BEYOND DEAD
The Cough
CHRISTOPHER FROST
This is a book of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Second Edition
Copyright © 2016 Christopher Frost
ISBN 979-8-57-698982-9
for Todd,
a true friend who always believed in me
1
Miss Stephani emerged from the faded brick building, out into the unusually cold air for the first few weeks of spring. The snow was hard and frozen, and the pathways drawn through the playground were flecked with glittering chunks of crude salt. The bright sun did little to warm the air, but Miss Stephani hiked up the zipper of her parka and pulled the scarf a little further up her neck. She gave a bright smile as one of the children ran past her screaming, with a mouth full of joy, and waved frantically at her as he passed by. Some parents worried about the children coming outside in the cold weather, but it was really the teachers that were at risk. The children were garbed in heavy snow-pants, winter parkas, thick mittens, and wool caps. Outfitted like that, along with their infinite energy, made them almost swelter in their pintsized apparel.
She walked over to the swings where her fellow teacher, Miss Jayme, was pushing two girls. The playground was bustling with tiny voices cheering with laughter, sprinkled with only a few tears here and there. This winter had been a hard one in New England. Cold temperatures and large storms had been the norm almost since October and although only a few weeks from April the winter felt anything but over. Most days it had been impossible to get the children outside because the temperatures hovered barely above freezing. The children were feeling the weight of cabin fever. This was a rare day; the temperature had finally climbed a bit over thirty-two degrees and the administration had decided the children could have a small break from the gymnasium and breathe in some fresh air. If only for a short amount of time.
“Cold?” Miss Jayme asked Miss Stephani.
“Not too bad. You?”
“A little but it’s worth it,” she smiled. “We need a break from inside as much as they do.” Both teachers laughed.
There was only a thirty-minute limit for the children to be outside. It wasn’t long before Miss Rizzo and Miss Erinn had joined the other two by the swing-set and were gossiping about which parents were overly critical of their children and were always bothersome, and which children had the best-looking fathers that occasionally came to pick up their kids.
Standing inside the door peering through the small pane of glass to the playground, his hands tightly clenched around the mop handle, Bob the janitor watched the children at play.
2
At the corner of the playground where the chain link fence met the post, little Bentley sat, removed from the rest of the children. Just beyond the jungle gym he sat with a triangle of his sandwich and was tearing at the bread and placing the small clumps in an organized line on his thigh. He took a single piece, placed it down just inside the fence, and sat back to wait.
“Bentley, honey, are you okay?” Miss Stephani called.
Bentley turned with a bright smile and called back, “Good Mif Stefi,” in his underdeveloped speech. He was like all the children in the toddler room. Still learning to put their words together into sentences and learning pronunciation. Miss Stephani smiled, and Bentley returned to what he was doing.
He waited patiently, hands folded in front of him, watching the single crumb of bread he had placed by the fence. It wasn’t long before there was an overhead rustle and Bentley’s eyes brightened to see the blur of gray fur and the twitching tail of a squirrel.
“Plumpy,” he said to the squirrel.
Plumpy was still here.
***
Bentley had met Plumpy back in October
when Plumpy was scavenging the perimeter of the fence for food. Bentley had grown an immediate fondness for the squirrel and soon he was smuggling food to the animal and tossing it through the diamond holes in the fence. As weeks passed Plumpy grew bolder until finally Bentley got what he was waiting for all those long days in the playground. Plumpy came to him one day, sniffing the bit of food – some goldfish crackers – the small lines of whiskers twitching as his nose inhaled the cheese flavored fish.
Plumpy, Plumpy, Bentley had encouraged the squirrel. With each small step the squirrel took toward his extended hand with the cracker, Bentley would draw it back ever so slightly to get the squirrel to come even closer. And then it happened. Plumpy skittered up onto Bentley’s lap and pawed at the cracker in his open hand. Bentley had laughed and pet the squirrel while he ate the goldfish crackers. Winter had separated the two newfound friends. Bentley often perched by the window that overlooked the playground or ran to the outside door to the look through the small pane of glass for any glimpse of Plumpy running around the playground, frozen in hard white snow. On the rare occasion that the children were allowed to go outside, he had not been able to find Plumpy anywhere. Instead, he left what food he could bring out by the fencepost where Plumpy’s maple tree was just beyond the outskirts. Each day Bentley would rush to the window when his mother dropped him off to look and see if Plumpy had taken the food. Most times if it hadn’t been covered in falling snow, the food sat untouched on the snow.
Now he had returned.
Plumpy was back and moving around just outside the fence.
Bentley called to him, “Plumpy, Plumpy?”
He could see his friend as he climbed down the tree in a similar motion to the kids allowed to ride the spiral slide. Plumpy reached the bottom and his nose peeked out around the tree. Bentley stared intently. Plumpy looked different. At first Bentley didn’t think that it was his Plumpy at all but a different squirrel, and his heart sunk. But then Plumpy came around the tree and inched closer to the fence. It was his squirrel all right but Plumpy was different. Something had happened to him. The squirrel’s fur was matted, in some places missing in large clumps that showed discolored skin.
