by Ponce, Jen
Had they all gotten sick at the same time? Or had one gotten sick and then turned the others? I would never know, but it made me sad to imagine what might have happened.
That could have been us, I thought. If April had bitten Lana, if the little girl we tried to save had—
“Turn here,” Ivy said, cutting into my dark thoughts.
Grateful for the distraction, I did as she bid, and followed her directions to a large grey trailer on a corner lot, a big RV parked beside it. We stopped, then Evan in his minivan pulled up at a forty-five-degree angle to us. Isaac parked last, finishing the crude triangle Dan had drawn in the dirt back at Norma’s.
Before I had my seatbelt off, Isaac was already in the middle, rifle propped on the roof of his car.
The rest of us watched for signs of them, the windows facing the middle rolled down so we could quietly call out info.
“Two coming up on our side,” Jean said softly.
“Got one headed our way from my direction,” Isaac said. “Want me to shoot them?”
We hadn’t talked out our strategy this far and none of us were keen on advertising our presence with rifle reports.
“Last resort,” I said. “We have the crowbar, the hammers, and the poky cone thing. Come on.” I grabbed the poky cone thing and got out, trying to sound more confident than I felt. I didn’t want to use it on anyone, but I would to keep Lana and the rest safe.
Ivy got out beside me gripping a golf club in one hand and hammer in the other. When I raised my eyebrows at her, she said, “Push ‘em back,” and she jabbed with the club, “then smack ‘em in the head.”
“Good plan.”
My heart rate sped at the oncoming crazies, one of them a child not more than ten. My grip grew sweaty and I hoped to high heaven my hands wouldn’t slip when I went to take out my target. I had to think of it as a target, as an it. I wasn’t sure how else I could deal with the nightmare otherwise.
The child was a girl, her brown bobbed hair clumped with dried blood, her bottom lip torn free to reveal her teeth. She growled at us. Her companion held out her hands. “Help me? Help? Help?”
Ivy swung the club at the woman’s head. I thrust the poky cone thing into the girl’s face, apologizing internally as I did. Her teeth broke under the weight of the cone and the sound made my stomach twist. Black, clotted blood clung to the metal as I pulled back to deliver another blow. I gagged as I shoved the cone into her face again. She staggered back with the blow and tumbled onto her butt.
Panting and crying, I forced myself forward. She was growling, the sound more of a gurgle in the ruin of her face. She reached for me, her dead eyes locked on my throat. “I’m sorry,” I choked out and plunged the cone deep inside her mouth.
The lights went out in her dead eyes.
I turned my head and puked.
The noise Ivy made with the hammer made me puke again.
When I turned, the crazy she’d killed was on the ground, her face no longer recognizable as a face. “I hope my grandbabies aren’t looking out the window,” she said hoarsely.
I looked up at the house in reflex. The curtains were shut tight and the place had a dead look to it that worried me. “You okay?”
“Fuck no. Are you?”
“Nope.”
Another sound on the opposite side of the cars told us someone had gotten another. When we looked, Evan stood outside holding the machete, his face twisted in distaste.
“Anymore of them?”
“Not yet,” Isaac said. “I think the people in that yellow car are out. One of them got a door open.”
I walked around the cars to look and sure enough, the female who’d been sitting in the front seat was now out of the car and the two boys soon followed. “Shit.”
“Go on,” Evan said. “We’ll take care of these. Get her inside with her family.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t too keen on that part. I was pretty sure we were either going to find an empty house or something much worse. I stopped to tap on Dan’s window and asked him in a low voice, “Will you come with us? With the handgun?”
His eyes cut to the house, to Ivy, and back to me. “Shit,” he whispered, then pulled Owen’s headphones off long enough to ask him to stay with Lana and guard the car.
The little boy nodded with a solemnity that was almost painful.
