Dead of Eve

Dead of Eve

by

Pam Godwin

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2012 by Pam Godwin

eBook Design by Donnie Light at
eBook76.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.

Science may have found a cure for most evils;

but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—

the apathy of human beings.

Helen Keller

“You are looking at very disturbing shots of the fighting that has erupted on the White House lawn behind me. Riots, just like this one, have ripped across every town, in every country. The situation has been compounded by the continued silence from presidential cabinet members. Their whereabouts, and their health, are still unknown. It would seem the U.S. has collapsed like all the nations before it. All we can do now is hope and pray. This is Mitch Case with MCSB World News reporting on assignment in…aaah. No. No…aaaaahh…”

The camera angle rotated, tumbled. Mitch’s screams transformed to gurgles. The sideways view of trampled grass, smoke, and red and blue lights filled the TV screen.

I hit the power button on the remote and vanished the clip I’d seen numerous times. News broadcasts were on continuous replay. How long had it been since the cameras stopped rolling? Four…five weeks?

I lay in bed next to glass doors that opened to a screened sun room on the deck. The room overlooked wilting bushes, overgrown shrubs, and an algae infested in-ground pool. There was a time, not too long before then, when I loved that view from my bed.

Lightning bugs flickered through the screen. The sun bowed behind the maple trees bordering the property. Silver-green leaves waved in the residual light. The shift from spring to summer used to be my favorite time of year in Missouri. I would prop the doors open and welcome the richness of soil and clay, the sweet smell of the earth drying out after the rainy season.

But the doors remained closed and a musty staleness choked the room. I sank into the pillow. My hip bones threatened to poke through the cotton sheet. My dinner sat on the night stand untouched.

Dull strands of hair knotted around me. I plucked at the ends. Only a couple of months earlier, I took pride in my fit physique. A vegetarian. A five miles a day runner. I lifted weights with Joel every morning. But that was before. In two months, twenty pounds of muscle seemed to dissolve from my body, leaving a frail shell to hold what was left of my soul.

Hairs on my nape prickled. The shadows concealing the deck thickened and gathered. There, just beyond the sun room, a section of the darkness contracted. Was it…was someone there?

The deck was two stories up. Joel had chopped off the stairs to secure our home from looters and other threats. He said it would take a ninja or a forty-foot ladder to access the deck from the outside.

The only way in was through the barricaded front door. And I would’ve heard the garage doors. Certain I was alone, I hugged myself and squinted at the deck.

A small form emerged on the other side of the glass door. My shoulders bunched to my ears against a stampede of goose bumps. The uncropped outline of a child solidified. Darkness gravitated toward two cavernous holes where eyes should’ve been. A teddy bear dangled from one hand.

“Aaron?” I gasped and tried to sit up. My arms shook with the effort.

The shadows dispersed into nothingness. I rubbed my eyes. Another nightmare? But I was awake. My breathing quickened and I wrestled to control it. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been Aaron. I watched my boy die two months prior.

The silence broke with a giggle and the patter of feet. A fleshy palm flattened against the glass then receded into the dark. I gripped the sheets and worked my throat against a lump. An oily handprint remained.

The garage doors squeaking vaulted me back to reality. Joel must be home from wherever it was he went. If not him…ah well, maybe my wish for death would finally come.

Each lock on the interior door snicked, one by one. What incited him to leave every day? Pre-outbreak, he kept our garage stockpiled with water and non-perishables. We should’ve had another month of basic survival supplies. I knew a shit storm brewed outside, but didn’t care. Instead, I focused on the handprint—didn’t dwell on the fact it couldn’t be real—and tucked back into that safe place in my mind. The place where I climbed the corporate ladder, laughed and drank with friends, and tucked children into bed at night.

His boots landed with purpose along the wood floors. Should I feign sleep? He’d just wake me to eat.

The stomping stilled. Gun oil flooded the room, overlaying his usual scent of Cavendish pipe tobacco. He leaned on the door jamb. “Did you at least try to eat?”

I bit my cheek. Maybe he’d give up and go away.

He wore his armor carrier vest rigged with bullet proof plates and a hydration system. It outfitted a tactical custom radio, a first aid pouch, and mag pouches for his M4 carbine and Glock 19 pistol. Married to a gun dealer for fifteen years, I’d learned to catalogue the details of his equipment.

“Ba-y.” A firm tone. He never hesitated to battle wills with me. And he used his pet name, aware the way he called me
baby
, silencing the
b
, softened my stubbornness.

The stare down commenced. He’d win it with patience, a virtue ingrained through a lifetime passion in martial arts. I couldn’t fault him for it since he treated me to several years of self-defense tutelage. Though, indulging him meant that while my girlfriends’ husbands were pampering them with pedicures and dinner theater, Joel was grinding my face in sweaty wrestling mats and bruising more than my ego. Was the part of me that enjoyed those activities gone for good?

He hit the quick release on the vest and slid it off. His fatigues rasped at his thighs as he crossed the room.

Did he glance at the glass door? At our boy’s handprint? Nah, I was the only head case.

The mattress dipped. He scooted next to me and scooped a spoonful of corn. “Open.” The spoon floated an inch from my mouth. “We’re not doing this tonight.”

The heart-breaking look dampening his blue eyes made me wince. His face aged so much in two months. Wrinkles creased his forehead. Dark circles furrowed the tender skin around his lids and silver streaked the goatee under his scowl.

