by Lee, Raymond
“How do you know there are any good people left?”
“Easy. I know Angela’s alive and I’m standing right here.” Hal crossed his arms and stared Maura down. “Aren’t you good?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled, averting her eyes before letting her gaze roam over the rest of the room. “I’m ready to get back. Why don’t you finish upstairs since you don’t mind rifling through the mail-order bride’s things? I’ll get started in the kitchen. I guess the food won’t be contaminated if it’s still canned.”
Hal sighed. His question had been a test and he couldn’t say she’d passed with flying colors nor could he say he trusted her. “We should stick together.”
“For safety?”
“Yes.”
“Whose safety?” This time she delivered the hard stare. “If you can trust Hank, a disgusting creep who married a mail-order bride more than half his age, with Angela then you can trust me to search a house with you without being up your ass.”
“So now Jan is a mail-order bride?” Hal stepped closer to her. “How did you learn this? By assuming? Just because she’s foreign she had to be a mail-order bride? All foreigners are mail-order brides?”
“Not all, but Jan is. And no, I don’t assume every foreign woman I see is a mail-order bride, just the ones married to repulsive men old enough to be their fathers.”
“And what if they are? Why do these women bother you so much?”
“I have no problems with Jan. If anything I feel sorry for her but if you want me to feel some compassion for these Russian whores who infested our country with disease then you’re out of luck. Why do you care so much how I feel about them?” she threw back at him, stepping closer. “Did you have one? Couldn’t get a woman to come to you freely so you bought one?”
“I don’t have to have been married to one to not hate them,” he countered, standing close enough to Maura now that he loomed over her. “Don’t you get tired, Maura? All that hate, all that anger at women you don’t even know. Don’t you just get tired of holding on to all that bitterness?”
“I stay tired,” she snapped in his face, her voice elevating “but what am I supposed to do, let it go? Just forget what they’ve done? Am I supposed to forget that one of those bitches got her claws into the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with and forced me to—”
Maura turned away, taking a deep breath as she gripped the straps of her backpack tight. “I’m done with this conversation. I’m checking for food in the kitchen and then I’m going back to the house to make sure Angela and Jan are safe. I’m not going to let your lack of trust in me or your issues with my feelings about the women you damn well know caused this outbreak to happen slow us down.”
She stormed out of the room, leaving Hal standing there with his foot in his mouth. He thought back to the night they’d picked her up, to the small conversations they’d had since and it hit him. Her fiancé had been bitten by one of the infected mail-order brides and she’d had to kill him. She had to kill the man she loved. She had to be mad at someone. The mail-order brides were the scape goat to her anger. It was easier to hate them than hate herself for what she’d had to do.
Hal sighed, feeling like an ass, but he couldn’t go make nice with her just yet. They still had a mission to complete. They needed meds, food, weapons, and tools, anything that could help keep them safe and alive longer.
He checked the closet, found a gun and a few boxes of bullets hidden in a shoebox. So far this was the best house they’d searched. Hoping his luck would continue, he found the bathroom and searched the medicine cabinet. Aspirin, Nyquil, Robitussin, a thermometer, and some assorted prescription medications. He didn’t know what the prescription medications were for but somebody might, and somebody might need them. He dumped everything into his bag and headed downstairs to help Maura.
He found her retrieving gallons of bottled water from the refrigerator.
“Thank God for that,” he said, relieved. “We needed water more than anything.”
“You can check the other rooms, I got this,” was the only response he received.
Hal nodded and crossed the kitchen to search the adjoining dining room. He knew he’d angered her. In his experience, angry women were like feral cats. Best not to approach while their hackles were raised.
He grabbed some silverware, more knives than anything, and found more candles in the bottom part of the dining room hutch. He also found two flashlights and several unopened packs of batteries. He liked this house more and more, he thought to himself as he found what must have been the family room. A large entertainment center took up one whole wall and exercise equipment was interspersed with furniture.
An autographed Louisville Slugger hung on the wall above the couch, framed signed pictures all around it. He lifted the bat and tested its weight in his hands.
Maura screamed and he heard a crash.
Hal ran through the two rooms, bat in hand, and skid to a stop as he entered the kitchen to see Maura on her back on the kitchen floor, pushing away at a rotting man whose mouth snapped at her like a vicious dog.
The door to the basement was open and two child-sized monsters emerged from it, growling. The blue-eyed blonde family in the portrait he’d seen in the living room wasn’t beautiful anymore. Their blue eyes had been replaced by cloudy white orbs, their blonde curls were now matted with blood and grime, and their skin was rotting away from their bones.
Maura screamed again as the man started to overpower her, his mouth now dangerously close to her throat.
Hal stepped forward to help her the same moment the kids rushed him. While outrunning them in the open wasn’t much of a challenge, the kitchen was small and they seemed quicker than others he’d encountered thus far.
Thinking fast and acting mostly on reflex, he sidestepped the boy and shoved the girl as hard as he could, ramming her into the counter behind him, as he raised the bat and swung it at the man, knocking him off of Maura.
