The old woman ground her teeth together.
More freaks came in. With more weapons.
Florence limped into the fray. She kicked until she had no energy to kick anymore. She jabbed at everything that moved, jabbed as her insides burned and twisted, jabbed until her entire universe was reduced to one overpowering thought:
And they fell. One by one they fell. Eleanor’s terrible progeny. The killers of countless innocents. Florence stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, and then she upgraded the pitchfork to a machete and chopped at the monsters until there was nothing left but a gigantic pile of lifeless, misshapen flesh.
Then, clutching her stomach, Florence collapsed onto the ground.
She was light-headed. And cold. So cold.
“Well, lookee what we got here.”
Florence glanced up. The man who spoke was massive, wearing some sort of padded body suit. Long gray hair poked through the football helmet on his head.
“Y’all do this by yourself, old lady?
The man reached down and took the machete from Florence. She didn’t have the strength to fight him.
“You must be one tough ole bird. Y’all know what we do to old birds ‘round these parts? We cut off their heads ‘n cook ‘em up in a soup.”
The man cackled, raising the machete.
“What’s your name?” Florence asked. It took practically the last of her energy to speak.
“Millard Fillmore Roosevelt,” he said proudly.
“Well, Millard Fillmore Roosevelt. I have a daughter. Her name is Letti.” Florence smiled at the man. “And my Letti is going to fuck you up so bad your momma won’t recognize your dead body.”
And then Florence laughed. She laughed so deeply and heartily that she didn’t feel a thing when Millard chopped off her head.
# # #
Letti was torn between worrying about her mother, worrying about her daughter, and worrying about herself.
Mal led the way through the luggage maze, using his cell phone’s screen to illuminate the pathway. The smell started off bad, and then got worse. Letti held her nose and stepped carefully; she didn’t have shoes on.
Irrational as it was, she kept repeating it in her head, over and over.
“Are you okay?” Deb, the one with the artificial legs, whispered to Letti.
“I’ll manage.”
“You’re Letti, right? I’m Deb. Your mother was a very brave woman.”
Letti noted Deb’s use of the past tense, but she didn’t contradict it.
“I have to find my daughter.”
“We’ll find her.”
“Oh, shit.” Mal called back to them. “Ladies, we’ve got a lot of dead bodies up here. And some rats.”
Letti looked down at her bare feet.
“How many rats?” Letti asked.
She found out a moment later. They stampeded her way, covering the ground like a moving, squealing blanket. Letti tried to stay calm, but once the first one ran over her naked toes she freaked out and began to run forward. Within seconds, she caught up to Mal, who was so startled by her he dropped his phone.
The room blinked into darkness. A rat hopped onto Letti’s calf, and she flung it off, backing away, stepping on—
“Jesus!”
The pain rocketed up through Letti’s foot, making her fall onto her butt.
The rats swarmed on her.
Little feet and greasy fur and rubbery tails soon covered every inch of her body. They climbed up her shirt. They got in her hair. Letti squeezed her eyes and mouth closed and kept absolutely still, even though her every nerve told her to start screaming and slapping them off.
It seemed like an eternity, but the rats eventually climbed off, continuing on their way. Except for the one tangled in her hair. Letti bit her lower lip and grabbed it behind the head. Then she gently pulled it free and tossed it into the darkness.
The cell phone light came back on, and Mal knelt next to her.
“Oh, shit.”
“I’ve got something in my foot,” Letti said.
He shined the phone’s screen at her legs, and Letti saw what she’d stepped on.
“I got it,” Deb said. Without warning, she yanked the old bone free.
Letti bled like wine being poured.
“Can you make it?” Deb asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Bring the light over here, Mal.”
Mal came over, pointing his phone at the wall of suitcases.
But they weren’t suitcases anymore.
They were corpses. Stacked up everywhere. A wall of decaying human beings.
Letti flexed her toes, and winced. It felt like there was something still stuck in there. The thought that a fingernail, or part of a bone, was still in her foot was worse than being trampled by rats.
Deb found an older body—a man dressed in a moldering suit—and began to untie the laces on his shoes. When she tried to pull off the shoe, the foot came with it.
Letti appreciated her efforts, but,
Deb managed to empty out the shoe and she threw it, and a holey, smelly sock, at Letti’s feet. Letti tied the sock around her wound. The old leather shoe was big enough to fit over the makeshift bandage, but when she tied it the laces broke off. She managed to make a good knot, and then Deb tossed her its partner.
“Come on,” Deb said.
She and Mal helped Letti up. When she took her first step, she felt like crying. It hurt worse than childbirth. Letti thought about telling them to go on ahead of her, but then remembered Kelly and willingly bore the pain.
“There’s a gate,” Mal said. “Right up ahead.”
Letti limped forward. A gate meant Kelly got out. Maybe she was nearby. Maybe she was—
“Oh, shit.”