A frightening silence gripped Bentley. The eyes of the squirrel that looked at him were familiar and frightening at the same time. Bentley began to shake as Plumpy moved closer, not looking at the food placed out for him on the boy’s lap, but looking hungrily at the boy.
“Go ‘way,” Bentley said.
Plumpy still advanced on him, now pushing his body through the diamond gap in the fence. Pieces of fur tore away from his frail body and caught on the frozen metal fence. Bentley could see that there were tears in the skin where the fence had pulled the fur away, spots bleeding like ulcers where there had once been fur.
“Go ‘way! Go ‘way!’ Bentley was scurrying back.
“Bentley?” he heard Miss Stephani calling his name.
“GO ‘WAY!” Bentley dug his hand into the snow and threw a handful at Plumpy. Instead of hitting the squirrel and scaring it off, Plumpy leapt through the cloud and lunged at Bentley.
His scream echoed through the playground.
3
Between the melee of screaming children and panicked teachers, and the piercing shrieking of Bentley as Plumpy tried to tear through his snowsuit – its small paws furiously clawing away the fabric and stuffing, its teeth helping to bite away the obstacle in its way – there was a loud and sudden snap and Plumpy was flying through the air like one of those flying squirrels on Animal Planet.
“I’ll get help!” Miss Jayme said as she ran back to the building and disappeared inside.
Miss Stephani had picked up Bentley
and was cradling him in her arms while the other teachers tried to get the children inside. He was crying. His face scratched with thin lines that looked like someone had played tic-tac-toe on his tiny twenty-eighth month body. Below, in the snow, were tiny pin drops of crimson that looked out of place on the perfectly white flakes.
“Bentley.” Miss Stephani said as she cradled him and felt her own warm tears burning down her cold face and onto his.
“Get inside,” Bob the janitor told Miss Stephani. She looked at him as though seeing his mouth move but not hearing his words, looking just as shocked as the boy. “Go Stephani, get the boy inside.”
She did as she was told. Before she even got to the door Jill, the daycare administrator, was rushing out and trying to ask what happened as Miss Stephani ran past her back into the building.
In the distance, beyond the heavy stream of traffic, the sound of sirens began to wail and grew louder with every passing second. Bob looked across the street at the looming building of the hospital and thought that it would have been faster just to run the boy across the street. Rules and regulations. Sometimes they were a good thing. Not today.
Bob now stood alone in a hauntingly quiet playground dismissed of children’s joy. Tainted by something cruel. Lying in the snow on the other side of the teeter-totter was Bob’s mop. He hadn’t even realized he had still been carrying it with him. Bob reached into the snow, his hand gripping the mop handle. He walked with it over to where the twisted body of what he could only guess looked like some kind of roadkill. He poked at it with the mop handle and just as he suspected, it was dead. There was a garbage bag inside the building that he would retrieve to put the carcass in and have them take it over with them to the hospital. Most likely the thing was rabid, or God knew what else.
The lights of the ambulance illuminated the street, even in the sunlight, as they turned onto Valley Street and into the daycare’s parking lot. Bob took that as his cue to move his old, tired ass back inside to get the garbage bag and wrap this up before the paramedics headed across the street.
Bob was pulling a black garbage bag from his wheelie of cleaning supplies when someone coughed behind him and startled him half to death.
“Bob,” Miss Stephani said, “thank you. I – I –I,” she stuttered on her words.
“No need,” he said and shook open the garbage bag and put on a pair of vinyl gloves. There was a smear of blood already on the hand that snapped the neck of the vermin but no need to get anymore. As it was, he suspected he was due for a line of shots himself, right there along with the boy.
“No, I mean it.” Miss Stephani had taken a breath and gotten her words back in proper order, “I didn’t know what to do. Nothing like that,” she started coughing again and brought her mouth into the crook of her elbow like they tried to teach the children to do, “uh-hum, nothing like that has ever, well has ever happened before.”
She coughed again into her arm. More violently this time.
“Are you feeling alright, Miss Stephani?”
“Just,” she coughed, “a little frazzled.”
“You should get some water and take a seat for a bit. I’ve got some business to take care of outside.”
“I will. I just wanted to thank you.”
“No thanks necessary.”
Miss Stephani nodded and gave a quaint smile though her face was pale, and her eyes looked busy. Bob was finishing putting on his gloves and taking the garbage bag, along with a dustpan, with him when he caught a glimpse of four long scratch marks on the back of Miss Stephani’s neck.
“Miss Stephani?” Bob called after her.
She turned to look down at him from the top of the stairs still coughing into her arm. He was about to tell her about the scratches on her neck and wondered if she had gotten them from the vermin, though he thought it had only been on the boy when he had grasped it by its feeble neck and turned it counterclockwise in one violent twist.
When Miss Stephani lowered her arm to uncover her face Bob saw a ring of blood around her mouth.