When Dan joined us, gun in hand, Ivy said, “What are you doing with that?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Don’t you even think about shooting any of them. I don’t care what …” Her voice broke and she fisted her hands, trying to get control over her tears. “Don’t you dare.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and she shrugged me off. “Ivy,” I started but she held up a hand.
“I go in. I find out what’s what. If I get bit, I get bit, but he isn’t going in there with that gun, you hear me?”
Dan looked at me and I shrugged. It was Ivy’s choice, but I hated the thought of her going in there alone. “Okay,” I said finally. “We’ll wait on the porch for you. Call out if you need—”
“I won’t be needing that,” she said contemptuously and marched up the wooden steps, stopping to dig a set of keys out of her pants pocket. She knocked softly on the door and then slipped the key into the lock. “Becca?”
She disappeared inside and Dan and I waited anxiously on the porch. Evan and Jude, armed with a club and a machete, had gone to meet the woman and her two kids. I couldn’t watch them put them down, so I turned away.
“Murder banana!” the woman called. “Murder! Help?”
The two boys called out too. “Mama! Please?”
“Need you. Help me!”
The cries were plaintive, they were painful.
And they were a lie.
I knew that and I still wanted to run to them, put my arms around them and tell them it would be okay. Or tell them I was sorry this happened to them.
I did neither, and I pretended not to hear the noises as Evan and Jude took care of them.
“Ivy?” I called after a bit of time. When I didn’t hear anything, I took a cautious step inside, Dan following close behind. The trailer smelled like a cat or two lived there and there was a scatter of shoes by the front door. Toys littered the living room to my left and on my right, dishes sat on the kitchen table, food still on the plates as if dinner had been interrupted. Flies buzzed around a bowl of what looked like potato salad. “Ivy?”
Still no answer. Poky cone held out in front of me, I walked through the living room, Dan covering my back. There was a long hallway that had doors feeding off it to the left. I checked the first room—empty. Second was the same. Then there was the bathroom, also empty, and finally a bedroom that took up the whole back end of the trailer.
Ivy sat in a chair by the bed, her head in her hands.
Her daughter lay on the bed with her two children.
They were all dead, apparently by suicide.
I must have made some noise because Ivy looked up, face bleak. “Why would she do this? She was fine two days ago. I don’t understand …”
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
And then I did.
The littlest one had a bite on his forearm, black streaks of infection snaking up his arm.
I covered my mouth with my hand and desperately tried not to picture Jackson or Tucker or my parents having to make a similar choice.
Tried not to picture having to make that choice myself.
Tried. But failed.
24
Then
“Ivy, we should—”
“I’m not leaving them. Not like this. Not without a burial or something.” Her eyes were trained on the bed, though she avoided looking higher than their torsos. Blood spattered the pillows and the wall behind them. “Maybe I can use some of our gas to burn the place down.”
Dan made a noise of dissent. “We can’t waste gas on—”
“It ain’t a waste!” she shouted, rising from the seat with her hands fisted at her sides. �
��It ain’t a fucking waste.”
“All I was going to say—”
“Get out. Get the fuck out! Now!”
I turned and put a hand on Dan’s chest. In a whisper, I said, “Let me talk to her. You go on.”
He nodded, though his jaw was tight. He disappeared down the hall and I turned back to Ivy.
“It’s not a waste, you’re right. I think, though, we can find something to use in here that would work just as well. Nail polish remover? Would she have some?”
Ivy stared at me, uncomprehendingly, then nodded. Like a robot, she turned to the bathroom at the far end of the trailer and rummaged through the cabinets hidden behind mirrors. When she returned, she was carrying two bottles, one half empty.
“Okay. Now we need a lighter.”
Again, she stared, then moved, going to the nightstand, digging through it until she came up with a lighter and a package of cigarettes. “She said she quit but I knew Becca. I could always tell when she was fibbing.” Her voice rose to a squeak of pain and she was sobbing, her shoulders jumping with the force of her tears. I hugged her and she let me touch her this time, her arms going around me as she wailed. I let her, knowing this could very well be me in a few short days. I let her, knowing how badly it hurt to lose someone you loved.
