by Betts, M. E.
Shari hesitated for a moment. "We did," she said. "But we won't hurt you."
"We never hurt good guys, or girls," Daphne chimed in.
"Well," the girl said, "I guess I can tell you my name, since I need your help anyway. I'm Juanita."
Shari smiled. "Pleased to meet you, Juanita. I'm Shari, and this is Daphne." She dismounted her horse and approached the little girl. "So what happened? Did those guys take you from your parents?"
Juanita nodded. "I left the camper and went near the road by myself. I was chasing a cat. My mom told me not to go off on my own. I should have listened to her, because those bad guys came and took me away. I stayed quiet, though."
Shari raised both eyebrows. "When they took you?"
Juanita shook her head. "I wanted to scream, but I knew that if I did, my family would come running. I didn't want any of them to get hurt. My mom's gonna have a baby soon, and I don't want anything to happen to her. I went by the road, and I'm the one who deserves to be punished. When the bad guys asked me where my family was at, I lied and told them to go the opposite way, instead of where they were really at."
Shari and Daphne sat silently for a moment, moved by the girl's bravery and forethought.
I wasn't that smart when I was her age, Shari thought. I wouldn't have thought ahead to save my family, I'd have just screamed like a--
"Like a little girl?" Kandi finished for her.
Yeah, Shari thought, like that.
"Juanita," she said gently, "you didn't deserve what happened to you. You wandered away, but things happen, you know? People make mistakes. You're not a bad person. In fact, it takes an unusually brave, smart kid to keep quiet to protect your family like you did."
"You're on your way to becoming a badass little survivor, aren't you?" Daphne said, grinning. Juanita giggled, covering her mouth with her hands.
"So," Shari said, "do you know where your parents are?" The smile quickly dissolved from the young girl's face, and she looked as if she might cry. She shook her head.
"No," she said. "I don't remember how to get back there. When I was on the motorcycle, we turned a lot. I don't even remember how we got here."
"Do you remember the name of any towns nearby where your family's at?" Shari asked.
"No." Juanita's chest heaved, and her eyes became shiny with tears. "We used to live in Missouri, before...before the world went away. I don't know this area." She paused. "It was near a creek, that's all I know."
Shari reached into her jacket pocket, where she kept a packet of wet wipes. She took one out and dabbed at the girl's muddy face. "Well, Juanita," she said, "I don't know exactly what to do right now, but I promise we'll do everything we can to help you find your mom and dad. And in the meantime, we'll keep you safe."
Juanita sniffled, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her muddy hand. "Do I get to ride on your horse with you?" she asked, a faint smile on her lips as her face lit up with anticipation.
"I don't see why not," Shari said, much to the little girl's delight. "I heard she's pretty good with kids. Do you like horses?"
Juanita nodded emphatically. "What's her name?"
"Eva," Shari replied. She rubbed the horse's muzzle. "Have you ever been on a horse?"
"Once, at the fair," Juanita replied. "I won't get scared, I promise."
Shari smiled. "Well, in that case, let's get you up there and be on our way." She helped Juanita onto the horse, then mounted herself.
Daphne started her ATV. "So back the way we came?" she asked.
Shari nodded. "I guess so. Just head south for now." Shari followed Daphne as they headed away from the river and toward Paducah, a relatively well-populated town to the south. "Don't worry," she told Juanita as they rode along, "we'll find somewhere safe to rest for awhile, then we can get you something to eat and let you get cleaned up."
"Where are we going to go that's safe?" Juanita asked.
"We won't know until we get there," Shari said.
They rounded a curve, and Shari realized that there would, in fact, be a lot of zombies. The sadists had, predictably, dragged a mass of undead with them when they had left town, and this roving herd was now roughly three-hundred yards to the south, roaming around 57 and its exit and entrance ramps. Shari rode faster to come up alongside Daphne.
"I guess we should detour west," she said.
