Brotherly Love? Pt. II

Brotherly Love? Pt. 2 September 5th I have learned a lot since that first day. I know that the things we see on TV rarely match the truth. I know the news media is nowhere near as free as they like to say they are. I know that monsters aren’t fiction like so many of us wholeheartedly believe, and I know that open-toed sandals are a really bad idea for so many reasons it’s hard to know where to begin. As I write this recount I am sitting on a highway guard rail somewhere along the New Jersey turnpike. It’s a gorgeous night, warm and sultry. There are crickets and frogs chirping in the salt-grass, and the breeze is just soft enough that I get goose pimples every time it hits my skin. If I close my eyes tightly enough I can almost imagine my life as it was before all this started. I can see weekends at the Jersey Shore, and sand castles, and ice cream on the beach. I can see my son timidly approaching the water’s edge for the first time as tiny waves lap over his toes sending him sprawling back for the blanket in terror. Then I open them again as National Guard troops come barreling past and remember where I am. I remember where my daughter is, and I remember that I never found my son. I’m tired, I’m dirty, I haven’t slept in three days; and more than anything else in this world I would really like to go home, wake up and realize that I imagined everything I have seen. Being crazy would be preferable to being aware. I want my kids back, I want my life back, I want my ignorance back. Tough shit huh? First, let me say that the news reports about gang violence in Philadelphia are complete bullshit. The so called murder rate is a fabrication. People aren’t being shot, they are being eaten. It took me over a week just to make it out of the city, and the only “gang” I saw was a bunch of terrified teenagers desperately trying to keep a mob of bloody, howling lunatics out of the arcade at the strip mall. They failed. It’s been about two weeks since my last entry and for that I apologize. A lot has happened. We’ll get back to all that in a minute though. My last entry ended in my kitchen, we’ll start there. Jimmy Richardson was a rotten little kid. He was spoiled beyond belief, and he didn’t share or take turns at the playground. In short, the kid was a bastard. His mother worked as an attorney for a center city law firm, and his father had run off with one of the junior partners shortly after Jimmy was born. So, he had been raised by nannies and teachers who neither understood his needs nor cared to find out what they were. He was really hyper, which only made his selfishness and “me first” attitude harder to take. I didn’t like it when he came over to play with Kevin, I didn’t want my son picking up his bad habits. Still, I often felt sorry for him. His mother only pulled him out for dinner parties and family occasions, beyond that she was too busy to notice him much at all. So, I tolerated my son’s friendship with him, even though I didn’t understand it. Kevin was Jimmy’s polar opposite. He was sweet, and considerate and fiercely defensive of his little sister. Even Jimmy knew not to cross that line. He was actually tolerable when Stacey was around. He knew Kevin would toss him out on his rear if he pulled the kind of crap with her that he did with everyone else. I pulled the basement door open, and Jimmy tumbled out head first; knocking me and my sword noisily to the floor. The sword clattered across the tile and came to rest under the dishwasher, just out of reach. Jimmy was whimpering, his eyes were the size of dinner plates and he looked half mad as I regained my bearings and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Jimmy!” I shouted trying to get him to snap out of it. “Where is Kevin?” He looked up at me with vacant hysteria as I stood up, and that was when I saw the wound on his face. “He bit me!” Jimmy shouted. “He bit me!” I stood there staring at him, unable to comprehend what he was saying. “Who bit you, Jimmy? Was it Kevin?” No reply. He was still on the floor, on his knees trembling so badly his entire body seemed to vibrate. I took him by his shoulders once again and stood him up, gently shaking him to get his attention on me and away from the basement door. “Jimmy, answer me, who bit you?!” His arm slowly came up and he pointed at the basement. He didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the emotional trauma or the blood loss from the gash on his cheek, but he wobbled for a moment, and then collapsed. He was on the floor for only a moment, moaning and clutching at his cheek. Then, as if he had suddenly caught his second wind he was awake again, he jumped up and snapped at me. He tried to bite me! There was a roar of anger, a snarling rage-filled clash of teeth and saliva and blood. He moaned again as he lunged at me and I staggered backward into the table, knocking the chairs out of my way. Instinctively more than deliberately I grabbed the back of one of the chairs and flung it at him trying to put something between me and him so I could think of what to do next. No such luck. He knocked it aside as if he had not felt it him and he was once again on the attack. He dove at me in a flailing blur of swinging arms and gnashing teeth. I couldn’t think. I could even react. I simply could not wrap my brain around what was happening. Blind luck put the table between us, and that was when I noticed the sword on the floor. I had forgotten I had it. He countered every motion of my foot, and the only thing that kept him from coming across the top of the table at me was his height. Despite being driven by madness, or whatever had suddenly taken over him, he was still just an eleven year old boy. Thank god for gravity. “Mommy?” My heart jumped into my throat as Jimmy and I both heard the small terrified voice at the same time. He spun and my eyes followed him as I saw Stacey peering out from around the kitchen doorway. That fast he was on her. Why didn’t she listen? Why didn’t she stay in the closet? She would have been safe there until I had dealt with this – whatever this was. He