STASIS: Part 3: Restart

by E. W. Osborne

As Cameron battled the bizarrely strong Rex, she crawled on her hands and knees to reach the woman. With bloodied fingers, she checked her pulse. Strong, but her respiration was a little raspy from the blood coming from an obviously broken jaw. Her eyes fluttered open and shut, her right hand searching the empty space for something.

  “Penny!”

  Hearing her childhood nickname pulled her attention like a trained dog. She snapped her head up and found Wesley pointing to the corner where the children huddled.

  The young girl was no longer screaming. She was staring directly at Joey, her expression now calm and serene. From this angle, she could see it was the face of all those catatonic patients she’d seen wheeled into her emergency room.

  She didn’t have much time to think. The mother would have to wait, there was nothing she could do help her while they were all in danger. In a split second decision, she decided the only thing she could do was to try to help the boy.

  Penelope stumbled over the writhing figure on the floor as she moved toward the children. “Come with me.” She reached a hand out to the boy who recoiled in horror. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  As if to answer, his eyes darted over her shoulder to where his grandfather and Cameron were struggling to kill one another.

  “Your sister is hurt. I’m a doctor, but you need to move out of the way.”

  That seemed to get through a little, enough for him to glance back to his now scarily silent sister. She blinked slowly, deliberately, as if she had to remind herself of the normally automatic process. Maybe he sensed something was wrong or perhaps he was moving to get a better look at her, but that one half-step backward was the difference between his life and death.

  The young girl’s face widened into a grotesque smile. Her teeth flashed, dead eyes focused on the boy in front of her. Like an animal, she lunged face-first toward him. Penelope shot out a hand and managed to grab a piece of his shirt. It was enough to pull him back before the young girl’s teeth could do much damage.

  “What the fuck!” The boy screamed in pain and surprise as his sister came away with a chunk of his left ear. She casually spit it to the floor, two trickles of blood running down her narrow chin.

  Penelope pushed herself between them, throwing herself into the melee. She trusted in the initial reports of the catatonic patients. They would stop only after killing someone. It didn’t leave her much choice. It was literally kill or be killed.

  She planted a hard kick against the girl’s chest and booted her back with everything she had. She stumbled and fell, sliding along the floor and coming to a halt at Joey’s feet. It bought her enough time to assess her surroundings.

  “Wesley! Take the boy, get him safe.”

  “No! My mom is…”

  For all his teenage years, his face looked like that of a small child. His mother was now still on the floor, but alive. Which means she’s still dangerous, too.

  Wesley didn’t try to convince the kid. He physically pulled him from the room and into the mouth of the dark hallway.

  The girl regained her footing. She glanced to the far end of the cabin where Cameron and Rex were still locked together, as if assessing the situation. Cameron’s grunts were growing louder, but he was winning, slowly but surely. The old man was proving hard to stop.

  With an eerie calmness, the girl shifted her focus from the fighting men back to Penelope. She tucked her bloodied chin closer to her chest and advanced. There was no malice in her gaze, nothing murderous. It made it even scarier.

  Penelope refused to pry her eyes off the girl as she advanced. She stepped backward, her heel slamming into the leg of one of the tables. With a free hand, she groped around the surface for anything that felt solid. Instead, she found the plastic handle of the soldering iron and held it in front of her like a knife.

  “Stop. You don’t want to do this.”

  The girl didn’t reply. She strafed to the right, strategically putting Penelope in a more awkward position with the table to her back. It was impossible to deal with the conflicting image of a pretty teenager aggressively stalking her prey. It was surreal, like something out of a horror movie. Yet, Penelope knew one wrong move and that girl would kill her in a flash. She kept talking, not thinking it would do any good, but it made her feel better.

  “I know something inside of you is making you do this. It’s not you. I don’t blame you.”

  The girl slowly blinked and crouched lower. She had circled half way around by now. Penelope didn’t dare tear her eyes from the girl, but could see peripherally her husband watching.

