The Seventh Day (5 page)

She’s still breathing, thank God. I drop to
my knees, rolling her over. The gunshot is in her side. Joey’s bullet only
grazed her side and the bleeding is already slowing down. She is burning hot so
I know she’s sick. The wound on her shoulder is clearly one of the bites. I
cover my mouth with my shirt and grab one of Mom’s arms to drag her to the
under-stairs storage. I push her inside and turn on the light, but it doesn’t
turn on. In the dim glow of the emergency lights, I can see her eyelids flutter
a little but she doesn’t move or make a sound. I grab a blanket off of the
couch and lay it over her and then grab a case of water to lock in there with
her, just in case. Tears are filling my eyes and my heart is racing. I don’t
want to leave her but I’m scared. What if she is becoming one of them?

I close the door and grab a dining room
chair. I stick it under the door handle and step back. Her blood is still on
the floor; I can see it in the dim glow of the emergency lights. I hurry to the
kitchen, getting the bleach and cleaning the blood.

My tears mix with the bleach and blood.
When it’s done, I pour the bleach right onto my hands and then wash them again.

I pull off my shirt and grab my gun,
tucking it in the back of my pants like my dad always told me not to. I run up
the stairs and wash when I’ve got all of my clothes off. I suddenly understand
her desperation to get the blood off of her.

The dim orange lights of the security
system make everything more intense and frightening. I change into three layers
of clothes. I pack a bag of more clothes and run back down the stairs, holding
the gun ready as I open the door to the garage. It still stinks of bleach in
there but nothing moves or breathes, apart from me.

My breath is louder than
anything I’ve ever heard
,
I
swear it
. It feels as if it echoes off the white walls of the still
garage.

I want to flick on the lights, but I know
it won’t do anything. I hold up my useless cell phone and click the flashlight
app. Nothing moves. I creep down the stairs to the concrete floor and sneak
around the vehicle, checking for signs of problems.

It’s cold in the dark, and when I get to
the wide garage door, I swear I can see my breath. I flash the light along the
whole door but it’s intact and the lock is still slid across the bars.

I turn, hurrying through the dark to the
supplies. I start grabbing bags of groceries and water. I fill the trunk and
third-row seating completely. I even squeeze food between the bucket seats. The
girls come with their bags of clothes and tear-stained faces. They climb in
amongst the rubble, fitting
themselves
in between
everything else.

“Where’s Mom?”

I give Joey a sad look. “If Dad comes, he
might be able to help her. But I doubt it. I think she’s really sick. Your shot
never hurt her. It grazed her side a little. You should know that—she
wasn’t hurt by you. It’s the sickness. You missed, Joey. Do you understand me?
It won’t be you that hurts Mom—it will be the fever and the sickness.”

Joey cries again. I’m not sure if it is from
relief or sadness that she shot at our mother. She climbs into the SUV and
closes the door.

I go back into the house and hide the rest
of the food in the closet of the office that doubles as a panic room. Dad built
it like a weirdo. Military scientists aren’t known for their rationality. Most
are preppers. My dad isn’t a prepper, but he has always insisted on things he
believes are common sense. The house had been built and finished already when
we bought it, so he made his own version of a safe room with the small walk-in
closet in the office. It looks like a regular closet inside, but the wall is
not a regular wall. It’s the opening to a tiny panic room.

It was the only thing my mother and I ever
agreed on—the panic room was so small, it made us panic. We always made
fun of him for it. I sob a little bit, like the dam in my chest is so close to
bursting that I have to let just a little out, to release the pressure.

I lock the food and supplies behind the
wall and slide the key onto my necklace, slipping it into my shirt. I write a
note and stick it to the door that leads to the under-stairs storage.

Dad,

Mom is
in here. She is sick so be careful. I don’t think she’s a biter. She seems
sicker, like a real virus. We left, going to the place Mom made you sell. We
never saw Mom do the head twitch thingy. Maybe she’s okay. We have Gus.

Love,

Your
girls!

Leaning my face against the soft paper, I
sigh. I’m tired and scared but there isn’t anyone older and more capable so I
have to be the big girl.

