by Maya Riley
Once finished, I deposited the tubes into a plastic bag and threw them into the SUV for future use. This time, it was Mateo behind the wheel. He turned on the car and announced the tank was nearly full. “Well done, Trouble. This was a successful stop. Now, can we get the fuck out of here?”
“Oh, wait, I forgot something. Stay here, I’ll be right back. Promise.” It seemed ridiculous to risk my life for a hairbrush, but after having the worst badger nest of a hair style for so long, I never wanted to be without a hairbrush again.
I quickly jumped out of the car and ran. As soon as I turned back down the street we were on before, another car was driving down from the opposite end. Panicking, I hid behind a tall wooden fence and watched through the broken planks until the car stopped. And it stopped right in front of the house that was next to the one we’d stayed in. “Shit.”
I knew I should run back to the car and get out of there, but my damn curiosity was going to get the best of me. I had a horrible feeling about this area, and I wanted to understand why. What was so horrific that it was scaring me away before I even knew what it was? It was like a small, surprisingly important fragment to a million piece puzzle.
The car’s doors slammed shut and I watched as two people went up the walkway to the front door. As soon as they disappeared into the house, I ran as fast as I could for the one we were just in not too long ago. It only took me a moment to dart inside, grab the hairbrush, and get out.
Curiosity still got the best of me though, and I found myself creeping underneath the windowsills next door. Slipping the small brush into my back pocket, with the handle nestled against the sheath on my hip, I inhaled a deep breath and then let it out. Taking a chance, I poked my head up just enough to be able to see what was going on inside.
Just as before, there was the same plastic-covered furniture and eerie cleanliness to the interior, but what the people were doing, what was really going on before my eyes, stunned me.
I was hit with a wave of confusion, along with urgency in my gut that was screaming at me, telling me to get the hell out of there.
Inside were two people, a man and a woman, who seemed to still be human. They weren’t alone though. There was also a little girl who was chained to a bolt in the floor. Unlike the man and woman, she was a rotter. While her skin looked like it had been peeling away from her bones for some time, her clothes remained in pristine condition. Her knee-length, light blue dress and black bow on the top of her hair somehow really did detract from the massive amount of chunks of missing flesh that could be found on her face, neck, arms, and legs. In fact, as I watched, I could see a piece of her cheek slowly succumb to gravity. It seemed to be happening slowly enough for the two people not to notice it. Unless they simply weren’t worried about it.
Another thought hit me, and I didn’t understand why I didn’t see it before. There was no smell. No scent. Not only did the inside look too clean, but it lacked any kind of odor at all. There was no smell of decay, no stink of body odor, and not even the scent of cleaning products. These people could remain comfortable in front of a rotter because not only was it on a chain, but there was no smell of decay either.
What. The fuck. Was going on here?
The woman held up a water bottle and tipped some into the girl’s mouth, which went right through the decayed hole in her chin and then puddled on the floor around her feet. The man came through with a mop and cleaned it up, and the woman placed some kind of muzzle around the rotter’s mouth and tied it at the back of her head. She then carefully pushed the girl by her shoulders down onto the plastic-covered chair that was situated behind her.
The man and woman then sat on the couch just out of reach from the rotter girl, and looked at the television. The TV remained in its same blank and broken state, but they stared at it. Nothing happened, but they remained fixated on something they could only see in their minds.
What the putrefied kind of hell was this?
Already having seen way too much, I decided it was time to leave. I began to back up, and let out a startled squeak when I hit what felt like a brick wall. I looked up to see Mateo’s scowling face glaring down at me.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he whispered.
I looked back. Both the man and woman were staring right at us, then they registered something was going on and jumped up off the couch.
“Shit,” I cursed, panicking. “We gotta go. Now.” I pulled him along behind me and we ran.
A very loud bell rang from somewhere, but I couldn’t tell exactly where. The sound was continuous and seemed to echo all along the street. Doors on a few of the houses opened, and people stepped outside, each dragging a chain with their own rotter.
“What the fuck?” Mateo yelled, as we skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. He sounded just as surprised and confused as I was when I was looking inside that house. “Are those rotters on leashes?”
I really wanted to make an inappropriate joke, but this was too inappropriate a time for an incongruous joke. My heart was erratic and my mind haywire as I tried to find a reasonable explanation for what was going on, and figure out how to get out of this mess. We were in more unknown territory than I’d thought possible.
A man to my left dropped the chain he was holding, and pushed the rotter in our direction. Mateo and I slid knives out of our pockets, one in each hand, and raised them, ready to fight.
I looked around, and other people were dropping their chains and pushing the rotters in our direction. Why the rotters didn’t turn around and attack the people confused me. Although, there was a lot of strange things going on right now I didn’t understand.
The first rotter neared us, and Mateo jammed a knife into its head then pulled it right back out, and held it ready for the next one. Blood and chunks of flesh dripped down onto the rotter’s once pristine white shirt.
Tires skidded down the road, and I looked over and saw the silver SUV rolling toward us. I planted my feet in place and waited to be picked up, then looked around to see every direction was filled with oncoming rotters, having been let loose from the other houses on the block. We were surrounded.
