Dahmer Flu (9 page)

I closed my eyes again, praying not to dream. I woke to a horrible sound; the sound was of gnawing and chewing, a crunch like gristle being torn from bone. I kept my eyes closed, waiting for the dream to fade, but it didn’t. The sound only changed as I woke further. I opened my eyes to the shockingly bright sunlight invading through the windows. In a brief panic, I felt that Madi was no longer on my lap, and whipped my head to find her, still blinking sleep from my tired eyes.

She sat, serenely, in the seat furthest from the door, contentedly chewing at an apple. Several others lay in her lap, and she reached down to hand me one. “Good morning!” she smiled. I couldn’t help but to smile back. The day seemed ordinary, in a peculiar way.

As the fog of sleep cleared from my mind, the obvious thought occurred to me. “Where did you get the apples?” I hadn’t recalled seeing any in the plane the night before. With her mouth full and juice dripping down her chin, she pointed out the window.

I hadn’t seen it before, in the darkness, but it was there clearly in the daylight. We had stopped at what was nearly the edge of the tree line, and through the thinning foliage I could see a modest, well kept single-story home no more than 20 yards away. On the side of the house closest to us, there were several overgrown apple trees, each overburdened with fruit. Surrounded by the trees was a long clothesline with some of the clothing still secured to the cord, the rest having blown or fallen off; a few sheets still swung lazily in the breeze, as did some children’s clothes. All of the children’s clothes appeared to be for girls, judging by the color, with the smallest of the outfits seeming to be for a very small child. I tried not to think about what that meant, focusing instead on the realization that Madi had changed clothes.

“Did you go to the house?” I asked with a mixture of anger and awe.

“Yeah,” She answered sheepishly, “I needed new clothes. Mine still smelled like…um… they smelled potty.” She looked down as she whispered the last word. “Next time I’ll let you know, I promise.” I realized just how much she needed a mother- a role I didn’t know how to fill.

I softened. “There won’t be a next time,” I said, trying and failing to sound stern. I pulled her close to me. “Did you see anything else over there?”

She nodded.

Life had become a never-ending race, staying ahead of and away from the constantly growing population of the undead. It seemed like a race that we wouldn’t ever win, but could only keep running. And to keep running, we needed food, water and supplies; the risk was in actually getting them.

Madi and I sat in the shade of a sun-faded child’s playhouse that had been overrun by weeds and spider webs. She munched quietly on an apple as I spoke slowly. “I’m going to go inside and look around, make sure it’s safe,” Madi nodded slowly as I continued; “can’t see nothin’ through the windows, so it’s probably abandoned. But when I’m sure, I’ll come back to that door and wave you in. Do you understand?”

“I guess.”

“Do you understand?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“If you see anything, just yell for me and I’ll come get you.” I didn’t have to explain what ‘anything’ meant. She nodded again and I kissed her goodbye. Despite what I had said, I didn’t really believe the house would be abandoned. The windows weren’t boarded up and nothing was moving inside; probably a suicide. As times became more desperate, more and more succumbed to the temptation, believing it to be preferable to the constant fear and inevitable end. Every person in these times, I imagined, always considered suicide to be at least an option, if not a plan.

I crossed the yard and made a complete circuit of the house, cautiously peering in each of the windows for a second time. The home was remarkably neat and tidy, aside from a thin coat of dust and the occasional cobweb; the normality of it left me with an uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism, as if the occupants were still at home or would be back any moment. Peering into the garage through the small, dirty window, I could barely see the outline of the single car parked inside. Coming back to where I began, I tried the back doorknob. The door held fast- it was locked. As if it would somehow be different the second time, I tried again, harder. Still locked.

I looked over at Madi, who was still watching from across the unkempt yard. I over-exaggerated the gestures as if I were checking and patting my pockets for my keys, grateful to see her giggle. I stole a glance through the small window next to the door before smashing one of the panels with my pistol; the single pane shattered easily, raining shards inside and onto the carpet. I cleared the remainder of the glass away and reached inside, flipping the deadbolt open. I tried the door again and it opened easily, but swung only a few inches before being caught on the chain.

I stared at the gold links through the crack in the door, not sure why such a small detail seemed so significant to my mind. I peered in through the broken pane, where I could barely see the front door. It, too, was chained. From the inside. The car, still in the garage. I found myself hoping that it would be a suicide, and fought the urge to leave. And if Madi hadn’t been watching, I probably would have.