  “I want to make you better. I’m a doctor and—” Her words cut short as she tripped over her own feet. As the floor rushed up to meet her, she had enough time to curse her own clumsiness. It was a matter of luck that she landed close to the edge of the table. It gave her just enough protection to roll under for safety.

  In a flash, the girl was on her. With long fingernails, she dug into Penelope’s bare legs, clawing for purchase as she tried to pull her into the open. She kicked and thrashed, pulling the leg of the table along with her. The girl was superhumanly strong.

  She twisted around to her back, momentarily loosening the girl’s grip. She sat up before she could pull at her again, and buried the dull end of the soldering iron into the top of her hand. The girl pulled it away but didn’t yelp in pain. For a split second, she cradled the injured hand and re-evaluated her attack.

  “Please don’t do this,” Penelope said over and over.

  A heavy thump shook the wooden floor of the cabin. A moment later, Cameron called out her name, his voice breathless and panicked. Penelope didn’t have a chance to respond before the girl was on her once more.

  Instinct took over, covering whatever horror she had left at the idea of killing a child no older than ten. As the girl flung herself to the floor, her fingers outstretched like claws, Penelope thrust the soldering iron upward. The momentum and weight of the girl’s body fell fully on the dull tip. She had to look away as the metal and much of the plastic handle disappeared into the soft entrance of her eye socket. With a strong kick, she pushed the thrashing body away from her. The slippery handle slid from her hand. The girl’s legs and hands twitched as she seized on the floor.

  Penelope launched herself back with another kick as heavy footsteps pounded up from behind. “It’s me. It’s me,” Cameron breathed. He grabbed her shoulders, crouching just behind her back. She couldn’t tell if he was holding her back or comforting her. “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head without thinking. The pulsing silence in the house was ominous. There was no noise coming from the back of the house. Could the boy have overpowered Wesley?

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  She blinked a few times, giving herself an internal scan. If she was injured, the adrenaline was masking any pain. She looked Cameron over, startled to see how bloodied and scratched he was. “Are you okay?”

  He grunted and held out his hand. The last three digits on his left hand were crumbled and bent. “These’ll need setting. The guy was so—”

  “Strong, yeah. So was she.” The last word stuck in her throat. Her stomach threatened to unload on the floor. With closed eyes and a couple deep breaths, she controlled the wave of nausea.

  “If you’re okay, I’m gonna go check on…”

  “Yeah, yeah. Go.”

  Penelope thought to check on the unconscious woman behind her, but felt pulled elsewhere.

  On her hands and knees, she crawled to the feet of the man she once thought was her soulmate. The father of her child. Her husband. “What did you do? What did you do!”

  His head moved down toward her, eyes following slowly behind. They were empty, emotionless husks of the eyes she once gazed into lovingly.

  “Joey?”

  It could’ve been the unfamiliar void, but his look felt different somehow. The girl had turned into an organic killing machine of sorts. Even when she’d plunged the soldering iron into her eye, t
he girl died with no emotion. She hadn’t begged for mercy or cried out for her mother. But there was an intelligence behind Joey’s blank look, as if he were deliberately remaining passive.

  She grabbed his still restrained hands and squeezed painfully tight. “Joey!”

  The world went dim. Every faint noise sounded as if it were traveling down a long tunnel to get to her. Cameron was at her side again, gently moving her away from her husband. She didn’t resist. With her head hung low, she concentrated on taking long, deep breaths. The last thing she needed was to faint.

  Once her head stopped swimming, she watched Cameron examine her still husband. He listened to his breathing, his heart, checked his pupils. He asked him to follow the tip of a pen as he moved it left and right, up and down. But Joey’s persistent stare bore into Cameron’s eyes, unwilling to comply.

  Cameron straightened, held the pen between his thumb and forefinger, and let go. Without any change in expression or shift in gaze, Joey’s left hand flew open and caught it before it fell to the floor. Cam grunted as if satisfied with an answer.