Daphne nodded. "It's only likely to get worse the further we head into town." They rode in the direction of the upcoming exit and continued west, riding past rural homes and woods. Shari saw a dehydrated corpse lying in a driveway in front of one of the farmhouses. Its skull had been cracked wide open at some point.
Someone drove over its head, Shari thought. The contents of the skull had been picked clean, either from the undead or from the turkey vultures, which were common in the area and appeared to be thriving more than ever with all the dead bodies to scavenge.
She looked back toward the road ahead of her, facing to the west, where her shadow slowly shortened as the morning sun rose higher into the clear sky. The cool, crisp air was still as they rode noisily down the road. Although Shari looked back behind her every so often, she didn't see any indication that they'd roused the attention of any undead.
As she gazed down the road, she saw a village about a half-mile ahead. Daphne made a left down a narrow, unpainted road, and they continued south. Juanita sang while they rode. Shari recognized the tune from one of the children's shows that had been popular before the apocalypse, but she couldn't remember which one. It was only a handful of months later, but already she couldn't wrap her head around the idea that, not so long ago, things like TV shows and celebrities and politics had mattered to a lot of people. Those things were, in Shari's mind, relics of the past.
Most of it isn't worth remembering, she thought. Just mind clutter from a bygone era.
"An era that's bound to return," Kandi said, "just as soon as humanity has time to fall back into all the same bad habits."
Shari scoffed. Not if I can help it.
Kandi laughed mockingly. "Silly princess, thinks she can save the world."
Up ahead, Daphne had signaled that she would be turning left. Shari saw a driveway ahead leading up to a farmhouse and outbuildings. She followed Daphne as she turned onto the driveway and drove on past the house toward a large metal building out back.
"This building doesn't have any first-floor windows, at least not low enough to be climbed into," Daphne explained, pointing to the narrow horizontal windows situated high up, near the ceiling of the ground floor. "We should be safe in there. We'll search the place, make sure there's no one in there, and then we can sleep in peace."
"How do you propose we get in?" Shari asked. "Because that's a reinforced door, so we're not getting in that way without the key."
Daphne shrugged, looking around the yard. "Maybe we can find a ladder, then I can climb up to a second floor window and break in."
Shari nodded, pointing to the garage beside the house. "We can look in there." She and Juanita dismounted Eva, who stood sniffing out fallen apples from the half-dozen trees planted on the south side of the building. They started across the yard to the garage, where Shari popped the door open with her crowbar. "There it is," she said, pointing to a ladder spanning the length of the back wall. "Gimme a hand." She and Daphne each took an end of the ladder, maneuvering it out the door and toward the large metal building which would serve as their camp.
Juanita followed close behind. "What's that building for, anyway?" she asked.
"I don't know exactly," Shari said. "But it has garage doors on it, so maybe that's where they keep their farm equipment. We know that it'll be safe in there, and that's the important thing." They approached the building, and she and Daphne set the ladder down for a moment. "You ready to help me stand this thing up?" she asked.
"Let's do it," Daphne said. "The sooner we get in there, the sooner we can sleep."
"And eat!" Juanita chimed in.
"And
maybe wash with running water," Shari said, nodding toward the cistern behind the building. Together, Shari and Daphne stood the ladder up and leaned it against the building next to one of the second story windows.
"Wish me luck," Daphne said as she ascended the ladder. When she reached the second floor window, she unsheathed her titanium knife and used it to break the glass.
"Be careful," Shari called after Daphne as she crawled into the building. She turned to Juanita. "You might as well have something to eat while we're waiting." She slid her backpack off of her shoulders and rummaged through its depths, taking out the various food items that she had scavenged from the last gas station that she and Daphne had picked through. "I have mac and cheese, spaghetti with meatballs, or a cereal bar."
Juanita giggled. "I think I could eat all of them!"
Shari smiled. "You eat as many as you can without getting sick, okay? I'm sure you need it, after being with those yucky guys."
"Yeah," Juanita agreed, opening the cereal bar first. "I didn't really want to eat anything they gave me."
