Dead of Eve (5 page)

I clutched the railing at the bottom of the stairs and steeled myself for the rooms above. Remembered images flooded in. Hand painted grass stretched to a cotton cloud sky and brightened the walls in Annie’s room. Sparkling butterflies dangled from the ceiling and her four post bed animated the room with grace and charm, mirroring her spirit. Aaron’s room was a dark contrast, with the walls and ceiling painted black. The top half of a crater covered moon peeked up from the floor and devoured an entire wall. Glow-in-the-dark paint glazed the surfaces, illuminating it at night.

Viewing their rooms for real turned my stomach over in violent waves. I rubbed a bead of sweat from my forehead and jumped when Joel touched my back.

“Are you ready?” His voice was thready.

I interlaced my fingers with his and squeezed. We looked up and began our ascent. I focused on cheerful memories like the A’s garland-draped balcony at Christmas. They would hide on the landing and spy on Santa below, who was Joel and two pillows stuffed in a Santa suit.

We reached the crest and he turned me to Annie’s room. With the windows boarded up from the outside, the room harbored unfamiliar shadows. He must have boarded those weeks earlier. He whispered next to my ear, “It’s okay.”

I drew on his strength and forced my feet to step into the room. The bed sprawled in the center. Stripped down, the naked mattress served as a heart-breaking reminder of its eternal vacancy. I opened the closet and ran my fingers along the hems of her dresses. Ruffles and lace and ribbons of all colors. Her favorite doll sat on a shelf and stared at nothing.

The air around me squeezed my chest. I wheezed and backed away from the closet. His hands tightened on my arms. “You have to breathe, Ba-y. Deep breaths.”

I took his advice then wrestled away from him. “Joel, you’re not just up here for me. We do this together. I’ll keep my shit tight, okay?”

He nodded once and reached for my hand.

In Aaron’s room, I struggled with a fear of confinement. The black walls caved in. Unexposed to light for weeks, the galaxy no longer glowed. He handed me the Maglite from a pouch on his riggers belt. I walked to the bed and flashed the beam over the bedding. I didn’t find what I looked for.

He stepped behind me and said, as if strangled, “Booey isn’t here.”

I faced him. Though I knew the answer, I asked, “Where’s the bear?”

“He’s…he’s with…oh God Evie…” He buried his face in his hands and slid down the wall.

I dropped to my knees and held on to him. Pressed into the curve of his shoulder, I absorbed the vibrations of his sobs. Heartache slammed into me like a fighting bull.

I didn’t know how long we clung to the shadows that darkened that room. “I’m glad Booey is with Aaron. He loved that bear.”

“I know, Evie. Christ, I know.”

We stood, helping each other find footing. Then we made our final descent from the top floor and never looked back.

In the garage, Joel and I stared at the Rubicon. Annie and Aaron called it the jumper jeep. With a five inch lift kit and mud terrain radials, the kids rode in it like a ride in an amusement park, bouncing and giggling.

With the packing complete and the house locked up, I looked to Joel.

He lifted the two A.L.I.C.E. packs in front of him, shoved one of them at me. “Whatever you do, don’t lose this.”

Expecting about thirty pounds of weight, I accepted the pack and wasn’t surprised.

He locked his eyes with mine. “It contains all your basic survival stuff. If anything happens to me, if we get separated…or worse, you grab it. Okay?”

I threw it over my back. My five-foot six frame held it ineptly, so I straightened. “Okay, I get it. Just like your life insurance policy.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

After loading the packs, we donned our armored vests and raised the garage doors. In the jeep, I plugged my MP3 player into the stereo’s aux jack and set up my punk rock playlist.

He backed out of the garage and locked up. When he jumped back in,
Theme From a NOFX Album
thumped through the speakers. The song’s catchy beat had a way of pounding away my fraying nerves. I needed its cheer.

He rolled the jeep to the end of the driveway and stopped. I hadn’t left the house since I brought my A’s home. Their last day of school.

Two months of isolation. I didn’t know what to expect. Twice, I fought an aphid and won. What if I’d burned through my luck?

He chewed his bottom lip, his eyelids half closed as he slid on his driving gloves. He taught me everything I knew about self-defense. Yet he fouled up his first close-encounter against a bug. Would his luck be better next time? And the time after that? I concealed my trembling fingers under my thighs and looked back at the boarded up house. The house we raised our babies in.

“Stay alive. Seek truth.” I forced the mantra passed my lips.

“And do not look back.”

We were doing this. We’d be fine. Yeah, we were fine. Just fine.

The chorus clapped in. He blinked then joined the vocals. With a seemingly forced smile, he raised his voice, singing.

I wanted to share in the optimism that peeked around the shadows on his face. But to be honest, it gave me the creeps. As he backed into the street and coasted down the hill, my gut rolled with dread.

Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead.

Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.

Bhagavad-Gita

CHAPTER SIX: GLOW OF THE ETERNAL PRESENT

I nudged up the bill of my baseball cap and dropped my chin to let the sunglasses slide down my nose.

Overgrown landscapes swallowed the monotony of patios and sidewalks. Porches offered withered flower pots and morning newspapers that decried the end of news. Other homes crumbled, burned from pillage and rioting.

Choking sewers and decaying crops replaced the usual summer perfume of cut grass and burgers on the barbecues. And beneath the miasma of abandonment, lurked the rot of the dead.

