Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  Out in the drugstore, a manager and employee surveyed the scene of the crime. “Stanley, grab some gloves from the sales floor and clean these up,” the manager directed as he nudged one of the sticky lozenges near his left foot. “And take this cart back to the front.”

  The employee did as he was told. With gloves hugging his hands he picked up the discarded cough drops and then found a mop to get rid of the tack they’d left on the floor. Just as he put the bucket and mop away, the police arrived to escort the woman to jail. He followed behind them, pushing the cart back to the front.

  She struggled against the handcuffs and yelled at the policemen to wipe off the backseat before putting her into the car.

  ***

  FREE CANDY

  “This isn’t preschool, mommy.”

  “I know. Mommy forgot to pack you something to share for snack time. We’ll go to preschool next, Maia,” Annette explained.

  She pulled her station wagon into the drugstore parking lot. After parking, she walked to the back door to help her daughter out of the car.

  As they crossed the lot to the entrance, Annette noticed a police cruiser parked parallel with the curb in front of the store. Stupid shoplifting kids, she thought. But, as they walked into the store, two cops staggered by with the struggling culprit in their arms. Annette was surprised to see that it was a middle-aged woman with something red smeared on her face.

  “Do you need a cart, ma’am?” a sales person asked as he approached, pushing one.

  “Do you want to walk like a big girl, or ride in the cart?” Annette asked Maia, though she knew what her daughter’s answer would be.

  “Cart!” Maia screamed a bit too excitedly.

  “Inside voice,” Annette calmly reminded her daughter as she accepted the cart and lifted Maia into the child seat.

  Annette walked aimlessly around the aisles. She maneuvered around a ‘caution, wet floor’ sign near the Band-Aids. “Hmm, what happened here?” she thought aloud.

  “Something got spill-ded,” Maia answered.

  Annette smiled and focused on finding shareable foods. In the snack section she quickly passed by the pretzels because every other mom always brought them. Coming up with nothing suitable, she went to the refrigerated section to pick up some yogurts.

  While Annette left the cart to hold open the door to the cooler, Maia found something stuck to the child seat next to her. It was red and round and looked like candy. “Mommy, can I have this?” Maia asked with the sticky cough drop already in her fingers and nearing her mouth. But Annette couldn’t hear her daughter over the noise of the refrigerator, especially since the yogurt hadn’t been restocked, forcing her to climb halfway inside to reach anything.

  Maia put the cough drop in her mouth and was happily sucking away on it when Annette returned to the cart.

  “What’s in your mouth?” Annette asked.

  “Candy,” Maia said quietly.

  Annette held out her hand and Maia knew that meant she had to spit it out. The cough drop fell onto Annette’s hand. She searched her purse for a tissue to wrap it in but had to settle for a gum wrapper that barely encased it.

  “Where’d you find it?” Annette asked, but she didn’t really want to know the answer. Kids were always putting objects in their mouths, no matter how dirty they appeared to be.

  “Here,” Maia touched a tiny finger to the seat. Her finger stuck a little to the residue as she pulled it away.

  “Uuugh,” Annette moaned. “What have I told you about eating things?”

  “Ask mommy first,” Maia recited. “I did.”

  “Well Mommy has to hear you ask the question and she has to answer you, ok?”

  Maia nodded and Annette pushed the cart to the checkout lanes.

  “Just the yogurt for you, ma’am?” the sales person asked from behind the register.

  Annette nodded and smiled. She didn’t want to sound rude so she said as politely as she could, “Do the shopping carts ever get cleaned?”

  Stanley wasn’t sure so he thought for a second and replied, “I could ask my manager, if you like?”

  “No, that’s ok. She’s late for preschool. Could you throw this away for me though? My daughter found it in the cart and put it in her mouth.” Annette handed him the partially wrapped cough drop.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry about that! Sure thing. Have a good day, ma’am.” Stanley smiled his best smile as the woman and her child left the store. He looked down at what she’d given him. He could see the red of the cough drop peeking out through the silver of the gum wrapper.

