by Haga, A. H.
The stairs creaked, and I spun around. Shadia stood at the top of the stairs, resting one hand on the banister and looking at me.
“He ate them, didn’t he?” I asked, feeling something move in my throat.
Shadia nodded and came toward me. “He had no choice, habibi. He was starving. He did what he had to do to stay alive.”
“That’s why he turned.” I swallowed. “If he’d only eaten his food, I’m sure he would have been fine. Why couldn’t he just eat his regular food? It contains processed meat, doesn’t it? He wouldn’t have turned then, he …”
Shadia reached me and bent, wrapping her arms around me. “His food was in a cupboard with a lock on; there was no way he could get to it.”
I hiccupped and swallowed a sob. “It’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.”
All the feelings that had been buried under shock started flowing back, and I cried into Shadia’s shoulder, holding her as close as I could. If I let her go, I might drown in my own tears. Tears for Max and what he had to do to survive, and still he died. Tears for the world that had changed around us. Tears for my friends and family that were taken by the parasite; who died and turned and would eat me if they got the chance. Tears for us left alive in this world of the dead.
20
A scream cut through my sleep, and I tumbled out of bed and onto the floor before I’d even opened my eyes. The screaming stopped and was replaced by mumbling.
Looking around, I noticed that the open window showed a grey sky, and the air was fresh and cool.
“Shadia?” I asked, lifting myself into my wheelchair. She wasn’t on her side of the bed, so she must be on guard somewhere in the house. Was she the one screaming? No. Even in my sleep-groggy state, I would have recognized her voice. Wouldn’t I?
“Here,” Shadia answered from somewhere outside our room, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s going on?”
I rolled into André’s room but stopped in the doorway.
Shadia was sitting on the bed beside André, who was staring at her with big eyes and trying to push her away. He was too weak to be any threat, and Shadia held his arms to his chest trying to calm him down. André’s eyes jumped to me as I came through the door, and he tried to pull away from Shadia.
“It’s OK,” she said, using the voice she used when one of her pupils got hurt. “It’s just Kit, remember?” André looked at Shadia, then at me, then at her again. “And I’m Shadia. You saved us, right?”
He stopped mumbling and stared at her for a long moment. “On a truck,” he finally breathed.
“Yes. You helped us onto the roof and brought us to your safe house.”
André nodded before his eyes started jumping around the room. “Where are we?”
“You don’t remember?” I asked, rolling a little closer. He shook his head. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
He bit his lower lip and thought for a moment. Even in the dim light from the moon, I could see his eyes were glazed with fever. It looked like he was asleep when he wasn’t focusing on anything. “I was … taking care … of my subjects. Didn’t want to leave them to suffer after I left, you know.”
“The day before we left,” Shadia said, glancing at me before carefully letting André’s hands go. They stayed on his chest.
“Where are we?” he asked again.
“In a house. You got a fever, so we’ve stayed here for two days now,” Shadia answered, dragging her hands across her face to hide a yawn.
“Oh.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked when Shadia only looked at him.
André yawned before he answered. “Tired. Hungry. Warm.”
As if for the first time noticing that he was mostly naked, and lying under a sheet that was clinging to his sweaty body, he blushed.
“I’ll get you some food,” Shadia said. “If I can take your temp again, and you’ll take another Paracet.”
André nodded reluctantly.
I rolled back so I wouldn’t be in the way as Shadia found the thermometer and started writing things down in the logbook. When she was done, she watched as André swallowed two Paracet with half a mug of water, before she found another sheet and exchanged it for the clammy one.
As soon as she left, André waved for me to come closer. “Why are we here?” he whispered.
I blinked at him. “Didn’t you listen just now?”
“Listen to what?”
“Shadia just told you that you got sick, so we’re waiting here for you to get better.”
“Oh.” His eyes became even more glassy if that was possible. “Who’s Shadia?”
“The woman who just left?”
“Oh,” he said again, but his eyes were as confused as they had been when he asked.
“André, what’s my name?”
He looked at me for a long time before he started looking around the room as if looking for clues.
Before he could answer, Shadia returned. She was carrying a plate filled with apple pieces. She sat on the edge of the bed and held out a piece. André stared at it for a long moment before he gingerly bit into it. The crunch of the apple made him wince, but he chewed and swallowed. For a long moment, he sat still, the skin around his lips growing pale, before he took the rest of the piece in his mouth.
André ate three applepieces, his face getting paler and his chewing harder with each piece. When Shadia tried to persuade him to eat another piece, he looked like he was going to throw up, and she pulled back.
She sighed and glanced at me before standing and walking downstairs again. André and I sat in silence, him with his eyes closed and breathing heavily, me watching him, unsure what to do or say.
When Shadia returned, she carried another plate, this one with what looked like cut-up bierwurst. She placed it on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed. André scooted as far against the wall as he could get, but didn’t argue as she fed him a piece at a time. Rather the opposite. It looked like she couldn’t move fast enough or be close enough as he almost grabbed for her hand each time it came near with a piece. His eyes were still as glassy as ever.
