Something answered, something small, something not quite human.
Jean shook her head, kept shaking it as Evan marched forward. “Don’t. They aren’t in there, our girls. Just … just leave it.”
“No.” He turned the handle, paused, then heaved the door open. Something crashed into the far wall and gave a pitiful wail.
Jean answered with one of her own. “You hurt it, poor thing. Stop!” She grabbed his arm and he jerked free. “Evan.”
He ignored her and went into the room by himself.
That was his first mistake.
He didn’t check the shadowy corners of the nursery. That was his second.
He focused on the baby, on the tiny monster this fucking apocalypse had created. That was his last.
The baby. I would always remember that baby. Its tiny, bloody hands reaching, its dead eyes begging him to be merciful, to come closer. A sob broke free from his throat as he drew his gun.
“No, Evan. Just leave it. Please,” Jean sobbed.
The gunshot made me jump, then the door slammed shut in our faces. There was a click.
Jean lunged for the knob. Behind the door, we heard Evan shout in surprise.
In pain.
Jean yanked at the door, screaming Evan’s name. He yelled back. Gunshots tore through the thin, hollow wood.
Dan was there, then, his eyes wild. “What’s going on?” His gaze moved to me, frozen against the far wall, to the holes in the wood, to Jean, who was slowly sinking to her knees. He caught her before she hit her head on the floor. “What happened?”
But surely he knew.
Behind the door, there was the meaty sound of a body hitting the floor. Evan? Or the thing that had been lying in wait for one of us to enter?
I went to my knees beside Jean, who was staring up at us in surprise as blood leaked from a hole in her throat. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” I said inanely, pressing shaking hands against her wound. “I need a towel. Get a towel?”
Dan nodded and struggled to his feet. I didn’t know how long he was gone, only that the blood continued to seep through my fingers the whole time and run in warm rivulets over the backs of my hands. “Here,” he said, as if from a long distance, and moved my hands to press the towel against the wound.
What had happened to Lana? Had she bled out somewhere afraid, alone? Was she somewhere right now, dying? Choking on her own blood?
“Help,” a weak voice said from behind the locked door. It could have been Evan’s.
“We need to get her out of here,” Dan said, voice low. “The front door won’t lock. More could come.”
What for? I wanted to ask. She wasn’t going to survive. And when she died, she would turn. She would turn and eat us. She would open her dead eyes and play the victim so that we would feel sorry for her and come close. Close enough to bite.
“Dee!” Dan gave me a shake.
I didn’t answer, but I nodded. We lifted her—barely—when the door clicked and swung open. When Evan emerged, hand to his jaw, his fingers oozing blood. Like husband, like wife. “Jean?” His voice wobbled. “God, Jean? What happened? Jean!”
He shoved us away and gathered her up in his arms. The bite on his jaw was deep, flesh ripped away as if the thing in the room had gnawed at him for a time. His shirt was spattered in gore. Behind him, there was a dark lump. Was it dead? Actually dead? “What happened?” he asked again. “Please.”
“She …” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t tell him he’d shot her. Accident, of course, but the result was the same.
“Please, please, please,” he gasped, clutching her to his chest. The towel shifted and his eyes went to the wound. A sob tore through him. “Please.”
Jean blinked. She wasn’t gone yet. I reached in and pressed the towel back to the wound.
“We need to get you guys out of here,” I said, my voice lacking conviction even to me. We weren’t taking either of them out of here. We couldn’t. Not if we wanted to survive.
Evan’s face, still turned to his wife, wet with tears and blood, seemed to sag in on itself, as if he was already dead but didn’t know it yet. “You have to find our girls. Please.”
I nodded. “I will.”
He didn’t acknowledge my words, just plowed over them as if I hadn’t spoken. “In my wallet, there’s a picture of them. Of us. Take it so you don’t forget them.” When I didn’t move, he barked, “Now!”
“Okay! Okay, I will.” I reached forward and fished the wallet out of his pocket. When I opened it, there was a creased picture in the clear plastic sleeve opposite his driver’s license. Jean and Evan stood behind their two little girls and a taller boy, all of them grinning at the camera.
When had they lost their boy?
“Find them.”
“We will.”
“Promise!” When he turned his angry, mutilated face to me, I saw a zombie, a horror movie zombie, not these weird, signing, prancing things that had befallen our world.
I jerked back, hitting my head against the wall.
More tears spilled out of his eyes and down his cheeks. He pressed no longer, just turned back to his dying wife and crooned to her as she died in his arms.
30
Now
She’s clean, fed, and safe for the first time in what feels like forever … and it feels like a terrible joke. It’s that moment in the movies where there’s a montage of happiness in preparation for the doom to come. She doesn’t want to trust it, doesn’t want to fall into the montage like those moony fucks on the shows, but she doesn’t want to say no to it, either.
Maybe she is just like those moony fucks.
She’s led around by Mel, introduced to
