by Ponce, Jen
“Shit. What do we do now?”
Dee shakes her head. “How do we get around this, Peter?” He has the map and he shakes it out, muttering as he does.
“Looks like it’s either backtrack to Golden Road or take Clear Lake North around the lake.”
“Which way is shorter?”
He snorts. “About the same. Maybe Clear Lake, though I’m sure it’s a smaller road. If we run into a mob …” He doesn’t have to finish that. They all know what will happen. “Your choice, Dee.”
Great.
“Let’s take the lake road and hope there weren’t a lot of people on the lake when things went to hell.”
The road is pretty, the view breathtaking. They can see Mt Rainier in the distance and Dee idly wonders if Eatonville is in the danger zone if the volcano explodes. Wouldn’t that top off a shitty apocalypse? Getting killed by a lahar?
They get halfway around the lake by Peter’s estimation when they see the first dead things they’ve seen in ten miles. The vacant-eyed monsters turn their way and the chorus starts up. “Help us!” “Please?” “I need Mommy.” One of them is signing My Little Buttercup and Dee gets chills down her spine. The jolly tune sung in a broken baritone is horror-movie material. She wonders, not for the first time, why they sing. Maybe it’s one of the few things they remember how to do. Folks with Alzheimers forget many things, but music isn’t one of them. Is that why they can sing?
A little boy with a teddy clutched to his chest watches them pass, his big eyes washed out from the sun … and death. Part of his face is missing, a flap of skin dangling from his chin. Dee turns her head away, but it’s too late. The image of him calling out to her, his face a ruin, will be burned into her memory forever.
Or until the next awful thing.
When will the awful things stop coming?
She wants to think everything will be different in Eatonville, but she knows that’s a lie. Things will be better once she hugs her boys, but they’ll still be a few survivors in the middle of a sea of biting, killing things. Everyone wants to believe they’ll survive whatever life, nature, or the gods throw their way. That little boy or the woman behind him, her hands outstretched as she stumbled after them, probably thought they’d survive.
Gloria lets out a sob, quickly stifled by her own jacket as she buries her face in it to keep from falling apart.
It never gets less horrifying. Even now, the sight of them makes her knees weak, makes her want to run and run and run.
They bump over dried mud and then they’re on the road again. Whoever made the barrier hadn’t come out to see who they were or to confront them, or even ask them for news or help. Dee supposes they’re dead, the cars the only thing left of their bid to survive.
It’s not comforting.
She drives on.
Ten miles now.
Five.
They drive into the parking lot of the living history museum. Her hands feel like ice though the heat is on in the cab and she grips the wheel tight as she pulls into a spot. It’s quiet. No sign anyone is living here, though perhaps that’s the point. No use alerting them to your presence, is there?
She turns off the engine and they sit and watch.
Waiting.
Looking for signs that someone lives here, that her boys live here.
What if they moved on? What if this time she doesn’t find a note? What if she finds their bodies here? Or what if they were killed and they roamed away? What if they never made it and they passed their wandering corpses miles back?
So many questions and no answers. There were so few answers in the fucking apocalypse.
“Dee?”
She turns her head on a neck made of creaky muscles. “Yeah?” she croaks, her mouth dry as a bone.
“Look,” Alex says.
She does.
46
Then
I managed to get into Montana before the snow started again and it wasn’t heavy enough to stop me. At least for now. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dan and Owen, how they’d hugged for such a long time. I wanted that, damn it. Jealousy burned through every pore even though I was glad for them. I was. I was happy Owen had his father again. Wasn’t I?
Of course I was. They’d both gone through so much.
But so have I, that small, rotten part of me howled. The selfish part, the unkind part. I wanted to hold Lana again. I wanted to kiss my boys. I wanted to see them all again.
It wasn’t fair I was out here alone. I’d tried keeping them all together, but one by one they’d fallen away like dead leaves.
Not dead, one part whispered.
Definitely dead, the other part hissed.
I popped in a CD and turned up the volume, trying to drown out the doubts and horrors from everything that had happened. Trying to forget that I was alone now, alone and with hundreds of miles and cities full of them between me and the boys.
I didn’t want to die out here, didn’t want to die alone.
“Please don’t let me die alone,” I whispered.
There was no answer, of course, except for the wail of the singer on the radio. I turned it up a bit louder and started looking for a place to hole up for the night. The thought of breaking into a place and checking it for them by myself made me sick to my stomach. I contemplated staying in the truck, but who knew how cold it would get or if it would keep snowing until I was trapped.
I had to stop.
I was on the edge of a tiny little town and saw a likely house on the far end. It reminded me of the house we took refuge in near Mullen, and hoped I’d find a nice old couple hiding out inside ready to feed me a hot meal and tuck me into bed.
Instead, I sat way too long in the truck watching for them. I had to force myself to get out, had to force myself to knock on the door and then wait, shivering, for something to answer.
It was quiet.
