Eat Your Heart Out, page 14
Near the house, there was a short wooden pier. Every afternoon, we would sit so that the tips of our toes almost dipped down into the water.
We sat in silence. Not the kind of silence loaded with a million unsaid things or unspoken anger or the awkwardness that happens when people want to talk but somehow can’t. It was the kind of silence born from comfort and love, and it created the freedom to listen to the river lap against the pier and watch pieces of clover pushed along by waves and ripples.
I found my reflection on the surface of the water and wondered if someday my hair would stay tied back in a neat ponytail like DeeDee’s. If someday I would have cute freckles on the end of my nose and my mom would stop calling me pleasingly plump.
“Even if you do, don’t act like DeeDee. She’s horrible. I like you the way you are.”
She made me hopeful and brave, and I said, “I’m going to make movies.”
She nodded. “I believe in you. Will you make movies about us?”
I said that I would.
The last night, Mrs. Ellenshaw helped us set up a tent in the backyard. We hid out there with our flashlights, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking grape juice boxes. Vee had her dad’s old Polaroid camera. Even then, she was into old things. She took pictures of us.
“How does it work?” I asked her.
She grinned. “It’s magic.”
“You believe in magic?”
“I believe people make their own magic,” she said with a yawn.
I peeked out of the tent. There were so many stars in the sky. The deep dark blue. The swaying trees. The cool night air. It was for us. Everything was for us.
I was the moon. I was a star. I was magic.
THE BASKET CASE pounds the creature again and again with the oar. When it breaks her arm, the bone twists and snaps, but it doesn’t hurt. It isn’t even her arm to break anymore. She knows that Vee will wait till the last possible second before finally climbing the fence. When the metal links rattle, THE BASKET CASE knows it’s almost over. She exists in a thousand different moments. Her memories flow through her like the chilly green-brown river water. Of yesterday and all the days. She plunges through infinite futures. Destinies and dreams. All at once, she is everything and nothing. Until.
She isn’t anything at all.
FADE TO BLACK
PAUL FANNON
There’s some seriously messed-up shit going on.
When the monster comes into the road, I am real fucking glad to be on the opposite side of the fence.
Miller got over the fence fast. He’s coordinated. I guess it’s not for nothing that he is a championship athlete. The instant his feet land on the ground, he shouts at Vivian, who is still on the other side. “You need to climb the fence. You need to do it now. Right now.”
Smentkowski is with Rachel, so I stand up. I should do something. There are still two girls on the opposite side of the fence, and for some reason that fact makes me feel like a complete ass. Like they are braver than me. Better than me.
The zombie screams.
I’m ashamed of the hot panic that runs through me.
And even more ashamed of my relief at being relatively safe.
Rachel falls over on her side, kind of moaning and breathing heavy.
Smentkowski does his best to prop her up. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asks. “Are you okay? What’s happening?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Get up on the fucking fence, Vivian,” Miller says.
It’s getting darker and darker, and both of the girls have turned off their flashlights. I can’t exactly make out what is going on. At first, I think that maybe Vivian is worried that she won’t make it. But really, that is pretty stupid.
Vivian is actually crying and repeating, “It’s my fault,” over and over.
A sliver of moonlight escapes through the storm clouds.
Maybe the storm is nearly over.
Maybe I’m going to be fine.
But then.
The blonde girl. Allison. She’s run off in the wrong direction.
Toward the thing.
She is trying to save us.
My heart stops.
Miller reaches out and stops me from grabbing the fence. “What the hell are you doing? What the fuck is wrong with everyone?”
Allison approaches the monster. Goes right up on it. Only a few paces away from it when the clouds close again and swallow the scene up in darkness.
I can’t process what I’m hearing. Even make sense of it.
“Aww. Man. Fuck, man.” I stumble a few paces away from Rachel and throw up into the snow. Chunks of trail mix and stomach acid stay in my mouth.
It’s like the sound of my voice does something to Vivian. A second later she’s up on the fence, scaling it with almost as much ease as Miller.
When she’s on our side, she gets her flashlight out of her pack and points it all over the place.
And then she comes for me.
“You did this! You did this!” she screams.
Before I can figure out what’s going on, her fist connects with my face. White spots explode in my vision as I close my eyes. I put my hands up defensively, but she lands another punch on my upper lip.
Miller drags her off me.
I fall back, lying flat in the snow. The cold comes as a relief.
I can hear them struggling and scuffling and Vivian shrieking.
“Let go of me. Allie’s dead. Allie is fucking dead.”
“This isn’t helping anything,” Miller says.
“What are you talking about?” Smentkowski asks.
“What am I talking about?” Vivian laughs. High-pitched. Maniacal. “Oh, I’ll tell you. May I please present Paul Fannon the Fourth? Scion of the mad scientist behind Camp Featherlite.”
It’s silent for a second.