She quickly crab walked away from the man and retrieved her machete from its sheath. Hal spun, bat raised, and took a swing at the boy who was rushing him again, his mouth open and drool spilling from his crusty lips. The bat connected solidly with the boy’s head, smashing it in. As his body fell against the wall, Hal delivered two more blows, making sure the boy’s brain now decorated the pale yellow wall.
The girl approached him now, moving slower as she dragged her right arm which had broken after Hal had shoved her into the counter. She snarled at him, reaching her good hand out to grab onto him. Hal imagined he resembled nothing more than a big juicy turkey leg to the girl.
“No dark meat for you tonight, sweetheart,” he whispered, swinging the bat.
The girl was smaller than the boy, her bones more delicate, skin far more rotten with death. One swing was enough to send her head careening across the room where it hit the wall and slid down to the floor, leaving a trail of maroon blood behind. The body crumpled where it stood.
Hal turned toward Maura to see her slicing at the man with her machete. She’d made several cuts but no kill strike. She seemed scared, afraid of getting caught in the man’s outreached hands.
Hal crept up behind the man and grabbed a mass of his hair while wrapping his other hand around his neck. “Stab him right in the center of his forehead,” he instructed.
Maura paled a little but did as told.
Hal dropped the body and reached out to her. She backed away, avoiding his touch.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “Did you get bitten or scratched?”
Maura shook her head quickly. “No, no. He didn’t get me. He almost did but he didn’t.”
“Good.” Hal heard a growl and whipped around, fearing another zombie creeping up on him, but nothing was there. “What’s that?”
“It’s coming from the basement,” Maura said as the growling grew louder. “There’s more.”
“We just killed Dad and the kids. It has to be Mom.”
“The mail-
order bride.” Maura’s nostrils flared as she gripped the machete tighter and stepped forward. “The mail-order bride who hadn’t been here long enough to have given birth to kids of this age. That whore killed some other woman’s kids.”
Before Hal could think of anything to say in response to that, Maura passed him and started down the stairs.
“Maura, wait!” Hal ran to the bag he’d dropped and found the flashlights he’d picked up in the dining room. He crossed over to the top of the stairs and switched one on, illuminating Maura as she made her way down in the dark.
She glared up at him. “Don’t stop me.”
“Don’t let anger get you killed,” he replied, handing her the other flashlight.
She took it with a muttered, “Thanks,” and proceeded down the stairs.
Hal moved his light over the room, sweeping it from corner to corner in search of zombies ready to attack them. When his flashlight’s beam finally landed on one he was surprised to see her tied to a column with rope. “What in the world?”
He and Maura stepped closer and the woman lunged for them. It looked as if she’d had both wrists tied to the column. One wrist had since broken and been freed. She reached toward them with that arm, the hand flopping lifelessly from its broken hinge. The other wrist was still tied, keeping her from escape.
“They must have tied her up down here after the outbreak,” Maura said, no emotion to her voice. “Maybe they thought they’d find a cure and save her. Dumbasses didn’t know they were already dead themselves.”
“The children wouldn’t have been if they weren’t hers,” Hal pointed out. “The father would have gotten sick, turned, and bit them.”
“Or they got too close to her,” Maura suggested.
“That too. Either way, they all died down here together.”
“No, they all turned into monsters down here together,” Maura corrected him. “Dad and the kids died upstairs. This bitch is dying down here.”
Maura roared, releasing her pent up fury in a war cry as she raised her machete and lunged. Hal expected her to sink the blade into the woman’s head so was surprised to see it slice through the rope instead.
“You want me, bitch,” Maura taunted the zombie as she sheathed her machete. “Come and get me.”
The zombie, having been tied up for over a month, didn’t need any encouragement and lurched forward to the closest source of food it saw, which happened to be Maura. The two women fell to the ground, knocking the flashlight out of Maura’s hand, but Maura had been ready. She grabbed a handful of the infected woman’s hair and rolled over on top of her. Once on top she delivered a series of punches to the zombie’s face.
Hal stepped forward, his reflex to pull Maura off before the zombie bit her, but he stopped himself. This was something Maura had to do to cleanse herself of all the hatred and bitterness inside. Hopefully it would help her let go of what had happened with her fiancé and forgive herself.
He kept his light shining on the zombie so Maura could see what she was doing and silently prayed she didn’t get infected while fighting the thing instead of just killing it.
Being already dead, the zombie didn’t wear down from Maura’s punches, and managed to grab onto Maura’s arms. Maura surprised Hal by rolling over, using the zombie’s grip on her arms to pull it along. Once she found herself on her back she kicked the zombie off of her and quickly rose to a crouching position.
As the zombie moved toward her, she lowered her head and surged forward, connecting her head with the zombie’s midsection and knocking it down. Then she brought a foot down on its shoulder, breaking the bone.
It grabbed Maura’s foot and opened its mouth to bite, but Maura quickly unsheathed her machete again and sliced off the bony hand holding onto her so she could slip away from its grasp.
She kicked its side. “Get up. Get up and look me in the face.”
