by Mark Tufo
“Nonsense,” Sheila replied. “Now, take a seat and let me see what I can pull together for you.”
“Oh, you don’t need to bother. You have the girls to feed.”
“Hush,” Sheila said. “I would never be able to sleep at night knowing you’re going hungry across the street. Girls, how about you visit with our guest, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
As Sheila headed to the kitchen, she heard Tasha’s sigh before the girl exclaimed, “It’s so nice to see you, Mrs. Rasmussen.”
Inside the kitchen, Sheila slumped. She nibbled her lip as she stared into her pantry. A half-empty box of spaghetti, a can of green beans, a can of peaches, peanut butter, and a bag of rice and a couple cups of flour was all that sat on the shelves. The way it was, Sheila was scrounging to get by until Friday. She had nothing to spare. Ire rose like bile in her throat at Kelli’s poor planning.
Before she let anger and self-pity make war in her chest, Sheila filled a baggie with rice, grabbed the can of green beans—since the girls hated them anyway—and marched the food out of the kitchen. She presented her gift to Kelli…who eyed the food as though it could be contaminated. Her neighbor accepted the offering with a patronizing smile. “Well, bless your heart. You’ve brought me beans and—?”
“Rice,” Sheila finished, growing impatient. “I know it’s not much, but if you don’t want them—”
Kelli snapped the food to her chest. “I want it. Thank you. I mean it.” Kelli batted her eyes. “It’s just that I remember you had a lovely wine cellar the last time I was here. I thought maybe you’d have one or two bottles to spare.”
Sheila glanced up at the ceiling. I will not kill her. I will not kill her. When she spoke, she enunciated every word. “We’re in the middle of an epidemic, Kelli. This is not a garden party. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t mean to step on your toes. Look at the time; I’d better get going,” Kelli said in a rush as she hustled to the door. “Thank you, Shelly. Much appreciated.”
Sheila watched as Kelli crossed the street and disappeared inside her house, only to reemerge seconds later. Sheila shook her head as she watched Kelli stroll down the sidewalk, stopping at the next neighbor’s house. “That woman is a darned fool.” When she turned around, she found both girls raptly watching her.
“I don’t like Mrs. Rasmussen, either,” Tasha said. “She’s not very nice to us.”
“I know, sweeties. She doesn’t always show the best manners around people,” she said, instead of saying she’s a spoiled brat as she really wanted to.
“I’m glad you didn’t give her the peaches,” Jenny said.
Sheila put her hands on her hips, pretending affront. “Jenny Lynn Horn, don’t you think for a second that I’ve forgotten that peaches are your favorite fruit in the whole wide world. I’d never give away our peaches. In fact, how does peaches for breakfast sound?”
Jenny beamed. “Sounds yummy.”
Sheila took a seat in between her daughters and wrapped her arms around them. After a lengthy pause, she spoke. “Things will get better. Just you wait and see.”
If only Sheila could convince herself of the lie she just told.
Being cut off from the rest of humanity did strange things to a mind, and she found herself in a constant battle against worst-case scenario paranoia. She had to remind herself that home was the safest place to be. More importantly, home would be the place Parker would come first to find them.
Assuming he was still alive.
— 3 —
A scream shattered Sheila’s dreams. She tumbled out of bed and leapt to the window. She could’ve sworn the yell had happened right outside her house, yet she saw nothing in her yard or on the street. Nights were darker without electricity, and it was more difficult to differentiate shrubs from things that were far more dangerous. Trees created eerie, dancing shadows in the moonlit breeze.
Movement near Kelli’s house caught her eye, and she snapped away from the window. Terrified she’d been seen, she stood frozen behind the curtain for a long moment. It wasn’t until long after her heartbeat slowed that she looked back outside. No monsters, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Relief filled her.
She squinted at where she’d sworn she’d seen movement at Kelli’s house, but knew her eyes had been playing tricks on her. They were safe here. The infected couldn’t get past the perimeters. After all, Alic McGregor’s flyers promised that the sirens would sound if the base were breached.
