Be Good
After
I remember...
I remember Maggie. I don't really remember where she had been, collage? Somewhere in her late twenties-years. She had come home, and left her bags in her room. I asked if she wanted help unpacking, so she was like, 'yeah, sure.' so while I was putting away her shirts, I came across a little bottle of 'candies'.
She told me what they were and I got upset, and ran outside to throw them into the duck pond. She arrived moments later, and we stared at the ripples spreading across the water where the bottle had disappeared. We both broke out laughing about it. I'm not sure what was so funny. Maybe it was because I'd overreacted?
There were other times. Times we'd play hide and seek in the woods around the farm. Go fishing in the stream, chase the chickens and spend summer nights in the hay loft with a flashlight, reading scary stories.
I remember when the break out happened. Hershel immediately put his foot down, so precautious and paranoid, he said we weren't leaving the farm until they got it sorted out. We kept track of what was going on in the towns through radio and TV. Slowly, things started blinking out, one by one, until every time we turned on the radio, we only heard static.
Daddy didn't know what it was. Neither did we. It was late at night, Dad and Otis had gone out hunting. They came back, wrestling something in the shadows.
"Get the barn doors, Annette!" He called out to my mother. Me and Maggie held each other and watched them push the 'sick' people into the barn and lock it shut. Traumatized, Hershel sat us all down and explained to us.
"Everything we've heard on the radio, it's this. They're not zombies, they're not dead. They're sick. This illness causes them to lose control of their bodies. We will not kill them, if we find more, we'll keep them together. And when this ends, there will be a vaccine, and they'll be cured. It's nothing to worry about, do you all understand?"
We nodded numbly, I felt sick.
Most days, I hung around Jimmy or Maggie. Just trying to keep my head. I could hear the banging behind those heavy wooden doors when I'd walk by to feed chickens. I could hear their groans, hear their curled fingers clawing at the wood. I'd wince and run. Feeding the animals as quickly as possible, and got out of there.
I kept myself occupied, reading books, going fishing, swimming in the duck pond. Pretending everything was normal. Weeks had passed, and there was nothing new. All satillite stations were gone, restored to a marathon of back to back episodes of black and white fuzz. I was worried. Daddy hid it well, Patricia was becoming a nervous wreck. Shawn spent most days hunting so he didn't have to face any of us. Otis was always on the verge of panic, but always knew what to say to calm us down.
Then... There was a terrible day. Daddy decided we needed to go out on the highway, just for a look. Maybe head into town for some supplies. He took Otis and Shawn with him. Me, Maggie, Patricia, Jimmy and my mother stayed back on the farm. They came back late, a swerve of light cutting across the front windows of the farm house.
Hershel angrily stormed into the house, followed my Otis, who appeared sympathetic and lost. We later learned Shawn had been killed by one of those 'sick' creatures. Like the ones in the barn, they were everywhere... Momma cried for days, Hershel silently grieved. Me and Maggie went through it together, hand in hand, as we always had.
Today marked the second month of the infection. Today, I wake. My heart swells as I think of Shawn, and know that I must be ready. Always be ready to kill if I have to. I hate the thought, and banish it, but I know that, deep in my soul, it's true. I have to be ready.
"We're going out into the woods today." Hershel announced over breakfast. His eyes red and puffy as they have been every morning since Shawn's death. "Those people commonly lurk, get stuck in the swamps... Poor braindead things. We'll bring them back using the nets Otis made last week. We need to get as many as possible... And Patricia?"
"Yes?" I anxious, mousy woman replied. A woman I have loved my entire life, who had always been there for me, with the rest of my family.
"May I speak with you in private?" Hershel asked carefully. His body language made it clear he did not want anyone else knowing about it.
Daddy ordered the rest of us outside except for Patricia and Otis. I lingered by the front door, telling Maggie I'd join her outside in a minute. I listened carefully.
"Those.. People." He phrased it carefully, as though he wasn't so sure himself. "They aren't fairing well out there. They're getting hungry, starting to attack each other, and they're not looking so pretty now, because of it. You follow?" She must have replied, because he continued. "So, here's what I'm thinking... We've got plenty of chickens in the coop. Throw one or two in there every few days, should have just enough to hold out until the end of this. If not, be very gratious with your use. Once they're gone, they're gone."
I heard rustling in the kitchen and darted out the front door. The screen door clapped against the frame, tattling on me. I winced, and for the rest of the day, I waited for Hershel to approach me, and ask about what I had heard. He never did.