Furgus follows me when I go back to the
garage and lock the door to the house. At least Mom will be safe if she’s okay.
I walk through the dark of the cold garage, listening for a moment to the
frightening silence of the still surroundings. Slowly, purposefully, I slide
the lock on the garage, still listening as the metal groans as it rubs against
the lock.
Furgus growls, sniffing at the air.
It lets
me know that there might be people behind the door, bad people.

There isn’t a single noise beyond Furgus,
but the image of my neighbor staring up at me from his stoop below the window
makes me press my ear to the cold door and close my eyes. I still don’t hear a
thing.

Have
they left? Have they moved on? Is Gus growling because he’s worried?

I don’t have answers and I don’t trust
anything, but we have to leave on the off chance my mother is one of them.
Tiptoeing still, I hurry to flick the switch that puts the house on the backup
battery Dad had installed. It will run lights and phones. But the one thing it
will definitely run is the one place I need power—the garage-door opener.

I open the trunk for Furgus. He gives me a
dubious look when he sees how little space there is for him but jumps in,
nestling into the bags and boxes of food.

I get into the SUV and look at the three
girls. “Stay down and keep your eyes on your feet, unless you want nightmares
for the rest of your lives.”

All three faces look startled. I start the
vehicle and press the garage door simultaneously. I look in the side mirrors,
as the door becomes high enough for me to get out and see movement. I drop the
SUV into reverse and floor it. I don’t even realize I’m screaming until we are
on the road.

The street has a few frozen people who are standing
there like they are waiting for their remotes to start them up. In the
moonlight, I can see the blood upon their lips and their docile faces change with
the noise my vehicle is making. There are no streetlights. My garage glows like
a beacon so I press the button, closing it quickly.

I slam the SUV into drive and stomp on the
gas, making the engine scream as we lurch forward. The driving involves swerving
as a couple people on the road start to do the three head jerks to the right.
The SUV hits one man but he just rolls off the side of the hood. I drive faster
than I am capable of really controlling, swerving and sliding around the
suddenly active people.

When we get onto a main road, I look in the
rearview mirror to see they’re chasing us. They’re actually chasing the
vehicle, hopping over the dead or dying on the road. The silver moon
illuminates the angry faces and bloodstained clothes.

I drive fast, heading toward the road out
of town, but I start to see my headlights shining on the backs of vehicles.
There is a wall of bumpers ahead and people screaming and running. The chaos
has started. Furgus barks, startling me as I skid to the right.

“Damn, Gus! No barking!” I turn to the
right and skid to the left around a sharp corner. The girls are screaming and
crying as we drive over bumps in the road and I gag, realizing what they are.

I know there is a back way out of town; Dad
and I have taken it. I just don’t exactly recall where it is.

“Girls, you remember the back road to the
ski hill? Any of you?” I ask as I see a woman in a doctor’s coat standing on
the side of the road. When I drive past her, she does the three head jerks and
starts to run after us, joining the ones following us.

Julia speaks with a shaky voice, “It’s the
road we’re on. This is the way to the ski hill. That's my doctor’s office.”

I nod. “Okay.” I drive faster.

Apparently, driving faster uses gas faster.
I slow down when we get out of town and I no longer see the biters in the
rearview mirror. The biters. The word my brain started using the moment I saw
Mr. Swanson attack Mr. Baumgartner.

The farther we get from town, the less the
drive becomes. I feel more like I’m driving to join other people and less like
I’m fleeing them. Even Gus mellows out and stops panting.

It’s a quick forty-minute drive to the
local ski hill. When we cruise into the village, we are on fumes. I park
outside of a cabin that makes my heartstrings tug in my chest. It takes me
several minutes to turn the vehicle off. I don't trust the dark around me, but
nothing moves in the headlights and the people who are biters don't seem to
differentiate between vehicles or people. They chase activity.

I look over at the three girls, all asleep
and holding stuffed animals. One of Joey’s arms is around Old Kitty, a black
cat that was given to her when she was born. Her other arm is around New Kitty,
a tiger-striped cat she got when she had her appendix out at eight. I can’t fight
my smile when I see she also has Songa, my bear. She must have grabbed him when
she was packing. I reach for him, transporting instantly to a million happy
places when I touch his soft brown fur.

I bury my nose into his cuddly chest,
smelling everything I am missing. When I open my eyes, a soft and fragile sigh
escapes my lips. Gus starts to pant again, waking and realizing we are at his
favorite place. He loves winter and he loves the ski cabin even more.