was on her so fast. I mean he didn’t move any faster than any kids his age would have, but it was still fast enough that I didn’t have time… I tried. September 6th Stacey is dead. I need to say that. I need to keep saying it because if I don’t it won’t be real. Not to me. My Stacey, my beautiful, sparkling, cherub-faced Stacey with the raven hair and big blue eyes is dead. I will finish this story. I have to. Someone has to know. If I don’t survive, or if this continues to spread then someone has to know about my beautiful Stacey. Someone has to know that my brave, bold and handsome little man Kevin may still be out there somewhere. I know what the chances are. I know what the blood in the upstairs hallway means. I know that they may never identify the myriad of remains that were found after that first day. Still, I didn’t see him die, so I don’t know, not for sure. I did see Stacey’s face though. I saw her eyes pleading with me for help, help I was too slow and too stupid to provide. I failed my baby. I was supposed to protect her from the world’s ugliness. I was supposed to keep her safe so she could join the Girl Scouts, and go to dances, and obsess over clothes and shoes and the latest boy band. I was supposed to give her all that, and I failed. Why didn’t I let him kill me too? Jimmy turned his attention from me when he heard her voice. I don’t know why. Maybe he knew she was an easier target, or maybe it was a baser instinct and he had been simply drawn by the new noise. I don’t know. All I do know is he was on her so fast. She screamed. That scream, a horrible high-pitched pain-filled scream that is burned into my memory so firmly that I can still hear it as clearly now as I could then. He tore at her and gnashed at her with his teeth, and all I could do was stand there and watch. She screamed again and something in me snapped. I dove for the sword and swung it, screaming at him like a lunatic. The first hit caught him in the side, and he fell off her; but that quickly he was back up and at me again. I pulled the sword back and swung. I’m not even sure if my eyes were open because the next thing I saw was a slowly spreading pool of blood that oozed from the nub where his spine met his brain. His body had fallen at my feet, and I slid in the blood as I tried to get to Stacey. I was deaf and blind to everything else at that point. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t feel and as Stacey’s eyes opened again I couldn’t move. Her leg was broken at an odd angle just below the knee. Jimmy had bit through it into the muscle which had wrenched the joint out of place. He had clambered up her body and torn into the soft flesh just below the hair line, her head lolled to one side as she dragged herself up and lumbered toward me with that same rage-filled guttural moan. Part of me just wanted to stand there and let it happen. Part of me wished I could somehow make it better. I couldn’t fix this. Then the thought struck me, where was Kevin? He still needed me. I had to find Kevin. “I’m sorry baby. I’m so sorry.” I muttered as I took one step back, then another. Her hands were grasping for me, her eyes filled with longing and rage. But, her expression was vacant, devoid of life. I had backed my way into the table as she came within arms reach of me. Her leg wobbled and made a sickening clicking noise as she half lunged, half fell forward trying to bite me. “I’m sorry.” I whispered as I raised the sword over my head and brought it down without looking at her. Another sickening crack and a spray of blood that felt like the initial mist of warm water coming from a garden hose on a hot day. My eyes were still closed as I heard a soft ‘snick’ when her exposed knee joint scraped across the tile and her body sank to the floor. The sword slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor again. This time I was the one screaming. I scooped my daughter’s body up into my arms and sank to the floor screaming at the top of my lungs. No one heard me. No one came. I’m not even sure how long I knelt there holding my daughter’s body, staring at her head that landed about four feet away. In a weird, surreal moment of clarity I thought, the movies had been right. You have to take the head; anything else just slows them down. Wait, what was I thinking? Movies? What the hell was happening? I had just murdered my daughter, and now I was sitting in a congealing pool of blood thinking about movies? I carried Stacey into the living room and laid her on the sofa. I have no idea what made me do it, but I kept thinking No, this isn’t right. She needs her head. I walked back out into the kitchen and lifted her head from the floor gently, placed it above her neck, and kissed her on the forehead. Then I just stood there for a while, staring at it, staring at her. It was almost an afterthought that in retrospect tells me how close to the edge I actually got that day. Where is Kevin? It’s his turn to set the table. I picked up the sword and went down into the basement without looking back. I walked down the basement stairs much as I did any other normal day. If I weren’t covered in blood it would have almost appeared like I was going to check the dryer. There was no hesitation, no fear; just blank, empty locomotion. An automaton moving toward the open window above the dryer, somewhere inside hoping that one of those things I had seen earlier would come up behind me and end it before any of this had the chance to sink in. There was a smear of blood under the window. It ran down the wall, and had been there long enough that it was already turning brown. I glanced around the room toward the back door that lead out to the driveway and the garage where I would normally put my car at night. I had had one stolen from out in front a few years back, and had cleaned out the garage as soon as the insurance company had agreed on a settlement. There was a small glass-paned door that led out into the garage from the basement adjacent to the steel-cored back door that led outside, another safety addition I had made after the theft. I didn’t want to be out in