by Morris, Jacy
Tears came to their eyes, with the exception of Jude, who simply stared straight ahead, her hand held to her face. Jude jumped when the elevator beeped, signaling their arrival. Without speaking, Little Jane and Caitlyn picked Jude up by her spindly arms and hustled her to the door of the penthouse.
Her father leaped off the couch when he saw them, concern in his eyes. On the TV, monsters roamed the streets, attacking people. Little Jane began to sob. She didn't know what else to do.
"Where's Grace?" her father had asked.
"At the pool. We were attacked," Caitlyn said between ragged sobs.
Her father ran from the penthouse, the door slamming behind him. "I can't believe this is happening," he said, his voice quavering.
Little Jane sobbed into the crook of her mother's neck as she wrapped her arms around the girls. They continued to cry, except for Jude who didn't do much of anything.
"Are you ok?" her mom asked.
She nodded her head. "Jude got bit."
Her mother knelt down next to Jude, and pulled her hand away from the wound. "That's a nasty bite. Come on. Let's go get you cleaned up, and then we'll call your parents.
As the afternoon transitioned to evening, the light in the penthouse turned orange, and Little Jane and Caitlyn clung to each other. It went like that for a while, and then eventually, their embrace loosened, and then fell away completely. In the back of the penthouse, they saw a glimpse of Jude being ushered into Little Jane's room. They heard the bedroom door close softly, and then Little Jane's mother appeared, a worried look on her face.
She squatted in front of them. "What happened?" she asked.
"A man attacked us. He got Grace."
Her mother walked over to the phone and picked it up. She pressed the button to turn the phone on and then dialed three numbers. She glared down at Little Jane and Caitlyn, concern and anger in equal parts on her face, and then her father came in, gasping for air. He slammed the door behind him and put all his weight on it as he threw the deadbolt. He backed away from the door, as if it were about to burst open.
"What is it?" Little Jane asked.
"I... I don't know," he said, a look of terror and panic on his face. Her father turned to her mother and said, "Is that the police?"
She nodded. "Yeah, but I can't get through. There's a recorded message on the phone. It says to wait patiently as all operators are busy."
"Shit." Her father ran his hand through his red hair, and then scrubbed it through the red beard on his jaw. "Shit. I've got to call their parents. Something bad is going on."
"What did you see up there?" her mother asked.
Her father said nothing as he walked into the living room and grabbed his phone from the couch. "I can't believe this," he said as he began to scroll through his list of contacts on his phone. Caitlyn and Little Jane sat through it all, letting the grown-ups sort it out.
Her father looked at the ceiling as the call went through. "Hey, Pete. We have a situation here. Have you seen the news?" There was a pause and then her father said, "Yeah, well Grace was just attacked by one of those things, and now she's missing."
"What?" they heard a voice yell.
"She was attacked, and now she's missing. We're on the line with the police now. But you should definitely get your ass over here."
"I'm going to call my mom," Caitlyn said.
"Ok, but try not to disturb Jude," she's had quite a scare.
Caitlyn disappeared into Little Jane's bedroom, and Jane's little sister Ruby appeared in the doorway of her room, rubbing her eyes, having just awoken from her nap. "What's going on?"
"Shhh," Little Jane said to Ruby.
Ruby pouted and ignored her older sister, as she frequently did. She tugged on her mother's shirt sleeve and said, "Mommy, what's happening?"
"Nothing, dear. Everything is alright."
There was a scream from the backroom, and Little Jane watched as Ruby backed up against the breakfast bar that her mother was leaning on.
Her father dropped the phone from his hands and ran to Little Jane's room. Little Jane followed, concerned for her friends. She wished she hadn't. On the floor, Jude was lying on top of Caitlyn, chewing on her friend's arm. The shrill scream hurt her eardrums, and then her dad was there, trying to pull Jude off of Caitlyn. Caitlyn's legs kicked and scrambled, and then she was on her feet, holding her arm out in front of her, blood dripping onto the pristine hardwood floors of the penthouse.