I shuddered. “I’m going back to the bedroom.”
“I’ll join you when I’m done here,” Shadia answered, not taking her eyes off André. I wasn’t sure if she was concerned or afraid. I knew I was afraid.
“I can stay if you want.”
Finally, she looked at me. “No, it’s OK. Get some rest, habibi.”
“If you say so.”
I waited for another few heartbeats before I backed out of the door and rolled back to our room. I was too awake to go back to sleep, so I rolled to the window and looked out onto the street. It was empty and quiet, bathed in the light of the stars and a half-moon.
Shadia came into the room almost half an hour later. She slumped down on the bed, stifling another yawn. I rolled closer to her.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Asleep now, thankfully, but his fever isn’t going down. I think it’s going up, and the pills don’t work.” She shook her head. “I tried to ask him a little about how we got here, but he didn’t remember anything. Every now and again, he’d ask me the same questions again and again.”
“He doesn’t know us either,” I said. “He asked who you were after you left, and he didn’t know my name when I asked.” Shadia cursed and buried her face in her hands. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. If it is the bite, there is no cure. But what if it isn’t? What if it’s an allergic reaction or something? I don’t know. I’m a kindergarten teacher, not a doctor.” Her voice was rising in volume as her eyes grew wider and wider.
“Hey, it’s OK,” I said, grabbing her hands and making her focus on me. “No one’s blaming you for this, you hear?” She looked away, so I squeezed until she winced and turned back to me. “No one is blaming you, so you have to stop blaming yourself, OK?”
“That’s easier sai
d than done.”
“I know, but try?”
She sighed. “Fine, I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” I lifted her hands and kissed them. “And I think the best thing you can do right now is sleep.”
“I can’t. Someone has to stand guard.”
“I’ll do that. Or, you know, sit guard.” I smiled at the bad joke, trying to lighten the mood. Shadia didn’t smile, but there was a small twinkle in her eye. “I’m really awake anyway.”
“Just promise to wake me if you get tired, OK? It’s important that you get as much rest as you can.”
I didn’t agree with her but knew her too well to argue. Instead, I made my way into the bed with her and pulled the duvet aside. When she curled under it, I tucked her in and lay spooning her until her breathing became deep and her body twitched in sleep.
One of the things that annoy me the most about being in a wheelchair is how much noise it makes. I’d always been a night owl, sitting awake long into the night to game or read or draw, so I learned how to move my body without making much noise at all. Now, though, I didn’t have that luxury. The chair made its noises, and there was nothing I could do about it. So, as I rolled my way from room to room on the second floor and looked out the windows to make sure no zombies were drawn to us or anything else came our way, I couldn’t help but feel I was waking Shadia and André with every move. There was the ticking of the wheels, my hands against the steel push-bar, even the rubber against the floor. The creaking of the straps keeping my feet in place, and the small bumps I made as I knocked into something with my feet or back as I tried to move through the unfamiliar terrain. Not to mention my own breathing and muffled curses at all of these sounds. But it didn’t seem to affect the sleepers at all, so after a while, I stopped with my mumbling and did my rounds in relative silence.
The sun was rising by the time I started to yawn, but I was set on taking just one more round before waking Shadia.
When I got to our room, movement through the window caught my attention. Backing up, I looked down at the road.
A car was making its way down the street at a crawl. I could see the outline of the people in the front seats, but no details.
My eyes jumped to look for the bodies we’d left behind the first day, but Shadia had pulled them all into the garage, out of sight from the road. But what if the people in the car noticed the blood on the pavement? What if they came to investigate? As anxiety built in my chest, I tried to tell myself there was no reason they would investigate the blood. There had been blood on the streets back in town; we’d even seen some blood on the street here and there as we walked from the car, so why should this dried pool be any different? Just someone unlucky who met their end, no reason to come closer or to try and solve the mystery of who the blood had belonged to.
The car reached the driveway and was almost past when it stopped.
No. Why would it stop?
The car backed up until the driver could look directly into the driveway. It stood there for a long time before the back door on the driver’s side opened, and a man stepped out. It took my panicked brain a second to recognize Nicholas. He was leaning on a cane but seemed otherwise in good health. Shame.
He hobbled into the driveway, looking at the blood on the asphalt and then lifting his eyes to look at the house.
No, not the house, I realized, but the broken door. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why hadn’t we thought about fixing it? Or finding somewhere else to hide?
I wanted to wake Shadia, wanted to warn her, prepare her, something, but was afraid that my movement would catch his attention. So instead, I sat and watched as Nicholas stood in the driveway and took in the house, his eyes shining in the growing light.
A voice carried to me as someone inside the car leaned out the open door. I didn’t dare take my eyes of Nicholas but could bet it was another man. Nicholas answered what must have been a question. He took one last look at the door before turning and made his way back to the car.
The driver’s door opened, and the man there moved to step out, but Nicholas waved him back inside before crawling in himself. In the fiery light of the rising sun, I saw the pain on his face as he pulled the leg I’d bitten into the car before closing the door.
The car stood silent for a few seconds before it started its crawl up the street again.