The zombie slowly, awkwardly, rose to its feet and faced Maura. Its good hand was gone, the other one hung limply from a broken wrist. Unable to grip onto her, it still reached for Maura, a hungry growl the only sound the once pretty woman made.
“This is for all the pain you’ve caused women like me,” Maura told it, her voice almost a whisper before she let out a growl of her own and rammed the machete into the zombie’s forehead.
The fight could have stopped there but it didn’t. Maura continued stabbing the zombie long after its body fell to the ground, completely useless. She stabbed and screamed and stomped and kicked until she herself fell to the cold, concrete floor, covered in blood and muck and hardly able to draw in a breath.
Hal stood in the same spot, providing light for her. Not saying a word.
“Don’t you judge me,” she snapped at him, wiping a hand across her face to wipe off the grime. She only succeeded in smearing it.
“Do you feel better now?”
“No. You think this just goes away? You think killing one of these whores erases what they brought over here with them?”
“I was hoping it would, for your sake. It has to be hard living with that.” He directed a beam of light at the flashlight she’d dropped. “Pick it up. Let’s get back to the house and get you cleaned up.”
Maura grabbed her flashlight and stood. She gave the zombie’s body one last kick and bent down to hoist a large bag of cat litter.
“What are you doing with that?”
“Cat litter has lots of uses,” she simply said as she walked past him and up the stairs.
Shaking his head, Hal hurried up the stairs behind her. As long as she could still help him carry back what they’d found in the house, she could take whatever else she wanted.
Hank was dead. His body lie on the living room floor, slumped against the wall that his blood splatter now decorated. The rest of his blood leaked out the hole in his chest. Jan sat on the floor on the other side of the room, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked back and forth. Angela sat next to her, the gun still in her hand. Next to him, Maura let out an appreciative whistle. “Good job, kid. Saved me the trouble.”
Hal lowered his bag to the floor and rushed over to Angela, kneeling before her to check her over for signs of injury. She seemed fine. Her skin was unmarred. She wasn’t crying.
“I had to kill him,” she said, her voice soft. “He hurt Jan, and he wanted to take me away from you.”
Angela met his gaze then and he saw it in her eyes that there was more she had to tell him, but not then, not with others around.
He nodded his understanding and looked over at Jan. She was hurt. Various shades of blue and purple were starting to color the right side of her face and her lip was cracked down the center.
“I told you he shouldn’t have been left alone with them,” Maura snapped as she crouched down in front of Jan and checked her face. “We found some pain reliever. It’ll help. Is anything broken?”
“No,” the Asian woman answered in a timid voice. “He only hit me in the face and not much before Angela … stopped him.”
“Oh, that’s another thing,” Angela said. “Jan speaks English, and she likes to be called Janjai. Hank called her Jan. It’s kind of not really her name.”
Hal blinked a few times then shook his head as if that would sort out all the tangled thoughts inside it.
“It’s been a rough day, huh?”
“A strange one at that,” he agreed before standing back up and looking at Hank’s dead body. “We didn’t hear the shot. Must have been while we were busy fighting off our own battle.”
“You were attacked?”
“A zombie family, in one of the houses. We killed them all so no worries. We’re safe now.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Janjai asked, her voice small and afraid.
“Of course not,” Hal answered, turning around. He was surprised to see Maura glaring at him as if daring him to say otherwise. Did she really think he would kick Janjai out of their little group and have her fend for herself? “You’re with us, Janjai. We only ki
ck out bad people and I don’t think you’re bad. Being with a bad person doesn’t make you what they are.”
She nodded her head and offered a small smile of thanks.
Hal reached his hands down to help both women up. Janjai accepted his help. Maura stood on her own.
“We found quite a few gallons of bottled water at the last house. Why don’t you two use some now to wash up? We still have some supplies we brought in from the van. Use those to patch yourselves up. Angela and I will bury Hank in the backyard.”
“That is too much trouble,” Janjai argued. “You must be tired. I have done nothing to help.”
“Well, why don’t you hurry up and get cleaned up, then you can fix us up some dinner? We found water, food, I recall there being charcoal out on the back patio if you need to heat something. Having dinner ready after we’re done would be a huge help.”
Janjai smiled and nodded her head quickly. “I will.”
She hurried over to the area where Hal and Maura had placed the items they’d found during their scavenging mission and grabbed as much water as she could before leaving them.
“Wow. Finally get rid of one man who made her his servant and here you are already turning her into the cook,” Maura said, teeth clenched.
“She wanted to feel as if she was helping. It was the only thing I could think of at the moment that she could do in her condition.”
“Well, don’t get used to telling her what to do,” Maura warned him. “She was gullible enough to make herself dependent on one man, I won’t let her make that mistake twice.”
Hal watched her grab a few more gallons of water and head upstairs to the same bathroom Janjai had disappeared to.
“What was that about?” he asked Angela.
The girl shrugged. “The world’s gone nuts and so have the people. Let’s get him out of here before he starts to rot and smells the whole place up.”
“How are you doing? When I left you behind to observe Hank and Jan I didn’t think this would happen.” He studied the girl for signs of trauma. She was only twelve and she’d just taken a life. That was an act that left a mark.
