by Brian James
“We’ve got to bleach your hair before tomorrow so that you’ll be as perfect as the rest of us,” she says, taking a few loose strands of my straw-colored hair in her hand and twisting them into the light where they don’t sparkle the way hers does. It will, though. Soon enough, it will.
FIFTEEN
My vision is reduced to tiny slits just below the blindfold and I can barely make out the red M tattooed on the chest of my uniform in the dim light. I keep my head down and my eyes focused on it to keep my mind off the parade of hands tugging and pulling me forward. I slide my feet over the floor, trying not to stumble as I’m dragged through the maze of benches and lockers.
“Can’t I take this off?” I ask the voices that float around me like so much static on the radio when the stations go in and out of range.
“I told you, you have to wear it,” Maggie says from somewhere in front of me, somewhere in the darkness. “It’ll keep the bleach from getting in your eyes.” But if it’s such a safety precaution, I wonder why they didn’t wait until we were in the other room before tying the shadows over my eyes, instead of already doing it while I was on the bench.
I try to manage my steps, try to keep pace and not trip over the feet of those leading me to the equipment room where they say is the best place to dye my hair because there’s a sink and a chair and everything we need to make me as blond as the winter sunshine.
The deadbolt clicks and I hear the heavy door creak open inches away. The sour, rotting smell of dead mice seeps into my nostrils and my stomach turns over. Four hands clutch at each of my arms and pull me to the source of the odor. I hesitate and they pull harder. “It’s really nasty,” I protest, struggling to get my hands free so that I can cover my mouth and nose to keep from gagging.
“Don’t be so stupid,” Morgan says. “The bleach will kill the smell in a second.” She gives me a little shove as she finishes speaking and I fall back into an invisible chair placed there to catch me. There’s a rustling through boxes and the shuffling of feet around me and I try to peek by rubbing my shoulder against the blindfold to push it up and let more of the room into view.
Someone grabs the loose ends of the scarf, pulls my head back like yanking a dog’s leash to keep it away from something it’s not supposed to get into. Then the last remaining light is sealed off when the knot is cinched tighter at the back of my head.
I can sense the figures moving around me like ghosts moving behind the walls of my house at night. My breathing grows quick and scattered at the clattering sound of glass and the silence of my friends. I only hear the whispering rise and fall of their lungs when they exhale. The whistling air sounds like a pit of snakes hissing with pointed tongues.
“Maybe I shouldn’t do this,” I say, sounding as worried as I can.
“Don’t be scared,” Meredith’s familiar voice says close to my ear.
“I’m not,” I lie. “It’s just, you know, I should make sure it’s okay with my dad first.” They tell me not to be such a child. That it’s no big deal. But I keep arguing with them because something doesn’t feel right. Nothing has felt right all day and I make up my mind to start listening to my instincts.
I go to stand up but I’m quickly pushed back down. Pinned to the chair and held tight by a series of hands holding my elbows and wrists. Warm breath on my cheek as someone slithers in close, putting her knee into my stomach as she speaks. “Maybe you’d like it better if I had my dad take you away to a foster home,” Maggie says.
I can tell by the way she says it that it’s not just a threat. She’d actually go through with it. And for the first time since meeting her, I know exactly how mean she can be.
I swallow any fight I have left in me and shut up.
“Slide the chair over and lean her head back into the sink,” Maggie orders once she’s released me. The instructions are carried out immediately. The screeching scrape of metal against the floor fills the room. My head makes a dull noise when it hits against the base of the sink. Then nothing, as if everyone else has evaporated and left only the low swishing of socks sweeping across the floor.
Waiting for whatever is supposed to happen next makes me feel sick to my stomach. I want to get out of the chair and scream at them all to stop, but it’s like I don’t have a tongue and I don’t have limbs. And I’m blind to the shadows that crawl like animals around their kill. The dream sensation of teeth chewing open my skin creeps along my spine at the touch of fingernails scratching lightly against my scalp.
I don’t expect it when the warm water suddenly soaks my hair. No sound of running faucets to get me prepared and I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming out. It burns like gasoline against my skin and I figure out that it’s not water at all but bleach, melting the color from each strand of hair to be washed down the drain.
There’s a moment then when nobody’s hands are holding me down and I know it’s my only chance. I tell myself that if I could see what’s going on, it wouldn’t be so bad. I reach up and dig my fingers under the blindfold and pull it up over my eyes. I see Morgan make a desperate attempt to stop me, but by the time she grabs hold of my wrist and bends it back it’s too late.
I see everything.
The metal shelves against the wall, stacked with countless glass jars that shimmer like rubies in the flickering fluorescent light. Filled with heavy red water, only thicker. Each has a strip of masking tape across the front with a name written in black marker. Names I know. Names that begin with the same letter. Hundreds of them, from floor to ceiling like books in a library.
I don’t realize what they are until I see the one in Meredith’s pale hands. The fresh smell of Magic Marker chemicals still lingers where my fake name has been scrawled onto the label. Madison. And I notice that it isn’t a jar at all, but more like the containers in a hospital that connect to tubes and drain into the patient.
