by D. L. Scott
He spun through the dials, trying to use the obvious answers, numeric order, odd numbers, even numbers. But none of them worked.
“This is boring,” he complained silently.
“Try using your birthday.”
Sammy jumped and turned around. No one was there, no footsteps, no sounds, nothing. He took one more look behind before following the advice of the friendly voice.
“04, 03, 91,” he said, turning each dial to its number. The box clicked, and its top swung open.
Guns. Piles of guns and ammunition filled the large chest. He touched the supplies cautiously, careful not to make a commotion. Sammy sensed it; the action would be coming soon. He quickly grabbed as many guns and clips of ammunition as possible.
“Sammy?”
The voice came from the house. He quickly backed away, gun ready to fire. It was his mom’s voice, but something was different.
“Mom?” he asked.
His mother emerged from their home. She staggered with only half of her brown hair, the tone matching his. The other half of her head was exposed. Her brain gushed, ready to ooze out at any moment. Her eyes rolled around in her head, only locking on her son for brief moments. Her arms extended in classic style.
She was a zombie.
Sammy backed farther away from her. He’d fought zombies before, but none of them resembled his mom as strongly as the one before him. Her smell, her warm smile, the way she cocked her head to the right when she was happy to see him, it was all there.
It was the woman who sang him to sleep when he was sick, and cooked him breakfast every day he was there, and healed all of his wounds. She supported him through everything. The pistol tilted with her head, but he didn’t know if he could shoot her.
“Sammy?”
He turned around. Vince, like his mother, was a zombie. His best friend lumbered lazily towards him.
“Sammy?”
He looked around. Many citizens of Hope Creek surrounded him. They stumbled and shambled towards him, constantly saying his name.
Sammy. Sammy.
He was trapped. The zombies did not bother hiding the drool soaking their chins. He closed his eyes, just a moment.
“They’re not real. They’re not real.” He repeated to himself. He straightened his gun and started firing.
The gun’s blast was not enough to drown out the echo of his name. Still, the zombies came; still they wandered to him. He shot them in the head, one by one. Each zombie fell uttering his name.
Fear and frustration welled within him. Why did they keep saying his name? ‘Sammy’ tortured him. The name crept behind him. It grabbed his shoulders. It sunk its teeth into his neck and ripped off part of his soul.
Sammy.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Sammy shouted. He spun sporadically and fired at anything that moved. The ammunition whittled away from him, but at the end of the mental battle, the zombies lie dead all around. He found and stared at his mother. Her brain rested against the ground a foot from her head.
“Sammy!”
He ran to the weapons chest and loaded up again. He couldn’t be sure. Something continued calling him, taunting him. It wanted him, whatever it was. He loaded up even more, clearing out the rest of the chest. He stomped to the middle of the virtual town and stood, ready for what was next.
He waited.
“Sammy.”
He didn’t follow the impulse the chills in his spine pushed. A long time passed, long enough for him to lose track of it. The moon moved to the middle of the sky and stopped. For the longest time, it stayed, unmoving, unchanging.
“What is going on?” He wondered.
His eyes caught the sign as it held the words he so desperately wanted to see. It was done, finally he could go home and rest. He still planned on gloating to Vince how he killed his zombie. He stepped gingerly over the dead bodies.
The faces, they looked like all his friends, his family, the people he knew. They were familiar, yet something about their half-tooth smiles bothered him.
“Maybe I won’t rush to play this game.”
He stepped through the vortex and wiped his head. It was still night, darkness spreading over the horizon. It was quiet, peaceful. He walked slow, relaxed, thinking about the comfort of his bed.
“Sammy!”
He turned around to see his mother in front of a stampede. The zombies, they were back, feral and fast. They trampled over the first horde and charged through the gate. In her eyes, in all of their eyes, he saw nothing but white.
He immediately took off, running as fast as he could towards his home, but he wasn’t fast enough. His mother leaped on top of him, punching, kicking, biting, tearing off as much of his skin as she could in a second and a half. He fired his weapons, shooting away as many as possible.
“Sammy!”
The cryptic sound of his name made him jump as he sprinted into his house and slammed the door. He didn’t waste time, sprinting through the house, up the stairs. Faster and faster he went. He was desperate.
“I won,” he said, “I won the game and I left. It said!”
He opened the door to his attack and opened the door to the roof. He stood over the zombies, the vast, growing stampede of hungry humanoids.
Each flood brought his mom to the front as well as Vince. He wished he felt something, anger, malice, greed. But all he felt was their hunger. Their bodies stretched from his house through the fantasy gate and beyond.
No escape.
He wiped the blood streaming from his face. The pain, the terror, it was all so real. He sat atop the roof as the hungry bodies banged against the house and moved to climb it. He faded in and out of consciousness, holding his guns close to him.
“These should be gone,” he realized.
“Sammy!”
He twitched and turned his head left and right. The voices were still there, still whispering and shouting in the back of his mind. It clawed in his ears and burrowed into his head.
He looked to the sign, desperate to find an answer to the problem. The only constant in the night, it blinked the red words he so desperately wanted. But as the zombies crept closer to his bloody pool, he realized the truth, the sign’s real message.