  “I sure hope that crazy lady wasn’t sick or anything. That’ll be a lawsuit right there.”

  ***

  SOMETHING TO SHARE

  “Alright! Now that all of our friends are here we can get started! Does everyone have their buddies?” Veronica Peters asked, as she looked around the room at the bouncy, messy-haired heads of ten 4-year-olds.

  “Yes,” the group of preschoolers responded as they calmed down and sought to hold their buddy’s hand.

  It gave Veronica the creeps when all the kids answered at the same time, especially when they did it holding hands. All Village of the Damned like, she thought. She was a non-traditional teacher and an even more non-traditional person outside of school, preferring the company of animals to people and spending hours reading about witchcraft and serial killers. If the parents of the preschoolers knew anything about her personal interests, they wouldn’t bring their kids to her. She snapped a smile back on her face. “Let’s all sit on the center rug and we can start sharing time. Does anyone have something they’d like to share?” she asked.

  Most of the children were shy but she could always count on one or two of them to eat up the time by describing a toy they had lost or an animal they had seen at the zoo. A small hand shot into the air. “Danny, go ahead,” Veronica invited him to speak.

  “My doggy runned away,” he said as he picked his nose. He then sat down, offering no more information on the absent pooch.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. That’s sad, isn’t it?” she asked the other children. Many nodded in agreement. One girl, who was rather emotional on most days, started crying.

  “It’s ok,” her buddy said to her.

  “Does anyone else have something to share with their friends?” Veronica asked.

  Without raising her hand, Maia stood up and started talking. “A lady got rested from the yogurt store.”

  “Miss Maia, we don’t talk until we raise our hand and get called on, right?” Veronica gently reminded her, though she had little patience for Maia as the little girl often ignored rules. “You can spend five minutes in time out while everyone else plays.”

  Maia stomped to the time out corner while the other children scattered to different learning tables around the room. After five minutes, Veronica retrieved her.

  “Go ahead and join the others,” Veronica said as she watched the girl slowly rise and retreat to the empty finger painting station.

  After thirty minutes of activities, Veronica called the children back to the center rug. “Today we are going to continue learning about animals. Does everyone remember the animals they chose yesterday?”

  The children nodded.

  “When I say ‘go’ I want everyone to pretend to be their animal. You can walk like your animal and make noises like it. Now, go!”

  The children milled about on the center rug and slowly traveled to all corners of the room. One of the girls had picked a pigeon, which she called a ‘pig-en’, after having seen them in the park. She waved her arms around excitedly. Another child, a boy, was a bear. Danny, the boy who’d lost his dog, was a lion but he was copying the movements of the bear. Maia had picked rabbit, but she hadn’t moved from the center rug.

  “Aren’t you going to hop around like a bunny, Maia?” Veronica asked her, but the girl looked tired. “Do you want to start nap time early?”

  Maia shook her head and started to gently hop around the roo
m. After a short time she too started copying the bear child’s movements. Danny saw this and became angry.

  “I’M the LION!” he yelled at her.

  Veronica had been watching one of the smallest girls pretend to be a goldfish, but her head instinctively whipped toward the yelling voice. “What’s wrong, Danny?”

  “I’m ‘posed to be the lion. Not her!” he yelled and pointed at Maia, whose fingers were gnarled into pretend lion’s claws.

  “Let’s all pretend to be our own animals, children,” Veronica said calmly as she looked at the clock on the wall. “Well, time’s up anyway. Who wants a nap?” I know I do, she thought. She quickly laid out ten blue mats on the floor and watched as the kids picked one and closed their eyes. Veronica turned down the lights and exited the room into an inner hallway of the small building to find coffee.

  Being so young, Maia didn’t notice the changes her ill body was undergoing as she napped. She was sweating but goose bumps crawled along her arms. She tossed and turned until her body went numb and her breathing stopped.

  Naptime was usually fifteen to thirty minutes depending on how long it took Veronica to get rid of her daily headache. Ten minutes into her midday peace she heard a scream from the classroom. She was about to open the door but Danny burst through it, crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Veronica asked him. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “I’M THE LION!” he yelled.

