by D. J. Graves
“Knock, knock,” I said from his doorway.
He was sitting at his desk, hunched over his laptop. When he looked up I tried to gauge his emotional state, but I was coming to a blank...or he was. I couldn’t read his expression as anything but nothing, or maybe I’d call it numbed or uninterested. Either way, I was clearly wrong because he was staring at a picture of his wife on the monitor of his laptop.
Without a word he turned back to his laptop and closed the window. I felt rebuffed. My feelings of bad blood that I’d thought were imaged were seemingly confirmed, until he waved me over to him. I walked in and stood beside him.
“Anyone tell you we have access to the internet? Limited, very limited access,” he said.
“Yeah, Karen told me yesterday.”
He looked up at me. “You want to take a look?”
I shrugged. “The internet connects the world, and from what Karen says, the world has pretty much abandoned us, so fuck them, right.”
That comment earned me a broad bright smile, the genuine kind that takes the whole face, even the ears to express, but he stood up and motioned for me to take his seat in front of his laptop. I sat down without argument.
“Like I said, it’s limited. Far be it for me to understand why the government restricts our access, but we can see basic news website; CNN, FOX, MSNBC, but nothing international. No Al Jazeera or BBC. We can go to any government website but nothing else. No personal .coms, .orgs or anything your average Joe could put on the internet. No blogs, no Twitter, no Instagram, but for some strange reason we can see Facebook.”
“Facebook?”
“Yeah, but we’re ghosts. We can see it but we can’t touch it. We can see anything that’s posted as public, but if we try to click on anything that lets us interact with others it prompts us to log in, which we cannot do.”
“Why? That seems cruel, doesn’t it?”
He brought up Facebook on his laptop while he said, “Yes and no. On one hand, we can see our family and friends outside the affected areas. We can see them live every day. We might feel forgotten and ignored, but then we have to remind ourselves of what kind of shit we would be posting? Zombie shit. Depressing shit. Our loved ones wouldn’t be able to move on. They’d try to rescue us.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” I asked him.
He bent over in front of me so he could press a few buttons. “For the first few months after the initial outbreak, this is what happened.”
He stood up straight and I was looking at a Facebook page that was created the day after infection. It was dedicated to saving us. Derek scrolled down to the bottom of the screen, to the oldest posts from years ago.
“The first posts of this page were news feeds and hotline numbers. That was fine, but the advice from followers got a lot of people killed.”
“How so?”
In a mocking voice, Derek said, “Hey everyone, go to the Walmart on Union Avenue in Tacoma for military protection. They set up a base.” In his normal voice, “Walmart gets swarmed with zombies and thousands die.” Again in a mocking voice. “Hey, everyone, no zombies in Lewisville. Come here for safety.” Normal voice, “thousands go, zombies follow, everyone dies and the perimeter of infection is widened by that much more. But the crappy advice isn’t the worst of it.”
“What’s worse than Pied Pipering a bunch of desperate people to their gruesome deaths?”
He scrolled up the screen and pointed at a video in the feed and pushed play. At first, it was a crowd of angry people yelling for help at a military barricade, but the yells turned into screams of fear when the military opened fire on the crowd.
“Where there zombies in the crowd?” I asked when he paused the video.
“No...People just wanted out of the infected zone, but the government couldn’t risk the spread of the infection.”
“Shit. Our own military killed those people just because they wanted out?” Staring at the paused video, I could see a man holding his son in his arms.
“This page became a sideshow of horror and depravity that enraged people."
"I'm pretty fucking enraged right now." I could feel the heat of it and I knew my face was turning red. “The idea of a son and father being gunned down for trying to live…What the fuck?”
"You’re not alone. There were several deadly protests and tragic rescue attempts.” As he scrolled up the page I could see how increasingly gruesome and frightful the posts became. With raw news coming from within the infected zone, it was like a never-ending feast of horrors.
“Inside the infected zones, we were being torn apart by the living dead and our own desperation to survive. Outside the zones, they were tearing themselves apart. But once they shut us out completely, it took about a year for things to calm down out there. They still have protests ever so often, but it’s nothing like before.”
I sighed heavily.
“Is there anyone you want to see?” he asked me.
“My mom. She lived in Seattle.”
“Seattle is gone.”
“Oh, I thought so, but...What is left of Washington?”
Derek opened an additional window on his monitor and opened a saved MSNBC webpage with a continually updating map of infected areas. Most of the east coast and southern states were infected, but not Texas. The Midwest seemed untouched, as well as most of Canada.
“Every coastal town from Everett, Washington to San Francisco, California is gone. Most of the mountain range and towns near it.”
“Well, all my family and friends are probably dead,” I said. Maybe I should have been sad about it, but really, I had three years of thinking they were dead anyway, so the extinction of whatever little hope I’d recently acquired, was gone and not missed all that much.
“How about you?” I asked, only damning myself afterword for proposing yet another loaded question…Oh yeah, your entire family is dead...smart.
“Same. I was an orphan, so my wife and kids were my only family. They were my whole life.” He closed MSNBC’s window and went to his own Facebook page. His last post was three years ago. It was a picture of him pointing at Mount Rainier from Reflection Late, a beautiful lake on Mount Rainier that when you stand in just the right spot, you get a breathtaking view of a perfect reflection of the mountain. I knew it well.
