DeadBorn

by C. M. Stunich

  ***

  Seventeen Hours After …

  Holly and I drag the blankets and pillows that we brought up the stairs and set up makeshift beds on the carpeted section of the floor. We don't have a whole lot of bedding so each person is limited to one pillow and one blanket to cover up with; there's nothing to use as padding. Holly tells me that we'll search for more supplies tomorrow, but that she's too tired to do it right now. I don't blame her and I don't argue.

  When Martin and Dawson return from the bathroom, Martin collapses into his bed without changing his dirty clothes and is asleep in minutes.

  “I'm kind of worried about him,” I tell Holly and Dawson and I can see from their faces that they are, too. “He doesn't look so good.”

  “Do you think he got bitten or scratched or something?” Dawson asks. We still don't know if that really turns someone into a zombie, but it's a good hypothesis. Holly walks up to him and gestures for us to follow.

  “Help me check him,” she whispers and the three of us start peeling Martin's clothes away and examining his skin. Holly makes me undo his pants and check his sensitive spots, but I don't see a thing. Nobody else does either. The only injury that he has is the cat scratch on his hand. It's still bleeding, but it looks better than before. As if she feels guilty about it, the tabby comes over and starts head butting Martin's foot with a purring apology. Dawson smiles sweetly at her and scowls when he sees me looking.

  “He's just out of shape,” he says as he stands up and starts to undo his pants. “He'll be better when he wakes up in the morning.” I doubt that, but I don't know what else to do. For the moment I decide that I just want to get Holly out of there before Dawson flashes her.

  We go downstairs together and spend a few minutes washing off in the sink. It's a laborious process and not all that effective, but it's better than nothing. Holly changes into a pair of my flannel pajama pants and a white T-shirt that says, Better Safe than Sorry. I won it in a contest during sex ed and keep it only because Holly likes to wear it to bed. I follow suit and dress in the same pair of pants, only mine are red instead of blue. Before I can put a shirt on however, Holly grabs me behind the head and presses her lips to mine.

  I kiss her back, savoring the feeling of comfort and warmth that I get from her mouth. When she drops her hand down my stomach and dips it into my pants, I don't fight back. It seems like it would be strange that she'd want to touch me this way with an army of the raging dead hunting her, but it isn't. Being together like this is the closest thing to perfect that we have right now and if we're dead tomorrow, at least we'll have memories of skin and pleasure instead of just pain and death.

  Soon we're rolling around on the floor trying to find a position that works. Eventually Holly just pulls me into her and we spend a few, quiet moments with our eyes closed and our arms wrapped around one another. When I open mine and look down into her face, I see that she's crying.

  “Don't stop,” she tells me though I wasn't going to. Even though she's sad, she looks like an angel. Her pale skin is flushed with a gentle pink and her lips are parted, emphasizing the moistness of her tongue and the way she flutters when I move inside her. I ignore the message on her T-shirt and try not to think that far ahead. Holly being pregnant doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. Either we'll be dead long before then or all of this madness will be over and I'll be happy just to be alive. In fact, I'd like to have a baby. A baby is new life, a fresh start, a seed of opportunity. All I've seen today are endings and death and misery.

  I finish inside her and immediately decide to try something new. Holly's never let me go down on her before, and I think now's as good time as any. If I don't do it today, right this moment, then one of us might be dead before we ever do. That's a powerful motivator.

  Holly seems to like what I'm doing, but after a few minutes she stops me and we just hold each other, wishing the world would fade away and leave nothing but this.

  ***

  Twenty-Two Hours and Fourteen Minutes After …

  Valerie wakes me up by shaking my shoulder gently. I notice that she's being very careful not to wake Holly.

  “Do you need to switch out?” I whisper through a small yawn. Valerie shakes her head.

  “It's your friend, Martin,” she tells me. “He woke up about an hour ago and asked if I'd help him to the bathroom. He told me he'd be awhile and locked himself in so I could come back upstairs. When I went down to get him a few minutes ago, he wouldn't answer. I unlocked the door to check on him and found him in the stall, buck naked. He's okay, but not very coherent. I was wondering if you could come down and help me get him dressed and back in bed.”