There is a desperate need to cry and shake
and sob, but I can’t do any of it. I have to remember where I am and what I
just left behind. I have to be scared and not weak.

I can’t let the fears eat at me, breaking
me.

Deciding it might free me of
them,
I list my fears in my head so I can let them go.

My dad
might not ever come for us. He might already be sick.

My
mother will wake in that closet, run out of water, and die alone in there,
totally sane and healthy.

My
mother is already one of the sick and will die alone and confused in the dark,
not remembering how to drink water. That one makes a small whimper slip from my
throat.

We
will have to stay up here at the ski hill for the winter, but will anyone be
left alive in town in the spring?

I shut my brain off instantly, pushing away
the rest of the bad thoughts. The fears aren’t leaving me as I acknowledge
them—they’re getting worse. They’re breeding in there.

Distracting myself with the reality I am
in, I look out all the windows for even a single person. The mountain isn’t
anywhere near opening for the season, so it should be deserted, but if anyone
from town were smart, they would have come here too.

There is nothing.

It’s dark, completely dark.

I’m not getting out in the dark. I’ve seen
enough horror movies to know what happens to the girl who gets out in the dark.
I double-check the locks on the doors and tilt my seat back slightly. My eyes
are closing
on their own
when I try to look around
once more. I snuggle into Songa and let sleep take me.

If I wake up, so be it. If not, I pray I
die in my sleep and don't even know it.

Day Two

“LOU!”

My eyes fly open. The brightness blinds me.
I can’t feel or see anything for a couple seconds. I don't know if I’m alive or
dead until my neck cracks from the crick in it. I groan, rubbing it and
blinking.

When I look around it takes a second to
recall everything that happened yesterday. The fuzz starts to melt away as my
vision returns and giggling tickles at my ears. Distant giggling.

I glance around the vehicle, realizing the
girls are gone. I open the door and jump out, almost hanging myself with the seat
belt. “JOEY!” I press the belt button, releasing myself, and grab the gun.
Songa is still in my left hand when I round the vehicle and see the three girls
stacking rocks and laughing.

I drop to my knees, catching my breath.
“Wha-what happened?”

Joey stands there, startled, looking at the
gun in my hand. I tuck it behind my back and in my pants, praying I don't shoot
my ass off like my dad always said I would. “What happened?” I ask again.

“What happened where?” Joey looks at her
friends, shaking her head. Julia frowns. “We were playing.”

“You screamed my name, Jo. I heard it. You
woke me up.”

She looks confused. “I never screamed.”

They all look the same, lost in my
question—even Furgus, who comes bounding over to me like a big sloppy
dog. He too seems to have forgotten the prior day’s activities.

“Weird. So you’re okay?” I clear my throat,
seeing my breath in front of my face. I try to calm myself after the startling
wake up.

“We’re fine.” Joey glances around us. “We
were playing with Gus.”

She’s right. We’re fine because it appears
that we are alone on the hill, as far as this section of cabins goes. I can’t
believe our aunt and uncle haven’t come to the cabin. I had hoped they would be
here. Older male cousins were a happy thought.

I get
up,
trying
to rationalize a hundred things as the feelings from the day before hit me. I
have to remember that we are here and we are safe. That's the important thing.
I can’t control a single other thing.

“Help me unload.” I get the keys from the
SUV and go open the door to the cabin.

It’s stale. No one has been here all year
long. The summers up at Red Mountain are a touch sad. They try to do the whole
ecotourism up here but it sucks. Montana has some amazing summer mountain
experiences but ours is pretty lame. Our town, Laurel, is close to Billings. We
are considered a suburb of the city, but we are more like a crappy little town
than a suburb. The only benefit is the short drive to a ski hill and the city.
Our town is almost in the middle of the drive for the city dwellers.

I look down at the fact I’m holding a gun
and a stuffed animal and assume that’s a sign of the times. I’m seventeen—a
child compared to the problems I’m facing, and yet, old enough to hold a gun
and mean business if I have to, I guess.

If Joey could do it to our mother, I could
do it too.
Maybe not our mother.
I think we would all
be infected right now, had it been me holding the gun.