4
Sorry U had a bad day. Have 2 stay late. OT. Luv U
Scott Hamilton checked his phone again just as he was pulling onto Chestnut Street, only three blocks down from his apartment. It had been late when he had texted his wife, but still surprised she had never shot him a text back. Stephani had filled him in on the events of the day, of the poor boy that had been ‘mauled’ she had told him, by some kind of wild animal. No one was sure what it was. Only that it was dead. Killed by the building janitor. Stephani, along with the other teachers, were still waiting to hear from the administrator as to the condition of the child. Last anyone had heard was that he was in intensive care. Stephani was distraught over the whole situation and blamed herself. Scott understood that it wasn’t her fault and at the same time he could see exactly why his wife would put all the blame on herself. The boy was one of her children, from her classroom, and ultimately responsibility fell on her and Jayme.
Across the street from the warehouse
where he loaded freight onto trailers, was a Wal-Mart Supercenter. He’d love to avoid the place if possible. Hated the vacant stares of the employees as they stood at the cash register scanning merchandise, but it was the cheapest place for toddler pull-ups and the only place at three am that actually sold flowers. Scott had a wordless transaction with the zombie at the register and left with a cheap dozen roses, a romantic card that would let Stephani know how much he cared about her, and a box of Pampers Easy Ups.
The pull-ups were on the passenger floor, the card and flowers laid gently across the seat. Scott killed the lights of the pickup as he coasted into his parking spot in front of their ground floor apartment. He sat for a moment and looked at the blinds that were pulled across the sliding door and shades drawn in the boy’s room. Reaching over he took out the card and fumbled for a pen in the glove compartment. He wasn’t one for words, so he simply jotted down at the bottom of the card:
Things will be better tomorrow.
You are a great teach do not forget that!
Love, Scott.
He licked the envelope and sealed the card inside before tucking it into the foray of flowers.
Scott slung his backpack over his shoulder and took the flowers and pull-ups with him, locking the driver’s side door manually instead of using the key fob that would trigger the parking lights. He had learned long ago that it took only that brief amount of light to wake Trevor, his youngest and the one who the pull-ups were for. Aiden was five and slept like a corpse. At the front door to the apartment complex Scott punched in the key code and the familiar buzz of the door unlocking broke the quiet air. He stepped into the main hallway, the immediate pungent aroma of stale cigarette smoke wafting into his nostrils.
Tonight had been another fifteen hour shift. The third this week. Every time he thought he couldn’t saddle up and take another long night like that, it took only the stench of the hallway to remind him why he was working so damn hard. Stephani and he had petitioned time and again to have their property managers ban smoking in the apartments and time after time their petition was denied. Scott was glad for the ground floor two bedroom, at least the smoke rose but he knew better than to think that it wasn’t getting into the apartment. That was where the long shifts came in. The overtime of three shifts this week was more than his regular forty-hour week. And it all went into savings, all of it to save for that down payment on a condex on the north side of the city. It wouldn’t be much more than they had but it would be theirs and they would have a small piece of land. Something large enough for a swing-set out back for the boys.
Stepping quietly into the apartment Scott left his backpack by the door. The nightlight in the hallway lit up just enough so that he didn’t trip over his own feet and could maneuver around the kid’s toys without waking anyone. Even Trevor, if he was careful. Scott stepped into the kitchen and pulled down a vase from the cabinet above the microwave. He quietly filled the vase with water as
he tore the plastic wrap from the roses and sank the stems into the water. He arranged them as best he could on the oven and laid the card in front of it so that Stephani would see it first thing when she woke up. Right around the time that he would be, if lucky, on his first hour of sleep. He opened the refrigerator and took out the milk, pulling from it straight out of the carton.
“Jeezus!” he yelled a bit higher than a muffled whisper and nearly dropped the carton of milk. The refrigerator light illuminated the figure of a woman standing in the living room in front of the entertainment center. “Steph?” he whispered while at the same time listening for Trevor to cry out that he was awake.
“Steph?” he called in a hush again, “Stephani?”
She didn’t answer.
Didn’t even move.
“Honey?” Scott put the milk back in the refrigerator and closed the door. The light disappeared and with it the silhouette of his wife. He walked past the four top table that did its best to divide the kitchen from the living room. Something moved behind him. Scott turned. He peered into the darkness knowing that whatever had moved past the hallway nightlight was small and had to be Trevor. He had woken him up with his startled cry.
“Trevor?” his voice now louder than a whisper. If his son was up, there was nothing he could do. It would be another half hour, at best, to try and settle him down, go through his evening routine – including reading Goodnight Moon and singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star not one time but three while rubbing his back. “Trevor, come here before you wake your brother.”
Behind him came a sound. Then another somewhere on the other side of the large sofa and between the two bedrooms. What it sounded like was a person choking. Not a gagging choke like a bite of food gone down the wrong way, but the choking of phlegm. Wet and strangled.
Beyond Dead | Book 1 | The Cough Page 1