Ramola ducks and pivots, avoiding Natalie’s grasping hands, scooting back toward the far side of the bed, but hoping to stay close enough to lure Natalie to lean and extend further.
Softly, Ramola says Natalie’s name again and tells her to lie down. Natalie snarls, shouts, “Never leave!” and lunges with her right arm. She falls onto the bed, hands first, holding her torso up as though preparing to do a modified push-up. Ramola slaps and sticks the tape to the back of Natalie’s right wrist and then quickly slides backward and off the bed. She sprints around the perimeter of the frame to the other side, coaxing herself to move faster. While Natalie is distracted by the tape and still bent forward, Ramola lowers her left shoulder and slams into Natalie’s backside.
Natalie pitches onto the mattress, landing on her left shoulder, and rolls onto her back. Her lower legs dangle off the bed. Ramola is fortunate that Natalie went left instead of right, as the duct tape is not trapped under Natalie’s body and is still attached to her wrist. Ramola quickly cocoons Natalie’s wrists and hands together. Natalie kicks out at Ramola but doesn’t land a solid blow. When she tries to sit up without the aid of her hands, she falls back to the bed with the slightest nudge. Ramola ties off one end of the rope between and around Natalie’s taped wrists. She loops the rest of the rope around the closest bedpost, making a pulley, and hauls in rope until Natalie’s arms are hoisted over her head, then she ties it off.
Ramola next fights with Natalie’s feet and legs, absorbing kicks to her thighs and one breath-stealing shot to the gut. In a war of attrition that leaves both women exhausted and gasping for air, Ramola wins the battle. She muscles Natalie’s legs onto the mattress and builds a complex web of tape from ankle to ankle and tethers each to the lower bedframe. Battered and bruised, Ramola returns to the entryway, retrieves the collection of bungee cords, and uses them to buttress the arm and leg restraints. Natalie wriggles against the makeshift but effective shackles. Her back arches and her swollen belly rises with her manic efforts at escape. She screams and shouts and cries and laughs.
Ramola whispers, “I’m not leaving—I’ll be right back,” and flees the room.
Natalie’s unhinged wails chase her down the hallway, out the front door, onto the porch, her feet drumming on the plywood, finally sputtering to a stop on the grass, bent over, gasping for air, hands on knees. The distance is not enough. Natalie is there next to her, screaming into her ear. She needs more distance, to be farther away, maybe walk down to the road to wait for a rescue, or maybe walk to the next house to ask for help and the one after that and the one after that. Would she still be able to hear Natalie? Would she be able to unsee her tied-up form and her heaving, pregnant belly?
Natalie’s shouting mercifully ebbs. Ramola straightens and her breathing slows. From the vantage of the set-back, elevated front yard the road is a thin sliver, an ebbing brook between fields. The wind blows and the grass obeys, summoning a phantom in a blue-and-white ankle-length nightgown.
Ramola does not believe in ghosts, but she believes in this one. The phantom is slight, diminutive, as wispy as the bristles attached to a dandelion seed. Her arms are long and thin, built for reaching, tapping, touching. On the other side of the road, she floats through the field of yellow and brown. Her path is chaotic, without direction. Her hidden legs piston, expanding and retracting the bottom of the nightgown as though it is a bellows. She slows to jerking stops that seem permanent until there’s a sudden, automatonic restart. Her face is not visible, not even when she looks up across the fields at Ramola standing in front of the house.
Ramola should go inside and lock the doors and windows, draw the curtains, turn off any unnecessary lights. There’s a part of her that wants to wave at the phantom, to walk through the fields, to welcome her home.
Ramola remains in the front yard with the wind still blowing, the grass still obeying.
The infected woman either does not see Ramola or is too ill to cross the road and approach the house. She stays in her field and slow dances to a song all of us will one day hear.
The overhead light fixture in the kitchen doubles as a ceiling fan. Its base droops away from the ceiling plaster, exposing wires. Only two of the three bulbs work.
Ramola sits in an unsteady chair at the small table and inspects Josh’s hunting knife. The nylon sheath includes a pocket with a sharpening stone the size of her thumb. The handle is hard rubber and the blade is black, curved, and smooth, coming to an exaggerated tip. She sets it next to a spare collection of knives she harvested from the drawers. Most are old, serrated, and have rust spots on their blades, though she did find one paring knife that appears to be in good condition.
After checking and rechecking and dialing and redialing and texting and retexting, Ramola creeps down the hallway to the back room. A pungent ammonia smell of urine hits her a few strides from the doorway. When she enters the room, Natalie reanimates, growling, yelping, and whimpering in pain. The whimpering is hardest to take because she sounds like the real her.
Natalie writhes against her restraints. She lifts and drops her head. Her mouth is fully ringed in foam so thick as to appear fake, sloppy makeup in a cheap horror movie. Her eyes don’t focus as much as they roll and spin.
Ramola wants to put a hand on Natalie’s abdomen to feel for