"You don't have to worry about that anymore," Shari said. She opened a cereal bar for herself, standing and surveying their surroundings as she ate. She had seen a group of undead about a half mile from their present location, but none of them had seemed fresh enough to close the distance with any kind of speed. Still, she kept a close eye on the road and the area around the farm, ready to greet any undead with an arrow to the cranium at a moment's notice. She heard the sound of the garage door being lifted, and turned to see Daphne motioning them inside.
"I searched the place," she said. "There's no one in here." Shari led Eva into the building. She saw that the first floor of the building was set up as a large studio apartment. There was a bed in one corner, and a living area beside that. The opposite side had a kitchenette and a bathroom. She flipped on a switch, bathing the room in soft light from the overhead fixture.
"Glad to see that generator outside is functioning," she said. She went to the refrigerator, opening the freezer door and leaning toward its interior. She was greeted with frigid air and the sight of a freezer filled with frozen entrees, appetizers, and other cook-and-serve foods.
Daphne drove her ATV inside. "We should get that ladder and bring it in here," she said. "Just to be safe."
"Yeah, sure," Shari said. She pointed to the fridge. "We can actually have a hot meal later, after we get some rest." She followed Daphne out to the side of the building, where they lowered the ladder and carried it in through the open garage door.
"Everything's in," Daphne said, reaching up above her head to pull the door closed. She crouched, carefully locking the door in place, then leaned against the door, sighing as she melted languidly into the floor, kicking her legs out. "It's time to not think about zombies or sadists, at least for a solid six hours or so."
Shari lit up a smoke, pulling the string on the ceiling fan to get the air moving in the room before collapsing into a recliner. "I think I'll need at least eight, personally," she said, exhaling the smoke upward toward the ceiling. "How 'bout you, Juanita? Are you pretty tired, too?"
Juanita nodded. "But can I have some mac and cheese before I go to sleep?"
"Of course," Shari said, going to the kitchen for a fork. "We'll all get our bellies full and then sleep good and hard."
She washed the forks first, even though she had taken them from a drawer full of clean silverware. Whoever owned this place, she thought, I didn't know them.
Before she sat down to eat, she rummaged through a utility closet in the corner of the kitchen until she found a large bucket. She filled the bucket with the sprayer hose from the sink, then carried it over to Eva, who lapped the water gratefully.
They all sat on stools at the breakfast bar that separated the living space from the kitchen, eating their shelf-stable meals. When they finished eating, they took turns showering.
"Doesn't clean hair feel and smell amazing?" Shari said as she exited the bathroom, pressing her wet hair into her face and inhaling deeply. "It's good to feel like a person again."
Once they were all clean, Shari and Juanita retired to the bed and Daphne to the couch. They were all sleeping before five minutes had passed.
Shari awoke from her deep, dreamless sleep. The inside of the building was getting dark, and the light of the setting sun cast golden light in through the small slits of the windows that sat just below the ceiling. What time is it? Her hand searched the top of the nightstand until her fingers closed around her phone, which she had decided to charge since they were in a building with electricity. She turned the phone on and checked the time. It was eight o'clock, which meant she had been sleeping for around ten hours.
She sat up in the bed, swinging her legs down to the floor. She slowly stood and made her way across the darkened room, picking up her revolver from the nightstand and holstering it. She felt along the wall of the kitchenette, looking for the switch she had made note of earlier. She found the switch, turning on the track lights above the breakfast bar. Kandi popped up beside her, and she jumped, startled, and reflexively palmed her revolver. You cunt, she thought. You scared the shit out of me.
"Just keeping you on your toes, princess," Kandi retorted. She squinted her dark eyes, lowering her voice as she continued. "You know, there's something odd about this place."
What do you mean?
"Well, it's an entire living area set up out here in this large outbuilding."
Nothing odd about that, Shari thought. Lots of people do that out here in the country. There's lots of reasons for it, if you think about it...guest lodging, somewhere for your grown kids to stay when they're living with you, a hangout place for a husband to get away from his wife.