I let out a deep breath and slumped back in my chair. I could feel my heart beating against my ribcage, wanting to break free, and my breathing came in heavy gulps. That had been too close.
“What was that?”
The voice made me shriek, and I clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle it. The car was out of sight and earshot, but I still feared them hearing me. Turning, I looked at Shadia. She was sitting up in the bed, eyes on me.
Taking a few calming breaths, I rolled over and told her what I’d seen. She stayed still the entire time, not asking questions or interrupting. Not even when I started having trouble finding the right words as the adrenalin finally started leaving my body.
“Well, we can’t leave,” she said when it was clear I was done. “Not with André the way he is.”
“But we can’t stay either,” I argued. “What if they come back to … to …” I rolled my fingers in irritation before the word came to me. “Investigate the broken door?”
Shadia pulled a hand through her hair. “I don’t think we have much choice right now.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she shook her head. When I closed my mouth, she reached out and pulled at me. I made my way from the chair onto the bed, and she wrapped me in the duvet and spooned me this time.
“You just sleep now, OK, and I’ll think of something. I always do,” she whispered against my hair.
“You shouldn’t have to think of something all the time,” I said, unable to keep my eyes open but feeling like crap for letting them slide shut.
She kissed me behind the ear. “Sleep on it for me.”
I tried, but couldn’t stay asleep even if I wanted to. The rest of the day went by in a daze. André kept falling in and out of consciousness, his memories more and more fragmented every time he woke up. I was exhausted and in pain as well, feeling sick and hating it because I knew it was my own fault for moving around so much during the night.
The car came back down the road around dinner time, driving a lot faster without slowing as it passed our driveway. I couldn’t help feeling like they knew we were here. Like they were playing with us. But what could we do about it? A big, fat load of nothing. It made me grumpy, and I snapped at André the one time I helped feed him. I also snapped at Shadia almost every time I saw her. Finally, she had enough.
“OK, that’s it,” she said as I told her how sucky everything was for maybe the hundredth time that day, making sure to mention how useless we were. “I know you are tired and stressed, but so am I. I don’t just have you to deal with anymore, but a dying man as well, you understand? I know your life sucks, and this … the situation hasn’t made it any better, but I am so over you biting my head off every time I try to lighten the mood. You hear me, Katerina Ingunn Tanum?”
The use of my full name shocked me out of my irritation, and I took a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry,” I said and leaned closer to kiss her. It was meant to be comforting, a wall for her to rest against, but the moment our lips met, her hands were in my hair, pulling me closer. There was desperation on her lips. Desperation to forget the boy lying across the hall; to forget the man hunting us, to forget the world. I didn’t want to forget, but my body responded anyway.
Arching toward her, I let her arms wrap around me and take the weight off my body. She lifted me from the chair and drew me onto the bed and onto her. Her hand was knitted in my hair, pulling, just in that area between pain and pleasure. I moaned against her lips, my hand moving down her waist, resting on her hip, fingers slipping below the waistband of her pants, forgetting that she was on her period. Rolling to the side, we stared at each other for a long moment.
&nbs
p; Something wet hit the floor across the hall, closely followed by the scent of stomach acid.
We broke apart so fast the pull at my hair made me yelp. Shadia mumbled a ‘sorry’, kissed the top of my head, and was out the door before I had even begun moving into my chair. Sometimes, I cursed the slowness of the contraption, almost forgetting how it also freed me from the confines of the bed.
Shadia was talking rapidly by the time I made it into André’s room, stroking the vomiting man across the back and trying to comfort him. Tears were spilling down his face as bloody stomach acid fell from his lips to pool on the floor in a red mess.
“Holy crap,” I mumbled, pulling the edge of my t-shirt across my nose and mouth, trying to keep out the stench. “What’s going on?”
“What do you think?” Shadia snapped, not taking her eyes off André. The furrow in her brow told me she was snapping out of fear, not anger.
André fell back on the bed, moaning and clutching his stomach. His face was glowing with sweat, and his eyes were shut so tight one might forget he even had them. His lips were drawn back in a snarl of pain, blood coloring his teeth like pink lipstick.
“Is this what I think it is?” I asked, rolling to the edge of the pool on the floor.
Shadia shook her head, but it wasn’t a denial. She was afraid and didn’t want my guess to be right.
“What do we do?” I asked, my voice wavering.
“I don’t know, OK? I don’t know.”
André let out a howl of pain that made my ears ring. Shadia jumped off the bed as the boy curled up, his bowels letting loose on their own. Almost before the smell, I saw the red seep through the sheet around him.
“Shadia,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her away. “He’s dying.”
Shadia fell to her knees, not caring about the blood or the vomit, and started crying.
Excerpt from Medical Notebook
After the worm has moved to the brain, the body starts to fight it. The host starts craving meat, but instead of strengthening their own body, they feed the worm, which in turn lays eggs in the stomach. When the eggs hatch, the new worms start eating the host, leading to the bloody vomit and stool, and eventual death, as stomach acid spreads through the body and burns it up from the inside.