Instead, the vehicle arced around us and took out a few of the rotters in its path. Limbs and fingers flew out in every direction as the bodies broke apart on the hood of the car. Various shades of red and brown substances smeared across the windshield, and it kept going, not bothering to slow down.
A door flew open and arms reached out to grab me as it went by. For a brief moment I effortlessly flew toward the inside the car. I was nearly inside when something grabbed on to my leg. I turned my head and saw a rotter had somehow latched itself onto my calf and was trying to pull itself up. In that moment, another rotter attached itself to my other leg, with more rotters closing the distance to get to us. Mateo was battling several rotters of his own, and Lincoln was behind the wheel and unable to accurately throw fire at it from his angle.
“Stop the car, we need to get them off her, it’s not letting go,” Adam yelled, right before it screeched to a halt and I was thrown off to the side from the force of it.
I rolled, tangled up with the rotters who were successfully clawing themselves up my legs. Still having a knife clenched in my hand, I swung until it made contact with one of the rotter’s heads, and its dead eyes became eternally vacant.
Adam jumped out and ran toward me. “Are you alright?” he asked, as he reached down and lifted me up, then his eyes went wide.
Looking down, I saw the second rotter had latched itself onto his leg. Without a second thought, I slammed my boot onto its head and then swung a knife down into its neck with all the force I could muster, instantly separating the head from the body.
Explosions happened around us as the scents of burning plastic and rubber filled the air. I spun around and saw flames surrounding the base of a mailbox, licking their way up the pole to the metal box.
Smoke filled my nostrils and I gazed around at the carnage. Burning corpses were w
alking around until they fell to the ground, charred completely through. Others lay motionless forevermore, from stab wounds or decapitation. Screams rose up around us, panic and anger filling the air from all these people who apparently thought it was okay to keep rotters at pets.
“We need to go. Now.” I pulled Adam back toward the car, which was nearly invisible in all the smoke that came from every direction. More car horns went off as the fire reached each vehicle along the street, the additional explosions adding to the destruction. “Is everyone here?” I questioned. Coughs sputtered out as I tried to catch my breath.
“I’m here,” Mateo replied. All the others answered too, but my moment of relief was short-lived.
“Except for Puppy,” Maura called. “She jumped out after Adam did and she isn’t back yet.”
“Fuck.” I turned and whistled. Nothing happened, so I whistled again. Still nothing.
“We gotta get out of this smoke,” Mateo urged. “We’re no use to anyone or anything if we suffocate.”
“Go,” I insisted, as I wrapped my hand in my sleeve and held it up to my mouth. “Get out of the smoke. I’ll be with you in a minute.” My coughed and sputtered words came out muffled through the fabric.
I ran around until I was forced to crawl on the ground from the amount of smoke. I heard curses behind me and knew Mateo was following. “Once I find Puppy, I’ll go, but not without her.”
“That’s fine,” he coughed out. “I’ll help you look.”
The smoke was soon getting too think. The scent of burning corpses filled my nose, and I just wanted to vomit and get away from here, but I pushed on. My spare hand clawed at the road, trying to feel my way around.
“Puppy?” I called out, my voice getting hoarse from the smoke inhalation. That couldn’t be good at all. I wondered if my lungs would heal the same as my skin did.
Cries rang out from unknown people, mingling with the sounds of fire eroding everything it touched.
A smooth breeze blew by and very slowly, little by little, the smoke began to clear. It wasn’t instantaneous and it wasn’t all the way, but it was enough to be able to see a little.
I moved up to my knees and looked around. Finally, I saw round, amber eyes peering at me from inside a turned over trash can. My heart swelled and I nearly fell over from the relief.
I whistled, and my smile turned into the biggest grin of all time when my favorite ball of fur bounded right into my arms.
Blyss
I watched the mounds of hills roll by as we drove through the countryside. It was peaceful in an eerie kind of way. The occasional rotter could be seen off in the distance, but not close or fast enough to cause us any concern. We swerved around the occasional abandoned car, some parked off on the shoulder and others overturned, appearing to be unusable. What was once bubbling with vibrant life, was now a graveyard of broken metal.
Puppy’s head rested in my lap, and I listened to her light whistling snores as she slept.
We’d barely talked about what had happened back in that strange neighborhood. That’s what we were dubbing it now—the strange neighborhood. It was the description that fit the best. The atmosphere around us was kind of weird. It was off, like we all wanted to talk about it, but also didn’t want to, so we didn’t. So many questions, observations, and theories hung in the air around us.
My head thumped as I leaned it against the glass, which was no longer cool thanks to the sun warming it all day. We’d been driving for a few hours and it was only a matter of time before we’d have to stop for gas and basic needs. I didn’t bother to lift my head when I asked, “How much gas is left?”
Mateo gruffly answered, “Nearly a quarter of a tank. After the fuck up we left behind, I have no idea where there’s a safe place to stop.”
I laughed. “There’s no such thing as a safe place anymore.”
“Turn up ahead,” I heard Adam tell Mateo, before I got lost in my own thoughts once again. Safety was a thing of the past. There used to be two kinds of people—survivors and scavers. Now, there was apparently a third kind—those who kept rotters as pets. What kind of cult had we unknowingly spent the night in the midst of?
