General

My eyes fly open like I’m waking from the dead. I start up, tossing aside the blanket that had been tangled around my legs. Something woke me up. I kick dirty laundry out of the way and shift my body to sitting up. Head swimming. The sunlight is too bright in the room and I find myself squinting around.

When I lean forward, my phone tumbles off my lap, hits the edge of the coffee table, and clatters to the floor. I wince.

“Shh!” I hiss at it. Why is that so loud? It echoes through the whole house. I look down at the dark phone way far away on the floor, and can’t convince my arms to swing down to grab it. What’s the point? So I can open it up and do what? I breathe in, smelling the stale smell of the old blankets wrapped around me in a cocoon, and because there’s nothing better to do, breathe out again. I can feel stiffness in my stomach from the surgery, the stitches stretching with my skin.

I’m hungry. I should haul myself to my feet, drag myself into the kitchen, and find something to eat. I try to imagine doing all of that. Standing up, moving, opening the fridge, getting out ingredients, putting things in a bowl—

I swing my head to the right. There’s my water bottle. I can drink some water. I try to force my brain to imagine telling my husband, when he gets home from work, what I did today.

“I drank some water from my water bottle. I breathed in and I breathed back out. I decided to keep breathing in and keep breathing out because it was easier than not doing that.”

I look down at my right arm, and because it would be embarrassing if I can’t even manage that, I lift my arm, pick up my water bottle with fingers made of lead, and swallow some water. I have been back from the hospital almost a week after my ordeal, and somehow swallowing water is still the most I can manage.

The TV is on, and there’s a very serious news lady droning on. She’s talking about the spread of the virus and there’s a map with splotches of red. I don’t want to listen to this, to see the red slowly seeping into our state, getting closer and closer to us. I want it to be quiet. She’s talking so loud, she needs to be quiet. But I don’t know where the remote is, and I don’t know if I can remember which buttons to press.

I lean my head back, and think about going back to sleep. But if I go back to sleep, at some point I’ll be woken up again, and then what? Once, I liked waking up in the morning, greeting the fresh world and whatever the day held. Now, after what happened, when my eyes open I just wonder when I can shut them again. I don’t have to feel hungry when I’m sleeping, and don’t have to worry about finding something to eat.

Thump, there’s a thump on the porch steps. My eyes trace past the cluttered living room, past the TV, out the window, and as he moves, I catch a glimpse of him. There’s a zombie climbing the porch steps.

I start to stand. Sharp pain shoots through my stomach. I stiffen and pause. Is that pain new? I don’t remember it from yesterday. I leverage with my arms, stiff and sore, and haul myself to my feet. I kick at one sock that’s slowly coming off my foot, and shuffle around the pile of laundry to get to the window.

Surely I saw something else. Right? I’m sure I didn’t see a zombie.

The lady on the news is saying to be very, very careful. She’s saying that the virus spreads not just from the bite, but that it’s in the water supply, too. She’s impressing on us how dangerous it is, because everyone knows that zombies are incapable of hurting other zombies. That’s why it’s spreading so fast.

I reach the window and stop. My arms are limp at my sides, and I can feel the lopsided bun on my head, slowly falling out. There’s something damp on my sweatshirt. What did I spill on my sweatshirt?

Outside the window, I see him. He’s climbing the porch steps. He’s lifting one foot, and he’s looking down at it, then he’s dropping it—thump—onto the step. He’s lifting the next foot, he’s looking at it, then he’s dropping it. Thump.

I take a step back. He’s an old man, a stranger I don’t know, with stringy gray hair and mottled green skin. The brass buttons on his moldy wool coat still shine in the sunlight. Looking at them makes one half of my head ping with pain. His fingers are curled into claws. His face is gnarled into a wince, his teeth slimy and yellowed.

I turn away. Thump. He’s a step closer. I turn again. On the floor of the living room is a bath towel. Oh, that’s why my shirt is wet. I took a shower this morning.

I start to move, pushing my feet forward. One, then the next, then the other again. I reach for the doorway to the kitchen, like if I can find it with my fingers I can draw myself through the doorway faster than my feet can move me. Why are my feet so slow?

I kick the bath towel out of the way. It’s still damp, like my sweatshirt.

“What do I do?” I say, careful to keep my voice low. I’m somewhat surprised to hear my own slurred speech. Who am I talking to? What do I do? What was the plan? Was there a plan? My brain tried to slog through the past day to remember the plan. I remember my husband this morning. He was leaving the house to go to work, I think—he must have been, because he was wearing his jacket and was standing in the doorway—and I was sitting on the couch, heavy-armed and tired, and he’d told me—what had he told me?