Game Over
About the Author
Adriel Reed was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Macomb, Illinois. Through his childhood and adolescence, he fostered a passion for creative storytelling as well as athletics.
As his athletic career ended in college, Adriel’s love for storytelling quickly rekindled. He began his pursuits in creative writing in 2010 and produced a number of short stories, including “Scrabbled Truth”, a short story entered in Western Illinois University’s Elements Magazine and a collection of short stories titled Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down (2013).
January 2014, Adriel published a short story called You Are Not A Hero. He continues fueling his passion for science with a new project called Risen One: Risen Zero.
The Big C
By Debbie Manber Kupfer
Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
– Marilyn Ferguson (1938-2008)
A lump, there can't be a lump. I lay in the bed looking up at the ceiling. The mosquito was back, taunting me from its position high up on the light fixture. I knew as soon as I turned off the light it would be at me again, the little vampire.
I'd read somewhere once that only the pregnant female mosquitos bite, that they needed the blood for their young. I supposed as a mother I was supposed to feel compassion for the little bloodsuckers.
Benign, I suppose it could be benign. I had breastfed for a million years (well seven actually). Wasn't that supposed to count for something? I was vegetarian (unlike that insidious mosquito). Never smoked. Exercised, almost daily. Made all the healthy choices. I was forty-seven years old - too young for canc
er.
The house was too quiet. My mother was probably asleep. The loud radio or television background music was gone, never to return. That had been my father, you see, who had always needed a soundtrack to his life. If I had been my mum I would have wanted to keep the music in his memory, but she seemed to prefer the silence. I didn't like the silence. In the silence I was forced to think.
I looked over at the large black suitcase lying on the floor by my bed, all packed and ready to go. I'd already been too scared to sleep, even before the mosquito and the lump. My father had always been able to wake up without alarm clocks, so this house didn't contain any. My mum who had always been an early riser thanks to my dad now was getting up later and later each day. I wondered what she would do after I'd gone. In just a few hours the taxi would arrive to take me back to the airport. I'd been here for six weeks ever since I'd got that fateful phone call in the middle of the night.
My father had been sick, in and out of the hospital for months, his sugar levels spiking and dipping. I'd talked to relatives. Should I come out? No, there's no need. You take care of your own family. Your dad will be fine. It had been a brutal winter in St. Louis and the months had been filled with petty disasters. First our refrigerator had died. Then the new one could not be delivered because of the layer of ice that wouldn't shift from our driveway. In truth it would have been nice to escape to warmer climes for a while.
The week before he died was the last time I talked to my dad. He made me smile. He was sharing his hospital room with another man of about the same age and temperament. "And you know what?" he said. "He has a wife who nags him just like mine."
The flight out for the funeral was relentless. Sleeping and eating, impossible. I looked around the crowded cabin wondering how all these people could be carrying on with their lives when my father was gone. I felt sick to my stomach. Never had the words “Welcome to Israel” felt so wrong.
My mother felt so small and vulnerable when I hugged her. I couldn't imagine her living without my dad. They had been married for forty-nine years.
At the funeral I gazed at the small form of my father wrapped in a prayer shawl and clung to my mother. During the week of shiva, the customary time of Jewish mourning, I met countless friends and relatives who had known my dad. Sometimes I would almost find myself on the verge of a smile, and then I would remember.
I stayed in Karmiel at my parents’ house for six weeks. At five weeks we returned to the cemetery and placed a stone on his grave. I had requested Theodor Herzl's words to be etched in the granite: "If you will it, it is no dream." My dad had finally achieved his dream, had moved to Israel for his retirement years. The only downside was that his only daughter and grandchildren lived thousands of miles away in St. Louis.
As I lay looking up at the ceiling one saving thought came to me. At least my dad would never know about my cancer. Because as the mosquito buzzed waiting to feast on me, I knew without a doubt it was cancer, and I was terrified.
After no more than a few minutes of snatched sleep, the early morning taxi arrived to take me back to the airport. I hugged my mum and briefly wondered if I would see her again. No mustn’t think like that, but I couldn’t help myself the fear had taken control.
The taxi driver knew my parents. He scolded me for leaving my mother alone. When I explained I had children and a husband in St. Louis he said, “So bring them here, or take her with you. She shouldn’t be on her own.” I wished it was that easy.
In any case, my mum was happy in Israel. She was surrounded by friends in a way that was never true for her in London. Ironic, really, when she had never wanted to come to Israel in the first place. That had been my father’s dream.
The dread built up over the next few days. I returned to my family in St. Louis, but I told no one about the lump, just quietly scheduled my annual gyno check-up and mammogram, which I was due for in any case. I wouldn't tell anyone unless it was cancer, after all, why worry them.
But my fear shone through and my husband guessed. He tried to reassure me, of course, but I knew better. The mammogram found nothing, but a diagnostic ultrasound revealed not one, but two lumps.
The fear felt like a boulder centered in the pit of my stomach as the staff at the Breast Center scheduled me for a biopsy just a few days later.
"But don't worry, dear. It's just a precaution. Most lumps are benign."