When she finally quieted, when the sobs fade, she scrubbed away the tears with her sleeve, though more promptly fell. “What are we going to do?”
I had no idea. “Would you like to say a few words?”
Her lip trembled. “Yes, but I don’t think I can. Let me sit here for a minute. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She sat back down by the bed and bowed her head, her hands clasped but hanging loosely between her thighs. She sat there for a long time, not making a sound, not even crying.
I wasn’t religious, had never been, but I offered up my silent wish to whatever might be listening that these three people had found their peace and that their loss wouldn’t destroy the woman sitting quietly nearby.
When Ivy was ready, she stood and held out her hand for the nail polish remover. I gave it over and she poured it on the lower half of their bodies, the sharp, acrid smell rising in the air. When she was done, she waved me down the hall, then flicked open the lighter and tossed it onto the bed.
There wasn’t the whump of light and sound that I expected, but their clothing caught and soon they were burning. Ivy watched for a minute more, then turned and followed me out of the trailer.
No one spoke and Ivy didn’t acknowledge anyone as she slid into the SUV.
“We getting gas next?” Evan said in a whisper after Ivy’s door closed, and I nodded. We’d planned to fill up when we got here and hoped to get more gas containers as well. None of us had dared think about what might await Ivy, or what waited for all of us, when we got to where we needed to go. And here we’d found the worst case scenario, with no guarantees that this wouldn’t be the way it ended for all of us.
We stopped first at a farm and hardware supply store that sat under a giant water tower on the west side of town. There were a few of them in cars and we took care of them first, not wanting to risk having any shamble up behind us. The roads around the store were clear, though we could see from our vantage point that the streets farther into town teemed with the dead. If they heard us, they’d make their way up here and we’d be screwed.
I hoped we wouldn’t be here long enough to have to worry about a siege.
The outer doors slid open easily enough and we stood in the entryway watching what we could see of the store. There was a cashier in a green smock standing at the register, looking for all the world like a normal human. At least, until she turned, and we saw that the flesh on one arm had been stripped almost to the bone. She started singing as soon as she saw us, and her song brought more of them, looking ratty and torn. Bite marks were by far the most prominent wound, though a couple of them had stab wounds and one was missing huge chunks of his neck, as if someone had gone at him with a knife. There were discarded weapons on the floor stained the dark brown color of dried blood and a few bodies, their skulls caved in.
“There are a lot of them. Is this worth it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure it was. There were seven of us, not counting Lana, Ivy, Owen, and Evan and Jean’s two kids, all of whom were in the van with one of the rifles. Dan had given Lana a crash course in firing the damn thing. Ivy hadn’t responded when Dan tried to include her, though I didn’t think it was because she was still mad at him. She’d gone away in her head. I hoped she’d snap out of it if they needed her, though I wasn’t too worried about them. Their doors were locked, and Lana had the keys so if things got dicey, she could drive off and meet us down the road.
I was worried about us.
“Think of all the weapons in there. And ammo.” Isaac had a two-handed grip on a baseball bat he’d had in his trunk. We’d decided against guns in the store—too close and too loud.
“There’s food too,” Dan said.
“Evan, Jean?” I asked.
“I say we do it. Only problem I see is them rushing us once we open the doors. We need to block them somehow so only one can get through at a time.”
“Here,” Jean said, and grabbed one of the snow shovels sitting outside. She snugged the scoop into the side of the door and let the handle fall back against the track on the other side. When she got close, the automatic door slid open, but because of the shovel’s placement, it was only an inch or two. “Shit.” She reached for the shovel, and the first zombie hit the door, fingers poking through the space.
Jude had the machete, and he stepped forward, banging on the glass. “Come here, asshole. Come get me.”
“Get me,” the zombie hissed back, pressing her face against the crack. He shoved the machete into her eye socket, pushing her back, but not stabbing through to her brain so she was back in seconds, calling to him, her eye oozing clotted blood.