Nothing stirred beyond a tattered flag, a waving screen door, and the drift of a child’s swing. Nothing lived.

Joel slowed under a darkened stop light and dodged a large furry lump baking into the asphalt.

“A dog?” I asked.

“Or coyote. There used to be a lot strays. Now, it’s a rare thing to see something walking around on four legs.”

Because aphids fed on all mammals. But only the lucky human genome was susceptible to mutation.

A crow perched on the exposed rib cage, beak buried in the bowels. An overturned skateboard teetered on the curb beside it.

Wreckage barricaded the road ahead. He rolled over the curb, cut through a yard. From within the warped metal, protruded a disembodied arm, a booted leg. A shredded torso folded over a car door. I shuddered, tensing more when his hand squeezed my knee.

In our bedroom community, everyone knew and trusted each other. Yet the neighbors who hadn’t perished in their homes or on their front lawns seemed to have slipped into the night. I thought about Jan, the Pump ’N Go brute, who sold me smokes with a grunt and a bothered glare. I bet she used an insectile mouth to take out her angst on an unsuspecting customer.

Then there was Ted, the baker at the Piggly Wiggly. His kind smile and crusty Italian loaves made listening to his tales about nineteen grandchildren worthwhile. He probably mutated then fed from the family he adored.

I smiled, remembering the kid at the corner McCoffee. He could barely keep his dick in his pants long enough to steam my espresso before skittering to the parking lot to steam his windows with the girl
du jour
. I didn’t have to do too much imagining to guess his demise.

“Evie, keep your face covered. Just because we haven’t seen anyone, doesn’t mean we won’t.”

His distraction wouldn’t work. The brick building, the playground, and the school buses filled my horizon. The “Home of the Grain Valley Eagles” sign swung on one end, a haunting reminder of what must have occurred there.

I traced a finger along the stitching on my forearm sheaths. It was the first time I’d worn them outside of training. Joel gave me six knives. I wore two on each arm. Each had a black six inch blade of 1050 high carbon steel with a paracord wrapped handle. When he gave them to me, I read
The Art of Throwing.
Then he drilled me in the same way he did all his training. Merciless repetition. But I looked forward to the drills and to the rush of power from every throw. Within a few months, I was flinging them with confidence. Each time the blade slipped from my grasp, down that horizontal plane, I felt invulnerable. My small size no longer significant.

I flexed my forearms to test the straps. They felt like they belonged there.

Joel hissed. I snapped my head up from the knives in time to see an aphid lurching into the road. He jerked the wheel to avoid hitting it and regained control of the jeep long enough to throw us into the path of three more. The brakes squealed as we bowled into them.

Given the height of our Rubicon, we bounced over two of the three, jarring my body against the seat belt. But the hard brake caused the jeep to take a slight nose dive and send the third one up the ramp of the hood. Just as quickly as it cracked our windshield, the aphid regained its bearing and glared at us through the crunched glass.

Black blood bubbled from its head wound, but it didn’t seem to notice. It crouched on the hood, its humped body vibrating in sync with its buzzing.

The aphid orbs fixed on me, unmoving. Its hunger dripped in shoestring spittle from the pointed mouth that writhed in its jowls. But under the hunger, something else lurked. Something trapped in its milky eyes that didn’t blink. There was a knowing.

For the first time, I felt the weight of the knives buckled to my arms. I didn’t care if the thing staring back had once been Jan or Ted or the horny coffee boy. It wanted to eat me. I rolled down the window and unsheathed a blade.

“What are you doing? Roll up the fucking window.” He thumped the gas pedal to the floor.

The jeep propelled forward and the back of my head hit the seat. The aphid lashed out a claw and smacked the brittle windshield. More spider webs crawled through the glass. It held on, its claw embedded in a splintering hole.

We raced down two blocks, building speed. The aphid reached through the open window. I swiped its forearm and amputated the claw. A spurt of blood filled the car with a metallic rot.

The aphid yanked its maimed appendage tight to its body and hung on to the windshield with its good arm.

It took six blocks of unobstructed roadway to max out our speed. He released the gas and locked up the brakes. His forearm smacked my chest as inertia shot the aphid tumbling through the street before us. He stomped the gas again. The bug screamed as we rolled over it. I rubbernecked to watch it drag its mangled body into the gutter.

We arrived in Hermitage, Missouri three hours later with fewer bumps in the road. The sky opened between soggy clouds as daylight weakened under the segue of dusk. The jeep’s knobby tires stirred up dust laden with acidic moisture, scenting the air with the earthy aroma of rain.

Joel sped up when we neared an open pasture. Four aphids grazed on a bull, which was toppled over and turned inside out. The placidness of the feeding seemed unnatural. One of the aphids lifted its head from the carcass and watched us pass.

At the end of the field, a cow pressed against the fence. Its big brown eyes stared at nothing as it bellowed, nudging the post with its head.

My heart flipped over. “Joel, we have to—”

“Where was the cow destined before the virus? In the hands of humans, in the claws of aphids, the food chain hasn’t changed.”

Except our species lost its position as the top consumer. My heart landed somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach.

“We should stop there and see if there’s anything we need.” He coasted the jeep into the parking lot of a small grocer station. Pristine panes of glass veneered the exterior. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s looted this one yet.”

I let out a choked laugh. “Yeah, bet we just passed the town looters in that pasture. They’re looting other things now.”