by Zoe Blake
I needed help. I needed help now. William… my William.
In a split second, William reared up, knocking me back. He bore down his weight on me and wrapped his hands around my neck. The phone slipped out of my hand, and William crushed my neck so hard I couldn’t speak or breathe. I struggled, kicking and silently screaming, pounding my arms on the mattress. I stared into his half-crazed eyes, and knew I would die that night unless I did something.
The man damn near choking the life out of me was not my fiancé.
I didn’t want to do it.
I really didn’t want to do it.
But I had no choice.
I grabbed a broken shard of glass and stabbed it into William’s neck. He slumped on top of me. Pushing him off, I pulled his death-grip from my neck. As soon as I turned away, I heard noises from my window. I walked toward it wordless as a panic-stricken glow of sweat drenched my face.
A throng of people swarmed the streets, blood frothing out of their open wounds, ragged tears in their skin from scratching that brought no relief. Children were snatched from cars, and women were mowed down by diseased mobs. The blast of an explosion sounded in the distance, followed by screams. Glass windows shattered and shards were strewn all over the streets. I knew in that moment, it was the beginning of the end.
Lettie and I cautiously walked the littered street. I had never been to this part of the city, but my new friend had a plan.
We had found each other by accident. Lettie was pinned down by a knife-wielding ‘scratcher’. I coldcocked it in the jaw and broke its neck, adding it to my list of kills.
“So, what exactly is this place—The Church—you’ve been talking about?” I asked.
“We’ll be there soon enough,” Lettie replied. “I can feel it. We’ve checked everywhere, and I’m almost positive it’s in the middle of the city. Only fools would go there, so it’s the perfect hiding spot.”
It struck a chord with me sometimes, Lettie’s secrecy, because I didn’t like to be in the dark. Back at the start, before we had met, I had been a homeless drifter tramping from one derelict building to the next overgrown freeway underpass. I knew any day I walked the earth alive, as opposed to becoming a raging infected creature, was a good day to say the least. In this new world, hopes had to be small. Everything from finding water to discovering a hole to hide in was a miracle. I rejoiced if I slept more than three hours at a time, before I convulsed in a panic. I had been told of this place that could help put us out of our misery and lead us to a better place. A mythical place that would help us find salvation. Where we would not be in fear of forever damnation. We would not become a scratcher for all eternity. Yes, I had heard of the place to which we were headed. Lettie called it The Church.
Only problem was that I was not a believer.
Not convinced.
I was a sinner.
“Did they give you a name of a person? Or anything?” I asked.
Lettie nodded. “Father Dane. Ask for Father Dane, is what I was told. I’m telling you, I’ve heard this place has hot running water, the whole nine. It’s the answer to our prayers… if you pray.”
As for Lettie’s life, I didn’t know what made her tick or who she’d been before all hell broke loose. I never thought it was my place to ask. Did it really matter? What mattered was what we were right now.
Survivors.
The lucky ones.
Or were we?
Living was not living anymore. Anything would be better. Death would be better.
That was where The Church came in.
Lettie brushed loose hair behind her ears as I grabbed her shoulder to lend her much needed support as she wavered side to side. I could see that Lettie barely had any energy left.
“We can take five and then keep going,” I reassured her.
“Was I really that obvious?” she asked.
I pointed at an abandoned gas station nearby. Though it was almost dark, we both found it the best time to trek. Scratchers seemed to be around at noon and at midnight. Some even called The Itch, The Cinderella Disease. Something about 12:00 fueled their fire.
The metal door of the gas station slid open easily enough. I held it and allowed Lettie to shuffle inside. Plastic wrappers crunched under our feet. Clearly, the place had already been raided of anything useful, not that I expected anything different. We both dropped down in front of a refrigerated display case. Lettie’s head already started falling in a deep nod, and she was close to passing out. I was too exhausted to sleep, if there ever was such a thing. Just as Lettie’s eyes started to flutter close, we both heard a clanging rattle on the sheet metal door.
I held a single finger to my lips and tightly gripped Lettie’s penknife I’d taken out of her hand. I held my breath like a hiccup in my chest. I eyed Lettie as she sat upright in terror against the wall.
“Let me in! Hurry and let me in!” We both heard the words spoken in a muffled voice from the outside. Scratchers don’t speak. They were only able to scream in shrill guttural tones once they were fully changed.
It happened fast. I shoved open the door, and the stranger raced in and swung her back to the safety of the wall. Before I could slam the door with a fast bang, a high-pitched moan pierced my ears. We all froze and then covered our ears with our hands.
“Goddamnit! You drew them right to us,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
The woman stood beside me to help keep the door closed.
“It’s not safe anymore here, we need to go,” I whispered to Lettie who still remained huddled against the wall in fright.
“Lettie,” I snapped. “Get it together.”
Fear was a luxury.
A luxury we couldn’t afford.
Luxuries were destroyed by the monsters of our world.
Snapping out of her momentary terror, Lettie stood up and nodded in agreement. “Let’s go. Fast.”
Almost paralyzed with fear, I pulled back and kicked the handle to the door with all of my weight. It remained stuck for what felt like endless minutes. Until finally, a low-pitched creak echoed from the rusty hinges as it opened.