I broke another pane to reach the chain, and unseated it from its catch. Again, I opened the door; this time enough to enter into the stale air inside. The living room gave me a strange sort of cognitive dissonance; as if frozen in time, it looked like any other from before the crisis. Children’s videos were precariously stacked next to the TV and a well-worn stuffed animal waited patiently on the couch for its owner to return. A few pictures hung on the wall, showing a happy family of five; a man, his wife, two daughters and a son, each of the children looking younger than Madi. The rest of the nails were empty- someone had taken some of the pictures from the wall.

I moved quickly through the house, afraid to leave Madi alone for any length of time, but through the window, I could see her, subdued and patient.

Each bedroom had been hastily overturned, with drawers left open and hangers empty. Each of the children’s rooms were painted in sardonically bright cartoon colors and toys, probably their favorites, were conspicuously missing from their shelves. I came to a door that was brightly decorated with stickers of ponies and the popular cartoons from last year; a wooden cutout, like the one Madi had from the fair, read ‘Britney’. I slowly cracked the door and peered inside; there was something perverse in a very real way, about me, a stranger- a grown man- in this little girl’s room.

The room could have been Madi’s, or nearly any other young girl of about the same age. Posters of some pre-teen heartthrob were tacked or taped to the wall, and the Barbie comforter, probably a hand-me-down from an older sister, was crumpled carelessly on wrinkled pink sheets. Also left behind were some of the possessions that no young girl would willingly leave- a Harry Potter book with a tasseled bookmark in the middle, a small shelf of meticulously groomed dolls and figurines, a motionless ball of fur in a small pink hamster cage; the parents had packed, and quickly.

Maybe they left through the garage,
I reasoned to myself in a mumble,
caught a cab for the airport or somethin’
. Even still, I left the garage to be searched last. With the rest of the house empty and still, I passed through the kitchen to the garage door. It was unlocked.

With the pilot’s pistol in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I flung the door open and stepped back, my light casting into the gloom. Despite my expectations, nothing came out. There was, however, movement. I couldn’t tell where the sound of movement had come from, but the shuffle was followed by the haunting moan that filled my dreams. The beam bounced as my hand started to tremble slightly, darting from each wall to find the source. Old shocks began to creak as the car gently bounced; the movement was coming from inside the vehicle, from the same something that began beating against the window.

I saw the man first, in the driver’s seat- he was the father that I had seen in the pictures, or was at one time. Now he was nothing more than a cold and unthinking beast with dead, hollow eyes. Now he existed only to consume. He was neatly dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, and his hair was short and trim. But the dried blood that ran from his mouth and down his graying face belied his respectable grooming. A large open wound ran the length of his cheek, which he didn’t appear to notice- I suspected that I would find that his wife had long nails.

He began to howl hungrily, beating on the glass as if enraged. His wife lay still in the passenger seat, her head leaning against the window. In her photo, she was a homely woman, average at best, but with a warm smile and bright sparkling eyes. Her lips, as well as her eyes, were missing now. Most of her face had been eaten, revealing clean skull underneath. Similarly, her spine had begun to show through her neck. The woman’s arm was twisted backwards unnaturally towards the back seat, although most of the bicep had been eaten away. I noticed that her fingernails were indeed long, and still had strips of his flesh caught under them.

Unsure of the scope of this threat, and knowing the man was no longer able to work the complicated door handle, I moved past the passenger side to the rear window, shining the light inside as the man shifted to follow. It was horrible.

In the back seat were the children. They had looked so bright and vibrant in the pictures, but that was taken from them. Each, also, had been robbed of the stillness of a peaceful death, instead laying in a snaking mass of bloody tissue. Their bodies were barely recognizable, and it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended, so bad was the carnage.

I jumped back as the man’s bulk crashed over the seat as he struggled to reach me, disturbing and nearly overturning the bodies of his children. I leaned towards the window and saw that a tiny hand was still drawing the door handle inward- the child lock had prevented them from getting out.

Totally unconcerned with the remains of his children, the man clambered over them, tearing the hand from the handle in the process, to distort his face on the glass.  As if from desperate hunger, bloodstained teeth grated along the window and his mottled tongue left a filthy trail on the glass. I knew that I should pity him, but I also knew that the man was no longer behind those dead eyes. As much as I realized that it didn’t make any sense, I knew that I hated him on a very personal level.

