Inflictions

by John McIlveen

  At the onset, all Marissa had to do was move fast. Food was plentiful for the living dead, and they moved slowly, but not as slowly as some would think. Regardless, if you were sluggish and had a propensity to dining daily on fast food, chances were you’d become a first course.

  She had found a Smart car that worked pretty well for weaving around, though, and under hard-to-fit spaces, and was near enough to the ground to push the ravaged bodies of the unfortunate aside. Marissa could jump out of the Smart car, hack a foot or hand off, and be back in the car within ten seconds without a feasting zombie even noticing her, or if they did, they didn’t give much of a shit as long as they were eating well. Soon, however, there was far too much congestion from crashed or abandoned vehicles, other debris and, of course … bodies, for the Smart car to be a long-term solution.

  The second month was more difficult. Cedric was four months old, two months living dead. The survivors had all but disappeared. Marissa wasn’t sure whether they escaped out of Boston to safer grounds or had all perished, but she would occasionally hear the tortured shrieks of some poor bastard who’d been caught napping. From her eighth-floor condo she could see the rush of the dead as they responded to those screams.

  Now she had to use her wiles when it came to feeding Cedric. She had tried freezing a hefty collection of body parts she had gathered, but Cedric wanted nothing to do with them. Fried, microwaved, blended, souffléd, it didn’t matter. Unlike with the living, frozen meats didn’t quite cut it with the living dead.

  The power had failed shortly after that second month. Despite it being one of the old-fashioned horizontal types with a latching lid, some of the smell did manage to squeeze between the seal and the frame, and there was no way she’d open that freezer now.

  Another reason for not opening the freezer was that Cedric’s daddy was in there. Marissa knew next to nothing about zombies. She had been so focused on Cedric that she hadn’t spent much time studying them, which meant she had no idea if they could starve to death or if their eating was just fueled by memory or a motor function. Nor did she know if they reanimated after being frozen and then thawed. She hadn’t heard any noises from within the freezer, but finding out was not on her list of options or desires. Besides, he was the dumbass who infected Cedric; he didn’t deserve to get out. Where he got it—the plague—she had no idea, but if it had come from that ho’ Keisha Jordan, it wouldn’t surprise her, the way she kept giving her stuff away to anyone who cared for a sample, rubbing that big old ass all over anyone who looked twice at it. Didn’t matter none, now. Keisha Jordan had been Cedric’s dinner about month ago. The leftovers had gone out the window and down eight stories.

  “Ain’t you ever full?” she asked her son. Cedric twisted and heaved in response, little impish clicks and snarls spilling from his mouth. His eyes bored straight into her, burning with hunger and intensity far too direct for his age.

  He was now six months old. Before he’d been infected, his skin had been healthy and unblemished, the powdery hue of cocoa. Now it was ashen as storm clouds, with splits beginning in the webbing of his fingers and toes and blood seepage from around his eyes and the corners of his lips.

  Marissa lifted him and raised him to her shoulder. The intimacy of motherhood had disappeared upon the acknowledgement of what her sweet baby had become, yet her heart was still tied to him. She patted his back until he released a fetid belch, all the while trying to sink his nonexistent teeth into her shoulder and drooling all over her. She wore a fisherman’s raincoat while dealing with Cedric, though it made her feel and look more like Paddington Bear. Cedric protested loudly, screeching his wrath as she laid him back into the crib, his eyes never swaying from hers.

  “There you go, you little demon,” she said sweetly. She carefully removed her coat, carried it to the bathroom between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into the tub on top of two others. It was so much easier when there was hot water; she would just turn the shower on full heat and dump in a bottle of chlorine. She gingerly peeled the Playtex gloves from her hands, rolling them inside out, and dropped them into a lined barrel.

  She’d known that Robert, Cedric’s daddy, had the plague before he even knew it; she saw it in his eyes, how they darted back and forth, always wary and shying from the light. When Robert started puking and messing damn near everywhere, even he couldn’t deny it. After Robert passed out, she brained him with his own softball bat, as he had instructed her. It was the same one she later used on Keisha … a little poetic justice, she figured.