"I understand all that," Kandi said. "But why is there a garage door?"
Shari shrugged. I don't know. Maybe it was used for something else originally, then they finished it later as a living space and didn't see the need to go to the expense of removing a large garage door.
Kandi smiled faintly. "Perhaps, princess."
Shari began rummaging through the kitchen, taking out the items that might be useful and setting them on the breakfast bar. After she had gone through everything, she surveyed the items on the counter. There were three jars of peanut butter, a multi-tool bottle opener, a meat thermometer, some toothpicks, twist-ties, and a handful of other items. After she had searched the building, she would go through the items left out on the counter and decide which ones were truly worth cramming into a bag or trunk when they got back on the road.
She moved on to the back half of the first floor, which was a large storage area. She walked past large racks full of garments covered with plastic wraps, making her way toward a large closet in the rear of the room. As she opened the folding doors of the closet, her hand groped the dark interior until she found a cord hanging down. She pulled the cord and filled the closet with the glow of the fluorescent bulb, and found that the it was full of recording equipment and toys, mostly dolls.
Shari frowned, walking back to the other end of the room. She lifted a plastic cover on one of the garments hanging from the rack. It was a shiny, sequined red dress. Shari looked at the tag, which said the dress was a size 5T. She sighed, feeling a foul sensation gurgle up from inside her, a sensation so palpable, it nearly made her sick. As she surveyed the room, she spotted a desk in the corner opposite the door. She made her way to the desk, opening the top drawer. Stacks of photographs were filed away neatly inside the drawer, the individual stacks bundled with rubber bands and labeled with a piece of paper, each one with a different name scribbled on it.
She took out a bundle, though she feared that she already knew what she would find. She took off the rubber band and gazed at the first picture. It was a close-up of a pre-school-aged girl, her shiny red curls piled into a ponytail high up on her head. She was grinning, her blue eyes lit up. Shari put the photo in the back of the stack to reveal the next one underneath it. The same girl was in the next
photo, still smiling as she sat on a bed in her underwear and undershirt. A man sat on the bed next to the girl, grinning ear to ear as he looked at the camera. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late forties, and the flash of the camera revealed a large, shiny burn scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to the top of his cheekbone. The borders of the scar looked like silvery, licking flames. Shari looked at the next of the pictures in the stack, realizing that it went further downhill from there, with more of the child's clothing removed. Shari threw the photos onto the floor, throwing up a little into her mouth as she realized that the bed in the photos was the same one in which she and Juanita had slept. She hurried back toward the bed and living area.
"You guys, wake up," she said in an frantic tone that was just short of shouting. "Daphne, I have to show you something." She shook Juanita's elbow gently. "Juanita, honey, it's time to wake up."
The little girl sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Are we leaving?" She looked up at the windows. "It's dark out. We're not going out in the dark, are we?"
"No, we're not leaving yet," Shari said. "It's just that I...I found out there's something wrong with that bed, and maybe some of the other furniture in here. " She paused. "I can't exactly explain it to you, but just trust me on this one."
Daphne took her sleeping bag from her ATV, unrolling it on the floor for Juanita. "Here, hon. If you're still tired, you can sleep in here."
Juanita crawled into the sleeping bag, burrowing in. "Thanks," she said. "I'm still sleepy." She closed her eyes, and after a moment, her breathing deepened.
"So what's this you wanted to show me?" Daphne asked. Shari motioned for her to follow as she led them to the desk. She picked up a few of the pictures from the floor, handing them to Daphne. Daphne appeared to have the same reaction as Shari when she got to the third picture, deliberately swallowing while she wore a look of utter contempt and disgust.
"Sick fuck," Daphne spat. She faced Shari, panting, her chest heaving with rage. "Let's get out of here at daybreak."
Shari nodded. "We'll still have a thorough look, see what else is here that's worth taking. I'm still eating some food out of the freezer, at least from the unopened boxes that the pedophile didn't put his filthy hands on. And then, I agree, we should be on the road as early as possible."
