by Tara Brown
When we get onto a main road, I look in the rearview mirror to see they’re chasing us. They’re actually chasing the vehicle, hopping over the dead or dying on the road. The silver moon illuminates the angry faces and bloodstained clothes.
I drive fast, heading toward the road out of town, but I start to see my headlights shining on the backs of vehicles. There is a wall of bumpers ahead and people screaming and running. The chaos has started. Furgus barks, startling me as I skid to the right.
“Damn, Gus! No barking!” I turn to the right and skid to the left around a sharp corner. The girls are screaming and crying as we drive over bumps in the road and I gag, realizing what they are.
I know there is a back way out of town; Dad and I have taken it. I just don’t exactly recall where it is.
“Girls, you remember the back road to the ski hill? Any of you?” I ask as I see a woman in a doctor’s coat standing on the side of the road. When I drive past her, she does the three head jerks and starts to run after us, joining the ones following us.
Julia speaks with a shaky voice, “It’s the road we’re on. This is the way to the ski hill. That's my doctor’s office.”
I nod. “Okay.” I drive faster.
Apparently, driving faster uses gas faster. I slow down when we get out of town and I no longer see the biters in the rearview mirror. The biters. The word my brain started using the moment I saw Mr. Swanson attack Mr. Baumgartner.
The farther we get from town, the less the drive becomes. I feel more like I’m driving to join other people and less like I’m fleeing them. Even Gus mellows out and stops panting.
It’s a quick forty-minute drive to the local ski hill. When we cruise into the village, we are on fumes. I park outside of a cabin that makes my heartstrings tug in my chest. It takes me several minutes to turn the vehicle off. I don't trust the dark around me, but nothing moves in the headlights and the people who are biters don't seem to differentiate between vehicles or people. They chase activity.
I look over at the three girls, all asleep and holding stuffed animals. One of Joey’s arms is around Old Kitty, a black cat that was given to her when she was born. Her other arm is around New Kitty, a tiger-striped cat she got when she had her appendix out at eight. I can’t fight my smile when I see she also has Songa, my bear. She must have grabbed him when she was packing. I reach for him, transporting instantly to a million happy places when I touch his soft brown fur.
I bury my nose into his cuddly chest, smelling everything I am missing. When I open my eyes, a soft and fragile sigh escapes my lips. Gus starts to pant again, waking and realizing we are at his favorite place. He loves winter and he loves the ski cabin even more.
There is a desperate need to cry and shake and sob, but I can’t do any of it. I have to remember where I am and what I just left behind. I have to be scared and not weak.
I can’t let the fears eat at me, breaking me.
Deciding it might free me of them, I list my fears in my head so I can let them go.
My dad might not ever come for us. He might already be sick.
My mother will wake in that closet, run out of water, and die alone in there, totally sane and healthy.
My mother is already one of the sick and will die alone and confused in the dark, not remembering how to drink water. That one makes a small whimper slip from my throat.
We will have to stay up here at the ski hill for the winter, but will anyone be left alive in town in the spring?
I shut my brain off instantly, pushing away the rest of the bad thoughts. The fears aren’t leaving me as I acknowledge them—they’re getting worse. They’re breeding in there.
Distracting myself with the reality I am in, I look out all the windows for even a single person. The mountain isn’t anywhere near opening for the season, so it should be deserted, but if anyone from town were smart, they would have come here too.
There is nothing.
It’s dark, completely dark.
I’m not getting out in the dark. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what happens to the girl who gets out in the dark. I double-check the locks on the doors and tilt my seat back slightly. My eyes are closing on their own when I try to look around once more. I snuggle into Songa and let sleep take me.
If I wake up, so be it. If not, I pray I die in my sleep and don't even know it.
Chapter Three
Day Two
“LOU!”
My eyes fly open. The brightness blinds me. I can’t feel or see anything for a couple seconds. I don't know if I’m alive or dead until my neck cracks from the crick in it. I groan, rubbing it and blinking.
