Authors: Sarah Langan
They stood next to each other again, like oddly sized sisters. He looked into their black eyes. He thought he could feel them inside him. Drowning him. They were eating his soul because they’d lost their own, and they were hungry. The sulfur on their breaths penetrated his mask. “Fennie, do you feel it?” they asked in unison: “Is it a lump?”
He stepped back. One step, two steps. Together they cocked their heads. His legs were numb. His feet, too. He stumbled into the stairs behind him, and then back- ward, began to crawl:
One step, two steps, three steps, blue!
The top of the stairway was colored red like blood, but it was only tape. He kept crawling. Red to yellow. He knew he should stand like a man, but he couldn’t. He went toward the light. Toward the doors that opened, and closed, and opened, and God they should have warned him. They should have told him that this place was for the damned.
In the hallway right in front of the exit was Lila Schiffer. She’d wheeled a set of gurneys out of one of the sickrooms. At first he couldn’t tell what she was do- ing, but as he got closer, it became clear. Tears streamed down her face, but her jaw was set. Determined. She’d made a real mess. The scalpel isn’t a functional tool
when it comes to cracking open a two-hundred-pound wrestler’s chest.
Aran Junior lay on the table. With her scalpel, Lila was fishing inside his guts. Fenstad stopped short in front of the gurneys, and Lila looked up at him. Blood ran down her hands, all the way to her elbows.
“I’m their mother,” she said. “I have to. It’s my job.” Then she looked at the other gurney, and Fenstad fol- lowed her gaze.
Alice Schiffer had been a less fortuitous experiment than her brother. Her head lay on the floor, eyes open, while her body bled on the table. Lila had severed the girl’s head with the dull blade of a scalpel. To do some- thing like that, you’ve got to be determined, and strong. You’ve got to use plenty of elbow grease.
Fenstad was crying again, but this time he didn’t try to hide it. His gut was numb, and he couldn’t remember why. He thought maybe Lila was fishing with a scalpel through his stomach. That was he on the gurney, his intestines untwined. He crawled toward the doors that swung open and shut. His knees hurt, because men weren’t meant to crawl.
“I have to make sure they stay dead,” Lila explained behind him. “They heal too fast to bleed to death.”
The door was close. He could smell the fresh air. So close. He crawled through its opening, and into the rain. Then a dog was barking. That fucking dog. No, it was he. He was crying in loud brays. He was out- side, oh thank God, he was outside. He was crying from relief.
His car was there. A big, hulking thing. Still on his knees, at first he didn’t recognize it. The keys in his pocket jingled. He pulled them out and got into the car. He started the ignition. The smell here was good, and
sweet. The smell here was free. He thought if he blew his own head off right now, he’d be happy.
He pulled away. But like Lot’s wife, he couldn’t help himself. He turned once and looked back through the doors. They opened to reveal Lila Schiffer’s manicured hands. Her scalpel was raised high. On its tip was Aran Junior’s heart.
M
addie’s eyes were sore and swollen. She hadn’t slept a wink all night. She was supposed to meet Enrique at the bus, but she didn’t know what time it was scheduled to leave Corpus Christi, and he wasn’t answering his cell phone. She waited until nine on Sun- day morning, and then called his parents’ house. No one answered. Why had she let him go last night? She should have talked some sense into him: The army didn’t want him now that he’d been exposed to the virus! But what if she was too late, and something bad had hap-
pened?
She wanted to go back in time and mess up her anon- ymous bedroom before he ever saw it, and fill her bed- side table with candles and rose petals. If she’d coated every piece of furniture with hot wax like an S&M vixen, he’d never have left. He’d have loved her enough to run away to Canada with her, where he could have written poetry, and she could have . . . plied her trade as an exotic belly dancer.
She took a deep drag off her smoke and looked at her cell phone, where no calls had been missed, and the time read ten a.m. Was he too chicken to say good-bye? She wanted to cry, but she’d done enough of that already. She
wanted her life from before he’d enlisted, before David left for college, before her parents’ cold war that left her nauseated and dry-heaving at the breakfast table, before this virus that had turned her town into a quiet, lurking place. She wanted her mother.