She turned to find a shadow standing in her doorway. She shrieked and grabbed her chest. When the shape morphed into a lanky, five-foot-tall person, she relaxed and leaned on her mattress. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus, Tasha, you scared me half to death.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Tasha said. “I thought I heard something.”
Sheila hugged her daughter. “It was nothing. How about you head on back to bed?”
“But, what if someone sick got on the base?”
Sheila mustered confidence she didn’t have. “They can’t, sweetie. Soldiers like Daddy won’t let them come through.”
Tasha’s eyes widened. “You mean Dad’s out there with all the sickies?”
Sheila winced. “You know his missions are always secret, but I’m sure he’s far away from the sickies.”
“How can you be sure?”
Sheila rubbed her daughter’s back. “Because he left before people started getting sick, so his mission must be for something else. You have to have faith. Daddy is the very best at what he does. I know he’ll come home safe and sound as soon as he can.”
“But, what if he doesn’t?”
Sheila cocked her head. “Didn’t he promise you he’d come back home?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And has he ever broken a promise?”
“No.”
“There you have it.” Sheila’s voice softened. “I know it’s hard, but try not to worry. Daddy will be home before you know it, and everything will be just fine. My guess is that he has to stay away until the sick people are all gone and it’s safe for him to come home.”
Tasha sniffled. “I miss him, Mom.”
She hugged her daughter. “I do, too, sweetie. I do, too.”
A round of automatic gunfire sounded, and its proximity was unmistakable.
“Mom, that sounded really close,” Tasha exclaimed.
Sheila released her daughter and peered outside. “Yes, it did,” she murmured as she closed and locked the window. She strode over to her dresser and rummaged through her underwear drawer until she found the black lockbox. She punched in a four-digit code, and the box unlocked with an audible click. She pulled out the Glock 19.
“Whoa. I didn’t know you had a gun.”
“I’ve had one for a while,” Sheila spoke as she slid rounds into the empty mag. She’d never loaded her gun in the dark before. In fact, she hadn’t loaded her gun in well over a year. Her husband’s best friend, Reed, had taken her to the gun store to buy the pistol after she tried to convince Parker she needed a gun.
“Does Dad know?”
Sheila smirked. “He knows.”
Parker had been adamant that a gun would serve Sheila no good if she didn’t go out and practice regularly. She had practiced a bit for the first year. Then, her trips to the range became less and less frequent until she stopped going altogether. Though, she told Parker she still practiced.
He never seemed to understand that she’d bought the gun to have, not to use.
After she bought it, he told her he didn’t think she could pull the trigger against another person. She vocally disagreed with him at the time, but deep down, she knew he was right. Not that she’d ever admit that to him. Lately, she was becoming more and more afraid she may have to use the gun. Still, she slept better at night knowing she had a powerful weapon to protect herself and her girls.
“Tasha dear, I need you to go to Jenny’s room and stay with her while I look around. Okay?”
“I can come with you.”
“No.” She shoved the mag into place, swept back the slide, and turned to Tasha. “I’m just going to check all the windows and doors. I’d feel much better knowing that you’re looking after your younger sister. Okay?”
Tasha nodded, the small movement nearly imperceptible in the darkness.
As her older daughter padded off to Jenny’s room, Sheila held the gun to her chest, closed her eyes, and prayed. After taking a deep breath, she went to Jenny’s room. Inside, Tasha sat on a beanbag chair, while Jenny breathed slowly and deeply like a girl in a sound slumber. Sheila and Parker had often joked that a freight train could run through the house, and Jenny would sleep right through it. Sheila wasn’t sure about a freight train, but automatic high-caliber gunfire nearby clearly wasn’t enough to wake the little girl.
She shut and locked the bedroom window and closed the blinds, shrouding the room in blackness. The only light now came from the hallway, where moonlight crept in through other windows. She caught a glimpse of Tasha’s silhouette as the girl bolted from the room.
