Anna screamed. The Hatter screamed. His little bones cracked and his skin tore as her Daddy's big jaws crunched closed, then he yanked back and pulled the Hatter apart. Blood spattered everywhere, lit by the eerie white light from his eyes. Blood hit the carpet like gentle rain, and the Hatter's little body crumpled in her father's hands, becoming a lump and not a dog.
Anna screamed.
Her Daddy chewed and the sound was horrible. Bits of skin and bone crunched and sheared in his grinding mouth. Stringy lines stretched from his lips to the torn lump in his hands.
The Hatter went silent and became just a ball of glinting black in her father's hands. The horrible bite-shaped hole in his back now defined him. His little spine poked up through the edges like stalks sprung off a snapped sapling twig.
Anna screamed. Her Daddy kept on chewing: grind crunch pop, turning the little puppy to bits. Tears filled her eyes and her jaw ached but he didn't even look at her. He swallowed then went in for another bite.
Anna ran at him and hit him in the belly and the leg.
"Stop it!" she cried. He didn't stop. She hit him and shouted until her fists hurt and her voice went hoarse.
"Stop it stop it stop it!"
He chewed on, biting at the bits left in his hands. The Hatter's hot blood splashed through his hands and onto her face. It poured down his pajamas in a dark trail, making the carpet sludgy. Soon the Hatter was all gone.
She staggered back. Her father's scraggly beard was smeared with blood and fur, like chunky chocolate ice cream.
"Daddy what have you done?"
In the hallway she noticed the crashing below was still going on. Sobs jerked up her throat like hiccups, like her Daddy was squeezing them out. In the doorway to her room she realized he was following.
She shouted and slammed the door shut. He thumped against it a second later but the handle didn't turn and the door didn't budge. His thumping joined with the thumping from below.
Anna pulled the side-table in front of the door. She climbed back into bed. She tucked her arms and legs into the tight covers and snuggled down low under them, like she was tiny Alice in a giant's pocket again. She pulled the pillows after her and wrapped them round her head.
The thudding diminished. She caught her sobbing and stopped. Soon enough sleep found her.
She dreamed she sailed upon an ocean.
The ocean was vast and made of people. They flowed upon each other smoothly, each a gray speck of water just like all the others. Anna sailed atop them with her bed as a boat, using the sheets and blankets as sails, wearing a blue and white petticoat like Alice.
"Ahoy there!" she called to the bodies below.
They carried her forward. She used the footboard as a tiller. Occasionally flapping birdwomen flew overhead, and she waved. She fished in the ocean of gray wriggling bodies, and came up with bright red chunks of tongue. They flapped at her like fish but said nothing.
The tides carried her for thousands of miles. The water-people lapped against her bed with low thuds. She stood at the prow looking to the horizon where her Daddy was waiting for her, a giant man sitting on a giant stool in the middle of the ocean.
"Darling Alice," he would say when she finally reached him, "why have you come so far?"
"I'm searching," was the answer she always gave, "am I home yet?"
He'd smile. "What is home, little Alice, but threads and cobbles, bits of old lint plucked from your pocket? Build it up, child, build it up."
Then she'd lie down at his feet and pluck old lint from her pockets, and he'd sing a song with words that were probably about sailing and comas, but she never could tell.
It was a dream she'd had many times. But when she reached the stool-island this time, things were different. Her giant Daddy was standing not sitting, and his eyes shone like lighthouse beams, projecting a strange white light over the ocean and into the murky clouds. He didn't look down when she spoke to him.
"What are you looking for Daddy?" she asked.
"The Jabberwock," he said in a deep and dreadful voice.
This confused Anna, but confusion didn't last long within a dream.
"What can you mean? The Jabberwock's not even a real thing."
"But it is," he said, "and darling it's so terribly cold."
He bent his burning white eyes down to her, and she was lost within the light.
She woke lost within the light.
It was bright in her room for the first time since the hurt. She wormed out of the covers like a birdwoman coming up from her feather chrysalis. The black velvet curtains on the window were still pulled open and bright light flowed in. It lit her art spread around the walls: crayon drawings of unicorns and caterpillar-men and Alice. Normally even glimpsing all these colors brought the hurt on hard.
Now it didn't. Anna lifted her head and ran her eyes over the collection again, but still felt nothing.
That was quite peculiar.
"Daddy?" she called.
No answer came.
She sat up in bed and saw her arm. It gave her quite a shock. There was a thin line of crusted black running down it, like a scab, which meant…
She strangled a scream in her throat. Screams and shouts brought the hurt on harder. Instead she followed the scab-trail with wide eyes. It could be anything. It could be paint or ice cream or even old strawberry jam.
"Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today," she whispered to herself, but the words were not very convincing or reassuring. It wasn't jam.
"Daddy?" she called again. Her voice sounded louder than usual. The temptation to duck her head back under the covers was strong, but she pushed it away. Alice wouldn't do that and neither would Anna.
She pulled herself out of the sheets and climbed from bed carefully, wary of the hurt. There were dark brownish-red footprints on the gray carpet. Standing by the bedside she lifted her right foot and looked at its sole.