  “Well?”

  Careful to keep his hands away from the reach of Joey’s mouth, Cameron placed the headphones over his ears. He seemed to debate with himself for a moment, but reached for the pillowcase and pulled it over his head.

  Penelope pressed her hand to her mouth, cradling herself, grief-stricken. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Even though he couldn’t hear or see, Cameron still pulled her to the other side of the room. “Pen…”

  All it took was one word, not even a word, a nickname. Penelope wanted to rage against his polite bedside manner, that tone she’d heard him take with the friends and family of the fatally injured. “He could be in shock,” she protested.

  “I think you need to prepare yourself for the worst case here.”

  She scoffed and gestured around the room, blood and destroyed equipment strewn around. “Oh, yeah? Worse than this?”

  With a steady, calm voice, he reiterated. “You need to get yourself in the right headspace, Pen. If he’s a danger to us—”

  “What? What then? What are you saying?”

  A simple flair of his nostrils was the only answer she got. Intellectually, she understood, but her heart balked at the idea of even considering that route.

  She slammed her arms across her chest and turned away from him. Yet, she realized she didn’t want to go near her husband either. She was too afraid.

  “We don’t know what we don’t know yet. Maybe this was different, temporary. Maybe we can bring him back…”

  Hours later, the three survivors collected outside in the Conrad’s car.

  Penelope leaned against her knees, wringing her hands. She kept playing the scene over in her head, wondering what she could’ve done differently. Two people dead, one probably on the way, and a traumatized boy they were now responsible for. She barely noticed she was doing it until Cameron rested his palm on them, stilling her movement.

  “I know you didn’t want to tie up the boy, but—”

  She snorted sarcastically. “I never thought I’d say this, but restraining an innocent, teenage boy isn’t what’s bothering me most right now.”

  The three of them shared a quiet bond that can only be forged in battle or trauma. Their’s was a graceful conversation of dark humor, silence, and processing. The mournful distant cry of an ambulance echoed through the forest. She’d lost count of how many she’d heard over the past few hours. It was strangely comforting to know there were still emergency responders out there working hard to set wrongs right.

  “She needs a hospital. There isn’t a lot more we can do for her here,” Penelope said.

  “We can’t chance it.”

  “I know. I just had to say it,” she sighed. “Again.” The car rocked as she slammed back against the seat. “I hate feeling so useless. We should find the closest hospital and go help.”

  Cameron gave her a look that pleaded for her to stop with that line of thought. He turned to the front of the car. “Get through yet?”

  Wesley shook his head, nose buried in the circuitry of Mr. Conrad’s cuff. He had tapped into the battery of the car, hoping to boost the signal, but even with that, they still couldn’t get through. All communications were down, either through terrorism or overloading. She hadn’t been able to get online since before the attacks. It felt as though a limb had been removed, a part she didn’t realize she depended on so much until she continuously tried to use it. All the times she had a world of information at her fingertips and she didn’t need it…

  “Can we turn on the radio at least?”

  “We need to talk about what we’re going to do next. If comms are down, power might be next. We don’t have a lot of food in there and I doubt their generator is…”

  Penelope gave him a weary look. “And to do that, we need to know what’s going on out there.”

  He shifted his ass back in the seat. “It’ll be the same message we’ve heard a dozen times already.” She leveled another look at him and he caved. “Fine. But only because you asked so nicely.”

  Cameron flicked on the car radio, catching the tail end of the announcement. The sound of the emergency signals still made her stomach clench. They somehow made the whole situation real. Not the blood under her fingernails. Not the bodies she helped Cameron move into the back shed. Those harsh, grating tones rang out the horrible truth.

  This wasn’t just happening to them. It wasn’t a fluke of Wesley’s electronic experiments or a punishment sent through her husband. This was another attack.

  “This is a message from the emergency broadcast system. A state of emergency has been declared in the following areas.”