He grabbed the top of her head and shoved with the machete again. This time it sank in a couple inches. He grunted and pushed harder and finally she stopped struggling and dropped to the ground. He untangled his fingers from her hair and stepped back, looking squicked out. “That’s harder than they make it appear in zombie games.”
The rest of the crazies had reached the doors, and they pressed against it, calling for us. One of the stragglers managed to activate a door on the other side of the snow shovel display. It slid open wide and we all turned, panic spreading through us. We hadn’t intended to face them head on, but it was too late to back down now. If we turned and ran, they’d be on us and then we’d be dead.
Shit.
I raised my pokey cone and tried to get pumped up for the oncoming onslaught. A couple of them were whimpering, the cashier singing some ditty just under her breath so I couldn’t tell what it was. A guy in the back kept saying, “Help me, Daddy. Please?”
I hated that they talked, even if it rarely made sense. It made killing them harder because they seemed more human, less zombie.
The cashier stumbled forward, her mouth open in a snarl of hunger and that was the cue for the rest of them to come at us.
Teeth, fingers, and the smell. Dear goddess the smell. Gagging didn’t make me feel badass and it took away from the power of my pokey cone strike. I managed to hit the cashier in the eye, but the tip of the cone glanced off, tearing a fleshy, wet hole in her milky white orb. I gagged again, then felt a hand on my arm. I screeched and jerked my elbow away.
It was Dan. He swung his club low, hitting her in the back of the knees. She went down with a crash. “Now!” he shouted at me, turning to catch another in the shin.
I stepped forward and rammed the cone home before I could think about it. As I yanked it free, another one came at me, this one an old farmer in dirty jeans and boots. His shirt was half torn off his body and his scrawny chest was covered in bites. I swung the cone at the side of his knees, and he skidded sideways a step or two but didn’t go down. I swung harder and felt the impact through my arms
and into my shoulders. It hurt like hell but he went down—I didn’t have time to take him out because a third was grabbing for me, its dirty, broken fingernails scratching at my coat. I shoved her and she staggered back before lunging at me again. “Eat! Hungry! Eat!”
The farmer grabbed my ankle and I went down on a pile of bodies, the girl on top of me, her jaws snapping. I managed to get my forearm under her chin which kept her teeth off my skin, but I couldn’t get her off or roll because I didn’t know where that damned farmer was. “Help!” I shouted, realizing as I did that I sounded like one of them. It shocked me into silence, and so I struggled with the zombie until Isaac whacked her hard in the forehead with his bat. Gore splattered. I turned my head quick but felt something wet and gloppy hit my cheek.
Another whack sprayed more goop. I shoved her hard and then rolled, praying I was rolling away from the farmer and not into his grasp.
When I gained my feet, gasping, the others had managed to dispatch the remaining crazies, even the farmer. “Is it near my mouth? My eyes?”
Dan shook his head, putting his hands on my upper arms to calm me because I was on the verge of a panic attack. I had no idea if this shit would infect me if it got in my mouth and my vision narrowed as the fear overtook me.
“Dee,” he said sharply. “It’s okay. I swear, it’s not near your mouth. On your cheek and about an inch under your eye. There will be a bathroom here. It’s okay.”
Something in his voice got through the terror streaming through me. I stilled and focused on his face and his eyes were on mine.
“It’s okay.”
I nodded, nodded again, then froze because I didn’t want the damned goop dripping into my collar.
“We just have to make sure there aren’t any hiding or trapped somewhere. But there are paper towels up front by the register, so we’re going to get it off you there, okay?”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Sure thing. Come on.” We went inside in a tight cluster, none of us exactly ready for another encounter. Dan helped get the woman’s brain goo off me and then I wiped myself down with hand sanitizer that I found by the register. When that was done, we went through the whole store, going up and down every aisle to make sure there weren’t any hiding. The backroom storage was next, and it was creepier because it wasn’t as well-lit.