The same thing he told me every day. “Do something for yourself today. Just one thing.”

I must have said something back, because he smiled at whatever it was. “One specific thing.”

I reach the kitchen doorway. That’s why I took the shower, I remember now, that was something for myself.

Thump. The newest thump was so much louder than the others that I grasped the kitchen doorway to keep myself from falling. A needle of pain wriggled through my abdomen.

“Quiet!” I hiss toward the front porch. The zombie had made it up the steps and is at the door. I can see his shadow through the window as he leans heavily on the door. Thump, he hammers again.

“Shh!” I say desperately. He needs to be quiet. Doesn’t he know he needs to be quiet?

I start to draw myself around the kitchen island, one hand over the other, guiding my stiff body. It’s not as bright in here and I can see better. My eyes fumble over old takeout containers, and empty water bottles, and the sink piled high with dishes. Piled so high with dishes. Before I went to the hospital I would have never let it get this bad. The gloves I usually use to wash the dishes are a thousand miles away, down on the floor by several pairs of socks.

Thump, crack, creak. Creak. I stop, my hands placed on the kitchen counter, holding me still. I know that creak, it is a sound that washes over me every evening and fills me with relief. Why? Why do I love that sound?

Now, it’s the sound of the door opening, as the zombie walks into my house. The zombie is walking into my house.

“No, oh no…” I whisper, and look around the dim kitchen. Where’s my phone? It’s in the living room.

Thump, thump. Footsteps in the living room, and I hear a ragged, rancid breath.

Suddenly my hands let go of the kitchen counter and I’m moving, my feet carrying me careening through the house, stumbling, unmoored, out into the hall, and across, and into the dark, dark, bathroom. The door shuts behind me and I blink once and again and again, images of the spinning rooms spiraling in my vision before settling into the dark outline of the bathroom. Sink, toilet, empty toilet paper rolls, trash overflowing.

And from down the hall, from the living room, I hear a voice.

“I can hear you in here.”

No one ever told me they talk. The zombie’s voice drips under the bathroom door, snaking up my leg and draining into the pit of my stomach. His speech is slow and meticulous, his dead mouth trying to remember how to form words.

“You are breathing,” the voice says. “You are breathing so slow. Why are you breathing so slow?”

Why am I? I can’t think. I can’t make my brain think. All I can see, when I close my eyes and remember, is my husband standing in the doorway, looking at me. Why is he looking at me like that? Full of pity? Why is he speaking to me so slowly?

“Do one thing,” he says, the words echoing in my sluggish mind. “Do one specific thing, just for you.”

I did! I did what he said! I look at the bathtub. I took a shower. A few water droplets are still dripping down from the shower head. I move forward, leaving the bathroom door. I hear heavy footsteps moving so slowly through the house behind me. I need to tell the zombie to walk quieter. He needs to be quiet.

I hold out a hand and I shiver as a cold water droplet splashes into my palm. I can barely see it in the dark, but my heart starts to sink, slowly, dropping from my chest down into my stomach where slow, steady panic is building just under my ribcage. Why am I full of dread? Why does the water on my skin make me feel sick? Why can’t I move fast enough to get to safety? My brain used to be smart and quick. Now it isn’t. I’m never going to be quick again.

"I will find you.”

I jump as the voice sounds again, this time closer. He’s just across the hall in the kitchen. He’s looking at the sink full of dirty dishes.

I yank my hand out of the shower like it’s a fire, and start moving again, letting my feet stumble and rush. My hand fumbles on the doorknob and the door swings open, and I see a shadow cutting across the floor of the hall. I’ve lost a sock, and my feet stamp, one two, one two, down the hall. I pass a closed bedroom door on my way. Shh! I need to be quiet. Stop being so loud.

“Why are you running?” The rasping voice grates through the house. “I can feel you. You’re tired. You want to sleep.”

I reach the basement stairs, and I stop. To my left, the backdoor of the house, leading out into the overgrown backyard and the bright sunlight dappling on the grass and flowers. I think I can smell the fresh grass and perfume of the flowers even from here. And to my right, the rickety basement stairs, leading down, down into moldy darkness.

“You don’t want to escape.”