  I nod and pick out a T-shirt and some pants for Martin before following Valerie downstairs, baseball bat in hand. Neither Dawson nor Holly wakes up, and I'm glad because I know Holly needs to sleep, but that she wouldn't let me go alone. I just hope she won't find out tomorrow because I know she'll be pissed.

  When we reach the bathroom, Martin is still sitting on the toilet where Valerie left him. His eyes are open, but he doesn't seem to be looking at anything in particular. When I walk in, he glances up at me and groans.

  “I don't feel so good,” he tells me and tries to vomit. Nothing comes up but saliva and bile. I move over to him, set the clothes on the back of the toilet, and lean the bat against the wall.

  “Let me know if you need me in there,” Valerie says as she closes the stall door to give us some privacy. I put my hand to Martin's forehead, but he doesn't feel hot. He is sweating though and I wonder if maybe he had a fever and it's broken.

  “What's wrong?” I ask, looking for specifics. I'm not a doctor, but maybe I could figure something out. I try to hand Martin the shirt, but when he tries to reach out for it, his hand misses and flops uselessly against his naked thigh. I wonder briefly how the hell he got undressed, but don't say anything about it. I reach down and put his arm through the first hole.

  “My stomach and my brain,” he says and I guess that he means he has a headache. I put his other arm through and then slip the shirt down over his head. “Am I turning?” he asks me and I raise my brows questioningly.

  “Were you bitten?” I ask, wondering if we might've missed the injury. Martin tries to shake his head and nearly collapses onto the floor. I manage to get him back into an upright position and bend down in front of him. I grab his foot and thrust it into the leg of the gray sweatpants.

  “No.”

  “Scratched?”

  “No,” he gasps and then starts to cough. Blood flecks his new white T-shirt and the wall next to him. It's then that I know he's in trouble. I finish putting the pants on but can't pull them up as Martin has no strength to stand. I decide that for the moment, that's the best I can do.

  “Valerie.” The ranger opens the door and is there in an instant, shotgun at the ready. She drops it by her side when she sees the blood and bends down to look into Martin's face. “I don't know what to do,” I admit, hoping that since she's in law enforcement that she'll have some kind of medical training. She puts her hand to Martin's forehead like I did and then frowns.

  “Do you have any conditions that I should know about?” she asks. Martin groans and slumps against the wall. Valerie looks up at me and I shake my head. I don't know anything about Martin at all. “Shit,” she curses as she rises to her feet and takes hold of his shoulders. “Help me move him.”

  It isn't easy, but we manage to get Martin on the floor without killing him. Valerie then checks his pulse and I can tell that she has no idea what's happening to him.

  “Why don't you go upstairs and get him a pillow and a blanket? I don't think we're going to be able to move him from this spot for awhile. And grab some food from the kitchen, preferably something with sugar.”

  I move out of the bathroom and up the stairs as fast as I can, trying to stay as quiet as possible. I still don't want Holly to wake up and try to intervene. I need her, we all need her, rested and ready for tomorrow. When I m
ove past her, she grumbles and turns over but fortunately remains fast asleep. I dig through her father's bag and grab several packages of hard candies, suckers, pretzels, and chips, tucking them into Martin's pillow case so I can carry them all back downstairs. When I reach for his blanket, I pause. In reality, it's my blanket (not that that matters anymore), and it just happens to be the afghan that my grandmother made for me before she died. It's made up of hexagons in red, white and black, and it hasn't left my closet in years. I stare at it for a while longer than I should, still worried about Martin but caught up in this strange sense of mortality and loss that I can't figure out. I don't know why it's decided to hit me now, but it has. I sit down heavy on the floor and can't seem to find the strength to stand.