  Needing out of that vile apartment, Marissa had moved the bare necessities up to the eighth floor of the ten-story building and begun stocking it with water, nonperishable foods, medical supplies, and propane to fuel the Coleman camping stove she had set up. She had observed that the zombies had no particular desire to ascend steps unless enticed, so the higher, the better. She had also developed a pretty clever route from her apartment to target sites like stores, pharmacies, and even a hospital, snaking through the upper floors of buildings and employing ladders, bedrails, planking, and anything useful for travelling between buildings and over rooftops, keeping any proximity to the zombies to a minimum.

  By the third month, the living dead had far outnumbered the living-alive. The only advantage to this was that the living population that had perished had done it so quickly it had left plenty of food and fuel for the survivors, as long as they didn’t mind eating canned and dry foods and siphoning gas … and could outmaneuver the zombies. The biggest disadvantages were that that there were so many dead the streets resembled Times Square on New Year’s Eve, only without the lights and fanfare, and that living flesh was now so rare that Cedric was eating less and less, though his ferocity remained at the same searing level.

  Marissa’s maternal instincts had kicked in. She needed to feed her baby. Marissa knew that if she was alive, there had to be smarter and more adept people who had survived as well, especially in a city the size of Boston. Cedric had needed food, which meant that she, just like the living dead, would have to hunt for living flesh. Her advantage was that the survivors knew the mindless dead were after them, but they never expected a gritty, strong-willed mother. The realization that she didn’t have to carry Cedric everywhere with her made things a bit easier, and travels much lighter. He was safe when left behind at the apartment. The dead didn’t want him; he was one of them.

  By the time Cedric reached five months old, his appetite was voracious, yet he was an infant, so he still ate relatively small amounts. With no way to preserve the dead bodies and the number of survivors nearing nil, Marissa had been forced into taking prisoners, luring them to her apartment, and then handcuffing them to the cast iron steam radiator. She kept them alive and fresh, making sure they survived as long as possible. She’d start small, with the toes and fingers, then the feet and the legs. She didn’t like putting them through all the pain and terror, so she’d shoot them up pretty well, at first with morphine, and then Darvon, Fentanyl, or Sufenta, all of which she had in ample supply thanks to the empty hospitals and pharmacies. You never knew when you might need serious narcotics.

  She found the woman first, practically slammed into her as they both ran across an anonymous rooftop that connected apartment complexes, turning the same corner at the same time in different directions. Sue wasn’t an easy catch. Marissa had to work on her sympathy by telling her that her baby’s head was trapped in the stair railings and she needed help. Damned fine bit of acting, too. Tears, sobs, and all.

  But Sue had tricked her. After drugging her, Marissa had searched her for weapons, but hadn’t thought twice about the Tylenol bottle in her sweatshirt pocket, where the clever young lady had stashed a razor blade. The evening after Marissa had cut Sue’s foot off and fed it to Cedric in small, nibble-sized pieces, Sue had slashed her own throat while Marissa slept and the zombie child watched her hungrily through the prison-like bars of his crib.

  Marissa didn’t make the same mistake twice. She saw
the flicker of candlelight from around the edge of a window about an eighth of a mile away. It was astounding how dark Boston could become on an overcast night, now that there was no electricity. The flickering was like a beacon.

  She waited patiently until morning, sitting on the balcony two stories above her apartment where Cedric’s shrieks and guttural noises couldn’t reach her. It was a man, evident by his size and the Celtics tank top, even at that distance. He climbed out onto the ledge, stretched, and stumbled, nearly plummeting six stories down. Marissa jumped around, waving her arms boldly until he noticed her.