Gravel crunched under the tires as we swerved off the road to get around some cars that were overturned in the middle of the exit ramp. It wasn’t much longer before we were stopping yet again.
Seatbelts unbuckled, doors opened, and the group began piling out, me included. Dust flew up as my feet hit the gravel road and I looked around, confused. There were no buildings, no landmarks that I could immediately see. Instead, we were once again surrounded by trees and foliage. There wasn’t a rotter in sight, but some birds rustled in the trees above at the sound of my voice. “Where are we?”
“There was a road sign for a tourist attraction. Some kind of waterfall. Figured it could be a good place to wash up, play with the radio, and recuperate,” Adam explained.
“Sounds good,” I replied, as I slung my pack on my back, secured it, and began to walk. We followed Adam down the only path we could find. There was a single wooden post at the start of it, the kind that would normally hold a trail sign, but the sign part was missing.
A little while later, we went off the path and headed into a tree line. It felt like such a long time since we’d last been weaving in and out of trees, running for our lives, but really, it’d only been a few days. It was crazy how quickly one could get accustomed to change. Funny, because the world adjusted pretty quickly to the destruction of rotter life.
“Hey, guys?” The others slowed their pace, letting the stragglers catch up. “How long has it been since the Void outbreak?”
The guys scrunched up their faces while trying to do math and it was adorable.
Maura answered first. “A few months under a year, I believe. Not quite a year, but close.”
“Correct,” I stated. “But how did it spread so fast?”
“Superfast psycho rotters?” Lincoln supplied.
“But all over the world? Can they run on water?”
What are you getting at? Jonah signed.
“I’m saying, the virus was all over the world in like a day or so. Doesn’t anyone else find that suspicious?”
“Didn’t the scientist guy say something about labs that were all over the world?” Mateo asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, labs all over the world. Still, if the outbreak originated in the one we stumbled upon, how did it spread so fast?”
Mirror experiment?
“Jonah may have a point,” Adam agreed. “If the labs kept in contact, they may have wanted to perform the same experiments to see if location made a difference.”
“But if the one that was here only happened because of a simple mistake, then that doesn’t make much sense. There must be something we’re missing. Something else at play here. How have we not considered this sooner?”
“Because people don’t talk to each other anymore and there’s no electronic form of communication?” Mateo mused, and everyone looked at him. “What? That was part joke, and part fact.”
“You, joke?” I teased, raising an eyebrow in mock confusion.
“I can be very funny when I want to be.” His stern face was contradictory to his words. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it here, so let’s keep moving. I’d like to find this waterfall before sunset.”
“Or, who knows, maybe we’ll accidentally stumble upon another lab somewhere,” Maura commented absently, and I shuddered. That was a very good probability. We barely made it out of the first one with our lives. There was no telling how another one would turn out.
The bugs ate us up like a free buffet as we walked, and the sound of slapping skin as we fought off the bugs was the rhythm we walked to.
My ears perked up. “Hey, I think I hear something.” I turned my head to get the direction of the noise. “Water. We’re almost there.” I quickened my pace, eager to get there.
It didn’t take us much longer before the trail opened up and revealed the
hidden treasure.
The water was crystal clear, and the greenery lush and abundant. Butterflies flew around the flowers that lined a section of the water’s edge. The waterfall itself was at least two stories tall, and once we got closer, it was deep enough where I couldn’t quite make out the bottom, despite the clarity of the water. Flowers and bushes surrounded the space, with berries growing and trees that reached high into the sky.
It was a little paradise hidden deep in the forest, untouched by the disarray of mankind.
We deposited our bags at the edge, and I fell to my knees in the grass. Blades of grass tickled just above my knees, and leaves fell from tree limbs where squirrels were scampering about. Cupping my hands, I reached in and scooped up some of the cool, clear water and sipped. The liquid glided down my throat, trailing a cool sensation on the way down, and quenching a thirst I hadn’t realized was there.
It was glorious.
I scooped up some more and tossed it onto my face, trying to scrub away as much of the dirt as I could in the process. We were all pretty filthy, but we’d gotten used to it over time. Hopefully someday, body odor would be a thing of the past, and personal hygiene would come as easy as walking.
Funny how much things like personal hygiene could be so greatly missed.
Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I lifted it up and over my head before tossing it to the ground. I’d do my best to wash it in the water before leaving—at least, my best attempt at laundry out here. “Hey, guys, would we be able to put a bunch of rocks together to form a circle thing and fill it with water and wash clothes that way, or would it be okay to put soap in here? Like, is soap harmful to the environment at all?”
Everyone was silent so I turned around. All the guys were doing their very best, which wasn’t very good, attempt of trying to not to look at me. Jonah was fiddling with his fingers, and I could see a faint blush creeping over his face and to the tips of his ears. Adam was rubbing the back of his very red neck with one hand, while the other hand clutched his necklace through his shirt. Mateo was spinning a knife between his fingers, and Lincoln had both hands in his pockets while he became extremely fascinated with the bark on a nearby tree.