“Run!” I called out to the girls.
A head full of snapping teeth thrust right for my neck. I reared back. The scratcher’s drool curdled down its maw like thick black gravy. Without thinking, I grabbed the penknife and stabbed it right in the monster’s eyeball. I shambled away, walloping the one-eyed scratcher with a chunk of dead wood I picked up near my feet. I needed to give the girls time to get away.
It grunted, wildly clawing bleeding grooves in my arms. I slammed at its head again. Bits of brain and jellied blood sprayed on my lips. There was a day when I’d feared contamination or becoming a scratcher myself, but those days were long gone. If it hadn’t happened by now, I seriously doubted it would by simply getting blood or brain matter on me. I pushed the brain-crushed scratcher away with a manic guttural sound. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw another scratcher marching right for me. If I didn’t run to join Lettie and the other girl soon, scratchers would surround me as foam-flecked blood oozed from their shredded flesh.
I ran as fast as I could. I was faster than Lettie, and I could bet I was faster than the other girl, so I allowed them a head start. But now was the time to survive. I had to look out for myself and couldn’t hold back the scratchers any longer.
A roar of ear-splitting screams echoed in the distance. Shadows skittered across the street behind us. We ran like we always ran. Never a day went by that I didn’t run.
I was done running. I was ready for The Church. I was ready. Sinner or not, I was so fucking ready.
“Hurry, inside,” Lettie yelled. Her hands held up a manhole cover near a fire hydrant that would never be used again. The woman we didn’t know got in first and then me. Lettie followed before dropping the heavy iron cover and letting it slam shut.
Running was over.
Now we hide like rats.
Running or hiding. That was my life.
I was
ready for The Church.
Chapter 2
Deliver them now from every evil.
And bid them eternal rest.
As it was now, three survivors stood apart in the damp sewers. The foul stench of festering human waste had tears welling up in my eyes. Lettie hit the back of her flashlight with the palm of her hand. She held it steady, the light hitting the stranger’s face. I charged this woman fast, pressing the tip of Lettie’s penknife right against the woman’s neck.
“Who the hell are you? What were you thinking? You led them right to us!” I hissed.
“Let me explain.” The woman lifted her eyebrows and looked down at the penknife threatening to slice her throat.
Lowering the knife, I stepped back, dropping my hands to my sides.
“I’m waiting.”
“My name’s Mia,” she said, inhaling a deep breath.
“Well, Mia, you are lucky I’m not killing you for putting our lives at risk just to save your ass,” I said. I motioned for Lettie to follow me down the sewer.
Mia furrowed her eyes, confused. “You mean you’ll just leave me down here, alone?”
“You aren’t my problem,” I said without even a shred of sympathy. Baggage was heavy, and my shoulders could no longer bear the weight.
“Wait,” Mia said quickly. “What if I told you where I was headed?”
I didn’t care to listen any further, and I knew Lettie would follow suit. I turned my back to the woman and began to walk.
“Listen to me! There’s a place called The Church. There’s food and water there. There is also a way to change everything as we know it. A man by the name of Father Dane has a way of leading the chosen few to another place. An afterlife. A place where we don’t have to be one of the scratchers forever! There’s hope! And I know where that hope is! I’ll take you there if we can stick together. I’m too scared to travel through the city and go there alone.”
Not even seconds passed before I spun on my heels and replied, “You’re lying. You just don’t want to be a free lunch for scratchers. We’ve all heard of The Church. I don’t believe you know where it is.”
It would have ended there, but Lettie asked the next question. “Where is it?”
“I’ll take you to it,” Mia answered quickly. “I was traveling with someone”—she looked down at her hands for a minute—“before he got The Itch, and he told me exactly how to get there. The street names and everything.”
I crossed my arms against my chest, getting more annoyed by the minute.
Mia added with heavy desperation lacing her tone, “It’s a chance to get off the infested street. Away from this life. Don’t you get it? Crossing over to an afterlife with the help of Father Dane is the way out. It’s not death. Or at least not the way most think of death. It’s our salvation. True salvation.”
Lettie pulled me to her left, and we huddled in a corner. “This is it,” Lettie whispered. “She knows where The Church is.”
I shook my head. By now, I knew not to place much stock in false hopes. “What? You’re just going to take this girl at her word? You actually think this make-believe place is real? And even if The Church exists, do you really think there is some better afterlife of some sort to go to?”
Lettie nodded. “We have nothing to lose to find out.”
Though I’d been so ready to believe in the possibility of salvation, ready to find this church and beg for sanctuary, now that the scratchers had been left behind, doubts were creeping into my head again. “Look, this is insane. There is no place called The Church. It’s most likely a trap or some sick and twisted sex house where we will be tortured and eventually killed or something.”
“What’s the plan then, Hannah? We run, and then what? Run until we starve or until we get infected? Just admit it, we’re running mighty low on options.”
I knew Lettie had a point, but she also knew nothing of Mia or her true intentions.
“The screams,” Mia uttered, noticing the silence near the sewer hatch. “They’re gone.”