Dark brownish-red.
She gulped and went to the door. The handle turned with difficulty, like it had been wedged in position. The door swung inward.
Her Daddy was right there lying on the floor.
Anna leapt back. For a terrible moment she expected him to lunge up and bite her like he'd bitten into the Hatter, but he didn't. Instead he lay still with his eyes closed and his lips pressed to the golden strip running along the threshold, sleeping soundly.
He hardly even looked like her Daddy anymore. His skin had gone an even whiter gray and his scraggly beard was solid with black, like he'd been scarfing down chocolate syrup. His black pajamas were crusty and dark too.
And he wasn't alone.
She closed the door quickly, but the afterimage turned in her fuzzy head like a spinning coin.
The dim corridor beyond him had been filled with sleeping bodies. There were so many, heaped on top of each other like the Queen's card-men fallen after battle. Arms lay across faces and legs lay across bellies, and all of them had white-gray faces and white-gray skin, and none of them were supposed to be there at all.
Anna closed her eyes tightly shut. This was enough to bring the hurt on for days, just like one of the impossible things from her stories, but somehow the hurt wasn't there.
She opened her eyes a crack: no change. She went to the window and pulled the curtains further open. Hundreds of gray-faced people were out there too, lying in the street and the front yards. She opened the window and heard their raspy breathing, rising and falling like a tide lapping at the beach.
"What are you all doing?" she murmured.
She went back to the door and knelt down. Her legs responded a little better than in the night, but they were sore. Standing and moving was getting easier. She leaned in close to the golden strip.
"Daddy?" she whispered through the gap under the door. He didn't respond. He didn't get up and start hammering on the door. He just breathed like the rest of them. She pressed her cheek to the carpet and felt his breath puff beneath the door.
"Daddy,
what's happening? Why are you sleeping there?"
He didn't answer.
She got up and opened the door a crack. He looked the same. She poked his cheek quickly with her toe, but he wasn't play-acting. He was really asleep. They were all really sleeping.
She squatted by his side, trying to calm her thumping heart.
"Are you full, Daddy?" she asked. "Is that it? You're not hungry anymore?"
Nothing. She looked over the others. They definitely didn't belong.
"It's not a sleepover here, you know," she said firmly. "It's time for you to go home."
They didn't budge. She stepped over her father and bent down to prod the pudgy gray face of an old lady.
"You, why are you in my house?"
The old lady rasped breathily back at her. Her breath smelled like dead fish.
Anna pinched her nose. "It's no good being like that. It's a simple question."
The old lady breathed out again.
"You can go now or I'll call the police."
No response.
She wasn't really sure how to call the police, though it did seem a good idea. For that she'd need a phone, and a phone meant…
They were blocking the hall with their bodies. She imagined picking her way through them, like a maze. Alice would do it.
"I'll be right back," she whispered to her sleeping father, then started tip-toeing away. There weren't many spaces left uncovered by bodies, but she placed her feet very deliberately and held to the banister, making a kind of game of it. At one point she walked on an old man's wobbly bald head, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Terribly sorry," she whispered, "though you shouldn't be sleeping there anyway."
She reached her Daddy's room and went in.
There were no people inside, it was empty, except for the black patch where the Hatter had died. It looked like a deep yolk-stain. It wasn't jam from a great big sandwich or anything like that. It was definitely the Hatter. She cried a little, then rubbed her eyes. It probably wasn't safe to cry. When Alice cried the house filled up with tears.
"Tears are better than gray people," she whispered to herself, and that got her back on an even keel again, because neither tears nor gray people were very good at all.
Her Daddy's phone was on the nightstand. She worked her way around the Hatter's circle and stood by the little table. Also there was his wallet, phone and keys, alongside some coins, a blue crayon and a small clay figure of Alice that she'd made for him.
She picked up the phone. She hadn't ever made a call on it, though her Daddy had showed her some of the apps, most recently the one for tracking the Hatter's chip. She twisted her tongue between her teeth and jiggled at various little pictures, trying to find the phone app to dial the police, but she couldn't find it. She didn't even know the number anyway.
It didn't matter. She tucked the phone into the pocket of her pajamas, then on second thoughts added the other bits. All that weight made her elastic waistband sag so she held it up with one hand.
What next?
Breakfast seemed like a good idea. Impossible things then breakfast, that was the normal order of things.
But not in pajamas.
She worked her way back down the hall, half-stepping on faces and shoulders and bottoms.
"Do excuse me," she said to each one, talking like Alice in very proper English, "I do beg your pardon."
It was funny. It became almost a game. In her room she opened her cupboard, dug out an old pair of jeans and pulled them on over her pajamas. The waist was tight but the arms and legs were very loose, because she'd gotten so thin. At least the waist helped hold her heavy pajama pockets up. She also slid into a bright orange jacket plus pink shoes that were too small for her feet.
Next she picked her way down the stairs, trying not to step on faces. In the ground floor hall the ceiling was high and light, with with walls and a black and white mosaic floor. There were photographs hanging of Anna, her Daddy and her mother, like strange hints from a secret history. She hadn't been downstairs for a long time.