“What?” Miller asks. He has the look of someone who wishes he had a clipboard full of paperwork to consult. “No. That’s Paul Lewis.”
“No, it isn’t,” Vivian says through her teeth. “All rich people eventually end up at the same parties. And I’ve been at one with him!”
“You lied?” Rachel says. “You lied to me?”
I have just let down the only decent person who ever seemed to like me.
“Jesus. Not having my laptop really sucks,” Smentkowski mutters.
I sit up. What the fuck would I do if they all decided to leave me here? “I had no idea what was going on here,” I tell them. “And that girl is dead because she decided to run that thing down. I didn’t tell her to do that.”
Vivian tries to charge me again, but Miller blocks her.
“That girl’s name is Allison DuMonde. And she decided to run it down because she’d eaten your dad’s evil fucking bars . . . and she knew . . . she knew . . .” Vivian squats down and breaks into sobs.
Rachel reaches out to pat her arm. “She ate the bars?” she says in between pants. “She ate them? Even after we found out what they do?”
Vivian cries even harder. “Yes, yes. Why would she . . .”
Drawing in a deep breath, Rachel says, “The world is so cruel. It makes us think we have to do anything to look like . . .”
“Him,” Smentkowski finishes, waving his hand toward Miller.
Vivian rounds on the jock. “Why didn’t . . . you shoot . . . the damn thing?” she asks in between sobs.
“It’s dark. I only have six rounds of ammo left, and the odds that I would hit anything, let alone take down one of those monsters, are nonexistent,” Miller tells her. “I’m sorry.”
“She was my best friend,” Vivian says.
“I’m sorry,” he answers in a sad voice, and for some reason this sends her into another round of heaving sobs. “But you’ll have to deal with that later.”
Miller kneels in front of Rachel, helping her put her snowshoes back on. “When are you due?”
“What do you mean?” she says.
He waves the beam of his flashlight over her face. “Please. I have four sisters, and I grew up on a farm. When is your due date?”
She hesitates for a second. “Not for four weeks.”
Smentkowski says what I’m thinking. “Shit. You’re having a baby?”
“Has your water broken?” Miller asks.
“No,” she says.
“Wait. You’re pregnant? And your parents sent you to a fat camp?” I ask.
No one answers me. They’ve probably decided I’m a traitor. “Look, I’m sorry I lied, okay! I was supposed to be checking out the camp and reporting back to my father. I thought I’d be writing reports on which yoga instructors campers hated. I didn’t think . . . I just wanted to . . .” To prove I’m not a total screwup. Except I am.
They ignore me again. Everyone busy with their snowshoes.
“We can’t sit around talking all night. We need to think about getting out of here,” Smentkowski says. He shines his flashlight into the road, where the thing is on the move.
Miller stands up. “Rachel, I doubt you need me to tell you that there’s absolutely no way we can deliver a baby right now. If you go into full-blown labor, the baby will die and so will you. We need to keep you as absolutely calm as possible. And keep you from doing anything physical. As much as we can.”
Miller can be real helpful sometimes. “Sure, Steve,” I say. “Sure. It’ll be easy to stay calm after that little speech.”
“You guys. Seriously. We gotta get a move on . . .”
The creature’s howl drowns out the rest of Smentkowski’s words.
I hustle off the ground. The monster has come very close.
Close enough that I can smell it. It has the scent of a dirty aquarium.
Miller and Smentkowski hoist Rachel up from the snow. Vivian grabs the other girl’s pack and swings it over her own shoulder. I flinch when she takes a step forward, but she doesn’t come for me.
I guess Vivian Ellenshaw has decided she’d rather live to fight another day.
Off in the distance, in the opposite direction of the monster, I can hear thick branches break and heavy footsteps growing louder.
Then.
I jump back as a second zombie hits the fence with full force.
A soft hum.
Miller points his flashlight at the monster as it charges the fence again.
This time the fence is supposed to deliver the lethal charge.
The chain links let out a sizzle.
The creature pushes itself back and retreats a few paces, nurturing an injured, bluish-black forearm.
It’s hurt.
But not dead.
In what is becoming an annoying pattern, Smentkowski again says what I’m thinking. “So much for stun-lethal.”
He and Miller each take one of Rachel’s sides.
And together, we run.
SHELDON SMENTKOWSKI
Ope. Paul has his little secret, and I have mine.
I don’t know if the fact that Paul Lewis is actually Paul Fannon helps us or hurts us. But I do know that the redbrick building probably has power. Because the power is probably still on everywhere outside of camp. The only reason that the electricity is off back at Featherlite is because I flipped the switch. Paul is a liar. But I’m worse.
I put our fucking lives in danger.
Now Paul’s secret is out. What if everyone else finds out about mine?
We keep running. Getting to the building is a slog.
Miller and I shoulder as much of Rachel’s weight as we can. We are pretty much carrying her, and only once in a while does one of her small feet push into the snow.