When I look around it takes a second to recall everything that happened yesterday. The fuzz starts to melt away as my vision returns and giggling tickles at my ears. Distant giggling.
I glance around the vehicle, realizing the girls are gone. I open the door and jump out, almost hanging myself with the seat belt. “JOEY!” I press the belt button, releasing myself, and grab the gun. Songa is still in my left hand when I round the vehicle and see the three girls stacking rocks and laughing.
I drop to my knees, catching my breath. “Wha-what happened?”
Joey stands there, startled, looking at the gun in my hand. I tuck it behind my back and in my pants, praying I don't shoot my ass off like my dad always said I would. “What happened?” I ask again.
“What happened where?” Joey looks at her friends, shaking her head. Julia frowns. “We were playing.”
“You screamed my name, Jo. I heard it. You woke me up.”
She looks confused. “I never screamed.”
They all look the same, lost in my question—even Furgus, who comes bounding over to me like a big sloppy dog. He too seems to have forgotten the prior day’s activities.
“Weird. So you’re okay?” I clear my throat, seeing my breath in front of my face. I try to calm myself after the startling wake up.
“We’re fine.” Joey glances around us. “We were playing with Gus.”
She’s right. We’re fine because it appears that we are alone on the hill, as far as this section of cabins goes. I can’t believe our aunt and uncle haven’t come to the cabin. I had hoped they would be here. Older male cousins were a happy thought.
I get up, trying to rationalize a hundred things as the feelings from the day before hit me. I have to remember that we are here and we are safe. That's the important thing. I can’t control a single other thing.
“Help me unload.” I get the keys from the SUV and go open the door to the cabin.
It’s stale. No one has been here all year long. The summers up at Red Mountain are a touch sad. They try to do the whole ecotourism up here but it sucks. Montana has some amazing summer mountain experiences but ours is pretty lame. Our town, Laurel, is close to Billings. We are considered a suburb of the city, but we are more like a crappy little town than a suburb. The only benefit is the short drive to a ski hill and the city. Our town is almost in the middle of the drive for the city dwellers.
I look down at the fact I’m holding a gun and a stuffed animal and assume that’s a sign of the times. I’m seventeen—a child compared to the problems I’m facing, and yet, old enough to hold a gun and mean business if I have to, I guess.
If Joey could do it to our mother, I could do it too. Maybe not our mother. I think we would all be infected right now, had it been me holding the gun.
The cabin is empty but I feel like the shadows in it still taunt me. My footsteps on the floorboards squeak as I creep about. I’m relieved to see it is as it was when I was last here. The bedroom on the main floor is dusty but clean otherwise. The loft bedrooms are spotless, apart from some evidence of squirrels or mice.
The little kitchen and dining room are just as clean as we would have left them, if the cabin were still ours.
When my father turned down a better paying private-sector job in the city, my mother made him sell our cabin to her brother as punishment. She said we needed t
he money.
I knew then it wasn’t true. She just wanted him to suffer. She wanted us all to suffer. She wanted things her way.
I hate the emotions that are tied with that. I hate that I still think she’s selfish, regardless of the fact she’s possibly dying alone in a closet.
Joey and the girls start loading the massive living room with food and bags. They all look funny, still in an uneasy way. Lissie starts to cry when she sees me coming down the rickety loft stairs. “I want my mom. I want to know if she’s okay.” This makes Julia start, which in turn makes Joey cry. The three of them are sobbing and shaking on the couches as the reality of the cabin hits. We are alone. Furgus, a dog who hates to see children cry, slips onto the couch with them, squishing them all. They don't fight his love—they let him lie atop them, each gripping to his thick black fur.
I look back at the SUV, in a bit of a panic to make them stop crying. “I’ll get my phone and see if it works up here.” I hold the gun out for Joey. “Come watch for me while I dig the last of the crap out of the vehicle.” She shakes her head. I nod. “I trust you.”