I am the patient.
The blood in the jar is supposed to go inside of me.
It’s supposed to go inside me the same way other jars are going inside Miranda and Melissa in the far corner of the room. Lying down on cots with their eyes rolled back in their heads and only the white parts showing beneath pink eyelids. Plastic tubes stuck in their arms and sucking out the liquid like straws where it will run blue through their veins.
I make a noise to talk but nothing comes out.
“Sit back,” Morgan shouts. She’s holding my wrist so tightly that she cuts off the circulation. I can feel my fingers going numb. I can see the skin turning white like the pavement in the snowstorm. White like them. White like a zombie with someone else’s blood to keep them alive.
I see it all now the way I should have seen it before. See it in the electric stare of dead eyes. The snarl of chapped lips that reveal sharp teeth for biting through bones. Death chants and disappearances. The pale skin of corpses that try to hide under makeup. But they can’t hide anymore. Not once they see that I figured it out. It’s like a switch turns on inside them.
The pupils of their eyes start to glow like rust through the electric blue.
A series of rashes breaks out on their perfect porcelain skin.
Their pretty faces have become distorted masks like in my nightmares.
“No . . . no . . . no,” I stutter, not able to really speak clearly or even think clearly as I struggle to stand up. Morgan lashes toward me with her mouth open and her hands held like claws. So fast like blurry images sped up on a movie screen. Slicing through the plastic chair with a swipe of her hands. A laceration in the fabric where my face had been an instant before.
They all reach for me then, but I manage to get through the grasp of their dead arms laced with spider veins that show through more when they’re angry. Communicating with one another by growling and snarling instead of words as I rush for the door. Grabbing at the handle in a panic, my fingers slip. Slip again and I start to scream as they start to get closer because I know if I don’t get out before they capture me that I won’t come out alive
. I won’t come out until I’m like them.
Meredith drops the jar in her hands to the floor and the shattering glass breaks like rain. Blood splatters against my leg and I stare for a split second too long. Long enough for Meredith to grab my arm and twist it behind my back in a sudden shot of pain.
“You’re not leaving,” she growls in a heavy voice. The air escapes my lungs in a weak gasp of breath when she slams me against the wall. I feel the heat from her mouth on my skin. The stench of old rotting wounds makes me gag as she breathes on me. Twisting my arm like a twig that’s ready to snap. “You’re either one of us or you’re one of them.”
Pushing me harder against the wall and crushing the bones in my face. My cheek pressed against a piece of paper, smearing onto my skin the ink of names that are crossed off. The last name on the list is Diana’s. A thin red line runs through the letters and makes me shudder because I know what it means without having to be told.
They killed her.
They killed everyone.
The blood inside them is the blood stolen from empty houses. Rejected people reused and reborn into them. That’s what she means by one of them. Part of the blood supply.
Lukas was right. He was right about everything. Maplecrest isn’t a ghost town. It’s a graveyard.
Vomit tickles the back of my throat as I shout for Meredith to leave me alone. Begging her because I know now that this is how they do it. This is how they plan to make me one of them. By infecting me with diseased blood so that I can help them kill. So that I will tear apart the others and feed off their flesh until the entire town is rid of anyone who isn’t like them.
“Please,” I beg. Repeating the word over and over until it gets broken up in my mouth and comes out only as tears. Saying it until it becomes too weak to mean anything.
Maggie approaches. Slow and careful because she’s hunting me. Running her tongue over her teeth like an animal ready to feed. And when she speaks, it’s not with her voice but with the guttural voice of someone being strangled. The voice of hatred. The voice of murder when she says I’m only good for spare parts now.
My heart thumps like a caged bird inside my ribs. Screaming through my veins to flee. To fight. To run. To do whatever I need to do to get away because I don’t want to die. I manage to grab on to the metal shelf beside me with my free hand. I ignore the pain running through the arm pinned between my shoulder blades and pull as hard as I can.
Meredith lets go of me in horror as the shelf creaks and begins to tilt. The sharp pain in my elbow and shoulder fade to an ache when she releases me and tries to keep the shelves from toppling before all the containers are spilled.
The rest of them rush to help her, too, because the blood is more important than I am. The blood is what keeps them pretty. The blood is what keeps them from being just a rotting corpse that can’t die. It is also what is going to save my life.
I rush out into the locker room as a chorus of broken glass fills the air behind me like the sound of gunshots. And the same thing is happening to the girls who were waiting outside to see my transformation. Their pretty complexions rotting away before my eyes as they growl like dogs when I push past them.
They’re slow to react and I manage to make it into the hallway. I yell for someone, anyone to come help me. But I’m really yelling for Greg. Running to the boys’ locker room and calling him by name now.
It’s not him who opens the door. It’s not a him at all but one of them. A zombie with rust stains around electric blue eyes like the cheerleaders only bigger. Stronger. More aggressive and I wonder if they have Greg, too. Wonder if they’ve always had him, if he’s been in disguise the whole time as I run past the gym and head for the exit. And I know the inhuman cry that echoes from the school behind me is the sound of my death sentence.