“Tasha! Get back here!” she whispered and stomped to follow. The pair collided in the doorway, and Sheila had to grab her daughter to keep from knocking her down.
Tasha held up a well-worn doll—a baby made of cloth and stuffing, whose soft black curls had morphed through eight years of Tasha’s cherishing into a horrible case of bedhead. “I was just grabbing Blinky. That’s all.” She nestled into Jenny’s beanbag chair again, this time hugging her doll.
Sheila whispered, “You need to stay in here. I’m going to close the door. If Jenny wakes, the dark will scare her. Don’t let her use a flashlight. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve had a look around.”
“Okay, Mom,” Tasha got out through a yawn.
Sheila closed the bedroom door behind her with a gentle click, then moved into fast action, shutting and locking every window and closing all the blinds. It was late April, and hints of summer had saturated the house with humid, warm air. She didn’t look forward to having the windows closed.
Confident the house was secure, she set the gun down, poured herself a glass of water, and leaned against the kitchen counter, gazing out at her back lawn that was in desperate need of a mow. Her small backyard was enclosed in a wood privacy fence, and had always been her private oasis. The girls’ swing set beckoned for play, and her hammock swung lazily in the breeze. She yearned for the long afternoons she’d spent reading books while the girls played outside.
She let out a wistful sigh. “Parker Horn, I sure could use you around here right about now,” she said to herself before taking a long drink.
A shout outside caused her to splash water on her pajamas. She jerked around and searched in the direction of the sound. She slapped the glass down, grabbed the gun, and rushed to the living room windows to find two men running down the middle of the street. At first she thought they were running together, until the second man howled and tackled the first. Her eyes widened as the pair wrestled in a battle of life and death.
Chills flitted across her skin as she regarded the gun in her hand. After a furtive glance back down the hallway where her daughters slept, she made up her mind. She wiped sweat from her face and forced herself to take the few short steps to the front door. She looked through the peephole one more time before unlocking the deadbolt.
Sheila found herself fumbling with the handle, her nerves making her fidgety. Every cell in her body screamed at her to run into the girls’ bedroom and cower. Her daughters needed her to protect them.
The man outside also needed her.
She swallowed and pressed the front door open with the barrel of the gun.
One of the soldiers climbed to his feet. He stood, as though searching for something. In the moonlight, she noticed the patch on the shoulder of his ACUs.
Her lips parted. “Parker?”
The man spun around to face her.
She gasped. He growled.
Blood dripped from his mouth, not that his mouth appeared human in any way. What she’d mistaken to be Parker’s tight haircut was a bald head covered in dark blotches. His eyes glistened in the moonlight—yellow slits that made her imagine a cobra about to strike.
Which he did.
He—more of an it, really—screamed before it dove at her and closed the distance in inhumanly fast strides that resembled more of a leopard’s leap than a two-legged sprint.
She fired without thinking. The gun bucked in her hand with every shot, but she hit the infected at least once, and it tumbled to the ground.
Someone gasped behind her, and Sheila spun around to find Tasha staring wide-eyed at the infected Sheila had just shot.
“Get back to Jenny’s room and lock the door!”
Her daughter didn’t move. Instead, her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Sheila turned.
The infected soldier grunted as it pushed itself from the ground. Its gaze moved to Tasha, and it seemed to smile, as though mocking them. A sadistic snarl came from that O-shaped mouth the instant before it pounced.
“No!” Sheila shoved Tasha inside and yanked the door shut, barely closing it before the infected slammed into it. Wood cracked. She braced herself against the door to hold it. “Run!”
Tasha took off at a sprint down the hallway just before the infected hit the door again. Automatic gunfire blasted Sheila’s ears, and she flung herself to the floor, covering her head.