She found Meg sipping black coffee from a giant green mug at the kitchen table. She was flicking the keys to the new deadbolts between her fingers, and lis- tening to WMHB college radio, which was talking in- stead of playing music, for a change. Something about bottled water versus tap, and how the eyes of the infected are hypnotic.
Maddie plopped down next to Meg. “I can’t find En- rique. I hate my life,” she said drolly. Then she saw her mother’s face. Mascara streaked dirty lines down her cheeks. “What is it?” she asked.
Meg wiped her eyes. She hadn’t plucked her brows in about a week, and they were starting to get hairy. “Don’t worry. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. What’s wrong?”
Meg shook her head. “It’s nothing, Maddie.” Maddie stood. “Did somebody do something to you?” Meg played with the keys. There were four of them,
and Fenstad had spent most of Saturday installing their matching locks with a power drill. Then he’d collected the animal bones into the garbage can without even wincing. She’d watched his simmering rage all day, and had wondered twenty years after the fact:
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
She tried to smile, but failed. “Have you been listen- ing to the news?”
“Not since yesterday afternoon.”
Meg squeezed one of the keys and let its shape im- press itself into her palm. She usually made a big break- fast Sunday mornings, but today she’d forgotten. Actually,
she’d forgotten about dinner the last few nights, too. The whole family was probably starving. “Sit down,” she said.
Maddie looked at Meg for a few seconds, but didn’t ask any questions. She sat.
“There were some murders last night,” Meg said. “Enrique!” Maddie gasped.
“Not him, that I know of. But on our block, and all over town, too.” She’d gotten the calls from friends and volunteers at the library. People were trying to get out of town, but I–95 was blocked, and there were rumors that anyone trying to leave through the main roads or even the woods was shot on sight. She itemized the dead with her fingers while holding Maddie’s gaze: “The Simpson twins. Miller and Felice Walker. Carl Fritz. Molly Po- pek. Plenty of others . . . I need you to be calm,” she said. “We have to help each other. You can’t get carried away on me.”
Maddie nodded, but didn’t speak, and Meg wasn’t sure whether this was an indication of strong resolve, or shock. “It’s the virus. Maybe you didn’t notice Dad cleaning the bodies yesterday, but the animals are gone. There aren’t any left.”
“I noticed. I didn’t want to scare you,” Maddie said. She’d taken the purple paint off her fingernails, and without it they looked naked.
Meg smiled. Then she frowned, because what she had to say next was ugly. “It’s just gossip right now, but I think I should tell you, because . . . Because I believe it’s true. During the day, they’re supposed to sleep while their bodies adapt to the infection, but at night, they get hungry. They eat anything they can find. The ani- mals . . . Maddie, the people who died . . . It wasn’t al- ways because their bodies rejected the virus. A lot of them were bitten to death.”
The blood rushed to Maddie’s face. “Where’s Daddy?” “One of his patients is trapped in the hospital. He left to get her out. He’ll be home soon. When he gets here, I’m going to suggest that we leave town. We’ll have to sneak out, if they’re still enforcing the quarantine. We’ll
stay with your dad’s parents in Connecticut.”
Maddie’s eyes were wet like a deer’s. She didn’t wipe them, and more tears fell, “Enrique’s missing,” Maddie said. “He came to see me last night, to tell me he’d be shipping out this morning, except they must have sent the letter before the virus started to spread. We had sex.”
Meg’s eyes widened. “You had sex because he was shipping out? Maddie, that’s the oldest trick in the book!”
Maddie shook her head. “No . . . I wanted to. But then he was afraid Dad would find him so he walked home in the dark. I knew I should have stopped him.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she scowled. “I
told
you that Albert was eating people!”
A line of worry thickened across Meg’s brow. She liked Enrique, she suddenly realized. He’d shown the good sense to love Maddie. “You haven’t heard from Enrique since last night?”
Maddie’s face froze. “I’m going to look for him, Mom. I have to. I’ll ride my bike.”
Meg cupped her shoulders in her hands. Her ankle was hurting again, but she’d decided not to take any more codeine. She’d taken too many last night, and in- stead of sleeping, had passed out. This morning she’d woken to a missing husband, a headache, and the news that life as she knew it was over. “It’s not safe for you to go off on your own. His family will look. Besides, maybe the phones aren’t working and he’s fine.”
“But I love him,” Maddie said. “If you love someone you have to help them.”
