by Betts, M. E.
Fauna sighed, smiling a sad smile. "So you're really gonna leave me?"
"I haven't decided for sure yet, but I've been seriously considering it. But hey, even if I do, we can always stay in contact over the radio."
"Well," Fauna said, "you just make sure that's really what you want before you go and do it." She shut off the water and began to coil the hose back around its reel. "I think the barn's clean enough. Sun's goin' down, anyway." They started toward the garage. Fauna looked down at the ground as they walked, hands in her pockets. "It's gonna be lonely without you," she said. "I feel like you and me really clicked, you know?" She made a face. "Cindy and Stephanie...not to be arrogant or anything, but they're not really on the same level as you and me. Maybe I can train 'em, though...teach 'em how to shoot, hunt, be useful and productive. Stephanie especially, she's still young."
"And easier to get along with!" Shari said.
"That's the understatement of the year!" Fauna agreed. "Could you imagine teaching Cindy to use an AK?"
Shari snorted. "I'd just hand it to her, tell her to have at it. Let her hold it like an amateur, watch her get knocked in the face from the kickback. Record a video of the whole thing for my amusement."
Fauna looked at her with a momentary expression of disapproval, then laughed. "You know what, I have to admit, that'd be a little funny. She could use a little humility, take her ego down a notch...or several."
"And every time she looked in a mirror and saw her crooked nose, it would be a reminder that she's not an authority on everything," Shari said.
Fauna smiled, patting Shari on the back affectionately. "I'm really gonna miss you, girl."
Stephanie lay awake, watching the clock and waiting for 3:00 a.m...ten more minutes. She had racked her brain, trying to plot exactly what she would do, and finally had come up with a plan that she thought would work. Fauna was awake, keeping watch. Lately, Fauna, Shari, Jon, and Cindy had been taking turns staying up through the night to keep an eye on Stephanie since she had attempted to feed herself to the undead. They didn't even let her use the bathroom without supervision. She went over the plan again in her head.Three o'clock came, and she heard the rattling of cans down in the garage, right on cue. She had set the alarm on her cell phone to vibrate at three a.m., and then carefully dropped in into a garbage bag full of cans in the garage, a bag that never made it to the recycling center before the apocalypse struck. She had been keeping the phone charged, she claimed, to listen to the music she had stored on it. She saw Fauna's head snap toward the sound.
"What the fuck?" she heard Fauna whisper. She took out her revolver and carefully descended the ladder.
Stephanie carefully slipped out of bed, looking around the room, hoping that the rattling cans hadn't awoken anyone else. They all appeared to be sound asleep. She grabbed a couple of duffel bags from against the wall, placing them, along with a couple of throw pillows, underneath the heavy comforter to give Fauna the impression that she was still asleep under the covers. Just for good measure, she cut off the long, blonde braid that reached down to her hips and placed it onto the pillow, the top end tucked in underneath the comforter. That should buy me some time, she thought, looking at the finished product for a moment. She then slipped into the bathroom, where she'd stashed a fifteen-foot extension cord in a dark corner of the upper closet shelf. She wrapped the cord around her neck and tied it, pulling it tight and wrapping the end around a few more times. Let's hope it holds, she thought. She opened the bathroom window, climbed out, and grabbed the balcony railing, which was just beside the bathroom window. As she climbed onto the balcony, she saw Fauna climbing back into the loft. I'm glad it's overcast tonight, with no moon. She quietly wrapped the other end of the cord to a bottom leg of the railing, knotting it as best as she could. She mounted the railing, sitting for a moment. These are the last breaths I'll ever take, she thought. She closed her eyes and jumped.
Fauna stood on the balcony, eyeing the two very decayed undead who were wandering the yard. Shit, she thought, I can't even tell if they was men or women. It was six-thirty, and the sky was gradually brightening. She armed her bow, aimed, and hit the first one in its eye. The arrow poked out the back of its well-rotted head, spraying bits of brain and congealed blood behind it in a fan of gore. She aimed for the next one. The arrow struck in the neck, knocking the sexually-ambiguous zombie to the earth and pinning it to the ground. Fauna frowned. I hate when that happens, makes for a tough to get the noggin.She went back into the loft, climbing down into the garage and stepping outside. She walked around the garage to the far side, underneath the balcony, where she remembered seeing the sledgehammer. As she rounded the corner, she gasped in horror.