  The guy was easy to bait, as most were … or had been. He was a sucker for the lonely woman with her pouting lips and amazingly tight jeans. Promise a man the best blowjob of his life and he’d follow you damned near anywhere. Kneeling in front of him also offered the best possible position for jamming the needle in his ass before he could even free his redheaded friend from his Levi’s. She searched him as soon as she had him restrained, feeling a tinge of regret. He wasn’t terrible, a little daft-looking maybe, but he had a fine body.

  But baby came first.

  Troy fed Cedric for nearly two weeks, until fever from all the cutting and amputations overtook him. Only an hour after Troy died, Cedric refused the meat. Dead was dead, and who would know this better than the dead? As she had done with Keisha and Sue, Marissa unlocked the handcuffs and wrestled the body out the window, letting it fall eight stories to the pavement below, hopefully taking out a few of those deteriorating bastards in the process.

  Eight days later, Marissa’s search for food for Cedric kept coming up short. She travelled the rooftops at night, looking for any signs of life. Many of the zombies seemed to have redirected their searches to greener pastures and the reek of death and decay seemed to be lightening, though many bodies were still visible in the streets. Cats and dogs weaved between the ownerless vehicles, every so often yanking a bit of flesh from a corpse, sometimes fighting over some delectable treasure. Merissa had plenty of food. The apartment was stocked with Spam, Bush beans, ravioli, rice pilaf, and a cornucopia of other foods, none of which were beneficial to Cedric, who was at that moment shrieking like a siren from inside the apartment. It was time for his second feeding of the day.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said wearily as she hoisted herself through the window and sat on the ottoman near the crib.

  The first Novocain stab was always the worst, even all hopped up on Sufenta. She inserted the needle between the big toe and second toe and pressed the plunger. After waiting five minutes, she gave the toe a good snap. There was a bite of pain, but she’d deal with it.

  She took the cable cutter and placed the open jaws around her second toe.

  Two feedings a day seemed to get Cedric through. The first day it had been her ears.

  Eight days.

  All that remained of her digits was the big toe on each foot, and her index fingers and thumbs. She wondered where his next feeding would come from. A big toe would really mess up her balance, but any of her remaining fingers would leave her helpless.

  She figured she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.

  On the count of three she slapped her hands together over the handles of the cable cutter. With a loud snap that sent tremors through her body, her toe fell to the plate below. The pain was immense, but she clenched her teeth and inhaled slowly, counting each breath. For Cedric she could handle it. For her baby.

  Smokey

  He pads softly down the hallway, silent and subtle as a breeze in the otherwise still night. Before the door near the end of the hallway he pauses, looks carefully behind him, and sniffs the air. All is still. Satisfied, he prods the door open just enough to allow entrance.

  He senses the child. Her sadness reaches out to him, brushing him with fingers—cold, haunting, and so lonely the feeling is palpable and immense. It makes him feel lost and insubstantial; a speck of sand under a silent, coal-black sea.

  He leaps to the crib and furtively clambers down onto the mattress. Gingerly he licks the sleeping child’s foot, which rewards his gritty tongue with a twitch. Even in sleep, the child’s emotions, her fear and sorrow, are nearly overwhelming to the cat’s fine senses.

  There is little room in the crib, which will soon be too small for the child, yet he manages himself between the crib rails and the child. Nestling against her chest, he offers the warmth of his lean form, trying to compensate the chill of the small bedroom. Hearing the flutter of her heart, her breathing, he is reminded of similarities to when he was a kitten and lay with his mother. He begins purring.

  The toddler’s ribcage expands and contracts, at times hitching as she shudders within the walls of sleep. Stretching forward, the cat sniffs the ringlets of mocha-brown hair that curl against the child’s pouted lips and adhere to her flushed cheeks.

  He offers all he is able—warmth, love, and little more. Reassurance is beyond his means, for what can a cat offer a two-year-old child except for warmth and its love? What benefit is reassurance to this child, when every day promises the same kind of hell? To know at so young an age that each dawning day is yet another journey into fear, each journey ending with tears, pain, and the promise of more loneliness. The only comfort being that such loneliness offers the shelter of isolation. There is no reassurance.

