by Misti Vanhoy
We checked on the parameters of the building for any weaknesses in the barrier before heading back inside. The barrier wouldn’t hold much longer, maybe another day or two and we’d have to go back out and get more bodies. An exhausted sigh escaped my lips, joined by more from the two that walked behind me up the stairwell. We worked too hard for so little reward and so little food. What was the point in suffering any longer?
Stopping in front of our hotel room door, I knocked three times to let Samantha know that we were back from our hunt. I could hear scrambling on the inside of the room, a thud as though she had fallen over, and finally the click of the lock as it was slid back into its home. She flung the door open in a hurry and rushed to meet me, hugging me tightly around the waist. Before I could hug her back, she let go just as quickly and snatched a bag from Reagan’s hand. She returned to the couch with it and began sorting through its contents.
“Hold up now! We have to make that stuff last, Sammy,” I called as I headed on in. Brantley and Reagan took the remaining two bags to the kitchen, laid them down, and dispersed to their favorite spots within the room. Reagan sat out on the balcony in the chair and Brantley took up his spot on the love seat.
“I know. I just want to have something now. I haven’t eaten today,” she replied as she continued to pull out the food to lay on the couch. She picked up a can of peaches as her eyes lit up. “Can I have these?”
I laughed and replied, “Sure. You want a brownie to go with those peaches?”
“YES!!!” she screamed as she jumped up and hugged my neck tightly. I laughed some more, but fetched the box of brownies from a bag on the table. My mouth watered at the sight of the box. It had been so long since we could enjoy a sweet treat that didn’t involve peanuts or caramel.
“You want one, Brantley?” I asked as I plopped down on the couch beside Samantha and peeled the box open. He didn’t answer. He just held his hands out and waited for me to hand him one. I tossed him the first one out of the box before handing Sammy one of her own. I dug to the bottom of it, mixing the packages up before I picked one out. It was a normal process for me. I never grabbed the first two out of the box and I always had to mix the others up before I could pick one out. I’m not really sure why I did that; it was just something that I did ever since I could remember.
We sat there in silence as we savored our delicious treats. I wasn’t going to bother Reagan about a brownie. I knew she would be out there in her own little world right now. It was best not to disturb her when she was thinking. She tended to be snappy when that happened and I didn’t feel like licking any wounds today. It had been a great run for food and the day needed to stay that way. I didn’t need it ruined by her attacking me, too.
My dad never came out of the bedroom. I knew he could hear us in here digging through the food and snacking on the little we could afford to. I had a feeling he wouldn’t eat for a while. It would be after he got over our transgressions before he would do anything other than pout. If that even happened at all. I shook my head, but ignored the guilt that I felt deep inside for what I had done to that man. He was my dad and I should act better toward him, but it would be all right. He would eventually come back around us.
Samantha jumped up when she finished and ran to the balcony door, leaving Brantley and I alone in the living room together. An awkward tension fell between us and I couldn’t help but think about him touching me again. I longed for it even though I despised him as a human being. I fidgeted, unable to think of what to do or where to go to escape. Glancing up through my eyelashes at him, I caught him looking at me. The expression on his face mirrored what I felt inside. Confusion mixed with a carnal desire painted his face and left it with a pink tint to it.
I lifted my face and looked him dead on, intent on facing this bravely. I just hoped that I didn’t show any of the fear or confusion that I felt. His gaze held steady with mine, unwavering and daunting in its intensity. A few minutes passed by, the longest of my life, before he spoke.
“I like you, Morgan, and no matter how much I’d like to be with you, I can’t,” he said as he glanced at the bedroom door. I nodded. I understood what he meant. My dad would surely kill him should he even try.
“It’s fine. We probably don’t need to even attempt it. Wouldn’t make much sense with us living together strictly for survival,” I replied, hiding my disappointment as best I could. I didn’t want to admit it, but I had romanticized our touch and it hurt to hear him say those words to me. He stood up, waved slightly to me, and left the room to go out into the hall. He never came back that night. I cried to myself at bedtime out on the balcony before I fell asleep.
Chapter 14
My sleep was interrupted by screams and loud gunfire. I jolted awake and leapt to my feet, searching the blue night for the reason behind my nightmare within a nightmare. My vision blurred and legs tingled as I tried to pull myself out of the sleep state. Smoke rose as fire ate away at several buildings around our hotel. The car from last night was parked below in the street and bodies lay all around the sidewalks and in the alleyways. This is what I pictured the Holocaust would have looked like when they captured people that wouldn’t cooperate.
The sliding glass door was busted out behind me as an object went flying through, sending glass across my back and tangling into my hair. I turned on my heels like it was second nature and threw my arms up to defend myself. Samantha stood there, gasping for air, and covered in blood. Her eyes were wild and her tussled hair made her look all the more insane. I rushed to her and grabbed her face to check if it was her blood or someone else’s on her body. I prayed that it wouldn’t belong to her. I couldn’t lose her right now. I couldn’t find the origin of the bleeding, but worried all the same for her. I couldn’t imagine her having to fight someone off on her own.
“We have to leave now! They’re tearing through the building!” she yelled over the noise of the gunfire.
