Authors: Sarah Langan
That was when she saw his face in her window. Her dad had hammered shut every entrance on the ground
floor, but he’d forgotten that if somebody wanted to get in, he could climb the porch and break into the bed- rooms. It was dark, and all she saw were his changed black eyes. He swept his hand down the glass pane like he was trying to touch her. Her eyes welled up with tears. Enrique. He looked nothing like the boy she loved, because when he saw her, he didn’t smile.
“Mad-e-line,” he whispered, like it was a game they were playing, and he didn’t want her parents to hear. Romeo and Juliet.
He lifted the glass and climbed in. She wanted to scream, but she was afraid for him. She’d seen what her dad had done to Graham Nero. Or worse, if she yelled, her dad would get nervous. He’d hurt the wrong per- son, like her mom.
“Mad-e-line, I missed you,” he said, but she didn’t think that was true. His brows were knotted like he was angry. He walked like a spider, graceful but ugly.
She tried to roll from the bed, but she was trapped. “Go away,” she said. “You’re not the same.” It was true; just looking at him, she knew that the boy she loved was gone. This thing that had taken his place was an insult to his memory, and she hated it.
“Shhh,” he said. His black eyes shone, and she saw herself inside them. Tears were falling down her cheeks like she was drowning in them, even though out here, her eyes were dry. She’d been about to scream, but now her voice was gone. It was trapped in the dark, wet place. It was trapped in his eyes.
“Mad-e-line,” he said. She could feel him in her mind. He smiled like he loved her, but she knew it wasn’t true. Maybe it never had been. That made her sad, too.
She tried to look away, but she couldn’t. From his eyes, there was no way out. She saw him in her bed,
holding her tight. That was all he wanted. He wanted to hold her one last time. She could let him have that. She wanted it, too.
“Stop,” she whispered. “Puh-please.” But her voice was a croak. She could hardly hear it.
“Now I’ll never leave you,” Enrique told her as he put his pale hand over her mouth, so she could not scream. His fingers were cold, and he pushed so hard that her teeth cut the insides of her lips. “We can be together. You can live inside me and I’ll carry you with me.”
Behind him was Rockwell’s framed
Freedom from Fear
. Two parents were kissing two children good-night. She was drowning now, and she wanted a good- night kiss, too. She wanted it from Enrique.
He’d come all this way to find her, even though he was changed. He’d done it because he couldn’t let her go. He loved her too much. She wanted to believe that. He was telling her that with his mind, but she knew the truth. Now that he was infected, he didn’t love any- body, and this thing that bound them to each other had nothing to do with affection. It was instinct, and hunger.
From the window, another body slithered inside and down to the floor. It was his little brother Thomas, and the virus didn’t fit inside him quite right. He moved like a worm.
Her reflection sank inside Enrique’s eyes. Instead of endless worry, there was calm. Instead of hurt, there was still water. Instead of love, there was hunger. It was a beautiful thing.
He licked her lips with his cold tongue, and nothing mattered. She didn’t care about her parents, who with- out her, she knew, would tear each other apart. She didn’t care about David, whose first boyfriend at school
had been so mean, but he hadn’t been able to tell any- one except Maddie, because he’d been ashamed that the people he loved weren’t women. She didn’t care about the end of the world. She didn’t even care about her- self.
Enrique placed his hand on her breast. It was cold, and he didn’t warm it for her. It seemed wrong that this rank-smelling thing was wearing Enrique’s face, though she couldn’t remember, now, why. “Mad-e-line,” he said, “there’s a balance. There are too many of us, and for now we can’t make any more.”
What he said sank deep. She was drowning in it. He was going to kill her. He didn’t even like her enough to change her. Suddenly she was mad. Her image fought in his eyes and reached the surface again. She pulled her leg back and kicked him as hard as she could.
“Dad!” she screamed. “Help!”
Enrique reeled. “You spoiled bitch,” he said. Then he bent down, and for a short instant she thought he would kiss her. But his teeth pierced her shoulder. It felt awful, and cold. Something black and ancient as tar crawled inside the wound. It threaded through her blood. She felt it move into her chest, her heart, her lungs, her liver. She felt it in her legs, her arms, her ears, until all that was left of Maddie Wintrob was a tiny spark, looking out behind the prison of the monster’s eyes.