He was ruggedly handsome. Built like a wrestler, his strong neck and big legs intimidated lesser men. Thick brown hair curled on his shoulders, contrasting his graying facial hair. He reminded me of a mountain man. Fitting, given our living conditions.

He adopted survivalist ideals years prior. I used to tease him for his fascination with it. He consumed every book and documentary he found on the subject. A garage loaded with medical supplies, gloves and masks prepared us for the threat of bird flu. We caught rain water in barrels around the house. Supplemented electricity with solar panels on the roof. Self-sufficient and ready for world abolition. He’d claimed, “Lack of preparation can wound the strongest families.” I accused him of suffering from paranoia. Two months earlier, I ate my words.

“Evie.” His impatient tone snapped me back to the hovering spoon. “I’m not asking again.”

That was true. In a few moments, he’d be shoving the salty corn down my throat. I opened my mouth and swallowed the cold mush.

He handed me a glass of water. “Keep it down this time.” His eyes searched my face.

In the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him so sad, so detached. We met in high school. Together longer than apart, we both turned thirty-three that year. And I blamed myself for putting the pain in the stare that held me.

I surrendered and choked down the last of the corn, salad and black beans. The corner of his lips levitated as I ate. So loving, that smile. How long had it been since we kissed? Damn, I missed our passion and spontaneity.

The tiny handprint glinted on the glass behind him. Should I tell him about it? I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth. It would confirm his suspicions about my state of mind. He’d make me talk. About the nightmares. About everything.

“Thanks.” I rolled to my side and breathed through the nausea that came with eating.

“I pulled some mint from the garden this morning. You want hot tea?”

I nodded. We grew our own produce in our backyard greenhouse. Another convenience owed to his survivalist foresight.

He kissed the crown of my head and stalked to the kitchen with my dishes. I grated my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t understand his drive. How could he keep going through the motions every day? He did everything essential to keep the two of us alive while I lay in bed and aimed for the contrary. I died the day our children died. And I committed to dying every day since.

The covers tangled around my legs as I fought sleep and the awaiting nightmare. My nightmares didn’t kill me. They just reminded me why I wanted to die.

“Joel?”

His head poked in the doorway. “Going to sleep?”

“Yeah.”

He put his pistol on the side table. Slid off his boots. Dropped his fatigues with riggers belt still attached. Arranged the pants over the boots to ensure quick dress, fireman style. Then he settled behind me and pulled me close. His finger traced circles on my back.

I laid my cheek on his chest and paced my breaths with his. Within minutes, sleep took me.

I perched on the floor in Annie’s room and brushed her doll’s hair.

She bounced in her closet, picking out a dress to wear. “Round and round the garden. Like a teddy bear.” Her angelic voice pealed behind me. “One step…” Her feet rustled on the carpet. “Two steps…”

The corners of my mouth tugged up. I braced for the tickle.

“Tickle you under there.” Her tiny hands squirmed along my sides.

I twisted to return the tickle.

All white eyes sunk into her skull. Spiny pincers replaced dainty hands. Pus oozed from her pores and plastered her hair and dress. Her skin glowed green, covered in tiny hairs and thin enough to reveal the fluids pumping underneath. Dusty lips cracked and fell away. A spear-shaped tube emerged from the hole that disfigured her mouth.

She held out her arms. The claws snapped open. Black blood leaked down her chin and the mouth-like thing moved. “Will you sing the Teddy Bear song with me, Mama?”

I jerked out of her reach and screamed.

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—

Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman!—

William Shakespeare,
Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 144—146

CHAPTER TWO: FRAILTY, THY NAME IS WOMAN

Arms hooked under my knees and back, lifting, pulling me close. “Shh. You’re okay.” Joel rocked us and murmured words I didn’t hear. When my shivering tapered off, he whispered, “Talk to me, Ba-y.”

“Just another dream.”

He stroked a finger down my cheek and raised my chin. “Tell me.”

I shook my head and screwed my eyes shut.

“Is it the A’s?”

I slid off his lap and lay on my side.

He rested a hand on my hip. “I’ve let you have your silence for two months. We’re going to talk about Annie and Aaron very soon.” I cringed when he said the A’s names.

“But there’s something more urgent we need to discuss.” His voice was grim.

I rolled back. His fingers thrummed his knee. Shadowed eyes flicked back and forth.

“I’m listening.”

He cleared his throat. “Have you turned on the CB radio? Do you know what’s going on out there?”

“CB’s been silent for days.” Maybe weeks.

His mouth tilted down. “There’s no kids, no old people…no women.”

No kids. Somehow I knew. Didn’t stop the burn simmering in my chest.

“Evie, they’re saying women didn’t survive this thing.”

I shrugged and waved a hand over my body. “Obviously
they
are wrong.”

“Women are gone. Dead.” His eyes blazed. “And those who didn’t die…their fate was worse.”

“A fate worse than death.” I whispered it, lived it, despised it.

He sucked in his cheeks. “Don’t. Don’t go there.”

No, I’d plunge back into my fated solitude later. After I convinced him to leave me be. “Then get to your point.”

“I’ve done my own investigation. In the two-hundred mile radius of this house, the rumors are true.”

“You know this because you’ve searched through every house in the metropolitan area.” Fucking melodrama.