“Where’s dad?!” I asked, following her through the broken sliding glass door. All she did was shake her head and look at me with eyes filled with tears. My heart sank. We needed to find him… We are a family and needed to stay together. We survived this far because of him and he was an important part of our hearts.
I let go of my sister’s hand to run off in search of our missing puzzle piece. With each room I passed through that revealed itself to be empty, my heart accumulated another crack. No one was around to be found. Our entire group was missing and I feared that one of them was the owner of the blood that Sammy was covered in. By the time I had searched them all, I didn’t think I had a heart left. I grabbed the only thing I had left in this world, my sister, and ran out of the door, only to stop dead in our tracks.
There, shuffling in the hallway was our dad. He had already turned into one of the undead. We hugged the wall and watched him as he moved around. His movements were sporadic and nothing more than mere reactions to the guns as they went off. He seemed confused more than anything. He turned in slow circles around one spot, sniffing the air and listening for sounds coming through the gunfire. His eyes felt like they were piercing our souls as he made his rounds slowly. I knew he couldn’t see us with the lights hanging on the walls, brightly illuminating the hallway that we stood in. It was only minutely consoling.
They used to say all the time that a broken heart wasn’t literal and could only kill someone in extreme cases. The realization that he did this because of his own childrens’ betrayal… He would rather be a zombie than to keep dealing with us? My heart felt like I was losing pieces of it onto the floor where I stood. Even though the other night I had no feelings for him, he was still my daddy. Forever and always… I never would gain those pieces back. Little did I know, this was just the beginning of the fall into oblivion for me…
My sister broke down, weeping at the sight of what we had caused with the past two days. She sank to the ground to her knees sobbing uncontrollably like an insane person. I reached down and covered her mouth with my shaking hands.
I held my breath to hide from his increased sense of hearing. His head whipped around all the same toward our direction; his blind eyes searching for us. He took a few uncertain steps forward with his teeth barred. Growling could barely be heard over the noise from downstairs as the building continued to shake randomly with the ruckus. What was left of my heart stopped beating as I hoped and prayed he would not locate us. I wanted us to live longer. I needed us to live to see the end of this. For Samantha’s sake, we couldn’t die here today.
I slowly handed Samantha the flashlight from my pocket and dug out my pocketknife. I had to be the adult here and make a decision no matter how painful it was. Even though this had been his choice initially, I made it mine not to let him stay that way. I crept closer to him, blade ready to pierce his brain. My breathing came shallow instinctively to prevent him from hearing me as I crept closer. The slow motions I made wouldn’t catch his attention as I carefully placed my feet where I wouldn’t make much noise on this carpet. Sweat dripped off my forehead as I tried not to panic and kill us both. I had to remind myself that it was just me and him here. Any distractions could be lethal. A clear mind was the best weapon against the undead.
A loud, echoing boom shook the entire building and knocked all three of us to the floor. The solar powered lights we had hooked up when we moved here flickered on and off threatening to put us in the dark with a zombie in the hallway. I threw a wild look at Samantha, pleading with her to turn the flashlight on before the lights went out completely. She fumbled with it as scared as she was. Her shaking hands were having problems following through with her brain’s commands.
Another loud, echoing boom shook the building, sending the lights on their way completely this time as they hit the floor on their tops. My heart stopped once more as I heard what used to be my dad rise to his feet near me, his growling more persistent now. We were in his realm and there was no hope if Sammy couldn’t get that light turned on. Fate had us bent over, screwing us with all it had.
I stayed as still as I could, barely breathing so I could hear him advancing toward me. In the silence, I could hear Samantha still fumbling with the flashlight behind me. Stay still, Sammy. Oh, God, stay still, I begged inside my head. I was frozen in terror where I lay begging God to spare us from this fate. I knew I should be going after my sister to protect her from our dad, but I couldn’t get my body to answer the plea to do so.
Just when I thought all hope was lost, I was blinded momentarily as the flashlight came on. With a quick sweeping motion, Samantha searched the hall for our predator. She found him just inches from her, staring into the light blindly. His face morphed into that of anger mixed with pain. I rose quickly to get to her, but she sealed her own fate. She let out a shriek at the sight of him standing so closely to her and he honed in on her location despite the light. He dove, driving her backward to the floor as his weight hit her. My screams mixed with hers as I fought to get to her through the defiance of my own body. I couldn’t lose my sister, too. Not like this. Not to our dad!
He bit into her arm as she screamed, tearing flesh away from bone and sending blood everywhere. Things suddenly started moving in slow motion for me. It was almost as if my brain wanted me to remember this moment for the rest of my life. Shock and regret washed through me and brought tears to my eyes instantaneously. I had let her down. Here I was, struggling to get my zombie dad off of my little sister because I wasn’t brave enough to face him in the dark. To top it all off, I was putting my own life at risk letting guilt push me into saving someone who couldn’t be saved. She had been bitten. She would turn today. Maybe tomorrow if she was lucky. She wouldn’t see this madness come to an end. She was already dying as I fought to protect her.
