talking about.” Ivy pointed at a small white tank set up off the ground on a metal scaffold. There was a lock on it that we’d either need the key for or bolt cutters. We might find the former inside or the latter in the small metal shop off to the left side of the house.
I didn’t relish entering either one.
“I’ll take point,” Dan said. “We go up to the house and try the door. If it’s locked, I’ll break the window and get us in. We’ll board it up somehow to make sure we have a safe place to sleep. Lana? Will you stay in here with Owen?”
I didn’t want to leave her behind any more than I wanted her to get out of the car. Both options seemed terrible, but at least she’d be in a locked car she could drive away if things got scary. Outside, there was no telling what would happen.
Her eyes sought mine and then she nodded. “Be careful, Dee. All of you. Please be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
I nodded and kissed her. She returned it, her hand on the back of my head possessive and fierce. When I pulled away, she had tears in her eyes.
I had tears in my own.
“I’ll be back,” I said.
“I know.”
Her confidence got me out of the car. I gripped the club with sweaty hands and tried to look every direction at once.
Lana slid over the seat to the driver’s side and then got Owen in the front seat with her. She gave us a thumb’s up.
I returned it and prayed I’d see her again.
Dan went up the steps to the door and turned the knob. It swung open which made Ivy smile. “Nobody ever locks their doors in the country,” she whispered.
If I lived out here I would, but I didn’t say that, too busy worrying we would be grabbed the second we walked inside.
We weren't.
I shut and locked the door behind us after one last wave at Lana. The kitchen spread out before us, and a living room sat to our right, the two rooms separated by a China hutch. There was a hallway in front of us, another to the far left off the kitchen. Ivy stayed at the door and Dan and I crossed the room together to check out the rooms ahead. Two bathrooms, three bedrooms, all clear. We looked under the beds and in the closets.
Back out to the living room and this time Ivy and Dan went together while I stayed by the front door. I peered out to see Lana and Owen in the car chatting. The windows were fogging up. “Lots of hot air in here,” either Tucker or Jackson would joke and then point fingers at us. “Dorks,” I whispered, then turned back to keep watch.
A shout drew me toward the far hallway, where a steep set of carpeted stairs descended into a basement. “What’s going on?”
Grunts. Thumps of metal on flesh. I gripped my club tighter and wondered if they needed me down there or if I’d be in the way.
“Guys?”
“All right! We’re okay. Got two of them.”
Dan came into view looking grim. The front of his jacket was spattered with blood. Ivy followed, looking the same. When he got to the top of the stairs, he said, “We shut this door and no one goes down there.”
I nodded. Looked at Ivy. “What—”
She shook her head, face white. “Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know.”
I shut the door and together we pushed a heavy wooden chest from the mudroom in front of it. Dan locked the back door after stepping out long enough to check behind the house.
“All clear,” he said. “Let’s get them in here, but Ivy and I will get our coats in the washing machine first.”
I nodded and while they stripped off their coats I went back to the front, already unlocking the door as I smiled out the window.
A woman in a white gown stood next to the car, her feet bare, a rock clutched in one hand.
She brought her hand up and slammed it against the window. Again. Again. I could hear Owen screaming.
“Dan! Ivy!” I shouted, straining to see if there were any more of them out there.
Dan lifted the curtain on the nearby window, scanning the yard. “Looks like there’s only one. Lana? I’ll go out back and circle around behind her. Count to twenty and then step out to distract her. Got it?”
I nodded, panic threatening to overwhelm me.
What if there were more?
What if the window broke?
What if—?
“Dee! Deep breath in. You can do this.”
Right. Deep breath.
“Ivy, stay in here and guard the door. Don’t lock it, though. We may need to get in quick.”
“Gotcha, boss,” she said. She still looked pale and I wondered what they’d done downstairs. I told myself I didn’t want to know, but my mind poked at it anyway.
Dan touched me lightly on the shoulder and I jumped. “Start counting to twenty. Slow.”
One … two … three …
I glanced over at Ivy whose eyes were unfocused as she gazed out the window. What was she seeing right now?
When I got to twenty, I opened the door and moved to the top step. “Hey! Over here.”
Lana shook her head frantically and pointed off to the right. Two more of them were between the barn and shop.
“Dan!” I shouted. “Dan, there are more of them! Opposite side of the house from you.” My knees were jelly, my stomach a roiling pit of anxiety. Did I wait? Go back inside?
The woman swung the rock again and this time the window cracked. Not enough to break, but something inside of me snapped. Screaming inside, I raised the golf club and dashed down the steps. I swung it at the woman’s head with a grunt of effort. The dull crack revolted me and the impact vibrated up my arms. I swung again and she stumbled against the car, eerily quiet. I raised the club over my head as her eyes turned up to mine.
