“Did he have brown hair and a beard and brown boots and ... and—”
“And a green vest?” Kaitlyn jumped in. “He had this green jacket-vest thing! And—”
“The one that was dead in your front door was an old guy. Gray hair and pyjamas,” he answered, then turned to Hannah with a smile. “That sound like your dad?”
Hannah shook her head, her sobs slowing.
“The one that I ...” He mimed smashing its head. “... was a lady. So, probably not your dad either.”
Hannah shook her head, this time with a slight giggle.
Kaitlyn, however, looked alarmed. “What did she look like?”
Crap. Alex thought. Forgot about her mom ...
“Well,” he started, hoping that his answer would not make her cry, “she was blonde. She was ...” He was at a loss. It had happened so fast. “Oh!” he said, remembering that it had been so easy to push the thing off. “She was really little. Like, short and skinny and stuff.”
He saw Kaitlyn let out a sigh of relief. Evidently those were not words to describe her mother. He was glad she didn’t cry.
“No one else was there?” Hannah asked, pulling his attention away from Kaitlyn.
“Uh, no,” Alex said. “I called out and looked around and stuff, but it didn’t look like anyone else was around, no.”
Hannah looked like she was about to cry again, but Kaitlyn knelt in front of her.
“He probably ran away and is hiding,” she said, wiping tears from Hannah’s face. “He’s probably looking for us, right Alex?”
Alex was caught off guard by the question. He had assumed that Hannah’s father was eaten with nothing left behind. “Yeah. Probably,” he lied.
Nicole ducked around the corner. “Now that that’s settled,” she said, “you guys need to check upstairs. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can go back home.” She paused. “Home. Then we just wait for your dad—for all of our parents—to find us, okay?”
Hannah nodded. Kaitlyn and Alex both called back, “Okay.”
Upstairs they found another treasure trove: blankets, towels, Band-aids, toothpaste, soap, even a well-supplied first aid kit. Checking out the house was one of their better ideas, and they managed to pull it off completely. Had Alex not gone to Hannah’s house, they wouldn’t have even encountered any mudmen.
“You guys ready to go?” Nicole called up the stairs. “I can see a few you-know-whats up the street.”
The three kids upstairs grew silent and still.
“They’re still pretty far away, and they don’t look like they are coming this way or anything,” Nicole continued. “But, you know, hurry up! Don’t wanna push it.”
With a few garbage bags stuffed with supplies, they headed down. Altogether they had gathered six bags. The mission was a success.
When they reached the living room, Kaitlyn evidently felt so confident that she broke from the group—from the plan—for a moment. Everyone stopped, confused by this sudden deviation.
Alex relaxed when he saw what she was going for: a flashlight on the floor nearby.
“It would be good to have another—” he said, when the words caught in his throat.
With a scream and a sickening squish, Kaitlyn grabbed the flashlight and smashed it into the severed head they had passed earlier—the head that he thought might have been looking at him. As Alex looked on in horror, it took chomps out of the air, until Kaitlyn bashed its brains out.
She stood, staring at the caved in head, breathing heavily. “It ... it ... the head tried to bite me ...” She could barely get the words out.
“It’s okay,” Hannah said, hugging the older girl. “It’s gone now.” She took Kaitlyn’s hand and led her outside. Alex hadn’t even noticed Hannah move across the room to comfort Kaitlyn. He was dumbstruck.
He looked to Nicole and took some solace that she looked just as baffled as he did. He wasn’t sure which shocked him more: the still-animated severed head, or the maturity of the youngest member of the group.
Nicole cut the tension when she motioned to the flashlight, still embedded in the head. “Well,” she said, “go get it.”
Alex looked at her in shock. “I’m not getting it! You go get it!”
“I’m not getting it!”
“We need another flashlight,” Alex said.
“I know. That’s why you should go get it!”
“I just had to fight one of those things already!” Alex stated, thinking he had a winning argument. “And she had a whole body!”
Nicole stared at him for a moment, then back at the flashlight. “Fine! But if you see that thing start to move again—” She didn’t finish the thought.
Alex couldn’t look at the head, but he desperately hoped for both his sake and Nicole’s that it was really dead-dead.
Alex didn’t say a word until they were back at the community centre. None of them did. However, before they ate, before they rationed, organized and counted everything, before they even took off their coats and protective gear, they told David and Ryan about the head in the living room.
David seemed unimpressed.
“But the head was still alive!” Alex insisted. “Well, you know what I mean. And it was just going CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!” He used his arms to show David exactly why it was so amazing.
David stared at Alex and his gestures. “So… like Pac-Man?”
Everyone was silent. Everyone who had been there—who had seen the head—glanced at each other. Then, as if on cue, all four burst out laughing. Even Kaitlyn, who just moments before had fallen into gasping sobs.
“Oh my God, David,” Nicole bellowed, between laughs. “You hit the nail on the head with that one!”
Another pause. Alex smiled. “On the head!”
Laughter broke out once again, all their nervous energy coming out in explosive fits.
David stood and watched as they made more jokes. They re-enacted Kaitlyn smashing it with the flashlight; they even took turns being the head, snapping at the air near the terrified girl; adding the wakka-wakka-wakka sounds of Pac-Man as he ate his pellets.
“But it’s dead now, right?” David asked with a chuckle, as if trying to join in the