  “I know you’re the lion, Danny. Is Maia still pretending?” Veronica asked. Sometimes the children didn’t go to sleep during naptime, instead choosing to wander the classroom and disrupt the others. The boy nodded his head and lifted his small arm to show her what Maia had done.

  “The lion bited me!” he cried as the other children began screaming.

  “Go to the first aid box by the sink, ok?” Veronica directed him as she opened the door to the classroom and turned the lights back on. There were a couple of children still lying on the mats, motionless. The rest of the class had sought refuge underneath the activity tables. Maia stood with one of the goldfish girl’s arms in her hands.

  “Maia, time out right now!” Veronica yelled at the girl.

  At the sound of the teacher’s loud voice, Maia started toward her. Her teeth were bared and she still held her hands out in front of her like lion’s claws.

  “Stop this!” Veronica screamed but Maia kept moving in her direction. The teacher knew she could overpower the child if she needed to but she feared a lawsuit from the parents. Indecision left her when Maia’s tiny teeth bit down on her arm. Veronica picked up the girl and walked to the bathroom. She set Maia down inside the small room and closed the door as quickly as she could. She could hear the child clawing at the wood of the door but she felt nothing for her. Maia’s lack of respect for her authority had gone on too long.

  “Rose, can you bring me my purse?” she asked the goldfish girl. Dutifully, the child brought it to her. She pulled her cell phone out of the bag and with trembling fingers she found the contact listing for Maia’s mom.

  “Hi, Annette,” Veronica said when the familiar voice answered on the other end. “You’ll have to pick up Maia. I’m not sure if she’s sick or something but she is acting very strange. She bit some of the other kids and then me…No, I haven’t called any of the other parents yet…No, I can’t put her on the phone. She’s in the bathroom and I’m not letting her out until you get here…I told you, she attacked us…I don’t know what’s wrong! I’m not a psychologist. Please, just come get her.” Veronica hung up and started down the list of other parents.

  “Hi, Barry. Can you come back to the preschool and pick up Danny? I don’t want you to be alarmed but another child bit him on his forearm…No, no, he’ll be fine. It isn’t bad at all.”

  ***

  Michelle Kilmer is a writer and designer living in Seattle, WA. When she is not writing she can be found playing video games, designing websites, singing and playing guitar, sewing, or dressing up in "full gore" to attend zombie events.

  She is working on several projects including a follow-up to When the Dead, a super secret zombie story geared toward young adults, and a handful of sci-fi short stories that give her the creeps.

  She lives with her husband, an attack hamster and a fear of the dark.

  Rebecca Hansen is twin sister to Michelle and lover of everything zombie. The Spread is her first contribution to the genre.

  When she isn’t plotting gruesome fictional deaths she fancies hiking, painting and watching low budget and foreign horror movies. A seasoned special effects make-up artist, she turns willing subjects into the walking dead on the weekends.

  She lives just north of Seattle with her boyfriend, three attack cats, a gun, axe, machete and small collection of knives.

  Find out how Paul the deliveryman became infected and follow the plague as it continues to spread. Look for The Spread: A Zombie Short Story Collection and Michelle’s full-length novel When the Dead on whenthedead.com and Amazon.

  ***

  EXCERPT FROM : WHEN THE DEAD

  By MICHELLE KILMER

  THE INFECTION

  It starts with a cold sweat then a swift drop in body temperature that makes the teeth chatter. The skin feels itchy and hot but the insides are dying from the cold.

  Then the numbness starts in the extremities. Finger tips, toes, up through the feet and hands into the legs and arms and finally the core. It cannot be rubbed out as the hands do not work anymore.

  It reaches the chest and the ability to control the breathing is lost. Just before the last breath of air escapes the lungs, numbness reaches the head.

  The eyes go crazy, the tongue limp. One cannot call out for help as the head falls on the chest. There is but a single moment for the dying self to think a final thought...

  Why me?

  But then . . . you aren’t you anymore.