  The child’s name is Cassie, though the cat does not know this. He comprehends no words, only understands the tone of voices and the smell of emotions, the most noticeable of which are anger, hatred, and of course, love. Anger and hatred are prevalent smells in the house of the little girl, imposing scents of which child’s mother reeks. Deciphering negative smells, like anger and hatred, from good smells, like love and happiness, is his most consequential ability.

  He knows mothers. He remembers his own as a faint memory, teaching him and his four feline siblings, influencing and guiding them, allowing them to learn from their experiences. He cannot recall his mother ever striking her young, not like the girl-child’s mother.

  His name is Smokey, a title dubbed him by the child’s older sister, who felt the correct spelling of smoky looked awkward. Even misspelled, it is a befitting title for a Russian Blue, suitably defining his downy gray coat and sinuous grace. His name, as with all words, means nothing to him, but the discernible pitches and vibrations, he has learned, are references to him.

  There are many things Smokey cannot comprehend, but if one thing is as discernible as a flame in the darkness, it is the mother’s dislike for Cassie. The mother does not want Cassie; this he, as well as Cassie, knows. It is obvious by the smell—the acrid, stinging odor that surrounds them whenever Cassie is near. This does not happen when the sister is in the mother’s presence. At those times there is the sweetness of contentment—an aroma he relates with his mother’s fur—or there is no smell at all. Despite the warm associations, it is offensive coming from the angry mother. The considerable discrepancy of the two smells coming from the same source, her ability to change instantly from a bad-angry smell to a good-love smell just by looking from one girl to the other, is perplexing and bizarre to him.

  Too often Smokey looks on as Cassie strives for the mother’s approval. From beneath a table or behind a chair he watches the child who desperately wants to perhaps break through the barrier of hatred, wants—needs—her mother’s love, and to return that love. Cassie brings the mother gifts, resolute offerings in quiet despondency, regardless of Smokey’s nudges or weaved warnings in front of her. Her attempts to find favor are usually ignored and brushed off with an apathetic glance and the mild tang of irritation.

  More distressing and memorable are Cassie’s physical efforts for affection. If Cassie should try to touch her mother, the bitter stench of rage and loathing instantly envelops the house, alarming Smokey. Hugs merit brutal rebukes often resulting in painful circumstances, bruises, and sometimes blood—her uncoordinated toddler legs too slow to support her. Fortunately these attempts have nearly stopped.

  Th
e mother does not seem to notice or simply does not care about the tears shed by her daughter, the tears of a two-year-old child who must see the harmony between the sister and the mother. Tears of discouragement fall to the floor, only to shatter with her hopes for smiles, love, and laughter, the qualities that mothers and daughters share—which the mother and sister share—while she looks on … an outcast.

  Cassie is too young to understand what a victim is, though herself the victim of a man she never knew, the man who fathered her, didn’t want her, and so abandoned her, and the victim of a mother who blames her and will never forgive her for her departed lover.

  Still she continues to face the hostility hoping that just maybe …

  Cassie shifts, waking Smokey and loosening a waft of old urine from the soiled sheets. Smokey watches his reflection in her vibrant blue-gray eyes. Large as quarters, they focus in the morning’s brightness. He sniffs his greeting like a kiss against her cheek, near a small but evident bruise, a handmade token for an infraction so menial, yet so unpardonable, as a toppled ashtray.

  “Cat! ’Moky!” The child says.

  Her eyes shine brilliantly with enthusiasm. Her silk-skinned face radiates the beauty of innocence in its roundness. A beauty that, like her merriment, will be shortlived, dampened by the first note of the mother’s wakefulness. Cassie wraps her little arms around Smokey’s neck and pulls him to her in an all-consuming hug. To Smokey this is somewhat painful, but he is aware of the ingredients in such an embrace; love and a need for the contact neglected her, bestowed on the only recipient that not merely tolerates, but welcomes it. This he happily withstands and tells her so by purring.