by TW Brown
“What’s a zombie?” Valarie blurted. She’d heard that word before and she hated it when she couldn’t remember things. Now this nice man, Kevin, and one of her favorite singers in the entire world were using that word over and over. It had to be important.
“Umm…those are the sick people,” Shari said.
Valarie saw the look on Shari’s face. It was the look people used when they spoke to her and thought she couldn’t understand. An image stuck in her mind. It was her meema; she was on the bed after her legs had been cut off. Meema had opened her eyes, but…
“They weren’t my meema’s eyes,” Valarie whimpered.
“What?” Kevin and Shari both turned to face Valarie. Her brown eyes were welling with tears and the dark brown skin of her cheeks were slick and shiny from them.
“My meema opened her eyes, but they were wrong. They were not my meema’s eyes.”
Kevin took a quick look around. He wanted to be sure that they had time to deal with this now. So far, nothing was headed their way.
“You’re right, Valarie.” Kevin put his hands on her shoulders. “Your meema has passed away. So have lots of people. Do you know what that means?”
“It means they are with Baby Jesus,” Valarie sniffed.
“Right,” Kevin agreed, placing his beliefs aside for the time being. “Only, now, when people die…pass away…sometimes they get back up.”
“Like the night time monsters.”
“Huh?” Kevin wasn’t sure she understood what he was saying, and he was certain that he didn’t understand what she was saying.
“My Uncle Skip used to make me popcorn and we would watch movies. His favorite was the Night of Live Monsters.”
She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she meant. “You mean Night of the Living Dead?”
“Yeah, the night monsters…” Valarie put her arms out and aped a convincing zombie walk. “I’m gonna get you, Barbra,” she said in a deep voice that would have made a Boris Karloff impersonator proud.
“Well some of the people have become the night monsters,” Kevin said, deciding it would be best to try and use her language instead of his own.
“But Uncle Skip said not to a’scairt because it was just people pretending.”
“And he was right,” Kevin said. He noticed a few shadows beginning to stir up the road a ways. “But we will talk about this later. Let’s have a contest to see who can unload the back of the truck fastest.”
Valarie looked at Kevin and sniffed. She felt a little silly for crying in front of Shari. She felt even sillier for thinking there could be such things as the night monsters. Even if they were all gray looking like the ones on Uncle Skip’s television.
Thirty minutes later—during which time Kevin left twice instead of helping which Valarie thought was a little bit rude—they had all the boxes and bags out of the back of the truck. Halfway in, another girl came to help. Valarie thought that she might be the prettiest lady she had ever seen, but she would never tell Shari. She didn’t think that Shari liked the other girl very much. Twice, Valarie caught her sticking her tongue out at the pretty lady who really liked Kevin a lot.
7
Blizzards
“I want to see her,” Jamie insisted.
Dr. Zahn had taken Teresa into the bathroom, which was now actually in the process of becoming the children’s room and already had three bunk beds lining the walls. She had given me specific instructions: Nobody comes in.
“Jamie, you will be the first visitor allowed to see her when she is done, but right now she needs to have everybody out of the way,” I insisted.
I had to admit, over an hour had passed and I was aching to know what the hell had happened. Jamie insisted that she hadn’t been bitten, and I knew Teresa well enough to know that if she had, she wouldn’t keep it a secret. Still, there was no denying what I’d seen. Her eyes had the tracers that gave away the fact that indicated a person had whatever it was that was turning folks into the walking dead.
We’d learned the hard way after I’d killed somebody who’d been bitten, but hadn’t turned or showed any signs of illness—the black tracers seem to be the giveaway that a person is infected. It was a tough lesson that the bite was no guarantee that a person would turn. I’d followed a man out into the woods with a few of his friends who’d also been bitten and then shot them in the head. When I’d returned, a group of new arrivals were waiting. One of them had a three-week-old bite.
A short time later, we learned something else. Being immune is one thing, but even if you are immune, death after being bitten is enough to bring you back as one of the living dead. Of course, it would be great if there were facilities available to check out that stuff with scientists or what have you…but that ain’t happening.
“Jamie,” I tried to sound firm, but still be sympathetic. After all, he was the father of the child Teresa was carrying. “I promise that you will see her first, as soon as Dr. Zahn gives the okay.”
Just then, Jon and Billy came up. Billy leaned close and whispered something in Jamie’s ear and the two boys walked away, Billy’s arm around Jamie’s shoulders. Jon waited until they were gone before he spoke.
“Brad says that the newcomers are leaving in an hour to perform the rites for their dead. He and Jake are going to escort them to their site, then they are going to swing south on a supply run,” Jon said.
“Is it really such a good idea to make a run now?” I asked. It had been snowing for the past several hours and showed no signs of letting up. The temperature had warmed to a balmy twenty-eight degrees.
“The newbies said that there is another settlement…or rather, that there used to be one. It got overrun a few weeks ago. That was how they wound up losing a few of their group.”
“So what makes it any more likely that we can succeed in looting the place when they failed?” I asked. After all, there had been twelve of them that actually made it to our camp. Of that bunch, three had been put down after arrival. One was a child that I’d had to punch a spike into the forehead of after Sunshine’s sleeping poison had put her down and out. How were two of our people going to fare better than over a dozen of theirs?