“Too quiet,” I said, then giggled almost hysterically. I used a crowbar to break in the way Dan had showed me, then crept inside, every part of me shaking in fear. The shadows were thick despite the time of day and the way the flashlight bobbed in time with my terror didn’t help things—it caused those same shadows to move as if they were alive.
I made it to the back bedroom without incident.
A door creaked. I screamed and swung around. A little girl stood there, eyes wide. She looked like she’d been here for a while. Her eyes were clear, not the cloudy white of the dead ones. Not that I’d stuck around and observed them enough to know if they always looked that way.
I supposed some could have eyes that looked normal. The woman banging on the window with the rock had normal-looking eyes. Eyes that still haunted me when I was least expecting them.
I swallowed down my fear and said, “Hey, are you … are you okay?”
“I want my mama,” she said.
That’s what one of them would say, of course.
“What’s your name?”
The little girl looked like she might cry. “Tina.”
“Hey Tina.” The dead things didn’t have names, right? They didn’t know who they were, what they were. They just screamed and cried for help and sang creepy songs. Right? “Do you know where your mama went?”
She nodded. “Outside.”
“When?”
The little girl shrugged. Her pink coat was ripped and dirty and she was missing a glove. Probably cold, too. I wiggled my fingers. “Come on, let’s get you warm and then I’ll get you a snack. Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Her hand was cold in mine as I led her back to the living room. It had a small pellet stove in one corner, and I got it started with only a few muttered curses. When that was going, I went back out to the truck and brought it my supplies, food, and water.
She drank an entire bottle without many breaths between swallows, and I wondered how long ago her mother had left and why. Why would she leave her little girl behind?
I laid out my sleeping bag and Paisley�
��s too, feeling a small pang when I thought of her disappearing into the snow. I opened a can of chicken noodle and poured it into a pan I found in the kitchen, then set it on top of the pellet stove to warm. The little girl was still shivering, so I moved her closer to the warmth and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. I’d have to find her a different coat. The one she wore looked like it had been through the wringer. What had happened to her, I wondered. And where was her damned mother?
Although I didn’t admit it aloud, I was grateful I wasn’t alone. Even if she was a little girl and maybe a liability, I was glad for her company.
We finished up our food and then I took her to the bathroom to do her business. The toilet paper had an inch of dust on it, so I doubted they’d been staying in the house for long. For some reason, the mother had stashed her kid here and then never returned. I couldn’t imagine leaving her behind and wondered what would have driven someone to do that to such a sweet little girl.
“You ready for bed?” I asked when the girl yawned for the fourth time. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes droopy as she nodded. I got her tucked into Paisley’s sleeping bag and settled in myself, telling her a story until she dropped off into sleep.
I laid there for a long time after, listening to her breathe and counting my blessings that I’d found her before she’d died from the cold or thirst.
How could someone leave their kid behind?
Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by a sound. I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. The creak of the gutters in the wind, maybe. I pushed myself to a sitting position and stared around the room for a long moment before turning on the flashlight. The living room was empty. I’d used a heavy bookcase to block the front door. The back had a deadbolt. Still, I got up and made another round of the house, checking the closets, the cabinets.
We were alone.
When I went back to the living room, I startled. The little girl was sitting up in the sleeping bag, staring right at me. “Hey, honey. It’s okay. You can go back to—”
“Mama? Help me.”
My guts turned to water. Her voice sounded so much like them I froze right there. After a minute of terror, I forced myself to say, “It’s okay, Tina. You’re safe.”
“Help me!” She moved then, struggling out of the sleeping bag to get to her feet. When she straightened, she did so jerkily, as if her joints weren’t working properly.
“Tina? Where’s your mama?”
“Mama! Mama please!” She drew out the last word, holding her grasping little hands out to me. “Please!”
Oh goddess. She was dead. Somehow in the middle of the night she’d died.
She’d died.
And then she came back.
“Please?” she asked again and took an unsteady step toward me. “Help.”
I lifted the gun, though my hands shook so much I doubted I’d be able to hit the broad side of a barn, let alone one little girl’s head. “Stop, Tina. Please. Just stop. Lay down, okay? I don’t want—” Don’t want to what? Shoot a little girl?
“Please?” She took another step and I stumbled back, into the hallway where the air was cooler.
“Not real,” I whispered. “You’re not real. This isn’t real.” I pictured myself shooting the girl. Pictured the mother coming back, pictured her screaming her daughter’s name. What would I do if I came upon someone who had killed my boys? “I’d kill them.”
The little girl came closer still and this time I could see her eyes. They were cloudy. She was dead. She was gone.
She was one of them.
Had she been bitten? Had she been sick?
Is that why her mother had left her?
Dear goddess, was that why?
I couldn’t shoot her. I knew I couldn’t. Instead, I kept backing up, leading her into the hallway. I’d shove her into one of the bedrooms and leave her there. I’d drive away in the morning and leave her there for her mother to find, if her mother was even alive.
“Come on.”
She did, but instead of stumbling she charged at me. Her mouth opened in a snarl of hunger as she came, and I raised the gun unthinkingly. I pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. The side of her little girl’s face disintegrated. Blood spattered the wall and still she came.