the alley at night, waiting for the garage door to close, so I had the new door put in. This way I could stay in the car until the garage door had safely closed behind me. The garage door was still closed, and the light was off. There was no on in there. I flicked the light on just to be sure, an absent gesture as I was still running on auto-pilot at this point. I turned and walked back down the hallway toward the utility closet. That door was closed as well and I listened, but couldn’t hear anything from inside. “He bit me!” I heard Jimmy’s voice echo in my ears. Who bit him? Kevin? No, couldn’t be. God could not possibly be so cruel. My son was ok. He was. I had to believe he was. Desperation began to well in the pit of my stomach; it pushed the bile and whatever remained of lunch up into my throat. I vomited violently into the laundry room sink; my hand still resting on the knob to the utility closet door. A cold sweat broke out on my brow, and for the first time I noticed that I was trembling. The vibration and the sweat combined to give me a fierce case of the chills, the kind of terrible cold you only feel when you are told that someone you love dearly has died. My mind wandered for a moment back to Stacey, but I managed to push her sweet lovely face out of my mind. It was Kevin I needed to focus on now. I slowly opened the closet door, and was hit in the face with a smell unlike anything I had ever encountered before. Rotten meat squared. My stomach wretched, and I backed away, covering my mouth and nose with my hand. I was afraid to look, but I had to. I needed to know. On the lower wall and floor of the closet was a smear of blood and …something else. I wasn’t sure what it was. Internal organs? Muscle tissue? Whatever it was it stunk, and there was enough of it that I was reasonably certain it was human. But, it wasn’t my son’s. It couldn’t be. There was too much of it. That was from an adult. My mind rambled on and on the thousand and one reasons why it couldn’t be my son. BANG I heard it from behind me while trying to keep whatever was left in my stomach down. BANG then a moan. There was someone in the garage. Someone with a gun? No way. I ran down the hallway toward the garage door and flicked the light back on. There were about six people outside my garage door and they had cornered someone inside my garage! There was a flash of light from a high powered flashlight and a shout, “There’s another one!” “No!” I screamed, staring through the small glass panes at the cornered being as his head exploded into millions of crimson shards that made a soft tink when they struck the glass. “My son! Have any of you seen a small boy, eleven years old. He has black hair and blue eyes. His name is Kevin. I can’t find him anywhere!” I prattled on nearly incoherently as one of the figures stepped closer. I could see he was military, and he was wearing protective gear. A mask, thick gloves and a metal and mesh helmet that covered his head down to his shoulders. “Ma’am, have you been bitten? Did any of the blood get in your mouth or eyes? Do you have any open wounds?” He ran the list of questions, like he was reading them off a teleprompter. I slowly shook my head and turned and point toward the stairs. “My daughter, Stacey; and the little boy from down the street, Jimmy, Jimmy Richardson. He said someone bit him, then he…” That was when it hit me. Everything that had happened over the last two hours came crashing back into my consciousness with the force of a hammer. I staggered once, dropped to my knees and started screaming again. Every weapon in the group came up, and pointed at me but I didn’t care. I wanted them to shoot. I wanted it to end. I wanted to be with Stacey. “Hold your fire, take her to the truck and put her with the other evacuees.” The man with the flashlight said in a matter-of-fact way that made me furious. “What about my son?!” I shrieked, and backed away, clicking the small push-button lock on the door handle. “I am not going anywhere without my son!” The man pulled at the door handle, then back up a step, raising the butt of his rifle to the glass. He broke the pain and stuck his hand through, turning the knob from the inside. “Ma’am, we will find your son; but you need to come with us. This area is not secured.” He opened the door, and I shoved back against it with all my might. They pushed their way into my house, and three of them grabbed me from all sides. They lifted me, kicking and screaming all the way to the truck. “Let me go!” I screamed into the one soldier’s face. “You mother-fucker! Let me go!” I pulled away once and took off back toward my house, back toward my daughter, back toward the life I would never have again. They caught me about half-way between the truck and the garage and dragged me back toward their truck that was full of bloody people paralyzed with fear. Some of them I recognized, some I didn’t. “Has anyone seen Kevin?” I implored. I made eye contact with the people who I knew, glancing over the faces that I didn’t. “Please, if any of you have seen my Kevin, please tell me.” “I did.” Shirley Dempsey from around the corner whispered through tears. “I saw him about an hour ago. He was running with that awful Richardson boy.” She looked through me, out the back of the truck, and her eyes flew open. She screamed and tried to climb right through the canvas into the cab of the truck. At the end of the alley was a mob of people. Dirty, bloody and wailing. “Go go go!!” I heard the soldier with the flashlight shout. The truck was in gear and we were moving very fast out to the end of the alley and toward the main road before I knew what was happening. I could hear screaming and gunfire in the distance. The smell of burning rubber and cars singed my throat and eyes as they flew past in a haze of smoke and flame. By the time I realized how far I was from my own neighborhood, and from the last place anyone had seen my son, we were at the evacuation center and there was little I could do about it. At least until the following day when whatever was happening outside reached the perimeter fence.