“Jake knows the location and thinks he can get in and out with minimal danger,” Jon replied.
I wasn’t going to dispute ability with Jon or his men, but I still thought he might be showing just a little too much overconfidence. “I don’t like the idea of a two man team making a run,” I protested weakly. Honestly, my heart just wasn’t into it with Teresa dying in the next room. Or undying…or whatever it could be called.
“Steve.” Dr. Zahn opened the door and called me before I could say just how much I no longer cared.
I gave Jon a half-hearted pat on the shoulder and stepped past the doctor and into the room where Teresa lay wrapped in blankets on a bottom bunk of a bed painted with stars and spaceships. Right away I noticed the smell.
“How are ya feeling?” As soon as I said it, I wished that I could take the words back. I could see the dark tracers in her eyes, and her skin had a sickly grey pallor. She was visibly shivering and her hair was matted to her forehead from the sweat. In short, she looked like crap.
“Like my body is on fire on the inside, but frozen on the outside,” Teresa wheezed.
“You know, I promised Jamie that he would be the first to see you when the doctor gave the okay.”
“Yeah,” Teresa waved me closer, “well I don’t want him to see me like this. I told the doc not to let him in.”
“You can’t keep him away from you now,” I argued. “He is an absolute wreck. He needs to be here.”
“Not like this,” Teresa insisted, shaking her head. “I don’t want the last memories he has of me being the ones where I look like those damn zombies.”
“But when we thought he was sick—”
“He had you take him out into the woods because he didn’t want me to see him,” Teresa interrupted. “And now I understand why. There is something
awful about having the person that you love look at you and see death; and that is all anybody sees when you are infected.”
“But you found us and were ready to put him down when he turned,” I reminded her. “What if he wants that same…?” My voice trailed off as I considered how to finish that sentence. What was it exactly? Duty? Honor?
“I already told Doc that I want you to bring me a cup of that crap Sunshine whipped up. I don’t want to wither and die,” Teresa spoke up, her voice not much more than a harsh whisper. “It isn’t like we are holding out hope that I am going to make a miraculous recovery. This isn’t food poisoning.”
“Agreed,” I said with a nod. I had to ask it. “When did you get bit?”
“That’s just it, Steve,” Dr. Zahn stepped forward. I’d almost forgotten that she was there. “I have examined every inch of her. There isn’t a bite or a scratch to be found. Plus, she hasn’t had any contact with an infected host for over a week. So that eliminates exposure to contaminated—”
A strange look crossed the doctor’s face. She looked at Teresa, and then the door, like the answer to whatever question she might be puzzling over would be etched in the surface.
“I wasn’t bit,” Teresa insisted needlessly. “I would never risk any of you like that.”
“So what happened?” I asked. I could tell instantly that Teresa didn’t have an answer. Tears filled her eyes and then rolled down her cheeks to add to the slick sheen on her face.
“That’s just it,” she moaned. “I don’t have any idea and neither does Dr. Zahn.”
I looked back to see the doctor still staring at the door. I can’t recall a time where I’d ever seen her look puzzled or confused, but the look on her face was sending that signal loud and clear.
“Steve, stay here with Teresa,” Dr. Zahn said in an uncharacteristically passive tone of voice. And with that, she left the room leaving me alone with this sixteen-year-old girl that I’d seen become more of a kick-ass-and-take-names leader than I would probably ever be now in my thirties or in the future.
“You need to take care of Jamie when I die,” Teresa said, taking my hand in hers.
Once again I was struck by the peculiarity of the fact that, while her body burned up with a fever, her hands were already cold and clammy. There was a smell coming off of her that was like a mixture of raw chicken left on the counter over a long, hot August weekend and raw sewage mixed with boiled sugar.
“And how am I going to do that?”
“Remind him of the good things we have done…rescuing those people at that warehouse in La Grande…the sled he made for the girls…the way he took charge that night when we were in the high school FEMA shelter,” Teresa recounted.
“That isn’t gonna make him feel any better,” I sighed. “He is losing something very dear to him. The closest I’ve come besides my dog the first night was when I thought I’d lost Thalia. He is losing the girl he loves and a child. I can’t even begin to understand how he feels…will feel.”
“But you have to take care of him, Steve,” Teresa pleaded. It was the first time I’d heard that tone in her voice.
Great, I thought, I don’t have enough troubles with my relationship—or whatever it is now—with Melissa. She hadn’t spoken to me since our blow out a couple days ago. Jesus, it felt like an eternity.
“I’ll do the best I can,” I promised. That was the only thing that I could say.
“And I want you to know something else.” She tried to smile, but with her eyes changed and the sickly color of her skin in stark contrast to the dark color of her gums, it just looked creepy. “You are the leader here. It doesn’t matter who has what experience as a soldier or whatever…you are the one who keeps us all together. There is something about you that makes us complete as a group.”
“What makes you say that?”