"Jude, calm down now," her father said. But Jude didn't calm down. She simply turned in her father's arms and lunged at him with her teeth. They clacked in the air. Little Jane's mom ushered Little Jane and Caitlyn backwards. From down the hallway, Little Jane could hear Ruby crying.
"You guys wait down there," her mother said.
They hustled down the hallway, looking over their shoulders. From behind them, they heard a thump, and then her father burst from the room, slamming the door behind him. There was more thumping as Jude tried to escape from inside the bedroom.
"Brian, what the hell is going on?" her mom said.
"I don't know. Get the damn police on the line."
"What happened?" Little Jane asked Caitlyn.
Caitlyn looked at Little Jane, shock on her face, and she said, "I don't know. I was just trying to get my phone from my bag, and she got up and attacked me." She held her arm out, and Little Jane winced at what she saw. She could see the ring of teeth marks on her arm, even through the blood was pouring out of them. Caitlyn walked into the bathroom and began running water over the wound.
In the background, the pounding continued. Her mother was on the phone. Ruby was crying. Her dad was screaming at her mother to get the police on the phone. Little Jane didn't know what to do, so she stood with Caitlyn. She looked through the medicine cabinet for the little brown bottle of liquid that her mom always put on her wound. She found it and said, "Hold out your arm."
Caitlyn did as she was told and held out her arm. Thin trickles of blood ran from each tooth indentation. "This is going to sting a little," Little Jane said, copying the words that her mother had said to her countless times. She dumped the bottle on Caitlyn's arm, and to her surprise, there was absolutely no reaction. No hissing. No sharp intake of air. No swearing. Nothing.
"See, that wasn't so bad," Little Jane said as the liquid fizzed on Caitlyn's arm.
"I didn't even feel it," Caitlyn said.
Little Jane was thrown by Caitlyn's words. Every time her mom had poured the stuff on her arm, she had wanted to use those words she wasn't supposed to use. Caitlyn must be tougher than her.
"What's wrong with Jude?" Caitlyn asked.
"I don't know," Little Jane replied, wondering the same thing herself.
Caitlyn looked at Little Jane and said, "It's like she didn't even know me. One minute she was just sitting there, and the next she was on top of me... trying to eat me."
The horror of the words hit Little Jane at that moment. "Eat me," she had said. She wasn't just attacking; she was trying to eat Caitlyn, just like the old man had done to Grace.
"I need to call my mom," Caitlyn said.
In the other room, Little Jane heard her mother crying. "I can't get through. No one is answering!" she sobbed.
"Well, try again, dammit!" her father yelled from the hallway.
"I am trying!" her mom yelled back, the frustration in her voice bordering on panic.
Ruby sat on the floor, snot pouring from her nose. She didn't know what to do. This situation was so far out of her realm of experience that all she could do was sit crying on the floor at her mother's feet and wait for someone to tell her something.
"Little Jane! Where are you?" her father yelled.
"Here, dad," she yelled from the bathroom. She walked out into the hallway so that he could see her. The sight of him standing at the door, holding it closed elevated her heart rate.
"I need you to go to the TV and turn it up. Maybe there's something on the news. Take Caitlyn with you."
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She called Caitlyn out of the bathroom, and they walked to the leather couch in the living room, where the orange light of the evening sun spilled over them. Caitlyn found the remote and turned the TV on. She didn't watch a lot of TV, and when she did, it was mostly sporting events with her father, a football game from his old alma mater. She preferred to watch YouTube. She could find anything on there that she wished. On TV, they just played what they wanted you to see... which was often just boring TV shows and news that made you feel like the world was ending... only it kind of was.
They sat on the couch, Little Jane looking over her shoulder every now and then to make sure everything was right. As the scenes played out before them on the TV, they fell into silence. It was terrible. All over the world, the same thing was happening. Europe, Asia, Africa... you name the place and they were experiencing the same situation.