The cabin is empty but I feel like the
shadows in it still taunt me. My footsteps on the floorboards squeak as I creep
about. I’m relieved to see it is as it was when I was last here. The bedroom on
the main floor is dusty but clean otherwise. The loft bedrooms are spotless,
apart from some evidence of squirrels or mice.

The little kitchen and dining room are just
as clean as we would have left them, if the cabin were still ours.

When my father turned down a better paying
private-sector job in the city, my mother made him sell our cabin to her
brother as punishment. She said we needed the money.

I knew then it wasn’t true. She just wanted
him to suffer. She wanted us all to suffer. She wanted things her way.

I hate the emotions that are tied with
that. I hate that I still think she’s selfish, regardless of the fact she’s possibly
dying alone in a closet.

Joey and the girls start loading the
massive living room with food and bags. They all look funny, still in an uneasy
way. Lissie starts to cry when she sees me coming down the rickety loft stairs.
“I want my mom. I want to know if she’s okay.” This makes Julia start, which in
turn makes Joey cry. The three of them are sobbing and shaking on the couches
as the reality of the cabin hits. We are alone.
Furgus, a dog
who hates to see children cry, slips onto the couch with them, squishing them
all.
They don't fight his love—they let him lie atop them, each
gripping to his thick black fur.

I look back at the SUV, in a bit of a panic
to make them stop crying. “I’ll get my phone and see if it works up here.” I
hold the gun out for Joey. “Come watch for me while I dig the last of the crap
out of the vehicle.” She shakes her head. I nod. “I trust you.”

She gets up, sniffling and tripping as
Furgus rubs against her slim body. Her hand shakes when she lifts it to take
the gun and I regret trusting her, instantly pulling it back. “Want me to watch
and you can dig the crap out?”

She nods. We go out and she opens up the
back door to the SUV, getting our phones and the last bag of stuff. She closes
the door, but I hop down the stairs and grab the shotgun before she locks it.

When we walk back up to the cabin I spend
the majority of the time scanning the area for movement beyond birds. I have
the same weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as before. I lock the door and
lean a chair against it. Joey starts trying the phone immediately.

“Anything?”

She shakes her head. I notice she isn’t
saying much.

We all sit on the couch and stare at the
room filled with stuff. Stuff we need to survive. I start to fill the silence
with words I can’t control. “The cabin has a well and an outhouse. So we don’t
have to worry about where to go to the bathroom and water. The snow will come
and we can melt it if the well has any issues. I was thinking we should come
here because it’s almost
winter
and those people probably
can’t come here. They would freeze. We can stay safe here. We have a winter’s
supply of firewood already. My uncle and cousins always make sure the wood is
done in the summer. We have an axe and a chainsaw, and I can learn how to use
them. When things get better, we can go back. The military will
come—trust me. They will come and clean it all up. We can just wait it
out here.” I realize I’m rambling.

Joey looks over at me. “Is Mom dead?”

I shake my head. “No. She was sick when I
left her but I bet she’s okay. Dad will come and help her. He’s probably there
now. They’re probably on their way here.”

Julia smiles. “With my dad.” I don’t have a
poker face so when she looks into my eyes, she sees it. “Lou?”

I shake my head. “Your dad was really sick.
I saw him in the yard. He was bad.”

She blinks tears from her soft-brown eyes.
“But if your mom is better, my dad is too.”

“Okay. You’re right. He probably is.”

I have to stop treating them like they’re
my equals. They’re children. But then again, so am I. I am not prepared for the
moment I am in. If someone kicked in the door, we would die or worse. Yes, when
you are a girl in a position like this one, there is worse and I am aware of
what worse is.

I look at them all again. “So—from
here on out, we don’t talk to anyone. Stranger danger is worse than ever. We
don’t go into the woods alone. This is Montana—there are bears. We don’t
trust anyone but the four of us. Even if your mom walks up and smiles at you,
let me decide if she’s okay first. Deal?” They look confused or just scared,
but they agree. All three little heads nod at me. I give them all a look. “So
what should we do now?”

Lissie sniffles. “I’m hungry.” The other
two nod.

