That night, as I held her, I begged her to forgive me for being so stupid. I promised a new life for her, and she told me to shut up. “I don’t want a new life,” Penny said. “I want our life.”
The darkness passed, and life began to have more meaning. We took trips, and spent money. Lots of it. We bought expensive gifts for each other on random days. I once gave her a motorcycle because, I told her, “It’s Tuesday.”
And we were happy.
Then, just after our sixteenth wedding anniversary, Penny started to get sick. She complained that she had never felt like this, and the sensation wasn’t going away. Nausea and vomiting. Lack of appetite, followed by feelings of starvation. We took her to see the doctor, and the new floored us both.
Penny was pregnant.
I was going to be a father. At thirty-five years old, I was finally going to be a daddy. I didn’t care how. I didn’t care why. I had weathered the storm. I was a father, and that was all that mattered.
Penny, in the other hand, spiraled into a deep depression. She lamented that she was too old to be a mother now. She tried to keep a brave face for me, but I could see it in her eyes: She was scared. I heard comments like, “What if it kills me?” and “What if it comes out retarded?” and “My eggs are too old. It’s going to be riddled with birth defects.” I answered every concern as lovingly as I could, though I harbored some resentment. She was killing my happiness. Couldn’t she see how amazing this was? Couldn’t she see how great and miraculous it was that we, we were going to have a baby? It was supposed to be impossible. It was supposed to never happen. But here we are! And now she’s ruining it with her darkness.
I tried to remember how Penny had been there for me when I was down. I tried to recall how I had spoiled so many of her moments, and how she had borne it all in loving silence. And so I held her and whispered how everything would be alright. I tried to not seem too excited as she began to show and Penny seemed to slowly warm to the idea of being a mommy. I would catch her singing to her belly, and talking to it all the time.
We were a family now.
The day came, and the delivery was smooth. No real complications. No issues. One day we were two, and the next, we were three.
It was a little girl.
We named her Eleanor.
My life finally felt like it had begun. My feelings for my wife deepened. My heart swelled at every touch from my precious little Ella. I was fulfilling my purpose.
I took to calling her the miracle child. The child that was never supposed to have been. The one that refused to stay out of existence. She was feisty, and clever, and beautiful. She was every reason I loved her mother and every reason I wanted to be alive.
I was falling in love again, with both of them, and I had never been happier.
Five years later, the reports began to come in. The television told of men eating each other in the streets. I was horrified, but Penny thought it was funny. “C’mon, Stu,” she had giggled. “A homeless weirdo tackles and eats a guy in the street? Sure it’s gross, but it’s kinda funny. Right? How often do you get to hear about random acts of cannibalism in America?” She laughed, but I couldn’t. Eating a person? In the street? While they died? I couldn’t comprehend it.
Then more reports came in.
Penny stopped laughing.
Then even more stories of killing, cannibalism, and sickness. Stories of people who could not be killed, walking the streets and attacking whoever they could find.
Words like, “infected” were being thrown around. Reporters warned that if you saw an infected person, you should not attempt to confront them. We were told to just run. We were told that there is no stopping them. No killing them and no surviving their attack. If you encounter one, it will kill you. You would become like them, killing, eating, and terrorizing.
Life as everyone had ever known it was about to be over.
We were living in Yakima, Washington at the time. I began to store food and fortify the house. If the infection reached us, I wanted to be protected. Many of my friends drove north into Canada and the wilderness, but I preferred to stay in a safe place and make our stand here.
Penny became catatonic. She told me how she thought this was a zombie outbreak. How these stories never ended well. How this would be the death of us all. How it would be better if we killed ourselves then have to live through this. I remembered back, puking my guts out and praying for a death that wasn’t coming.
Never again.
I told Penny about how I needed her. Ella needed her. How we would make it through this if we stuck together, but we had to be a team.
I can’t say that I ever really thought I got through to her.
Then the killing began in Washington. Reports came in that a group of men had shot and killed a boy in the city of Vancouver, just north of Portland, Oregon. The parents of the boy claimed he was just walking home, but the men swore he was a zombie. And it only got worse from there. Soon, shootings were happening across the state. No one knows when the zombies officially arrived, but there was a week of shootings and murders before any reports of actual zombie