Where is there to escape to, anyway? My feet are stuck to the floor. I can’t run. I look down at my hand, damp from the water from the shower, and I remember. I remember that I took that shower for me, and that when I was done, I sat on the toilet in my towel, shivering and shaking, and I didn’t feel better, and my ears were ringing with screaming, and my head was aching and my stomach was twisting, and I was tired. I told them at the hospital, I was so tired, and they sent me home anyway. It’s all I can think anymore, and no amount of warm showers make me feel better. Why not? I can’t seem to feel better.

I’m tired. I turn away from the backdoor, and my feet drop onto the basement steps. I hear him, behind me. Thump, thump. He’s following. My feet hit the basement steps. Thump, thump. He’s following.

I reach out, raking my fingers along the concrete walls, balancing my stumbling legs and feet. Where are my feet? Where did I leave them? Oh, they’re here, right underneath me.

I reach the cold, cold floor of the basement, and step over a puddle at the base of the steps, and I pass the light switch on the wall. I can see from the pale light that shines in through the small windows. Bins and boxes piled up where I left them, half open and spilling their contents on the floor. That was from before, when I cared about organization and neatness. Now I can’t even look at them.

“That’s right,” the croaking voice says. It’s coming from the top of the stairs. It’s grinding down the wood steps and splashing onto the concrete floor. “Go down into your grave. Go down to drown alone. You do not want to walk back up again.”

My fingers trail along the dusty top of a box, then the edge of a bookshelf loaded with cans of beans and tomatoes and vegetables. My glazed eyes trail over the rows of cans and I have to blink myself awake. I used to be different, I used to be awake. After what happened, whatever else there is, it’s like I’m gone. I have to press a hand to my stomach, holding in my stitches and my guts even to walk. I miss the person I used to be.

My feet shuffle along, one foot warm, one foot cold, one sock on, one sock off. I weave my way through the old bikes and laundry baskets, to where the washer and dryer are crouching in the corner.

I can hear his loud feet on the steps. One thing. One specific thing, just for me. I want to scream, to fill my lungs and holler, as loud as I can, but instead it comes out as barely a whisper.

“Be quiet,” I hiss. “You need to be quiet!”

My hands rest, one on the washer, one on the dryer. I pause. I need to remember how to use my knees. I look down, and I remember, and bend, bend, twisting at the waist and bending my creaking knees, all the way down until I’m on the floor. It’s damp down here, water trickling in through the cinderblocks and oozing through the cracks in the floor. I place one hand on the cold floor, the water stinging my fingers with how cold it is. I reach behind me with the other hand.

He’s on his way down the steps, the steady thump, thump, thump echoing through the house. He’s going faster because he knows, he knows why I came down here. Shh!

Behind me, a dial on a metal safe clicks.

Thump, thump, then, splash. He reaches the puddle at the bottom of the stairs, and my eyes slowly look up, up. He’s tall, and broad-shouldered, and I can see, in the dim light, the glint of his yellow teeth gnashing together. His eyes narrow when he sees me.

Click click, the dial behind me.

“There you are,” he says, and he’s moving, his hands bumping into dusty boxes and canned goods.

I’m still crouching, and I can feel the water seeping into my sweatpants. I should be shivering, but I’m not. It feels almost warm, warm like blood, like my blood, pumping through me, swift and sure.

“Here you are,” he says. The safe clicks open, and my hand closes over something familiar and solid.

“You’re hiding down here to be found,” he says, an ugly smile curling his gray lips. I’m holding the familiar object in my hand, and his eyes land on it. The smile widens, his teeth grinding together, spit dripping out of his mouth and onto his moldy coat.

I raise a shaking hand. I pull in breath, and I let it out again.

“You can’t do that,” he says, his mouth fumbling over the words, spitting them out one at a time. He raises a crooked finger with a broken, bloody nail, pointing toward the ceiling, and the floor above us. “If you do that, you won’t be quiet. Don’t you want to be quiet?”

I do want to be quiet, I want to curl up down here in the warm water and sleep, where I can’t feel hungry and my stomach and hips and back don’t hurt, where my head doesn’t ache.

He must see my shoulders sag, because he takes a shuddering step forward. “You came down here to die.”

“No,” I say, and my voice is louder than it should be.

One specific thing, just for me.

I can feel my hands again as they raise the gun I’d pulled from the safe, and level it at the zombie. His old, dead eyes don’t change or look alarmed.

“I’m here because I want to live.”

Bang!

Thump.

Upstairs, in the bedroom I had skipped, suddenly startled awake, my newborn baby starts to cry. I look at the rows of canned goods, vegetables and beans and soup. I think it’s time to cook some lunch.