  “You okay?” Dawson whispers and when he turns to face me, I can see tears glinting on his face, highlighted by the glow of the street lamps outside the window. I shake my head, but I can't make any words come out. Maybe I'm still worried that Holly will wake up or maybe I've just realized that I have no family left. Of course, there's a slim chance that my mother could still be alive, but when I put together the wine bottles, the pills, and the open door, all I really get is that she's probably a zombie, a loper, a DeadBorn. The only person I have now is Holly. “Me neither,” Dawson says as he relaxes his head into the pillow and stares up at the ceiling. “I don't know if I'll ever be.”

  “Agreed.” It's the only word that will come out and it isn't very helpful. Dawson sighs gently.

  “Where's Martin?” I jerk like I've been stung and rise to my feet in a hurry.

  “Downstairs,” I say and my voice is louder than it should be. Holly grumbles and rubs at her face with a fist. “He's sick. I have to go; Valerie's waiting.” I turn and start down the steps when I hear Holly call out from behind me.

  “Galen, what's wrong?” she asks as she stumbles to the edge of the stairs and looks down at me with tired eyes. Dawson comes over, too, and pauses next to her.

  “Martin isn't doing too well,” I say as the two of them exchange worried glances. “I need to get this stuff to Valerie.” Without another word, I keep going, hoping that Martin's still okay and that he hasn't died with his head on the floor and his pants down around his ankles. There's some scrambling sounds from behind me and then two sets of footsteps start to descend at a rapid pace. I'm glad because I have a bad feeling about how this is all going to turn out and I know that if I were Martin, I'd want as many people around me as I could get.

  What we all fail to remember is that the upstairs window is still open and the only one that knows it is the cat.

  CHAPTER 13

  Mendacious

  Twenty-Three Hours and Nineteen Minutes After …

  Martin is lying very still, head cradled on a white pillowcase that's now stained with blood. He won't stop coughing it up, no matter what we do, no matter what Valerie tries. She's a cop, not an EMT, and although we all know that, we keep looking to her for help.

  “I thought maybe it was diabetic shock or something,” Valerie says. “But I don't know what to make of the blood.” She lifts Martin's shirt and gently touches his abdomen. It's squishy and not just because he's a bit overweight. It jiggles like a water bed, like it's filled with liquid. “Or of this.” Valerie sighs and pulls the shirt back into place before tucking the afghan around Martin's shoulders. She sits back on her knees and shakes her head. “I guess all we can do is sit here and try to make him comfortable. We definitely can't risk moving him.”

  “So we just wait for him to die?” Dawson asks and although I know he doesn't like Martin, I can tell that he's upset. We all are.

  “Maybe he'll make a full recovery,” Valerie says. “The human body's capable of some pretty miraculous things.” Nobody responds to that, and it's painfully obvious that no one believes it either.

  “I guess we'll take turns staying down here with Martin and watching the roof, at least until it gets light outside.” Holly stands up and then holds out a hand for me. “Galen and I will get the rest of the bedding and take the next shift. Is there anything else you guys need?”

  “If you could get us a few more bottles of water, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to try and get Martin to drink a little bit more.” Holly nods and I follow her past Dawson's frowning face and out the bathroom door. I keep waiting for her to reprimand me, but she doesn't. I think she's too caught up with Martin and what we all think is his impending death. “He's going to come back as a DeadBorn,” Holly says and although she isn't looking at me, I nod.

  “I know.”

  “And we'll have to kill him,” she says. Again, I nod. We move through the gift shop in silence and pause only when we find the tabby cat sitting at the bottom of the steps. Her tail is curled around her body and her fur is spiked and angry looking. When Holly tries to pet her, she takes a swipe at us and bolts out the door and into the lobby. It's not a good sign. “What do you think got into her?” Holly asks as her eyes follow the steps up to the landing and pause. There's nothing amiss from this point of view, but that doesn't mean something isn't waiting for us.

  “Maybe we shouldn't go up there,” I say as my nerves twist and my anxiety rises into my throat. “If the cat's afraid then I'm terrified.” Holly ignores me and flicks on the nearby light switch. The ceiling comes to life above us and illuminates the stairs but not much else. To turn on the lights upstairs, we have to go up the steps.