Fauna climbed back up into the loft, panicked and bleeding. "Cindy, Jon, wake up!" she shouted. She stormed over to the pullout sofa bed where, she could have sworn, Stephanie had still been sleeping. She pulled back the covers, closed her eyes and sank down to her knees, weeping.
"What's the matter?" Cindy demanded. She looked at the duffel bags on the bed, and Stephanie's hair. Her eyes widened, and her hands came up to her mouth. "Oh, my God--where's my sister? And what happened to you?" Shari and Jon got out of bed, confused.
Fauna struggled to speak between sobs. "She hung herself off of the balcony. I left the room for just a minute last night. I heard somethin' down in the garage, a buncha cans rattlin', and I went to check it out. That must be when she did--this," she said, motioning to the ruse that Stephanie had staged on the bed.
Cindy took off downstairs, Jon behind her.
Shari approached Fauna slowly, her eyes wet with tears. "Oh, Fauna..." she said softly, touching Fauna's left cheek, which was shredded and tattered from where Stephanie had gnashed it. "You were bit?" Fauna nodded in confirmation. "How did it happen?"
Fauna sniffled. "I went downstairs to finish off a zombie with the sledgehammer." Shari buried her face in her hands. "I walked right into Stephanie while she was hangin' there. Her feet were just barely hoverin' above the ground. I shoulda been more careful. I shouldn't have rounded that corner without lookin'. I shoulda known better. I shouldn't have let her hang herself." Her chest heaved. She glanced over at Timothy who was, somehow, still sleeping. "It's my fault Stephanie's dead, and it's my fault I'm gonna die." They heard Cindy begin to wail outside.
Shari shook her head vigorously. "No, that's not true. Stephanie was determined to die, it's not your fault. She would have found a way. Don't blame yourself for the fact that she did it on your watch." Her expression went from grief to raw anger. "It's her fault that you're going to die!" She had a sudden thought, and started toward the ladder. "You said you heard cans rattling?"
"Yeah, why?" Fauna asked. "Where are you going?"
"I want to go check something." She climbed down into the garage, searching for the bag of cans. She found it in the corner opposite the door. She tore it open, dumping its contents on the garage floor. That's got to be her phone, she thought, picking it up and turning it on. The wallpaper was a picture of Stephanie and Cindy, smiling with the ocean in the background. That cunning little wench. She climbed back into the loft, slamming the phone down onto the coffee table.
"That's what made the noise," she said, irate. "She must have put that into the bag of cans at some point yesterday. She had it set on vibrate so you'd go down into the garage. She went well out of her way to plan this whole thing. You see what I meant now? She wanted to die, she was going to see to it that she got her way no matter what." She began to cry. "I can't believe it. I always thought you'd survive, maybe outlive me. I can't believe this is happening."
Fauna's sobs began to die down. She wiped her tears away and stood, taking deliberate, deep breaths. Pull yourself together, girl, she thought. You only got so long left.
Jon stood near Stephanie's undead body as it swung from the extension cord, her hair lopped off at the nape of her neck. She tried in vain to gnash at Cindy, who sat in a crumpled heap near her feet...what was left of her feet
. The undead that had wandered in overnight had chewed away the flesh of her lower arms and legs while she dangled from the balcony. Jon tried not to look too hard at the exposed bone, the gristle of torn cartilege and tendon, and the shredded muscle fibers that were so messily severed as he raised the revolver to her head."Cindy...honey, look out, I have to do this now."
"No!" Cindy wailed. "She's my baby sister!" Jon walked over toward Cindy, crouching to avoid being bitten, and wrapped his around her, dragging her away. He raised the revolver to Stephanie's head, pulling the hammer back.
"I'm sorry, Steph," he whispered, and pulled the trigger.