He scrolled down and the next post was a picture of a young girl and a beautiful woman eating gooey s'mores by a campfire. Without thinking my finger immediately sprang up and pointed at the girl.
“My oldest,” Derek said. “And my wife.”
“No!”I yelled.
Derek looked at me with confusion, but my words weren’t forming well enough in my mind. I couldn’t produce complete sentences because excited emotions were erupting from within. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time. Something close to, maybe joy. I couldn’t contain it, but I couldn’t express it either. I flew out of my seat and actually jumped a little.
“What is it?” he asked. “What?”
I was shaking my hands because I didn’t know what to do with so much energy. “I know her. I know her!”
“Who?” Derek asked.
“I’ve met her. She’s alive!”
“Who, Sarah?”
I nodded and he moved in close to me and grabbing me by my biceps. He held me close to his chest, his face was just inches from mine.
“Where?”
My face went slack with the realization. “Finn’s church.”
12
Derek was standing beside me as we stared at the church from the old clothing store across the street. Through the dingy windows, the church looked more ominous than when I first saw it. A great white building with tall stained glass windows surrounded by a hastily made stone fence. I felt beyond stupid for returning to the church, but at least Chris wasn’t with me this time. He was probably just now waking up from his nap. Pane was all too happy to get out of cleaning duty to watch my son, and when we left he was pulling out board games and making snacks. Watching
him prepare for some good quality kid time made me instantly jealous. I'd never actually played with my own son before. We never had the chance to play. I wished I could trade Pane places, but Derek needed me. I knew the church and I knew where Finn kept his favorite pets.
“Where are the guards?” Derek asked me in a hushed voice.
“Probably taking a piss,” said Gerald in a cringingly loud voice. I looked back at him to find him shopping, and I gave him a mean glare. “What?” he protested the look. “I haven’t had a wardrobe change in three years. No one has. We really should stop by here on our way back home.”
I rolled my eyes and looked back at the church. Without looking at me, Derek said, “He’s right. We need new clothes. It’s the one thing we didn’t plan for the long term.”
I didn’t respond to him, but I had to agree. I couldn’t keep borrowing the guy's clothes every time my one outfit was dirty, and Chris was a growing boy…
“Is that why you volunteered to come with us? You wanted to go shopping?” I asked.
Gerald stuck his tongue out at me for that comment, but Derek said, “You should wait here. Your injury could compromise us.”
“The fuck I am. Derek, I love Sarah and there’s no way I’m not apart of her rescue. I’ll be the bait while you two sneak in,” Gerald suggested.
“We don’t have to sneak in. They’ll open the doors if we knock,” I said.
“But then we’ll be in there on their terms. They’ll have the advantage over us,” Derek said.
“Not to mention they know you, Erin. What do you think they’ll do when they see you?”
“Oh, just the usual. Rape, torture, murder, eat...but they’ll be, you know, meaner about it.”
"Was that a joke?" Gerald asked.
Kind of, "No."
Gerald walked up behind Derek and placed a hand on his shoulder, “I’m sure Sarah is fine.”
Derek didn’t look upset, but that didn’t mean anything. The only reassuring words I had for him were, “She should be alive. She was one of Finn’s pets. He kept them under lock and key. For his pleasure only.”
Derek nodded because I’d already told him this before we left. “I know. She’s in the tower.”
“We’ll have to go to Finn’s room first to get the key. I don’t know where he keeps it, but it’s got to be in there somewhere.”
“So how do we get in?” Gerald asked.
“You two knock. They always welcome new members to their flock. I’ll try to enter the same way I left.”
“Into the crawlspace and through the floor?” Derek asked. “What if it’s closed off?”
“Then I’ll find another way. Trust me. I’m resourceful.”
Gerald adjusted the large hammer hanging from his hip. How the hell was he supposed to lift that with his injured arm? “Normally I have a rule against trusting people who ask for it, but there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll find a way in.” He looked to Derek. “You ready, brother?”
Derek nodded. He put his hand against the yellowed glass and spoke soft words to his daughter, “Hold on, baby girl. Daddy’s coming for you.”
Derek and Gerald walked in front of the gate in plain sight of anyone manning the lookout, while I approached all stealthy-like. The gates opened and the two man walked into the courtyard and up the steps to the doors, while I crept by them, darting quickly to the side of the church. Thankfully, no one was tending the potato garden that grew in the muddy trenches.
I heard the boy’s loud knocks just as I approached the crawlspace access point Chris and I had used just last night. “Fuck,” I swore under my breath when I found that it had been nailed shut. But it was a sloppy job. The nails were old and rusty. They were likely pulled from somewhere else and reused here. Also, many of the nails were only hammed in halfway and then bent down. It looked like crap and with some effort, I was able to yank the panel open once again.