Vivian and Paul are a few paces ahead, shining their flashlights, blazing a path. They aren’t exactly cooperating, but they aren’t trying to kill each other either.
Behind us, we keep hearing the monsters hitting the metal fence. Like they’re testing it. And if they are, our problems will get exponentially worse. Because it would mean that those things have superhuman strength and abilities but also some amount of intelligence.
What if they find the section of the fence that has the electrical short?
The closer we get to the building, the more I begin to wonder if this idea of mine is going to work. What from a distance and in the daylight was a cheerful redbrick building is growing darker and gloomier by the second. It becomes larger and more imposing with every step we take.
But we are out of options.
And I am almost out of breath.
“Let’s give it a rest for a second,” Miller suggests.
I’m grateful for this. But also embarrassed. Miller isn’t out of breath.
We place Rachel down on her feet gently. She leaves her hand on Miller’s shoulder and continues to use him to brace herself.
“How’s your pain?”
“Same . . . as before.”
The side of the building we are on doesn’t have an entrance. Vivian runs her flashlight up the wall, highlighting brick after brick until she arrives at a series of narrow windows. They are way too high and probably too small for us to use to get in.
“Four!” Vivian calls out in a harsh voice. “Is there any chance you might have some useful information? Like where we might find the fucking door?”
There is a pause, but then Paul answers. “The main door is around the corner. But I’m sure it’s locked up pretty tight.”
“You’d expect a building of this size to have some security,” Miller says.
For a second there, we are all kind of hopeful.
“They have a service. They’re supposed to send a patrol a couple times a night. But . . .”
“But,” Vivian finishes for him, “nobody in their right mind is going to come out and check on some big creepy building in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.”
So we are screwed again.
I don’t know why, but right at this moment I’m thinking about my dad. Like, I want to be mad at him. I want to focus on how bad he sucks. On how much it sucks that he left Mom when she was sick. But he isn’t always bad. We have our fishing trips in the summer. And I know he cares about me.
I want to hate him.
But the truth is that I just want to see him again.
I want to live long enough to see my father.
Paul’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “Oh! But my dad’s office is on the other side of the building. On the first floor. And the office has a window.”
“All right. We’ll try that,” Miller says.
Paul comes around to try to take Rachel’s other arm, but even though I am tired, I stop him. “No offense, bro, but you’re not good in the snow.”
Miller is smoother. “You should show us which way to go, anyway.”
We head around to the front of the building. The place has oversize reinforced steel doors with a few square windows made from ballistic glass. Paul is right. We’ll never get in that way.
But the lights are on inside the foyer.
“Good call, Smentkowski,” Miller says. “The place has electricity.”
Even though I’m getting pelted in the face with ice, I can’t stop myself from grinning. If the building has power, the chances are really fucking good that it also has working phones. Maybe we’ll get out of this. Maybe I won’t get us all killed.
We keep moving.
“What does your dad do here, anyway?” Vivian asks Paul.
“I’m not totally sure,” he says.
She takes an aggressive step in his direction.
“I’m not! I’ve only ever been here a couple of times, and the inside was totally empty except for some office furniture.”
“Right,” she says.
“I’m serious!” Paul picks up his pace a bit so that he gets in front of Vivian. “I’m sure this will come as absolutely no surprise to you, but my father, the great Paul Fannon the Third, thinks I’m the world’s biggest screwup. He isn’t going to tell me all his secret plans.”
Vivian slows down. “And . . . that’s why he sent you here? To punish you?”
I can see what she is getting at. If those notes we found from the scientist are real, and people had been warning Dr. Fannon about the bars . . . well, you wouldn’t send someone you liked into that kind of a situation.
“He didn’t send me at all,” Paul answers. “He wanted Carl Kaiser to come. Dr. Kaiser’s son.” He seems weirdly bitter about the whole thing. I mean, I would be thrilled to give Carl Fucking Kaiser my spot in the zombie apocalypse.
Next to me, Rachel squirms and pants. “You mean . . . the dead guy’s . . . son?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
We round the corner. Yellow light from a row of windows casts a dull glow onto the snow. Soon, we’ll be inside.
“You think that’s some kind of coincidence? That Kaiser is dead? And his son was supposed to be here too?” Vivian asks.
We form a little circle near the first window.
The first thing I find in the light is Paul’s confused, haggard face. “It would have to be, right?”
Miller leans Rachel up against the wall and shrugs out of his jacket. He takes the flashlight from Vivian, wraps the coat around it, and before any of us have much of a chance to ask what he’s doing, he bashes the window in.
He uses his coat to cover the windowsill. “Give me a boost,” he says.
Paul makes a loop with his hands and hoists Miller up. The jock disappears into the building.
Rachel takes a deep breath. “What if it’s not?”
“Not what?” Paul asks.
“A coincidence.”
“Yeah,” Vivian agrees. “I mean, it’s not like Kaiser died of old age.”