The snowflakes fall like slow-motion static on the television, suspended in the air for a moment before falling. So beautiful as I run through them that if I let myself, I could almost forget the horror that surrounds me. The horror that follows somewhere in the distance as the brick walls of the school get smaller.
My socks are soaked through.
I can’t feel my toes but I don’t stop.
I run faster.
Running to nowhere in particular, just running. Knowing that I would run off the end of the world if I could. But I can’t. The cramps in my side remind me that I can’t. The broken-glass cuts on my feet let the cold air in and remind me that I have to go somewhere. That I need to stop running soon.
The wet snow makes the bleach drip from my hair and into my eyes. Gives the edges of everything I see the appearance of melting. I wipe away at them but the hills still stay out of focus.
I bend down and fill my palms with white water and wash out my eyes. Blinking until they’re clean and the trees are covered with leftover rainbows of chemical poison. Half blind from it but I can see enough to make out the street sign with its familiar address.
I get up and begin to run again.
I only make it a few steps before being grabbed from behind. The screams that come from my lungs are like the sounds babies make when they squeal so loud their bodies turn red with fever. Screaming at the anticipation of teeth sinking below my skin. Teeth that never come. Only a soft whispering sound like a lullaby blown into the wind.
“Hannah! It’s me. It’s okay.”
His hands are pressed against my stomach like the safe hands of someone alive and I hold on to them. Spin around in his arms and hug him.
Lukas doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He doesn’t ask what happened and lets me cry for a minute into his coat where the nightmare can be swallowed up. Letting the fear fade just enough that I’m able to speak again.
“It happened. Just like you said it would.”
“I know,” he says. “I was waiting outside the locker room.”
I want to tell him I’m sorry. That I should’ve listened. That I should’ve believed him no matter how crazy it sounded. If I’d trusted him, maybe none of this would have happened. But I don’t get the chance to say any of it because my words are cut off by a ferocious howl coming from the direction of town.
“We have to go,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “They’re going to come after you once they’ve gathered everyone. They’re going to come and they’re going to come fast.”
He starts to lead me into the woods and I pull back.
“Wait! I have to go to my house,” I tell him. I can tell by his face that he doesn’t think it’s a smart idea. “If we don’t, we won’t make it far,” pointing to my feet where the blood has seeped through and turned my socks red, pointing at little pink footprints in the snow trailing along the sidewalk from the direction I came.
“Okay, but we have to hurry,” he says, already starting to move toward my house.
The snow falls faster as we hurry along the sidewalk. Blanketing the ground and covering the road. Weighing down the branches of the pine trees so that they sag. Draping the empty houses with a coldness that matches the lingering chill of death inside them. Hiding everything under the storm’s flakes the same way Maplecrest hides out of sight from the rest of the world.
We round the corner and run up the driveway to my house. Two sets of footprints leaving traces in the snow. But the clouds are getting heavier and the snow is raining down at a faster pace. That should wipe our tracks away. Maybe not soon enough, though—I can hear the sound of an approaching pack in the near distance.
“They’re getting closer,” I say. I try to open the front door but it’s locked. I shake it and push on it but it won’t budge. “The key . . . it’s in my backpack . . . I left it,” I shout in a panic.
Lukas tries the door once but it still doesn’t give. I watch as he steps off the porch and picks a rock up from the garden. Before I have time to wonder what he’s planning to do, he throws the rock through the front window.
I cover my mouth in surprise as it breaks like fireworks exploding.
Without hesitat
ing, he climbs in and comes around to unlock the door from the inside. “C’mon,” he says, keeping an eye on the street for any signs of visitors. “Get what you need and let’s go!”
My mind is scattered like the clothes strewn across the floor in my room. The faster I try to find anything, the slower I move. Throwing things about, trying to find shoes or a coat, and finding nothing that I need. Lukas shouts for me from the front door and I’m afraid I’m losing my mind. I put my hands on the sides of my head and squeeze my eyes closed trying to concentrate.
The strong smell of bleach on my fingers wakes me out of my daze and I remember what I need to do.
I need to focus.
The shoes I need are right in front of my face and I slip my injured feet into them. Pull a wool hat over my head to prevent another blinding episode. Then I snatch up the jacket tossed on the bed and listen to the heavy footsteps running down the hall.
Lukas is standing in the doorway as I try to get my arms untangled in the sleeves. “Ready?”
“Yeah, I’m ready,” I say and slip past him into the hallway.
The red and blue lights flash against the open door, stopping me in my tracks the way headlights freeze deer to the highway late at night. Reflected off the shards of glass from the broken window, the colors splinter apart and fill the room. Outside they bounce off the warm steel of the police car parked in front of my house.
The sheriff’s broad shoulders fill the doorway as he takes one step into my house. Hand resting on his belt, inches from his gun.
“Going somewhere?” he says, removing his sunglasses to stare at me with the rust-colored eyes of someone who’s already dead.
Sheriff Turner holds out his hand like he’s come to rescue me. “You should just come with me. Make it easy on yourself,” he says. “We’re your family now.”