When the gunfire ended, a loud ringing in Sheila’s ears remained. The world around her was muted, yet her senses somehow seemed heightened. The floor was cool on her bare skin, yet it felt like a raft holding her afloat on a rough sea. She smelled gun smoke and something else—a sour tang of blood and rot. She looked up to see bullet holes riddling her front door. She jumped to her feet and checked herself for wounds and sobbed in relief to find nothing.
“Mom? What’s going on?” Tasha yelled out.
“Stay there! I’ll be right there as soon as I know it’s safe!”
Her door opened, and she swung around to shoot.
“Whoa!” A soldier yanked her gun from of her hand, nearly knocking her down. They stood there a moment—she shivered while he watched her. She couldn’t make out his features. He wore NVGs—night vision goggles—just like the ones Parker had let her try on before, so she knew he could see her better than she could see him.
“Did it touch you?” he asked.
Calm English sounded incompatible with the gruesome chaos she just bore witness to, and it took her a moment before the words unjumbled in her mind. She shook her head. “No.”
“Ah, hell,” another voice called out from behind him. “It got Singh.”
Sheila peered over the soldier’s shoulder to see several other men—all wearing NVGs—encircling the fallen man. She watched as a soldier lifted his rifle, aimed at the man on the ground, and fired a single shot, the muzzle flash lighting up like a single, angry firefly.
“You need to stay inside,” the soldier standing before her said.
She looked up at him. Fear rose in her gut. She mentally willed her hands to stop shaking, to no avail. “How many are inside the base?”
The NVGs hid any expression. “Don’t worry. We have things under control.”
She motioned to the dead soldier in the street. “You call that under control?”
“Listen, lady,” he snapped. “We’re having a rough go at it, but don’t bet against us yet. We’re going to whip those things.”
“I know,” she stammered before lifting her chin. “Tell me what I can do.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then sighed. He handed her gun to her. “The best thing you can do is stay inside.”
She reluctantly claimed the gun.
He continued. “Your first instinct should be to stay quiet and stay hidden. If you find yourself cornered, then shoot. Go for the head, the heart, anything that would stop someone fast. The key is to kill them before they can heal.” He nodded t
o her house. “When’s your husband get home?”
She shook her head. “He’s off base.”
After a long pause, he spoke. “I’ll tell you what, my house is just a couple of blocks west of here. I’ll stop by when I can. Okay?”
“Okay,” she quietly said, before adding, “I’d like that.”
“It’s settled then.” He held out his hand. “Private Nicholas Vadreen at your service.”
She took his hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Private Vadreen. I’m Sheila Horn.”
A Humvee zoomed down the street with its lights off. It cranked to a stop near the bodies, and the troops began to pile into it. Vadreen nodded to the window. “You’d better get inside. Stay quiet and don’t be seen, got it?”
Sheila nodded. Before heading inside, she turned. “Oh, and Private?”
He turned.
“Thank you.”
She headed inside and locked the door. Tonight, she’d console her daughters. Tomorrow, they’d prepare to fight.
— 4 —
In the morning, the Horn family ate the bland flatbread Sheila had concocted out of flour, water, and salt, and grilled on the small camping stove she’d found in the basement. The girls dutifully ate their breakfast, dipping the warm bread first in oil and then in sugar and cinnamon.
Sheila skipped the sugar for her own bread because she knew that once the small bowl was empty, there would be no more. Instead, she added sprinkles of cayenne pepper, which helped to make the barely edible cardboard more palatable.
Outside, gunfire had become a constant backdrop, like an album of percussionist music stuck on repeat. The noise jabbed at their nerves, and Sheila often noticed her girls flinching at loud explosions, or gunfire that was far too close to home.
A large Army vehicle rattled the windows as it drove by. Sheila had gotten quite good at discerning the sounds of various engines. Most that passed her house were personal vehicles—soldiers reporting to duty and later returning home—and she suspected a few were fleeing the front lines to be with their families. Over the past couple of days, she noticed fewer and fewer vehicles drove by. They’re just working longer CQs… I hope.