  ***

  FUCKED

  “I can’t understand what they’re saying,” Edward said as he slammed a fist down on the radio.

  “You could try another station. That sounds like French they’re speaking,” his wife Moira suggested. She had wanted a television for a long time but Edward preferred the way the voices came floating from the speakers into the apartment. This meant that in the current situation though, they had to rely on the radio show hosts’ graphic descriptions to give them any idea of what was going on in cities across the globe.

  “The other stations keep replaying the same stuff. It’s not getting any better; only worse,” Edward grumbled.

  “Then there’s nothing we can do but make some tea and wait to see what happens next.”

  ***

  “It’s happening everywhere,” Isobel said to her mother over the phone. She had spent the morning reading news articles online. She had watched a clip of someone succumb to the infection on a CDC table, surrounded by plastic and strapped down like a criminal or lunatic.

  “Things will be ok, Isobel! They have a carrier. It really is only a matter of time. If they can study it, they can find a cure or at least a vaccine. Try to keep this thing from spreading any further.”

  “It’s too big already. The world is fucked. I’ve got to go.” She hung up the phone not knowing it would be the last time she’d speak to her mother.

  ***

  “On and on for three days, man; can’t they talk about something else?” Vaughn turned off his television angrily. “Could have been aliens, maybe the government, maybe bio- terrorists? Shut up.” He chucked a drained beer can at the black screen. “Just fix it and forget it!”

  Vaughn was alone, as he often was, unless he paid for company. He was talking to himself. He probably couldn’t even pay someone to listen to him. Especially when he was drunk and that was most of the time.

  “Couldn’t be bio-terrorists, they’d a laid claim to it. Been proud of the trouble they were causing. Pretty fancy stuff making dead people come back to life. It has to be the government; only group with enough funding an
d closed doors to pull this shit off.”

  ***

  The infection was quickly spreading. It had reached terrorist groups and government groups alike. It lay in thousands of sickbeds, it rode the bus, and it lived next door to many already. No one was immune from this unstoppable plague.

  The number one cause for the spread of the disease was denial. It made no sense to anyone. News media could be blamed for the lies with headlines like It’s impossible! Death is death, the final breath, and People Don’t Come Back. They stay wherever it is that they went.

  ***

  WILLOW BROOK APARTMENTS

  Willow Brook is a three-story building, four if you count the basement. Each floor has six two-bedroom apartments with identical floor plans.

  The kitchen is to the left of the entry. It has an island that looks out on the dining room and living room. The first room on the right down the hallway is a second bedroom. Next is the laundry closet with a stacking washer/dryer unit. The last room on the right is the bathroom. At the end of the hall is a closet and the master bedroom is on the left.

  All of the apartments look more or less like this save for differences in décor and varying levels of tidiness. The Willow Brook building is controlled access, meaning that if you don’t have a key, someone has to buzz you in, or not.

  ***

  THE FIRST DAY

  On the morning of the first day, the day that things would start to change for the residents of Willow Brook Apartments, things looked normal. When Isobel Shiffman looked outside it was almost too normal, right down to the happy thieving squirrel in the tree nearest her living room window.

  Northgate is at the northern edge of Seattle and the nearest reports of the disease were further north in Everett and south in Tacoma, still far enough away for Isobel to brave the outdoors. Her mother had told her to stock up on food just in case things didn’t clear up as quickly as she hoped. Isobel had gone shopping on Sunday and it was only Tuesday but her mother insisted.

  Like Isobel, the rest of the city driven by nagging mothers, packed into the grocery stores and left them in such a state of disarray that it was hard for her to navigate. The cart, even without the help of the wobbly right front wheel, kept running into things: cans of food, a bag of chips, some nylons, and other items strewn about. All of which were displaced far from their original aisle and shelf. She struggled with it until she found the secret to making the cart move was to put pressure on the left side of it with her foot. She went for some of the fresh food that everyone else was ignoring, figuring it could be eaten first and when it ran out or started to rot, whichever happened first, she’d break into the non- perishables (of which she had a lot).