  “We can't lose the second floor,” Holly says determinedly as she tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and puts her foot on the first step. “It's the only chance we've got.”

  I follow her reluctantly, one hand clenched around the baseball bat, the other holding the rail beside me for balance. I can't stop imagining the rotten angels. In my mind, I see them waiting just around the corner for us, ready to tear our heads from our shoulders and consume them in mouths lined with needled teeth and blackened tongues.

  “Be careful,” I whisper as Holly pauses at the top and reaches for the light switch. I swallow hard and prepare myself for death because if there really is a DeadBorn up here, even just one, then there's a good chance that we won't make it. Or at the very least, if it's a loper or a bone bag or something else that's still under the necromancer's control then I won't make it and Holly will have to stand there and watch as I'm torn apart.

  “Get ready,” she whispers as her fingers come up and the switch goes with it. Light floods the room all at once, baring the secrets in every dark corner, showing us that the room is nearly empty. Or at least the floor is.

  Pinned to the wall above the open window is a DeadBorn.

  ***

  Twenty-Three Hours and Thirty-One Minutes After …

  Holly and I both scream because the image is so grotesque that it isn't something the average person could take in and not be bothered by.

  There's a little girl, I don't know how old, with sparkly fairy wings and a white leotard, all spattered with dark flecks of blood and bits that I can't identify. Her jaw is missing, but she's gurgling something through her damaged throat.

  Ha, ah, ah is what it sounds like, but I know that what she's really trying to say is Holly, Olly, Olly. Her legs are dangling down, still encased in a pair of tights and some pink ballet shoes. Everything is ripped and shredded, including her skin, and it hangs from her body making her look like a piñata. Her eyes are the worst part though because they're still a brilliant blue, like she hasn't been dead for that long. They remind me of a picture that Mrs. Arget once showed me where Holly starred in a ballet recital. She'd been wearing a witch's hat and a black tutu, but the eyes were the same. Young and hopeful, like the whole world was out there just waiting to be explored. This girl, whoever she is, hasn't been dead for very long.

  “Help me,” Holly yells as she charges forward without much hesitation. I try to follow after her but come to a stumbling stop when the fairy wings begin to move. They're just the costume kind, like a million I've seen in the stores around Halloween, but they're
flapping, propelling the unborn monster forward and away from the wall where she'd been resting like a moth.

  “Ha, ah, ah,” she says as she points her finger at Holly. Black and silver light flickers around her and crawls through the wire and nylon of the fake wings and into the ceiling. “Ha, ah, ah.” None of this stops Holly. In fact, I think something about it infuriates her. She lifts her revolver to the ceiling, pulls the hammer back and shoots the DeadBorn in the face. I cringe as the shot rings around the enclosed space and makes my ears go numb from shock. Meanwhile blood and carnage is raining down on my head and sprinkling the beige walls with unwanted color.

  The DeadBorn falters and sags in the air like a wounded bird, but it doesn't stop moving. Instead it begins to turn around and head back towards the open window. Holly fires another shot and manages to hit the zombie dead center in the back, slicing through one of the straps that holds the wings together. They split apart, leaving the monster hanging from white elastic that sags precariously, threatening to drop the abomination on our heads. I step back, wondering why Holly is so dead set on killing the creature. If it wants to run away, why not let it? But I don't get time to ask. Holly empties her cylinder into the girl and manages to knock the wings off completely. The dead child plummets to the floor like a sack of rocks with the wings trailing behind her ever so delicately, drifting in the air like autumn leaves.

  “Help me, Galen!” she shouts as she drops the gun and picks up the second baseball bat. The zombie is rising to its feet, groaning and stumbling as it continues to head for the window. That strange light is still emanating from it, teasing the carpet fibers and drawing them to attention like soldiers. I move forward and raise my bat, but can't find the strength to swing it. The DeadBorn has these little, blonde pigtails that are held up with sparkly clips and tiny, white bows stained with blood. She looks so small, so delicate. Innocent. She looks innocent.