Meg thought about that, and then she thought about her husband. “Trust me. I’m telling you the right thing. If he’s at the hospital your father will find him, and if he’s not there and he’s not home . . .” Meg debated say- ing this, and then decided that protecting Maddie from the truth was tantamount to getting her killed. “He’s probably dead.”
Maddie hid her face in her hands. “Oooooh,” she said as the air literally left her body, and she curled her head into her chest. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Meg lifted Maddie’s ponytail and kissed the back of her neck. Then they hugged, a gaunt pair of women with cold hands and warm hearts. At first it was only Maddie, but then both were crying into each other’s shoulders.
After a while Meg asked. “So you had sex with him?” “Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?” “Later . . . What if he needs me?”
Meg drew back and looked at Maddie. “I love you,” she said. “What I’m telling you is right. Trust me.”
Maddie nodded. Her green eyes were so much like Fenstad’s: one part alien, one part soul mate. “I trust you,” she said.
D
anny Walker wanted to cry on Sunday morning, but he was afraid he’d wake the dead. So he cov-
ered his mouth with his hand and gulped down his tears like he was eating them. He was sitting against the cold, wet wall of his basement. No light shone through the small gutter windows, and the day was a rainy one.
His stomach growled, and he wondered if he was in- fected. He started sobbing in awkward, muffled jerks, and that made him think of Felice, whose worst blues used to come with the rising sun, like the promise of every new day had terrified her. He understood that now.
Then he lifted the gun in his lap, ran his finger inside its chamber, and wondered:
Was she still sad now that she was dead?
After he ran from the house last night, he drove to the police station, but no one was behind the desk, or in any of the offices. He found only Lou McGuffin, who lay facedown on the floor of the holding cell. Lou’s blue shirt was untucked, and Danny could see the blubbery sides of the pot belly that he’d kept hidden all these years. Tucked into his fist was a green plastic toothbrush whose tip had been filed to a sharp point. A shank. The
toilet and sink were white porcelain and the floor was boxed granite tile. Danny tried to focus on these things, instead of the body. Another body. They were stacking up, and for a brief moment he wondered if it was he, not James, who’d done murder.
“Mr. McGuffin?” Danny asked. “Lou?”
Danny didn’t want Lou to answer. He was afraid the man would stand up and gurgle, “You ruined my life, kid.”
Danny stifled a moan, mostly because he didn’t want to hear his own echo in this empty place. A week ago he’d been smiling through a steak dinner with Miller Walker at the golf club, prince of Shit Mountain. The faucet by Lou’s cot dripped. Blood was smeared all over the floor, sheets, and toothbrush. It took Danny a while before he pieced together what had happened.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said, which was true. He was sorry his dad was gone, and he was sorry that his mom was in pieces. He was sorry his brother was a psycho who, even without the virus, liked to kill things large and small. He was sorry he was a bully, but had never stood up to the people who counted. He was sorry he’d chosen to come to the police station where he’d found only this foolish man, who’d killed himself by impaling his body against a sharpened toothbrush. From the looks of things, he’d done a bad job, and it had taken hours before he’d died.
After he left the police station, he tried the hospital. But the place was a ruin. Doctors and nurses raced in every direction, and even when he grabbed their white aprons stained in blood like butchers, they didn’t stop to listen. He wasn’t alone. Wild-eyed and hysterical, the waiting room was full of people. They chased every able-bodied doctor they could find, insisting, “My
sister . . . my mother . . . my brother . . . my father . . . my best friend . . . they’re dead . . . they’re infected . . . What’s happening?”
Finally, in the cafeteria, which had run out of food and was serving only coffee, he found the police chief, Tim Carroll. “My parents are dead,” Danny said.
Tim put down his coffee and squeezed the back of Danny’s neck, hard. “That’s tough luck, kid.”
“Can you help me?”
Tim looked at him for a while, and then he sighed, deep. “No. There’s not enough help to go around.”
Danny looked down at his hands, which were still red from digging the rabbits’ grave at the dump. “Lou Mc- Guffin killed himself. My dad framed him for kiddie porn because my brother killed his rabbits,” he blurted. When he looked up, Tim held his gaze, and he liked that, because it wasn’t like Miller, who was always trying to get him to flinch.