  Cameron laughed as the automated message rattled off every nearby county. “It’d be quicker for them to just say that we’re all fucked.”

  The warning message continued after finishing the litany of fucked counties. “Due to terrorist activity in your area, officials have recommended all listeners shelter in place until further notice. As a precaution, each individual is further encouraged to arm themselves with any available weaponry. The nature of these attacks has yet to be determined but are ongoing. As a final protection, the collection several days’ worth of potable water and food is advised.”

  “I have a tone!” Wesley cried, shouting over the announcement. “It’s faint, but it’s there!”

  Penelope fell to her knees of the floor of the car. She stretched her hands out to the remnants of the cuff, unsure of where to hold it. “Please. I need to call Joey’s parents, make sure my baby girl is safe.”

  The old man pressed his thin lips together. “I’ve had to connect it all through the vehicle. The metal acts as a—”

  “Okay, fine. Just please let me call…”

  He nodded, turning toward the control dash. “What’s the number?”

  Penelope felt faint as she rattled off the number from memory. She’d been so focused on getting the damn call through, she hadn’t stopped to think about what could be waiting for her on the other end. Cameron’s strong hand gripped her shoulder as the call rang through the speakers. It crackled and broke off, but remained connected. By the fifth ring, she thought her heart might burst from her chest.

  The ringing stopped. They looked at each other, wondering if the call had been dropped. A faint voice, timid and unsure, crackled through the car. “Hello?”

  Wesley frantically handed her an exposed part of the cuff. She shouted into it, unsure where the microphone was buried. “Jackie? Jackie! It’s me!”

  “Penelope? Is that—”

  “It’s me! Is Anna okay? Are you all—” Her throat closed shut on its own, choking her words. Luckily to her mother-in-law, it only sounded like the call dropping.

  Her voice wavered in and out, as if moving around a vast, empty room. “We’re safe. Anna’s safe. Marty! The kids are on the phone! They’re—what about Joey?” she asked.

  Penelope met Wesley’s ey
es, searching for strength. There was no point in telling his mother everything that’d happened, no sense in worrying her. She still held out hope that they’d be able to save him somehow.

  “We’re okay. Nothing has happened to us here. Me and Joey are safe.”

  “Oh, thank God,” she cried. Penelope could hear her husband Martin ask a question in the background. Jackie repeated it. “When can you get back to us?”

  “I don’t know. We’re safe, but the reports keep telling us to stay put. I’ve been trying to call for the last…”

  Her voice seized up again. It was like she’d managed to keep it held together long enough to find out her baby was okay. Now the flood of emotions flowing through her were nearly impossible to stop. She knew she had to end the call before she worried Joey’s parents.

  She cleared her throat and squeezed her eyes shut. “Listen, Jackie. I have to—”

  “Is everyone at the hospital okay? We’ve been praying for them, and you if you have to go in.”

  “I’m not sure. Jackie. I really need to go. I haven’t called my family yet, so…”

  “Of course! Call us back when you can. It’s so good to know you’re both okay.” In the rush of the situation, Joey’s mom forgot they were the only family Penelope had. She had no caring mother or father praying for her safety.

  “I’ll try to call back soon!”

  “Wait! Do you think we could talk to Joey real quick before you go?”

  Penelope pressed the heel of her hand to her nose, fighting with everything she had in her to keep from bawling. A choked cry came from her throat, foreign to her own ears. “Jackie, I’m not sure if…”

  The white noise of the live speakers died. Her eyes fluttered open, swimming with tears, and found Wesley. His finger dropped from the dash of the car. He shrugged as if embarrassed by the small act of compassion.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She allowed herself to give into the tears that had been building for days. As the silent sobs slowed and her vision cleared, she stared out into the forest where life carried on as normal. Bugs and birds flitted from the trees. Somewhere deep and safe, the mountain lions and bears were snoozing through the worst of the heat. If it was a choice between dying at the hands of a person or the claws of an animal, she knew which one she’d pick.