“For the past several days, the attitude here has been one where we are fine and there isn’t anything to worry about. You saw it and tried to warn us and we treated you like Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling. You take all of this so seriously…and it all started with Thalia.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. Maybe she was getting delirious, because I honestly had no clue what she was trying to say.
“You shared the story about the first night with me once…and when you told it, you didn’t even see the big deal about saving Thalia. To you, it was just the right thing to do. That is how you do everything. Look at this place. Nobody saw it the way you did. Had we been with anybody else, we’d be like these stragglers who come in near starving. You were thinking about winter back in August.”
I thought she might be selling my stock a little high, but I could see in her eyes that she believed every word she was saying. I ignored the smell, and the fear that somehow, just by touching her I could become infected, and I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
“I couldn’t have done half of this without you,” I whispered. “And I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you now.”
“Just don’t lose sight of what has always been important,” Teresa said with a soft hitch in her voice. She was trying not to cry.
“I don’t know what is important anymore,” I said. “I think that is the problem. I thought I did…I thought it was survival, but Melissa—”
“Is pregnant,” Teresa cut me off. “You will never convince a mother that it is a good idea to kill her child unless she is an absolute psycho. You should be glad that she disagrees with you. That means that she is ready to fight to the death for her child. Surrender isn’t an option in her mind. I have a feeling that you are going to need that kind of support in the coming months.”
“Well right now I don’t know what I have; she hasn’t said a single word to me since that day.”
“She’ll come around,” Teresa promised, patting my hand. “I see her looking at you when you aren’t paying attention. I think she understands what you meant, and even though she will never agree, she knows deep down that you have the same sense of protection when it comes to her that she feels for the baby she is carrying.”
“I hope so,” I sighed.
“Now, I want you to do me one more favor.”
I knew what she was going to ask. For a moment I thought I might balk at the request, but in a flash, I knew that I would do what was needed.
“Don’t let me be one of them.”
“I promise, Teresa.”
She made a slight gasping sound. Funny how we see death around us all the time now, but it refuses to get any easier when it is one of yours. I could see the pain in her eyes, and I was struck by how much she already did not look like the person I knew. I tried to keep her gaze because, for some reason, I felt that it was important that I look her in the eyes. After all, I was about to watch her die.
“Don’t let Jamie see me,” she whispered. “Not like this…please not like…”
She coughed hard and I was surprised not to discover blood trickling from her lips. Didn’t people always cough up blood in situations like this in the movies? I guess it just adds to the drama. She stiffened and her weak grip on my hand tightened just a little. Not much, but enough to make me wince.
“I can feel it…taste it,” Teresa said through clenched teeth. “It’s exactly like what you think it would feel like.”
“It’s…” I was about to say that it would be okay. But it wouldn’t. It would never be okay for her. There would be no miracle reveal that she was just having extreme reactions to being pregnant, or anything else of the sort. Teresa was going to die. She was going to die in this little bunk bed in the converted bathroom of a camp ground’s main office.
After everything we’d been through, it was coming to an end…and I was helpless to stop it. Even worse, we had no idea why or how.
“Thanks.”
And with that final word, Teresa closed her eyes. I placed my hand near her mouth and nose to confirm what I still didn’t want to believe. All I had on me was my hunting knife.
It would have to do.
Drawing the blade, I struggled with knowing what I had to do versus what I absolutely did not want to do. Still, I had promised, and I would not let her open her eyes. I kissed her forehead and pulled the blankets up over her face. It was a simple thing to find an eye socket. One quick thrust and it was done.
I pulled the knife free and wiped off the blade. It seemed so anti-climactic. In the movies, there would be a string symphony playing a really sad piece. A montage of clips showing Teresa in her best moments would play with a fuzzy border giving it that dream quality. But all there really was now was the emptiness where she used to exist. There was a body under the sheets that would be dragged out to the fire and burned like the others.
The door opened and Dr. Zahn slipped in with Sunshine at her side. Sunshine was holding a mug.
“You’re too late,” I said, sliding my knife into the sheath.
“Is she…?” Sunshine’s voice trailed off.
“Yep.” I wanted to say something profound, but nothing would come.
“I slipped something in Jamie’s coffee,” Dr. Zahn said quietly.
I didn’t know what to think of the doctor at the moment. She was acting peculiar; very unlike the Dr. Zahn I’d come to know. That could only mean one thing: Something else was wrong.
“Kind of a dirty trick.” I got up and crossed the room to the pair. Sunshine shot a nervous glance at the doctor. That meant that whatever it was, she knew. Neither of these women should ever sit at a poker table. Not that I was any better at hiding my feelings.
“What the hell is going on?” I blurted.
“I can’t be sure,” Dr. Zahn said. “And until I can run some tests, I won’t start a panic.”
“But Sunshine knows what it is, doesn’t she?” I pressed.
“She is my nurse so to speak, I keep her abreast of things, yes.” This was more like the Dr. Zahn I was familiar and comfortable with.
“Well here is the deal.” I decided it was one of those times to be the group leader. “We are going to break this to Jamie together. But before he is awake, I want Teresa wrapped up in as close to a shroud as we can manage. I want a pyre out in the clearing and her body placed on top of it.”