Enrique smacked his lips, and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked satisfied.
Her bedroom door swung open. Her father charged while the warmth ran out of her. Thomas went down first. He was crawling on the floor, and Fenstad hit him in the back of the head with one swift stroke. Then he held up the bloody hammer and went after Enrique. She smiled, because a tiny piece of her was screaming. It was
trapped inside this lump of hungry flesh, and that was funny, too.
Her father chased Enrique to the window. Then he was gone. She could read his mind now, and she knew that he’d be back. He’d marked his territory. Now that his brother had died, she could live.
Her father pressed hard against her sticky shoulder. The sheets were pink. He poured something that fizzed all over her wounds, and filled the hole in her arm with gauze and tape. Pushed so tightly that the blood stopped flowing. She wanted him to stop pushing, so that the blood would flow from her body. She wanted the virus out, too.
She imagined jumping out her bedroom window. By some miracle she’d fly, or else fall. She tried to rise, but her father held her down. “Dead,” she said, and by that she meant, “The person I am is dying.”
“He will be,” her father answered. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
The things she cared about slipped away. The people she loved, the world she inhabited, the possibilities to come. They slipped through her fingers and into a deep lake. They took Maddie Wintrob with them, and she drowned. She watched from the prison of her eyes, while a mean thing inside her yawned, and blinked, and finally surfaced.
She smiled at him, this man who’d tied her to a bed. “Honey?” he asked. “Sweetheart, answer me. Can you hear me?” He was holding her in his arms now, and she could feel his heart beat.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
Her shoulder had stopped bleeding, and he was hold- ing the bandage in place against the wound. It felt good, the healing. She was doing it so fast. “You might
need a blood transfusion,” he said. “I’ll give you my blood, and we’ll see if that helps.”
She looked out from the cage and was very sad, but the rest of her didn’t know why. “Feel that, Fennie?” she asked. “Is it a lump, or are you just happy to see me?”
My Heart Stopped Beating, But Still I Go On
F
enstad sawed the nightstand’s legs from its base and hammered it against Maddie’s window.
“You wouldn’t hurt your dear, sick mother, would you, Fennie boy?” she asked.
He grabbed the wad of cotton on the floor, which happened to be a pair of Maddie’s white underpants, and shoved it in her mouth. He secured it there by gag- ging her with a red bandana. Blissfully, she became quiet.
He pulled up a chair and sat. The hammer’s face was smooth, and he slapped it against his palm while Mad- die watched. His daughter was infected. So was his wife. He was the last man on earth.
Sure, the rest said they were uninfected, but he knew better. Take Danny Walker. As soon as the sun had set tonight, the boy had come speeding onto his nice green lawn, feigning the wide-eyed grief of a lost puppy. Fen- stad had almost fallen for it. He’d felt bad for the kid, younger than Maddie and all by his lonesome. For a second he’d imagined that the boy was the best luck he could have hoped for, because together the rest of them could carry Meg through the blocked roads they might
find, and escape. But then he’d remembered: No brood of Miller Walker’s could possibly cry real tears.
Fenstad had smiled, while in his hands he’d spun the power drill to the ready. The boy was infected. He wanted to tear down the Victorian, and Fenstad was the last man holding it erect. He lifted the drill just as the kid pulled his car into reverse.
On the floor, Thomas Vargas’s blood smelled rank. Fenstad scratched his scalp because it itched, just look- ing at this mess.
He popped an OxyContin and crushed it between his teeth. At this rate he’d run out by sunrise, and have to hit the hospital again. He was vaguely aware of the fact that OxyContin affects the central nervous sys- tem, and because of that he wasn’t thinking clearly. If he’d been sober, he would have remembered to block these windows. But he felt okay. Under the circum- stances, he felt just fine.
On the bed, Maddie writhed. The dead boy on the floor was leaking blood like a squashed bug. What if he wasn’t dead? What if, right now, his bleeding brain was healing and when Fenstad turned his back, the boy rose up and attacked his daughter?
“Fenstad?” Meg called from down the hall. She’d given up screaming, and now sounded meek.