They buried Cindy that afternoon near the creek. On the walk back, Cindy approached Fauna."I want you to know that this wasn't your fault," she said. Fauna nodded, but her eyes remained fixed straight ahead. "Shari told me you were taking it pretty hard. Look..." She stopped walking, and turned toward Fauna, grabbing her gently by the elbow. "We all know my sister was suicidal, okay? It could've happened on anyone's watch. Even if she didn't do it last night, or the night after, it was only a matter of time. Besides, Shari told me about her elaborate plan to get you to leave the room. You were just doing the logical thing, making sure there wasn't someone, or something, in the garage. You saw what you thought was her, braid and all, under the blanket when you came back. Don't blame yourself." She looked pointedly at Fauna's cheek. "You're already suffering enough." They continued their walk back to the garage. "I bet you wish we never came here."
Fauna shook her head. "No point in regrettin' anything. I'm glad your family is safe, and that I could be a part of that. Just...just make somethin' of it, is all. You guys stay here, and stay safe. Raise your boy. Make use of this place, and all it has to offer, once I'm gone."
Cindy stepped in front of her, cutting her off. "Fauna...I'm so sorry." Her eyes filled with tears. "And thank you."
Three days later, it was looking like Fauna was going the way of all flesh. She appeared to be twenty years older than her usual, youthful self, and she seemed to have lost at least ten pounds. She was no longer simply weathered...she looked like a dying old woman. Shari had charged her cell phone and asked Jon to take her picture with Fauna. I wish I'd thought to get a picture when she was still well, she lamented. Shari spent most of her time sitting at Fauna's side as she lay in bed, talking, sharing stories, and trying to avoid thinking about the inevitable fact that her friend, her teacher, would soon be gone."Shari," Fauna said, pointing to her cowboy hat on the end table, "I want you to have my hat."
Shari shook her head. "Fauna, you're still alive right now. It's your hat, at least for the time being." Don't be so thick, princess. It won't be long now, can't you see she's got one foot in the grave? For the first time, Shari internally responded to this unwanted voice in her head. Shut up, she thought. It was immediatley followed by a horrified realization...Oh God, I'm arguing with the voices in my head.
"Please," Fauna rasped, "I don't think I'll be leavin' this bed again, 'least not 'til you're ready to bury me." Shari felt a painful lump in her throat. Don't let her see you cry, she thought. That's the least you could do for her. Be strong. Fauna continued. "Did I ever tell you the story of how I got that hat?" Shari shook her head. "It was the summer before I turned eleven. Me and my two older brothers used to run around outside all day long, like a lotta kids out in the country, like my own kids later on. We came home for lunch, then we were back out 'til sundown, runnin' all over God's creation. Man, we would get so tan, we were almost brown by the end of the summer. There was this one abandoned house about a half-mile from where we lived. It was pretty much in the middle of the woods. If there was ever any kind of road or driveway leadin' to it, it was long overgrown. The house was condemned, we weren't s'posed to go near it, but to us, that made it all the more worthwhile to go poke around in there. And whoever it was that abandoned that place, they musta done it long before me or my brothers were even born. They had to have been packrats for sure--the place was fulla this and that, a lotta useless stuff, mostly. There were stacks of magazines, mostly in chronological order, starting with ones from around 1910 and ending around 1935. And everything--the magazines, clutter, furniture--it was all still there, just as they had left it, I guess. I don't know what happened to them or why nobody had at least come by to go through their stuff, or loot the place if nothin' else, but everythin' was still there." She paused, allowing a deep cough to rattle through her lungs, and went on. "There was one of them big, ol' timey radios, a phonograph player, an old fridge that had still had some food in it." She made a face, repulsed by the memory. She laughed, a difficult, painful endeavor in her state. "We shouldn't have opened that fridge, had to have been two or three decades of that food sittin' in there with no power! But anyway...my brothers were sidetracked, 'cause they had found a liquor cabinet in the parlor. My brothers were 4 and five years older than me, so they had more interest in the booze than I did. While they were busy tryin' to see how many bottles they could hide in their backpacks, I wandered off on my own, explorin' the place. I crept upstairs, and started down a long hall. There were some old portraits in frames hangin' on the walls. Some of 'em were