She gets up, sniffling and tripping as Furgus rubs against her slim body. Her hand shakes when she lifts it to take the gun and I regret trusting her, instantly pulling it back. “Want me to watch and you can dig the crap out?”
She nods. We go out and she opens up the back door to the SUV, getting our phones and the last bag of stuff. She closes the door, but I hop down the stairs and grab the shotgun before she locks it.
When we walk back up to the cabin I spend the majority of the time scanning the area for movement beyond birds. I have the same weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as before. I lock the door and lean a chair against it. Joey starts trying the phone immediately.
“Anything?”
She shakes her head. I notice she isn’t saying much.
We all sit on the couch and stare at the room filled with stuff. Stuff we need to survive. I start to fill the silence with words I can’t control. “The cabin has a well and an outhouse. So we don’t have to worry about where to go to the bathroom and water. The snow will come and we can melt it if the well has any issues. I was thinking we should come here because it’s almost winter and those people probably can’t come here. They would freeze. We can stay safe here. We have a winter’s supply of firewood already. My uncle and cousins always make sure the wood is done in the summer. We have an axe and a chainsaw, and I can learn how to use them. When things get better, we can go back. The military will come—trust me. They will come and clean it all up. We can just wait it out here.” I realize I’m rambling.
Joey looks over at me. “Is Mom dead?”
I shake my head. “No. She was sick when I left her but I bet she’s okay. Dad will come and help her. He’s probably there now. They’re probably on their way here.”
Julia smiles. “With my dad.” I don’t have a poker face so when she looks into my eyes, she sees it. “Lou?”
I shake my head. “Your dad was really sick. I saw him in the yard. He was bad.”
She blinks tears from her soft-brown eyes. “But if your mom is better, my dad is too.”
“Okay. You’re right. He probably is.”
I have to stop treating them like they’re my equals. They’re children. But then again, so am I. I am not prepared for the moment I am in. If someone kicked in the door, we would die or worse. Yes, when you are a girl in a position like this one, there is worse and I am aware of what worse is.
I look at them all again. “So—from here on out, we don’t talk to anyone. Stranger danger is worse than ever. We don’t go into the woods alone. This is Montana—there are bears. We don’t trust anyone but the four of us. Even if your mom walks up and smiles at you, let me decide if she’s okay first. Deal?” They look confused or just scared, but they agree. All three little heads nod at me. I give them all a look. “So what should we do now?”
Lissie sniffles. “I’m hungry.” The other two nod.
I laugh. “Okay. Let’s get some food and organize what we have.” It takes a long time to get everything organized into cabinets and cupboards. In the end, it looks like we are preppers or some kind of freak shows like the husband on my mom’s favorite movie Sleeping with the Enemy. Of course that would have been her favorite, she was just like the husband. She just never saw it. I hate where she sits in my brain. I want her to be only fond memories, but there are only three things I remember that would classify as good:
1. My mother gave me the necklace around my neck. It is a locket with a picture of our other dog, Hobbs, who died when I was twelve. She knew I was heartbroken, and she went out and got a jeweler to make a locket with his face carved into the heart. It had a picture of him and me together inside of it. We got Furgus a month later and I never warmed to him the way I did with Hobbs. I was scared maybe that he too would die and take a piece of my heart with him.
2. Once she lied to my dad and told him I was sleeping at a friend’s house in Laurel, when the truth was I had snuck into the city for a concert with my best friend, Tanya. And not just any concert—it was the Black Eyed Peas—and my dad had said I couldn’t go. But somehow Mom understood I needed it. Tan and I have been friends since we were two, until Tan’s mom got a job in a city and moved away. So when Tan invited me to the concert, I was stoked—Dad, not so much.