He wished he had a cup of coffee, but he didn’t know how to make it. His gums were numb anyway. So was his tongue, and his throat. He started to hum “God Only Knows,” because it was the only song right now that he remembered.
“What’s happening? Maddie, are you okay? Fenstad, please answer me,” Meg called. Like a baby, she was hollering herself hoarse, and would soon fall asleep. That was best, he decided. He didn’t want to worry her with the news that Maddie had been bitten. She always
carried too much on her shoulders, and then, when she couldn’t support it, all of them fell.
Besides, he knew she’d betrayed him. When she’d suggested abandoning Corpus Christi, she must have known what he’d do. He’d never sleep under Sara Win- trob’s roof. A plot, probably, to elope with Graham Nero. Why else had the man arrived on their doorstep tonight, if not to take her away?
But even now, he would stand by her. Even now, he would protect her. She’d made a mistake. That was un- derstandable. He’d made some mistakes, too.
Fenstad peeked out the three-inch aperture in the window where no wood had been hammered. His breath caught in his throat. Pale bodies raced down the block. They leaped gracefully, like gazelles. They were beautiful. He wished he could be one of them. Instead he was his women’s beast of burden. Maybe David had had the right idea all along.
Fenstad looked from the Vargas boy’s body, to his daughter, to the window. He’d killed a kid tonight. But that was understandable. Sometimes extraordinary things happened to ordinary men.
Fennie, I’m so lonely. You left me all alone,
someone whispered in his ear. He looked out the hole in the window, and instead of racing infected, he saw Sara Wintrob’s reflection. She was wearing a white cotton nightgown. The first three buttons were undone. He could see her navel, which was deep. He looked down at his shoes, and blushed. He’d killed a boy tonight. Murdered him. His eyes were leaking all over the floor.
Let me in, Fenstad
, the voice said.
It’s so cold out here.
He kicked the boy’s body. Hard. Again. And again. Not his daughter—he’d never do that. No, he kicked the
boy on the floor. It sounded wet. And then, after a mo- ment, it moved. He looked at it closely, and saw that it was still breathing. The gash on its skull was beginning to heal.
He looked at the hammer. It was a crude instrument, but it was also all he had. He couldn’t leave this room. He couldn’t leave his daughter alone. Then he remem- bered the saw in the corner that he’d used to break apart the night stand. He worked fast, just in case the boy still had feelings. Just in case this hurt. His instru- ment was a savage thing. He sawed and sawed. What had been one became two, and the bedroom floor was covered in gore. Thomas Vargas’s severed head looked up at him, unblinking.
His eyes might have been leaking. He didn’t know. This was excessive. He wished he had a mop. What a mess he’d made! But he didn’t know where Meg kept the mops, and he couldn’t leave Maddie alone.
Fennie, my heart stopped beating, but still I go on,
someone whispered. It sounded like Sara Wintrob, but he knew it was Thomas Vargas. Who else could it be?
He pulled a white sheet from the bed and covered the boy’s parts with it. His hand peeked out from under- neath.
Fennie, it’s lonely out here. Open the door down- stairs. We’re so hungry, and you know this is the way it has to end. If you love something, set it free.
He thought maybe he was back home in Wilton, Connecticut. The carpet was thick with blood. His mouth was numb, lips to gums to tongue. He thought maybe he was dead, only he was the last to know.
A chainsaw would have worked better. The saw was crude. After a while the hand came off, but then a bare foot poked out from the sheets, so he sawed that off too.
And then something flopped, like maybe it was still alive, so he separated the legs from the trunk, just like in good old medical school. By the time he was done the saw’s teeth were dull.
There wasn’t enough sheeting to cover all the gore, so he used Maddie’s sweaters. She wasn’t moaning anymore. Her eyes were cold. She watched. He wished she hadn’t just witnessed this. He wished he could have protected her from such a terrible thing. But it was good in a way, too. He was so tired of the way she clung to his every word. It’s not easy being a hero when your feet are made of clay. At least now she knew: He was a messy boy.
His clothes were sticky. They were dirty, just like they used to be in Wilton, when his mother was mad at him, and she let his hamper fill until it overflowed, but he wasn’t permitted to use the washing machine, so if he’d wanted to wear something clean he’d had to rinse it out in his bathroom sink.