On my hands and knees I crawled through the dark, cobwebbed underbelly of the church to the hole I’d made in the floor, but unfortunately, like with the access, it had been boarded up. Unlike with the access, they did a decent enough job. I laid on my back and pushed up with my feet against the new wood planks, but they wouldn’t budge. I looked around the darkness for another way in. Nothing caught my eye and no great ideas came to me, so I crawled back out, only as soon as I poked my head out of the crawlspace something hit me hard and I fell to the ground from where I was kneeling on all fours.
I was only out of sorts long enough for whoever hit me to pull me out from under the house the rest of the way and point their gun at me. I looked up past the long barrel of a shotgun to see a familiar face; dark brown locks and light hazel eyes. It was Rudy, a teenaged boy. I remembered the day he came into the church with his dad. It was one of the worst days of my life, and his too, I’m sure. It wasn’t more than a few hours after they walked through the doors that his dad was killed and Rudy was passed around the church elders. I, along with others were forced to watch the rape, which was Rudy’s punishment for the sins of his father. His father was Jewish...And I was pretty sure that it was just a bull shit escuse to kill someone they realised was incorruptible. What they did to Rude was meant to break him down and it worked. He didn’t talk after that day. He was broken and became one of the cruelest punishers of them all.
“Rudy, please. I’m here to rescue a girl. Help me and you can leave with us.” He said nothing, unsurprisingly, and brought his gun closer to my face. “Don’t you want to leave here?”
Again, he didn’t answer me, but I noticed that sweat was falling down his face. It wasn’t hot enough for that kind of sweat. He looked like he was in a fight recently. His skin was flushed and his eyes were unfocused. He looked scared-er than usual.
“What’s happened?” I asked him. He licked his lips and looked up at the church. I took that opportunity to grab his gun and pull it to the side hard. He pulled the trigger and shot the grown near me. “Fuck!” I yelled. I stood and kicked Rudy in the back of his knee. When he fell, I took the gun from his hands by force, turning it awkwardly so he couldn’t keep a strong enough hold on it.
“Get the fuck out of here, Rudy! Leave now!” He just looked at me with his big bright scared eyes. I pointed the shotgun at him. “Leave!” I had no intention of killing the boy but it worked. He ran out of the gates, which were strangely left open. They wouldn't have been left them open... I walked toward the courtyard and peered around the corner to find the front steps empty. Derek and Gerald were in, which meant I had to get in fast before anything bad happened to them.
I walked around to the back of the church. I expected to see a wilted garden and the gallows they used to regularly hang people, but what I didn’t expect to find was a pile of dead bodies. Most of them were women and children. I knew some of these people. Flesh-eating zombies had made me numb to the sight of dead bodies, but I never could achieve full numbness at the sight of dead children, especially children I knew. My stomach twisted into knots. Part of the pain I felt at seeing their bodies, was guilt for having left them behind. I closed my eyes to collect myself before looking back down at them. What a waste. All this meat just laying here for the birds. Finn would never have allowed the mindless slaughter of so many people at once. Something had definitely changed here.
There was a beautiful black girl lying off to the side of the pile. It took me a moment to remember her name, Triv. She had been a very quiet girl and Chris’s only friend here. Her cause of death wasn’t outwardly evident until I saw the bruising around her neck. Someone in that church had strangled this little girl to death. I could feel the beginning of tears welling up in my eyes. Those sick bastards! How did Christopher and I survive this? I stroked my hand down the girl’s face. I don’t know why I did that. It was compulsory. I blinked out tears that fell on her cheeks and trailed down into her hairline. A man’s scream tore me away from the spell I was under. I looked back up at the church and found the back door open. A sane person would have run lik
e hell from all of this. I was clearly not a sane person.
13
Without electricity and most of the windows boarded up, the church was always dark inside, but usually, there were candles or small fires to light some key rooms, like the common room and the kitchen. There was none of that now. I walked into utter blackness. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. I held the shotgun close as I walked through the sanctuary toward the lobby. It was eerily silent as I walked between the pews, but I didn’t feel alone in the dark space. My feelings were confirmed when I heard the loud scraping sound of a pew being moved just behind me. I turned fast with the gun pointed out, but in the darkness, I saw no one. A shuffling sound made me turn again just in time to see the shadowy figure of a man run into a room beside the podium. I moved my head to the side until it cracked, relieving some tension and then I followed the man.
I pushed the door open all the way with my shotgun to find a disturbingly skinny woman eating away at the stomach of a dead man. She was slopping it up with her hands, avoiding the intestines and going for the liver and muscles. It was a disgusting thing to see, but what was more upsetting was that she wasn’t a zombie. She wasn’t crazed or ravaging him mindlessly. She was calmly eating her fill.
“Hey,” I said in a friendly greetings sort of way. She jumped a little and looked at me. There was nothing but sadness in her eyes. I didn’t recognize her, but by the looks of her, she’d been kept at the church for a long time. Starved and hidden away. Now she was free and hungry…
“I didn’t kill him,” she said. “I found him like this.”
“No worries, honey. Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know. I belonged to Jensen, but I woke up this morning to a different man on top of me... After the man was done he left the door open. I heard screams. A lot of screams. I hid until the screaming stopped.” She looked down at her bloody hands. “I haven’t eaten in so long and there was no food in the kitchen, nothing.”