They were blue, not milky.
Oh god. Had I attacked a living person?
Oh god oh god oh god.
The woman reached for me and I brought the club down again, driving her back into the dirt.
“Dee!”
I jerked my attention away from my victim as Dan ran past, a low yell of fury coming from him as he charged at the two hiding by the barn, splitting open the first one’s head when he got close enough, before dancing away from the second’s reaching arms. I raced to help but he’d already pivoted and driven his weapon into the other’s stomach, doubling it over. “Die!” he screamed, and smashed the thing’s head in. It fell with a meaty thump.
Panting, Dan stood there looking
at the bodies at his feet, his expression flat. The inexplicable smell of lilacs filled my nose.
Brains gleamed in the ruined mess of their heads.
No other monsters made an appearance and we finally trudged back to the car. The woman was still twitching and the horror that I’d hurt a live person rushed back. “I don’t think she was one of them,” I said, spilling my guilt to Dan as we stared at her. “Her eyes weren’t milky.” I went to drop down beside her, but Dan pushed past me and drove the crowbar into the woman’s eye socket with a vicious push.
Her legs twitched once more and she was still.
He nodded as he straightened. “You saw her. Beating the window with a rock. Trying to hurt my kid. Think she was banging on the window for anything good?” His voice rose as he spoke, a vein in his forehead throbbing with his anger. “You think she was just confused? Trying to get in? Huh?”
I took an involuntary step back, my eyes dropping to the bloody crowbar he still clutched in his hand. For a moment, I was pretty sure he’d swing at me, but then he blinked, registered my fear and his shoulders drooped.
Gruffly, he said, “Sorry. I—shit.” He knocked on the window for Lana to unlock the doors and then gathered Owen in his arms, whispering something into his little boy’s hair as he carried him to the house.
Lana got out more slowly, her eyes on Dan’s retreating back. “Are you okay?” she asked when he disappeared inside.
“Freaked the fuck out,” I said as she shut and locked the car. “But maybe not as freaked as Dan and Ivy.” I explained what had happened—the bits I knew about it anyway—and Lana followed me inside without a word.
We locked the door and moved the nearby bookcase in front of it just to be on the safe side. Then Lana kicked off her shoes and we curled up together on the sofa, still not talking. I wasn’t sure I could have talked right then. I knew we should probably do what we could to secure the place before we all went to sleep, but I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to let go of her.
The reality of our situation was sinking in. Our world had collapsed. So many people were dead, and we had just scratched the surface of what we might have to do in order to survive it.
“She wasn’t alive,” Lana finally whispered. “Maybe her eyes hadn’t changed yet, but she wasn’t there. Her eyes were just … dead. Expressionless, like a killer’s. She kept saying things, awful things. ‘Pull you apart, taste your blood.’ That kind of shit.” She rubbed my hand, running her fingers along mine as she spoke. “I was going to honk the horn to warn you guys, but then Owen spotted the other two by the barn. I figured if I honked, it would draw them closer and then we’d be screwed.” Her fingertips were cold and I pressed them to my lips.
“Dan took care of them.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us said what we were thinking, that his attack had been violent. That he had scared me when he plunged the crowbar into the woman’s eye … a visual I’d be having nightmares about for a long time after.
“We’re safe now. That’s what matters, right?”
I wasn’t sure we were safe. I wasn’t sure we’d ever be safe again, but I nodded and kissed her, then held her tight in my arms.
19
Now
She stays at the house for eight days, and thankfully never wakes up to a hallucination whispering her name again. Eight days trapped because the storm dropped several inches of snow and the wind piled it into drifts, some as high as her thighs. She has plenty of water, food, and warmth and the fire lulls her into a drowsy complacency that would have scared the old her.
New her likes the fire, the safety of the house, the routine she falls into of checking the doors and windows with blank-minded intensity. She reads books, romances mostly, with virginal heroines and asshole men and she rejoices that she’s a lesbian and married … and then grieves because she lost the woman who made her life worth living.
She switches to fantasy when she can’t take another I love you.
She tries to make it to the highway on the fifth day, but the drifts are still too deep. The sun is doing its best to melt them away, but every night the snow freezes and turns everything to ice. The drifts have wind-sharpened edges that threaten to slice her up when she ventures out.
There are no tracks around the place, no indication that any of them are around. She likes this, too, this knowing for certain that they haven’t sneaked up on her in the night. The tell-tale snow will give them away.
She still checks the doors and windows though.
Just in case.