The news said that the people were infected with some sort of virus, and that they were sick. Scientists were working on a cure. Other scientists argued that there was no cure to be found because the sick people were no longer people; they were dead. The one thing that everyone agreed on was that things were getting worse. The army was being mobilized. Foreign units were being called back to America to assist, and they said that major cities would soon be falling under martial law.
"What's martial law, daddy?" June yelled.
"Oh, God," her father replied. "Martial law is where the government and the army take over. Did they say something about martial law?"
"Yeah, they said it was a possibility."
"I got through!" her mother yelled from the kitchen. "Hello? We have an emergency here. We have a missing child. One is sick and another has been attacked."
There was a pause as she listened. They all listened.
"Yes, a man bit her." More listening. "What are you saying? What do you mean too busy? Well, how long?" A pause. "Six hours? Yes, we'll wait. Thank you." Little Jane watched her mother hang up the phone, a bewildered look on her face.
"They said it would be six hours," she said to Little Jane's father. "Apparently, things are going wrong all over the city. It's going to take them six hours to get anybody here to help us."
"Jesus Christ," Little Jane said.
"Watch your mouth," her mother yelled at her. There was nothing to do but wait. Her mother and father tied the door to Little Jane's room closed with a piece of rope from her father's rock climbing kit, knotting one end of the rope around the doorknob to her room and the other end around the doorknob to Ruby's room.
Together, they all sat on the couch, Ruby and Little Jane sandwiched in between their parents. Caitlyn sat in the recliner away from them, apparently dozing. They had tried calling Caitlyn's mother, but there had been no answer. When they failed repeatedly, Caitlyn had just closed her eyes and started snoring away. Jude's father had never showed up.
A nightmare played out before them on the TV. A military man came on the TV, and pronounced that the city was indeed under martial law and that everything was going to be alright. They were supposed to wait for help. Little Jane felt comforted by every word that the military man said, and for the first time that day, she felt like everything was going to be fine.
She wondered what would happen to Jude, trapped in her room, she still banged on the door every now and then, but for the most part she had settled down. Was she sick or was she dead like the scientists on the TV said? What about Grace? Where had she gone? She had certainly looked dead when they had abandoned her face-down in the pool on the rooftop. Little Jane doubted she would ever go into a pool again.
Thinking about a dead Grace wandering around The Encore sent a chill down her spine, and her dad pulled her close.
"It's all going to be fine, you know. We're going to be ok," he said.
Caitlyn liked those words. She leaned her head on her father's shoulder and closed her eyes. He kissed her on the top of the head.
When she awoke, it was nighttime. Everyone was asleep, the TV still on, still marching nightmarish image after nightmarish image across the screen. To her right, Caitlyn's breath rattled in her throat. Someone had thrown a blanket over Caitlyn in the night, and she struggled underneath it. She sounded like Billy Smithers did when he had suffered that asthma attack during P.E.
"Caitlyn?" she asked. The coughing and gurgling stopped, and Caitlyn's eyes opened, her head turning to look at Little Jane. With just one look, Little Jane knew that something was wrong. "Are you ok?" she asked. The dead eyes locked on her, and in that glance, Little Jane saw something that scared her... hunger.
Caitlyn, her former friend, struggled to extricate herself from the blanket, eventually falling out of the chair and onto the floor, the blanket wrapped around her limbs. Little Jane didn't know what to do, so she did what the girls in the horror movies always did; she screamed at the top of her lungs. Caitlyn crawled towards them, and Little Jane pointed her finger at her, still screaming at the top of her lungs as her parents were roused from their slumber. In the hallway, they could hear Jude begin her banging against the door anew.
Caitlyn, still crawling, the blanket wrapped around her legs, reached out for her mother's foot, and then Ruby added her own scream to the cacophony in the penthouse. Her mother sprang up onto the couch and then hopped over the back, pulling first Ruby and then Little Jane over. Her father ran into his bedroom and came out with a handgun.
"Caitlyn," he said, trying to get her attention. "Caitlyn, stop moving or I'm going to shoot you."