Leaving him to howl after me, I returned to the house and walked briskly to the master bedroom, peeking at Madi as I walked past the window- she was waiting patiently and smiled when she saw me. I returned to the garage clutching a large pillow. As if I never left, the man continued to try to bite through the glass, which I covered with the pillow, feeling it vibrate with his assault. 

I pressed the pistol hard into the cushioning and squeezed the trigger, sending the recoil screaming into my palm. Blood and brain violently painted the opposite door as both rear windows shattered with a crash, leaving my ears ringing with the blast- it was much louder than in the movies and I was momentarily disoriented in the small space. The man’s body slumped backwards, folded over onto his children’s laps. His face was still fixed in an enraged grimace and his eyes were left open. I leveled the pistol and fired again. And again. His face shattered with my angry shots, his head fracturing to reveal the soft bulk within.

I dropped the pillow and returned into the home, locking the door behind me. Later, I would have to see what it was that they had packed for their aborted travel; most likely I’d find something of use among their possessions, but first I needed to have Madi inside.

I pulled the rear door open. Madi wasn’t there.

“Madi!” I called, scanning the yard in a panic. I saw movement and saw her face peering from the child’s playhouse, her red eyes gushing with tears. In full sprint, she crossed the yard and locked to my waist in a bawling hug.

“I heard gunshots, I thought you were gonna die,” She managed in between sobs. She had just lost her mother and brother; her terror at the possibility being alone was evident and understandable.

“I’m fine, honey, let’s get inside where it’s safe.” I pulled her hand from my waist to lead her into the house.

She resisted, “If it’s safe, then what did you shoot?”

Parenting was easier when she was younger- she didn’t think quite as much as she does now. I looked at the tree line nervously, regretting the sound of the shots, and wanting to get to the relative safety of indoors as quickly as possible. With one motion, I lifted her into my arms, feeling her body tense with the start as I quickly shut the door behind us.

“If I tell you we’re safe, we’re safe,” I snapped, shaking her small body. My outburst startled her and she looked at me with wide eyes. “I’m sorry,” I stammered, lowering her to the ground, “You just have to listen to me. All I want to do is make sure you’re safe, okay?”

I wondered how much longer I could hold myself together.

She nodded. I pulled her with me to the couch, where we sat.

“I found some dead people in the garage. I shot them just to be sure and now the door is locked,” I lied quickly. “Now, you know what we need to do next, right?”

“Watch outside and stay quiet,” she recited.

“Good, you got it!” I replied with a false sense of confidence. “You start in here; I’ll start with the kitchen.” I crossed to the kitchen as Madi peered out the living room window. There was a tense silence as we studied the landscape, methodically rotating to a different window with a different view every few moments. I recalled, sadly, that at one time we would have had three people watching.

I guessed at my numbers, completely pulled them out of my imagination. I figured that the gunshots, being inside of a house that was surrounded by trees, could maybe heard for about a mile in any direction. I read somewhere, once, that the average person walked about four miles an hour, so I gave the undead a little more than that speed, if they were eager. Using my completely made up numbers and hasty math, we watched for about an hour until I was satisfied that it was safe.

“Hey, Madi,” I called.

She appeared next to me. “Yeah?”

“You hungry?”

“Starving!” She grinned. We were mourning in cycles; focusing only on survival and preservation, then the momentary relief of normalcy, followed by crippling periods of deep depression that we tried to hide from each other in an open secret that we tried to keep. Yet I didn’t feel that I had the luxury of grief; I had to care for Madi, had to keep her alive. I’d have time to grieve later, when we were safe, but for now I had to be content grieving in installments when she wasn’t around.

We searched through the kitchen drawers and cabinets, discarding the many items that needed electricity- our past reliance on power was amazing to me. The bags of microwave popcorn were useless and the canned foods were only frustrating without a manual can opener- probably the reason they were left behind. The fridge and freezer, of course, was nothing but a molded mess.

Eventually, we were able to sit at the table to a feast; a generous spread made up of dried pasta, peanut butter, packets of ketchup and, for desert, honey, fresh from the plastic bear. Surprisingly, the Twinkies were completely stale. I thought they were supposed to last a million years, or something like that.

“Daddy?” Madi said, with a mouthful of pasta.

I raised my eyebrows at her, my tongue working the peanut butter from the roof of my mouth.

“When they die after hurting so many people… do they go to heaven or hell?”

“What?” I asked, buying a moment- the question was deceptively deep.

“I mean, if someone lives a good life, but they get bit and become one of those things… then they hurt people... do they go to heaven or hell?”