I laugh. “Okay. Let’s get some food and
organize what we have.” It takes a long time to get everything organized into
cabinets and cupboards. In the end, it looks like we are preppers or some kind
of freak shows like the husband on my mom’s favorite movie
Sleeping with the Enemy.
Of course that would have been her favorite, she was just like the
husband. She just never saw it. I hate where she sits in my brain. I want her
to be only fond memories, but there are only three things I remember that would
classify as good:

1. My mother gave me the necklace around my
neck. It is a locket with a picture of our other dog, Hobbs, who died when I
was twelve. She knew I was heartbroken, and she went out and got a jeweler to
make a locket with his face carved into the heart. It had a picture of him and
me together inside of it. We got Furgus a month later and I never warmed to him
the way I did with Hobbs. I was scared maybe that he too would die and take a
piece of my heart with him.

2. Once she lied to my dad and told him I
was sleeping at a friend’s house in Laurel, when the truth was I had snuck into
the city for a concert with my best friend, Tanya. And not just any
concert—it was the Black Eyed Peas—and my dad had said I couldn’t
go. But somehow Mom understood I needed it. Tan and I have been friends since
we were two, until Tan’s mom got a job in a city and moved away. So when Tan
invited me to the concert, I was stoked—Dad, not so much.

3. And lastly, Mom once lied to my dad when
I accidentally shot myself like I was the kid on
A Christmas Story
. My dad had gotten
me an awesome bow and quiver and taught me to hunt with it. I did the thing he
told me not to do—pull back the arrow while I still had it pointed at my
foot. I begged my mother to pull the arrow from my foot and swear to my dad I
had stepped on a nail. She gagged when she pulled it out and got teary eyed
when the doctor gave me my four stitches. But she later lied for me so he
wouldn’t take it away.

And that is it. Everything else has been an
inconvenience, an annoyance, a disturbance, and a distraction. No matter how I
feel about her, I wish she were here now. Then I wouldn’t be the adult, and I
wouldn’t be in charge.

I would be the sassy, bratty, teenage pain
in the ass. I dish out the canned fruit and cereal bars with juice boxes.
“Joey, I have to go turn on the propane.”

Her eyes grow wide as she sits to her dish
of canned peaches and pears. “No.”

“What’s that mean?” The other girls give me
a look I ignore.

“Lock the door until you hear the secret
knock.”

Joey opens her mouth, but I leave before I
have to hear anymore. I’m not excited about it either. I grab my flashlight and
gun and slip out onto the front porch. The gravel street is silent. There isn’t
even a twig breaking or a leaf scuttling.

There is only silence.

It’s almost worse than a leaf dragging
across the gravel or a twig cracking.
Where
are the birds? Are they sick too?

My stomach aches but I know we need the
stove. I can’t turn on the generator for lights; it makes more noise than a
freight train. But the stove is a must.

I take a breath, looking out at the bright
afternoon and decide if I act casually, it’s no biggie. I’ve started it a
hundred times—today is no different.

Of course when I’m on the second step to
the ground level, my brain mentions that in fact, that is not true.

Today is different.

Today I am potentially an orphan and
definitely in danger of being attacked by the things everyone is becoming. The
biters.

When my feet crunch onto the gravel, I take
another deep breath. I feel exposed, like when we are bow hunting and I’m alone
in my perch, waiting for something to come.

Only now I am waiting for a person to
come—a person who wants to kill me for no reason other than wanting me to
be like them. I shudder as the memories of Julia’s father’s face, and Mr.
Baumgartner’s, fill my head.

I push them away and slip behind the house
to the small door to the underside of the cabin.

My fingers shake when I reach for the
handle, looking all around me and listening like I am alone in the forest. I
open the door slowly, peeking my face into the dimly lit space. It looks
identical to how it did the last time I was here. I take one last look around
and make a run for it, the way I always do. I treat it like an obstacle course.
The house is built on huge stilts for the snow in the winters. The underside of
it is beams, joists, and posts with hay and grass on the ground. Joey and I
hate it down here.

I run—jump to a beam—swing from
one joist to leap over another beam—drop into the exposed underneath of
the house—crawl over the old hay and dead grass to the propane tank. I
open the valve—check the line for smell, and then do the same routine
back to the door. I crouch at the entrance and listen to the sound of my
pounding heart and ragged breath.

There is nothing.

When my heart slows to a slightly more
normal pace, I tell myself none of this is any different than when I was a kid
and pretended the wolves would get me so I had to make it fun.