Through the tears and sobbing, my body took over. It was a good thing that killing zombies had become second nature for me. My hand, seemingly by its own accord, brought my knife up that I’d forgotten I was holding to my dad’s temple and shoved it through his skull to interrupt the flow of firing neurons in his brain. His body limply fell on top of my sister. I could justify his kill in my head or say that it wasn’t really me that took him out of this world, but it would always stick with me. One thing that was for certain, I could say that I finally understood what a murderer meant when they said they weren’t in control of their bodies when they committed their crimes.
I shoved him off of her as I tried to see through the tears that clouded my eyes. My family was done; gone forever. This was the end of all we ever were. I was doomed to die alone like I always imagined I would. She lay there crying, covered in her own blood, our dad’s, and the blood of whoever she had hurt or killed earlier. She was a wreck in every sense of the word. The worst part was that she’d have to die like this. She’d have to die in a building being attacked by thugs with her undead father lying next to her on the floor and her worthless sister would have to be her murderer…
I slumped down beside her and cradled her head in my arms. This was over, goodbye. This was ten years we had together going down the drain. I held her and ignored the chaos going on downstairs. None of it mattered in that moment as we tried to come to terms with our loss. We cried with each other and prayed for forgiveness for all we had done in our lifetimes. God knows we had done a lot of bad things, the worst of which happened after the apocalypse. We had almost lost our humanity in the name of survival.
I whispered lies to her to make her feel better; lies that made me feel like a piece of shit. I told her she wouldn’t turn and that she would be fine. I talked about how she wouldn’t be like our parents and would live to see the end of the outbreak. She wouldn’t and couldn’t die here in this hell hole of a building. I told her how God had better plans for her than this. That she was the cure for our inflictions just waiting for the moment to come to do her magic. I whispered to her about all the wonderful things I think about us doing after all of this was over. I thought it might calm us both down and help her pass easier.
I described in detail the beautiful summer days we could spend together at the park or on a boat in the channel. I made a point to tell her we would try Coney Island one more time if we could bring ourselves to overlook what had happened to her mom. I knew how much she had loved that place before all of this happened. We could find someone somewhere that would know how to operate the rides so we could learn to have fun again…
The door to the hotel room beside of ours opened up and Brantley hurried out of it with an arm full of stolen goods. He stopped dead in his tracks as he noticed us sitting on the hall floor. His face grew grave when he saw the bite on Samantha’s arm. He let everything he was holding fall to the floor so he could bend down beside of her. “Holy shit! What did you do?! Where’d all this blood come from?” he asked me, bewildered and angry. His eyes searched Sam’s face as though the answer could be found there.
“I didn’t do a damn thing! She was bitten by a zombie. You know, the one LAYING ON THE FUCKING FLOOR BESIDE OF HER!”I yelled, infuriated with his insinuation. Who the HELL did he think he was?! I didn’t have all the answers to his questions, but it wasn’t like it was any of his business after all…
“You should’ve been protecting her instead of having your ass on your shoulders,” he snorted as he picked my sister up off of the floor.
“I was protecting her!! The freaking lights went out and I couldn’t see. What do you think you’re doing with her?” I got up and ran after them. He wasn’t about to get out of my sight.
“Taking her somewhere safe. She won’t turn right away where she was bitten,” he called over his shoulder as he headed down the hall for the stairwell. I hurried to catch up to them, pissed at his callousness.
“We’ll run into that gang that’s busting up the building.” I was more worried about myself now than anyone else. Samantha was dying and my dad was already dead. I was empty inside, but this wasn’t where I wanted to die. Not at anyone else’s hand other than mine. I would be the one to decide when I’d die and how. I would be in control of my
fate for once, not someone else.
“They’re not in the stairs. Reagan just signaled me before I came out of that room,” he gasped as he ran for the door that led to our way out. He seemed to be struggling under her weight, but I couldn’t care less. Our safety depended on this exit still being clear. Hopefully, they were still destroying something else and wouldn’t ascend the stairs anytime soon.
“Morgan?” my sister breathed out as she looked over at me pleadingly.
“What is it, sis? I’m right here.” I replied as I took her hand in mine.
“I found him and let him turn. It’s all my fault.”
“No, honey, no it’s not. He did it to himself, ok? Don’t blame yourself for it.” She shut her eyes and lay up against Brantley’s shoulder, dropping the subject completely.
The bumpiness of our descent seemed to bother Samantha more than Brantley liked. With every step down, she moaned out in pain and his face flashed a look of concern. I kept begging her to be quiet or she’d get us all killed, but she no longer seemed to worry. All that was on her mind was keeping pressure to the wound to slow the bleeding. She could care less if she condemned us all at this point. I ended up giving up on shushing her after two flights of stairs and gagged her just to shut her moaning up. If I had to, I’d slit her throat to save myself right now.
We were just one flight away from the lobby floor when the door to the floor above us opened. We could hear them talking as their voices bounced off of the walls in the tiny staircase. “I wish Pedro would stop sending us out like this,” one of them said in a deep Hispanic accent.
“Shut up talking like that. What are you, crazy? Bastardo! He’ll sacrifice you to Santa Muerte for that!” the other replied in a hissed tone. Their footsteps descended the stairs above us, making their way down to our level. My heart quickened with dread.