I kicked her, knocking her reeling into a wall and then I lifted the gun again. This time I hit her square on. Her face disappeared into a bloody pulp. Her little body fell to the ground and I fell too, sobbing.
I’d just shot a little girl. A four-year-old. I knew her name. I fed her.
“It wasn’t real,” I sobbed. But it had been. Very real.
It took me forever to get back to my feet. I walked to her and knelt beside her, easing her out of her coat. I found the bite on her arm, a big, nasty thing all purpled and infected.
She’d been bitten and her mother left her behind to die alone. I supposed she couldn’t bring herself to kill her and so she’d just left to let the elements do it for her.
It was cruel. Heartless.
I cried for her anyway, for the choice she’d had to make.
Then I got up and found some blankets to wrap Tina’s body in. I laid her on one of the beds and shut the door.
I couldn’t bury her, so that would have to do.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. My mind warred with itself. “Real. Not real,” it whispered until I wanted to scoop it out with a spoon.
In the morning, after I’d watched outside to make sure none of them had sneaked up on me, I loaded the truck. I wouldn’t get far, not with the snow, but I couldn’t stay there. Couldn’t stay where that poor little girl had lost her life.
Something shifted inside me as I drove away. Fear creeped in. The what ifs threatened to drive me insane. I kept doubting myself as my brain picked over what had happened. Had I done the right thing? Had she really been dead? Had I shot a perfectly healthy kid?
“No, she had a bite.”
Or had I imagined the bite?
I shook my head, wishing I could take something to knock me out for a couple days, something that would erase the memory of the night before from my head. But I couldn’t get rid of it.
It rode me. It rode me hard.
I pushed myself hard too, despite the roads and the snow. I spent three nights in the truck freezing my ass off because I’d gotten stuck. Only a couple days’ worth of sun saved me on that one. I felt myself closing down, closing up, getting more fearful by the moment, until I jumped at every sound.
I was the watch now. If I slept, something could come up on me. If I didn’t sleep, I’d kill myself seeing things that weren’t there.
Only the thought of my boys kept me going. The boys and that ever-dimming hope that I would find Lana at the end of my long journey.
I’d make it home.
I had to.
There was nothing left for me to do.
I’d make it home.
47
Now
They look like a dream. A wonderful dream that can’t be real.
“Is that them?” Alex asks.
“Yes,” I say. Yes. Jackson and Tucker there on the road. They’re running toward the SUV and I get out, almost falling flat on my damned face. It’s all I can do to stay upright and then they are there and then they are in my arms. We’re all sobbing, laughing. My heart feels like it might explode in my chest, a red-hot star gone nuclear. “I never thought I’d see you again,” I cry, but that’s not quite true. There were times when I absolutely knew I’d get here mixed with times I despaired of even surviving another day.
I am here. They are here. We are alive and well. I pull away from them, touch their faces, look into their brilliant eyes. With a voice thick with tears, I ask, “Your mom?”
They exchange glances. Sorrow passes between them, a sorrow I’m not sure how to interpret.
“She made it here, Ma,” Tucker says. “About a month ago. She …” He looks away and I know.
“What happened?” I ask,
my ears ringing, their voices sounding a million miles away.
“She, uh. She was bitten,” Jackson says.
I shut my eyes. Tears fall, those perpetual tears. A month. I missed her by a month. One fucking month.
“She stopped to help a guy when she was out scavenging supplies. He had a little kid with him and I guess he was kinda delusional. The kid was a zombie, Ma but he didn’t tell Mom. She got too close and—”
I want to cry. I am proud. I am shattered and broken and lifted up and I don’t even know. She’s gone. My love. My life. The woman I’d shared everything with. Gone. But gone because she was helping someone else. Gone because she was a beautiful soul whose purpose had always been to bring light to others. “I’m so sorry, boys.”
They nod, their faces tight with grief. “We’re sorry too, Ma. She was so sorry you guys split up. Said it was the hardest months of her life getting here without you. She prayed every night she’d find you.”
Tucker squeezes my hand. “She left you a letter. We’ll give it to you later, okay?”
I nod, unable to do much else. “Where is she?”
“We’ll show you. Come on.”
They take me past cabins, several of which have people on the porches. I ignore them for now and walk with my beautiful living, breathing boys to a small clearing beside a little pond. Ducks quack at us and paddle away as we near.
There are three graves in the clearing. My boys lead me to the one with a solid slab of wood at one end, a crude pentagram carved into it and Lana’s name. I cover my mouth as another sob escapes me. The boys’ arms come around me as I gaze down at the spot where they laid her to rest.
A month. “I wish I could have told you goodbye,” I whisper.
“She knew, Ma,” Jackson says.
“She loved you so much,” Tucker adds.
When I can talk without sobbing, I say, “I’m so glad she had you two by her side until the end. Thank you for taking care of her.”
They nod, their eyes wet with unshed tears. We trudge back to the SUV and I introduce Alex, Peter, and Gloria. “They’d like to stay with us if there’s room.”