The sheer terror I felt at that point outstripped worry by about a hundred fold. I'd seen those brave bald women on the TV and in the grocery store. I could never be one of those women. I was naturally a wuss. Hell I hated needles so much I'd never even had my ears pierced.
Yet, as would become my mantra in the next few months, it's amazing what you can get used to. Somehow I got through the biopsy. Over the next few days I jumped every time the phone rang. I imagined myself bald and breastless. I cried, the terror building inside me like a nuclear bomb waiting to explode.
And then the call came. A message on the answer-phone. “Can you please call the Breast Center?” It still could be nothing, right? They could be calling to say I was okay. But if that was the case wouldn’t they just leave a message?
I was shaking when I called the office. I kept messing up the phone number and having to start again. By the time the nurse came on the line I was so worked up I could barely make sense of what she was telling me. Yes, there were two lumps. Yes, they were cancerous. But I should feel lucky, they were slow forming of the kind that was easier to treat.
Lucky? How could I possibly feel lucky? I desperately wished I could backspace the time to last summer before everything had gone bad. Last summer I’d taken my daughter to London. We’d met up with my parents there. My dad considered it his last hurrah. We’d tried to convince him otherwise. You’ll have plenty of future holidays.
No, he said, this is it. He was right.
Despite wanting to move to Israel, my dad loved London as do I. It was wonderful sharing those few weeks with my parents and my daughter. Wonderful for her to spend time with her grandparents. Yes, as I sat there listening to the Breast Center nurse on the other end of the phone I desperately wished I could go back to that summer and stay there.
At the end of the call the nurse told me I needed to come in as soon as possible to talk about treatment. If it’s so slow growing, I thought, why the rush? Because it wasn’t slow growing was it? There had been no lump six weeks before and now there were two. The nurse was trying to make me feel better. It wasn’t working.
My husband came to the appointment with me. It was a good thing too, because at least he was able to listen to what they said, take notes, ask questions. I could do none of that. The fear had taken hold.
Choices, apparently I had choices, maybe. It would depend on another test – a breast MRI which would determine if the two lumps were linked together. If they were I may be able to get away with chemotherapy, a lumpectomy, and radiation. If not I would have to have a mastectomy.
“Mastectomy” – the word terrified me, more than anything else. The thought of losing a part of my body was my deepest fear that I was being forced to confront. It did no good to talk of reconstructive surgery and success rates. I would not be me anymore, would not be whole.
The Breast Center nurse was young and flighty, reminding me more of a kindergarten teacher than a medical professional.
She talked flippantly of women who chose to be flat-chested, like it was no big deal. Maybe for her, so young that all this was merely an abstraction. Yes, I would have the MRI. I would see if I could save my breast.
In the MRI machine I felt I was suffocating and had to stop to take my inhaler for my asthma. The sounds of the test pounded in my brain. Let it have a good result, let it have a good result.
In the meantime I’d told my kids, told my mother. My mum was very calm when she heard the news and I realized I was right. My father would have panicked. She would take my cancer in her stride, never once believing in anything, but a healthy outcome.
&n
bsp; The results of the MRI came back. Yes, the two lumps were linked. “That means we can try the chemo first, right? We can see if we can shrink them down, that’s what you said, right?” I pleaded with the doctor, begging him to take my side.
“Yes, we can try,” he said, “but we can’t promise anything?”
We went to a different doctor, to get a second opinion. The second doctor wanted me to schedule a mastectomy immediately. “We’re talking about life and death here,” he said, holding my hand and looking into my eyes. He was very young and to me he seemed terrifying. Aren’t doctors supposed to reassure you? Not put the fear of God in you?
I returned to the first hospital. “I’ll take my chance with the chemo.”
They scheduled me to have a port put in. It would make the chemo easier, so I wouldn’t end up like a pincushion. I was glad of that. My fear of needles was partly born from the fact that I have bad veins. During my two pregnancies I dreaded the blood tests. The nurses inevitably had to stick me over and over until they would get it right.
Directly after the operation to put in the port I was to go down to the Cancer Center for my first chemotherapy. I still felt groggy and strange from the surgery, but the Cancer Center was a surprisingly cheerful place, and I wondered at the good spirits of the other patients around in the room, chatting with their friends and family, reading, eating, watching TV. Very few looked sick, but there were tell-tale signs that all was not as it seemed to be though – a few of those ubiquitous bald brave women and some wearing hats, scarves or wigs. How could they be so relaxed, when they all had some kind of cancer, when I was still terrified and groggy from the surgery?
My husband stayed with me for that first treatment and then I was sent home with a bundle of pills for the nausea that had yet to set in. The smiling nurses, ever optimistic, ensured me that it wouldn’t be so bad, that the drugs would take the edge off the nausea. I dread to think what it used to be like, before those little white pills.
Within a few hours of leaving the Cancer Center the nausea had set in. Waves and waves of it. I dry retched over and over again. The medication apparently acted like Dramamine, something I remember taking as a kid when my parents hadn’t wanted me to throw up on long bus journeys. Yes, the drug stops you throwing up, but doesn’t stop you feeling sick. That feeling stays with you all through the miserable journey.