Apparently some time after the first week, it became difficult for Patricia to successfully feed the zombies without anyone noticing, so she recruited my mother to help her. I watched them carefully from the upstairs window of the farmhouse. They'd smuggle chickens to the barn in burlap sacks, and sneak up through the hayloft, and, I assumed, dropped them down below.
This routine went on for a while, and while that happened, I did not become anymore relaxed, just more edgy.
One morning, there was screaming, then shouts, and Patricia ran from the barn, crying for help. Hershel and Otis ran out to help. Me and Maggie stood on the porch, trying to see what was going on. Soon, they carried back my mother, cradled in my father's arms, suddenly seeming so small. The soft, white lace of her summer dress, that criss crossed her shoulders, was stained red, a sickening red that made my stomach turn.
"Maggie! Prepare a tourniquet!" Hershel shouted ahead when they were a few yards from the house. Maggie ran inside, reappearing moments later with clean sheets from the linen closet, sheets that smelled like lilacs.
I stood back, Jimmy hugged me tightly, I just... Couldn't make myself turn away. I was mortified by the sight. My mother's agonized screaming, all the sweating, she looked ill. She could hardly breathe, and still they built the tight tourniquet around her upper arm, trying to stop it. What we didn't know then, was, it didn't matter. It was an infection, and it spread through the bloodstream like venom. What else we didn't know, was, our days were numbered anyways. The infection was already inside of us, waiting to spring, waiting for a corpse to reanimate. That thought terrified me for weeks after we had been informed, I could hardly sleep, I didn't want to die, I didn't want anyone I knew or loved to die, either.
"She's going to be fine!" Hershel shouted in frustration. Everyone crying around him, pressuring him to save my mother, Annette. She was unconscious, and as far as I could tell, still breathing.
"Daddy, she needs to rest." Maggie insisted. "I'll go prepare a room upstairs,"
"No." Hershel grabbed Maggie's arm to stop her, but did not look at her. "This isn't something she can rest off, Maggie. We'll keep her in the barn until-"
"What if there isn't?" Maggie cried shrilly. "What if there isn't an end? Isn't a cure? We're just throwing her in there to die, your own wife!"
"MAGGIE!" Hershel bellowed angrily, giving her a severe look. "Enough. This is how we're doing it. And it'll work out. Otis, help me get her to the barn, Jimmy, open the doors."
I didn't sleep that night.
Or the one after that.
I just tried to imagine something other than mom... Thumping aimlessly against the walls inside the barn. I forced positive thoughts, but even though Hershel assured us everyday after personally checking in on Annette, I was becoming more and more certain that she was dead. I got my proof, too.
One night, on the way to my room, I glanced into my parent's room. Hershel was sliding a cardboard box onto the top shelf, and then another one. Pulling the string in the closet, it went dark. He shut the door and prepared for bed. I was suspicious of him, so the next morning while he was out, I went into his room and pulled down the boxes, checking their content. Sure enough, they were boxes of mom's stuff. Her dresses, necklaces, the locket she loved to wear. Her earrings and hair pins, everything in the bedroom that was hers. He really thought she was dead... But he'd never tell us. He'd keep telling us she was 'sick'. Like he had for two weeks.
I kept the find to myself, trying to keep up the charade I had been since the beginning. And that became hard. Nothing ever changed, nothing. Boring old farm life for weeks. You never saw anyone else, and when you did, Hershel and Otis were wrestling them into the barn before dawn, before anyone else woke up.
"...Daddy?" Maggie called from the front porch of the farm house one afternoon. I sat in the living room with Jimmy, playing cards. "Daddy?" She called again with more urgency. Hershel came out of the kitchen and arrived on the front porch, me, Jimmy and the others followed to see what was wrong.
In the distance, across the field, was a small, black blotch. As it moved closer, appearing to run and stumble, it became clear it was human, a man. He was breathless as he arrived a few yards from the porch.
"You Hershel?" He shouts up to us hoarsely.
"Yes?" Hershel replied guardedly, watching what the man was holding, we all were. It looked like a young boy, shirt bloodstained, he appeared unconscious.
"Was he bit?" Hershel calls out.
"No!" The man struggles for a breath as he juggles the weight of the boy. "Shot, by your man!"
"Otis?" Patricia gasps in disbelief.
"Bring him in, Maggie, prepare one of the beds upstairs."
We learned the man's name was Rick. The boy was his son, Carl. Turns out, they had a whole group. Split up to look for a missing girl in the woods. The rest arrived later, Lori, Daryl, Glenn, and the Dale, Andrea and T-Dog. This group of strangers who came upon us because a simple missfire, over a few months they became my family. And now I believe they're still out there. For how long, though? I keep praying we'll find them...
We'll find them, and we'll be a family again.