"Brian!" her mother yelled.
"No, Daddy, you can't! She's just sick."
Caitlyn was drawn to Brian's voice, and as she freed herself from the blanket, she slowly rose to her feet, her hands formed into claws and her face drawn into a ravenous grimace.
"Stay right there!" Brian said, his voice quaking with the fear of what he might have to do. Caitlyn didn't listen.
"Caitlyn, stop!" Little Jane yelled, hoping that somewhere in her head Caitlyn was still alive, still capable of understanding the words that were coming out of her mouth. But Caitlyn didn't stop, she kept moving towards Little Jane's father.
When she was within a foot, the little girl, the friend that Little Jane had grown up with and known since kindergarten, reached out with one of her claw hands and put her hand onto the barrel of her father's gun. Her father closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.
But Little Jane didn't close her eyes. She saw it all. The bullet entered Caitlyn's chest just below her right shoulder. Almost simultaneously, Little Jane saw a cloud of gore erupt from her and a wad of stuffing fly out of the recliner that Caitlyn had died in. Little Jane knew that Caitlyn had died because, despite the wound that she had received, despite the blood that was splattering onto the hardwood floors, she kept shuffling towards her dad, her arms outstretched.
Little Jane understood now. She understood what was going on. They really were the dead. Those that said they were just sick people were fooling themselves. "Kill her, Daddy," she said, wanting Caitlyn to go away.
Her father screamed as he backed away from Caitlyn. He pulled the trigger again, another bullet hole, more gore, and the same result.
"In the head, Brian," her mother said, her voice pragmatic and cold.
Little Jane's father looked at her mother, a look of horror on his face, and then he grimaced, closed his eyes for a second, and mumbled the words, "God help me." When his eyes opened, all expression drained from his face, no emotion, no panic. He breathed out slowly, raised the gun a couple of inches, and fired. A flash of lightning, a crack of thunder, and more blood flew through the air. The back of Caitlyn's head erupted. She toppled backwards, her hands still grasping spasmodically at the air.
Then she was on the ground, and Little Jane shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears. It didn't help. Nothing seemed to help. From her bedroom, they could still hear Jude banging on the door.
Her father sank to his knees, the gun clattering on the floor. He rocked forward, his eyes squeezed
shut, and tears flowing down his face. Little Jane's mom went to him, and fell to her own knees, wrapping her arms around him. It was an intimate moment, and Little Jane looked away, made uncomfortable by the sight of her father crying and being consoled by her mother, a sight her young mind could have never imagined.
Little Jane dropped to her own knees and looked at Ruby. Her eyes were big, and she couldn't tear them away from Caitlyn's body. "Are you ok?" Little Jane asked.
"Why did Daddy do that?" she asked.
"He had to. Caitlyn was going to hurt us."
"Is he going to shoot us too?" Ruby asked, concern on her face.
Little Jane smiled, and smoothed a stray strand of hair out of Ruby's eyes. "No. Dad would never hurt us," she had said, firmly believing her own words with every fiber of her being. "Dad would never hurt us."
****
But the truth was he had hurt them. He had hurt them when he had refused to go into Little Jane's room and kill Jude. He had hurt them when he had decided to lead them through the city to his boat in an effort to escape the city, leading to her mom's execution at the hands of the military when they discovered she was bitten. Then, when they were escaping the Coliseum, he had hurt them one last time, turning into one of the dead and killing Ruby, leaving Little Jane all alone in a world where nothing made sense.
The loneliness was the hardest part. There were people around her, but they looked at her like she was a piece of luggage, something that they had to carry with them out of duty or responsibility. They didn't know her. They didn't know her pain. How could they? They were adults, beings capable of choosing their own path and dealing with the consequences. For her entire life, Little Jane had been controlled, told what time to go to bed, told what to have for dinner, told what kind of grades to get in school. Now there was nothing. No one was going to tell her what to do, and the entire world had opened up to her. She was on her own, literally and figuratively, and the weight of that freedom had crushed her to the ground.