Bodies lay here too, though they thinned out as she headed toward the kitchen.
The floor was shiny stone and there were glossy cupboards set below a gray counter. She scanned it for bananas and found them in a wire basket, alongside some apples and a big fat orange. She fetched a stool and got one.
"Peeling," she muttered, as she fiddled to open the top. It was tricky but eventually it peeled and she looked at it with squinty eyes. How to turn this into milkshake?
Smash?
She found a brown mug and put the banana in, broken in little pieces. Opening the fridge was easy. The milk carton was heavy but she poured some in, only spilling a little on the floor. Now the banana bits sat in the milk like poop in the toilet bowl. She laughed. Was it supposed to melt? She poked it. Flush? She picked up a fork and…
The house shook.
She toppled to her bottom. It hurt, but the house thumping and rattling was more important. She got up and hurried into the corridor, where all the gray people were now on their feet. Their eyes were open and shining, and most of them had their backs to her.
"Hey!" she shouted.
This time they didn't look at her. They were moving together again, down the corridor and out of the house. She laughed.
"That's right!" she called. "Out you go. Go home and go to bed without any breakfast. Go sleep on your own floor!"
They went and went. They came down the stairs in a thumping clattery line. They bounced off each other like silly gray worms.
"Careful," she warned them, when they pushed up against her Daddy's pictures on the walls. "Those are important." None of them listened. She danced a little closer and shoved a few of them on the bottoms, helping them on their way. It seemed so rude and fun, but they didn't mind.
"Hurry hurry," she urged, laughing.
They filed out. They kept coming.
"Daddy come see this!" she called up the stairs, but the stairs were almost empty by now, and a horrible thought came to her. She scanned the backs of the last few stragglers, and recognized one by the lightning bolt on his pajamas.
"Daddy!" she shouted.
He didn't turn. He kept on walking. Her Daddy walked clean out of the house, following his new friends and leaving Anna alone behind.
3. TIDES
She ran after him.
Down the hall she charged, bursting through the borderline between inside and outside at full speed. Bright light hit her eyes, and she pelted down the front path and out onto the street near blind, calling out to her Daddy. She hit the sidewalk on unsteady legs and plowed into the side of the flood of gray bodies at full speed.
She almost went under at once.
The flood drove her sideways and she was swept along, staggering for space in that dark and tramping flow. On all sides clammy bodies pressed and towered over her, stinking of dust and acid, and she ducked and staggered for footing as best she could. They stepped on her toes and kicked at her heels, their knees punched at her back and smacked her head, and it took all her meager strength to stay afloat and not get trampled down.
"Daddy!" she screamed, but the sound was swallowed up the tight press of shifting thighs and bellies. She looked up at faces desperately, trying to pick out his bloody chin from below, but there were just so many people.
She pushed against them wildly, ducking awkwardly between and around legs, but she was tiring fast. Her body wasn't ready for this. Her legs were trembling and her ankles barely held her weight.
"Let me out!" she shouted, but the people didn't listen. She could feel herself slipping under. They'd walk all over her and squash her to bits. They'd kill her like the Hatter.
She tried pulling with her arms as though she was swimming, past a fat bare-chested man and a woman with a gray baby hanging from a sling, past a little girl the same height as her and an old grandpa wobbling by, but the flood went on and on and she couldn't find the edge.
Then she did. Like
a skipped pebble she bounced into the middle of an island; a small oval of clear black road surrounded by the ocean of strangers. She dropped to her knees and panted while the flow continued on either side of her. Her arms and legs burned and her body throbbed from the needling of the ocean's waves. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. There were three cars resting at crazy angles behind her, stopped in the middle of the road like strange-shaped, colorful mushrooms, dividing the flow of bodies. Everyone else flowed around them.
Except for a few. There were at least four gray people moving against the flow and fighting to get through, with their white eyes were pointing right at her. In seconds they'd be on her.
She didn't want to find out if they were hungry. Maybe they hadn't had their Hatters for breakfast.
She heaved to her feet and made for the cars. One, a parked yellow taxi, had its door open and she threw herself inside, slamming the door shut behind.
Seconds later the gray people thumped against it, pressing their chests to the glass and hammering on the roof. Anna covered her ears as more followed, filling up the windows and hammering until they were so tightly pressed they couldn't hammer anymore. Their bodies blocked all the windows and only the white glow of their eyes lit the car's inside.
She looked at their faces, but none of them were her Daddy.
"Be tough," she muttered to herself. "Lint and cobbles, Anna."
She couldn't stay here. She had to get out and catch up to her Daddy.
She tried the door handle but it wouldn't open; too many gray people were clustered there. More of them pressed in as she clicked at the handle.
"Are you really so hungry?" she asked through the glass. It helped to hear her own voice. "I don't think there can be much meat on me at all. Not enough to fill you all up, anyway."
They jostled closer as she talked, rocking the car.
She stopped talking and investigated instead. The taxi had black seats that were hot to the touch, a dangly pair of pink dice hanging from the little mirror over the windshield, and bead mats over the seats. It smelled like raspberries. None of that helped.
Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost Page 2