No question about it, I was putting myself at risk by even talking to Mia, though I’d risked my life for much less. I didn’t want to do any deep decision-making right then and there.
“We need to lay low for awhile,” I said, announcing my choice to them both. “I’ll decide where we’re going tomorrow.”
Lettie leaned in and whispered, “I want to go. We’ve run out of options, and this place is all we got.”
I nodded. “Fine.” I looked at Mia and then back at Lettie. “Tomorrow we head to The Church. I just hope we don’t regret this.”
I stepped into a puddle on the damp, stone floor, my bare feet touching the dank, muddy water. Filth wasn’t new to me; I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t flinch. I just walked straight through the muck. Around me, hopeful women moved down the hallway of The Church, terror mixed with excitement blanketed their faces. Hushed whispers echoed off the concrete walls. It almost appeared as if they were walking into a dungeon… hopefully not to their doom.
After only a couple of hours, and with Mia’s help, we fairly easily found this mysterious place. Being escorted down the main hallway to the intake area set warning bells off inside of me. Blindly going to an unknown place wasn’t the wisest way to survive in this world, but Lettie was right when she said we didn’t have much of a choice. At least ten other women were with us, revealing that word had spread throughout the infested city. The Church gave hope to the women who barely hung on.
There were no men. Maybe they were the wise ones. Lettie had said The Church only took women and that right there should have been the warning bell telling us we needed to run, and to run fast. But no, we just continued on.
The women, young and old, kept bumping into me as we made our way down the narrow hall. I did my best to control my irritation. I didn’t like crowds, especially when the fear of scratchers lurked around every corner. If the scratchers found this place, it would be a blood bath with only one way in or out. Claustrophobia closed in around me, doing nothing to ease my breathing.
As we reached the intake area, we were directed by a nun to sign in at a table and then to an area with a sign hanging over a table that read ‘Nourishment’. My travel mates and I quickly walked to the table with our mouths watering for long overdue food.
I carried a shallow dish of slop in my hands, carefully keeping it close to me, trying not to spill. Each woman only got one bowl filled to the brim, and each drop spilled was a drop wasted. The food actually appeared to be a stew with meat and potatoes, but I still considered it slop due to the fact that any meat or vegetables were swimming in a clumpy gray fluid. This thick, and most likely tasteless, meal wasn’t going to be the best in my life, but at this moment, I held heaven in my hands.
“Hurry up, ladies. Time to eat and take your baths in the holy water,” a nun shouted as she stood behind the table dishing out the bowls. “Father Dane will make the decision if you are appropriate for our church or if you must return to the street. I advise you all to clean yourselves to the best of your ability. He hates filth. Only the clean and the pure can cross over.”
I glanced in the direction of the large bath basins filled with water—holy water—and rolled my eyes. There was nothing holy about this water. The murky liquid was a far cry from the running water Lettie bragged about. Trying to clean months’ worth of dirt off everyone’s bodies would be more than those inadequate tubs could handle.
I sat down in a pew with warm light shining down upon me from a huge stained glass window and gently sipped my slop from my bowl. It tasted like glue and chicken flavoring, but I ate all of it anyway, enjoying the feel of substance hitting my stomach.
“There you are.”
I glanced up to see Lettie as she sat down next to me and leaned against the pew as if the back of the seat was the only thing keeping her from crumpling to the floor due to weakness.
“Where’s your slop? Did you eat yet?” I asked, worried about my friend.
Lettie smiled and nodded. “I was so hungry I could have eaten three more bowls.”
I took the final sip of mine, wrinkling my nose at the awful taste.
“Do you think we will make the cut?” Lettie whispered as we watched all the women scurry around. There had to be at least twenty of them by now. The numbers of desperation grew.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I still can’t quite figure this place out.”
Lettie nodded. “All I know is they fed us.”
“We better take this chance to get as clean as we can,” I said, standing up. Even if we don’t get chosen to cross over, I wanted to get clean, or as close to clean as I could get.
“I hope they don’t separate us,” Lettie said. “I want to cross over to the other side with you. I’ve never had a friend like you.”
I shrugged off the kind and vulnerable confession. “We need to just focus on getting accepted inside.”
We both made our way to a water basin and washed layers of grime off of every exposed part of our bodies. I shamelessly lowered my pants and washed between my legs and over my ass as well. I nodded for Lettie to do so as well. Even if The Church did not grant us entrance, I would walk away feeling fresh and fed.
“I think we should take a look around,” Lettie whispered as we finished washing. Her face lit up with an undeniable grin. “People are still in line for food. We have plenty of time.”
I tried not to smile, but I couldn’t help but let one corner of my mouth turn up. Lettie always did have an adventurous and mischievous soul.
“Attention!” one of the nuns shouted as she swept through the room. “Attention, ladies! Bath time! Cover your skin in the holy water. We don’t have time for you all to waste. One hour until decision time.”
“Come on, this is our chance, Hannah,” Lettie said, tugging on my sleeve.
I rolled my eyes, but gave Lettie a push and we headed off down one of the nearest empty hallways. As we ran, the shouts of the nuns and the mumbling of the women faded.