3. And lastly, Mom once lied to my dad when I accidentally shot myself like I was the kid on A Christmas Story. My dad had gotten me an awesome bow and quiver and taught me to hunt with it. I did the thing he told me not to do—pull back the arrow while I still had it pointed at my foot. I begged my mother to pull the arrow from my foot and swear to my dad I had stepped on a nail. She gagged when she pulled it out and got teary eyed when the doctor gave me my four stitches. But she later lied for me so he wouldn’t take it away.
And that is it. Everything else has been an inconvenience, an annoyance, a disturbance, and a distraction. No matter how I feel about her, I wish she were here now. Then I wouldn’t be the adult, and I wouldn’t be in charge.
I would be the sassy, bratty, teenage pain in the ass. I dish out the canned fruit and cereal bars with juice boxes. “Joey, I have to go turn on the propane.”
Her eyes grow wide as she sits to her dish of canned peaches and pears. “No.”
“What’s that mean?” The other girls give me a look I ignore.
“Lock the door until you hear the secret knock.”
Joey opens her mouth, but I leave before I have to hear anymore. I’m not excited about it either. I grab my flashlight and gun and slip out onto the front porch. The gravel street is silent. There isn’t even a twig breaking or a leaf scuttling.
There is only silence.
It’s almost worse than a leaf dragging across the gravel or a twig cracking. Where are the birds? Are they sick too?
My stomach aches but I know we need the stove. I can’t turn on the generator for lights; it makes more noise than a freight train. But the stove is a must.
I take a breath, looking out at the bright afternoon and decide if I act casually, it’s no biggie. I’ve started it a hundred times—today is no different.
Of course when I’m on the second step to the ground level, my brain mentions that in fact, that is not true.
Today is different.
Today I am potentially an orphan and definitely in danger of being attacked by the things everyone is becoming. The biters.
When my feet crunch onto the gravel, I take another deep breath. I feel exposed, like when we are bow hunting and I’m alone in my perch, waiting for something to come.
Only now I am waiting for a person to come—a person who wants to kill me for no reason other than wanting me to be like them. I shudder as the memories of Julia’s father’s face, and Mr. Baumgartner’s, fill my head.
I push them away and slip behind the house to the small door to the underside of the cabin.
My fingers shake when I reach for the handle, looking all aro
und me and listening like I am alone in the forest. I open the door slowly, peeking my face into the dimly lit space. It looks identical to how it did the last time I was here. I take one last look around and make a run for it, the way I always do. I treat it like an obstacle course. The house is built on huge stilts for the snow in the winters. The underside of it is beams, joists, and posts with hay and grass on the ground. Joey and I hate it down here.
I run—jump to a beam—swing from one joist to leap over another beam—drop into the exposed underneath of the house—crawl over the old hay and dead grass to the propane tank. I open the valve—check the line for smell, and then do the same routine back to the door. I crouch at the entrance and listen to the sound of my pounding heart and ragged breath.
There is nothing.
When my heart slows to a slightly more normal pace, I tell myself none of this is any different than when I was a kid and pretended the wolves would get me so I had to make it fun.
I open the door and creep along the side of the house again, still listening. Hiking and hunting are the same as this. I have to believe that.
I hurry, grabbing a fast load of firewood and knocking at the door. I can’t help but look behind me as the door opens. Joey looks worried until I am inside and the door is locked again. Furgus raises his head and scruffy eyebrows at me from his bed in front of the woodstove. He hasn't even batted an eyelash since we arrived. For him this is a happy place.
I carry the wood over to the huge potbelly stove and start the fire the dog is waiting for. “The smell of the burning wood might draw people here, so we will only burn late in the day to get it warm inside.”
As the sun sets I can’t help but feel stressed. I don’t have any idea if we will be okay or not, if my father will come or not, or if all of this is more serious than I can imagine. And I already think this is damned serious.
“Can we pray before we sleep?” Lissie asks.
My head snaps around. “What?” I catch my first glimpse of the cross on her throat. I don’t know how to pray but I smile. “Sure.”