real old, some just drawings and some photographs. The newest one, it was a photo of a middle-aged man wearin' a cowboy hat." She pointed to her own hat on the table beside her. "That very same one you see there. I still remember his eyes, the look on his face. You ever looked at a photograph, and had the irrational feelin' that the person in the photo is tryin' to tell you somethin'? I kept on goin' down that hall, nosin' around in each bedroom as I passed it. Then I got to the last one before the end of the hall. I looked in, and sittin' on a table beside a fireplace, just to the left of the door, was that same hat I'd seen in the photograph, and right away, I knew I wanted it. That was around the time I heard my brothers callin' from outside. They had loaded themselves down with all the booze they could fit into their packs, and they were anxious to leave. I wanted that hat, though. I wasn't leavin' without it. So I went into the room, picked the hat up and put it on, and--CRASH!--the whole upstairs collapsed down onto the ground floor, leavin' just the chimney. Everythin' was gone...floors, inside walls and all...except for a little piece of the floor right around the fireplace, where I was standin'. I just stood, clingin' to the fireplace for dear life, and screamed for my brothers. The younger one, Andy, ran back home to get help, while the older one, Benjamin, stood outside the house, yellin' to me that help was on the way, just to sit tight. After the longest fifteen minutes of my life, I heard my dad's old pickup truck outside. About ten minutes after that, a firetruck showed up, and got me the hell outta there." She chuckled at the memory. "It coulda gone a lot worse than that, and I believe I have that hat to thank. That hat just happened to be sittin' in the one and only spot that didn't collapse. It's one of those things that makes me believe in...I don't know...synchronicity. I had a feeling when I looked at that man's picture, and that feeling is, as it turns out, is what saved my life. I went into that room, and I went for the hat, because of the feeling the hat provoked. But at any rate...." She sighed heavily, wincing in pain. "It means a lot to me, and I want you to have it."
Shari nodded, forcing a slight smile. "Thank you, Fauna. That really means a lot to me. I'm so grateful to you, for everything. The fact that I'm even alive right now is because of you. Everything I've learned to stay alive, to stay safe, it's all because of you." She smiled, and this time, she didn't have to force it. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."
Fauna smiled back, and took Shari's hand in her own. "And you're the closest thing I ever got to have to the daughter that I lost. I'm so proud of you." Fauna gazed out into space and leaned back onto her pillow, the smile still on her lips. Her gaze drifted farther and farther away, until her eyes were vacant and her fingers, still gripping Shari's hand, went limp and lifeless.
"Fauna?" Shari said, voice cracking, as she touched the woman's face while the tears poured down her own. Pick up the iron, love. She picked up Fa
una's revolver from the end table, chest heaving as she sobbed. Jon walked up to her, survival knife in hand, directing her into the kitchen.
"Shari, I'll take care of this," he said. She nodded. She didn't want to have to destroy Fauna's brain, not when there was somebody else around to do it instead. She had come to think of Fauna as family...maybe the only family she had left, for all the knew. Now I've got nobody, she thought. You've got me, princess, answered that rogue fragment of her consciousness.
They buried Fauna next to her husband, under the cherry tree. Shari, Jon, and Cindy all helped dig the grave. Shari had brushed her hair and cleaned the dried blood off of her face. Jon had made a clean cut into her temple, so she wasn't too gruesome to look at. Shari was grateful for the fact. She almost looks at peace, she thought. She had considered going through Fauna's bedroom closet in the house to see if she could find something nice to bury her in. In the end, though, she had decided that Fauna was the type who would want to be buried in her usual casual attire. She could almost hear Fauna saying, "Girl, when's the last time you saw me wearin' a dress!?" She had changed her into a clean pair of jeans and a clean shirt, and her beloved jean jacket and cowboy boots. After they concluded the short service, she returned to the loft and wandered languidly out to the balcony and sank down into a lounger. She thought back to all the mornings when she and Fauna had sat in those loungers, drinking their coffee. She glanced over at the empty seat next to her...and nearly screamed out loud, instead managing only a loud, panicked gasp.
There was a woman perched in the lounger. She seemed to be wearing a period costume, perhaps Victorian. Her pale blonde hair hung in ringlets around her shoulders. She regarded Shari with amusement.