On day eight, the snow has melted enough that most of the road is now visible, the ice only patchy. She loads up the rest of the food from the house and the jars of preserved jellies, veggies, and fruits she found in the basement. She adds several gallon jugs of water and two red gas containers from the small tank she finds in the barn. Thank you, Ivy, she thinks, because she can’t remember if they thanked her before. She hopes so. Ivy saved them more than once despite Lana’s misgivings over bringing her with them. She and Dan both, they …
She pushes thoughts of them out of her head as she drives back to the highway. She’s feeling confident she can get to the boys today or perhaps tomorrow at the latest if the pass hasn’t snowed shut.
Avalanches are a real danger without any management, and she hopes to all the non-existent gods that she won’t have to detour. The thought of such a delay churns her stomach and she hopes like hell nothing else goes wrong.
She doesn’t know why she doesn’t learn.
Over a hundred miles down the road, she sees an RV on an overpass. Someone is standing there, waving their hands like an insane person in front of a billowing sheet that reads, “I’m alive! Help!”
She hears Lana in her head telling her to push on, that their boys are waiting. Then she sees their boys up there, stranded, maybe at the end of their rope and she’s slowing before she realizes she’s doing it. She puts the SUV into reverse and backs up to the exit. She tells herself she’ll drive on if she sees any of them, because surely they’re around if this person is, but she doesn’t see any of them at all. The RV cants to the left and she sees why when she nears. The right front wheel is flat.
They’d had a flat once, too, and a nice lady named Norma took them in, saved them from the hordes that would have torn them apart if she hadn’t popped their head out of the door and said, “Get in here quick!”
The young man has a shotgun in the hands he holds above his head. When she rolls down the window, the guy says, “I’m alive. I swear. I can recite the alphabet for you, do math. Yeah, give me a math problem. I’ll solve it. Prove I’m not a nutter.”
It’s a good idea, and so she asks, “What’s thirty-two times five?”
The guy screws up his face. “Damn it. Something easier than that, I hate math. Oh, hold on.” He stands there for the longest time, thinking, and she’s almost about to relent when he says, “One sixty?”
“You got it. Where are you headed and what do you need?”
“I’ve got to get to Kirkland. I know, I know, it’s probably thick with them but my sister is there and …” His breath hitches and he looks at the RV to keep from showing his tears. “I have a few things, a lot of food, ammo. Can you … will you take me? Please? Two people are better than one, right?”
She knows that’s true, but she also knows that she doesn’t like watching people die. Of course, if she leaves him, he will die. She’s shocked none of them have found him and she tells him so.
“There was a huge herd of them a few hundred miles south. They followed me for a long time, I guess ‘cause the RV is big or loud? I don’t know. When the tire went, I figured I’d have to make a run into town to find anther vehicle and, well, I wasn’t sure I’d make it.” When he turns back, his cheeks are dry. Whatever tears had threatened, he’d fended them off. “I’m Will, by the way.”
“Need help loading things? I’m pretty full, but there’s room in the backseat.”
“Thank
you. Thank you so much, you can’t even …” Will shuts up and opens the door on the side of the RV, disappearing inside.
She gets out of the SUV and looks around for a long moment, unable to help herself even though she knows they’re alone. It’s too ingrained now. She can’t imagine not looking around. When she’s satisfied again that there aren’t any of them nearby, she goes inside the RV to see the young man shoving food into an army-green duffel. “That backpack and those jugs of water,” Will says, concentrating on his work.
She grabs the items Will indicates, though she has to leave one jug for the next trip. When those things are loaded, Will trudges to the SUV under the weight of the duffel, waving off the help she offers.
She studies a picture of an older couple hanging on the wall. It shows two well-tanned sunbirds with the wide, too perfect grins of people with false teeth and money to burn.
“The RV isn’t mine,” Will says in a quiet voice when he comes back for the last load. “They were trapped in a school with me and a bunch of others in Colorado.” His eyes are hollow and haunted. “When things went south, they said I could come with them. Me and Jake, a friend of mine. Two more couples, a few kids. We were packed in here like sardines and so miserable …” He shoulders another bag as his breath hitches. “We should go.”
They go.
Will is quiet, carried away by whatever terrible memories fill the space between the school he was trapped in with so many people and the empty RV they leave behind.
20
Then
We had a sit-down dinner that night, having cooked our food over a fire Dan built in the fireplace. It was a pain having to use tongs to pull the pots out of the flames, but luckily the farmhouse had a few cast iron pots and pans for us to use. We had boiling hot soup, biscuits from a mix, green beans, canned peaches, and some toast with homemade jam spread on top.