Zocopalypse (Death Fields 1)

3 weeks ago

At daybreak light filters in a small vent at the top of the wall where the dryer exhaust funnels outside. Inch by inch the light creeps across the floor until it lands directly on my mother’s face. I don’t wake her. I don’t move.

“Hey girl,” she says, stretching on her back. Her bones crack, shifting with age and she groans against the stiffness of sleeping on the floor. She blinks several times, acclimating to the light. If she’s anything like me every time she wakes up she has to reconcile the world we now live in. A heavy line creases across her forehead. “What’s wrong?”

I pull my knees up to my chin and wrap my arms around them. “Where do you think the cats are?”

“What?”

I gesture to the tower of food. “The cats…where do you think they went in all this?”

She looks at the food as though it’s the first time she’s noticed it. It probably is. “Cats are pretty resilient. They’re probably hunting mice in the fields.”

I stare at the cans. Then down at my toes. Then at the door where Roger Upton stopped talking some time ago. I hope the battery died. I hope there’s no one on the other side of the door.

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Do what?” she asks more awake now. She bends her knee, grimacing a little at the stiffness.

“This. This whole thing anymore. The killing and the running.”

Her stomach makes a noise—a gurgle of hunger. She rummages in her bag and digs out a couple pieces of bread and a jar of peanut butter. I watch her slowly spread the brown butter with a plastic knife across the crumbly, drying out bread. She hands me one and takes a bite of the other. I watch her chew, taking her time until she finally says, “I don’t want to do it anymore either, but…”

“No buts,” I say. “Let’s just…stop. Can we stop?”

She holds me in a stare, the kind that she gave me when I lied about my book report in the third grade and forged her name. She found out and made me apologize to my teacher. It’s the look that says ‘I know you don’t want to do this but you have to do this so suck it up, Alex. We can’t stay in a laundry room forever with stale air and nothing to eat but cat food and.’

“I know you’re tired, honey. And scared. I’m terrified.”

“So, let’s give up. Can we not give up?” The words sound rational in my head but crazy once they leave my mouth. I know you can’t just stop. It’s not the Ramsey way. That’s not how you get to be valedictorian.

She reaches for me, her warm hand covering mine. “We can’t give up. We promised your father. We owe it to your sister.”

Jane. For some reason I try not to think about her. She’s all alone in the middle of a big city with no support. Dad obviously looped her in on this thing too—he made that clear before he left but does she know that? What did he tell her?

But most of all I worry I’ll never find her or worse, that there’s no one left to find.

I know that I’m just having some sort of breakdown, although at the same time I think the reality of life has finally hit home. The one where Roger Upton is a thing of the past. Where chained up Eaters are my present. And killing things—yes things—is definitely the future.

“We won’t be the same people when we find them,” I say examining the bread and tearing off a small corner turning green with mold.

“No, I don’t suppose we will be,” she says. “Maybe we’ll be better.”

I shove the sandwich in my mouth and force down the dry bread and gooey peanut butter. Even now my mother lives in a fantasy but maybe that makes her better equipped to deal with all of this?

“Something is really bothering you—other than what you’ve said. What is it?”

I look down at my hands and say, “What if one of us gets attacked? What if we get sick?”

“Then I guess we’ll do what we have to.”

“Which is what?” I know what but I need to have this conversation. I want to know what is expected of me. “Because I don’t want to get left out there in a silly kitty cat shirt trying to eat people. I don’t want that to happen.”

My mother reaches for me. She pulls me close and into a tight hug. With as much time as we’ve spent together lately it hasn’t been like this. “Alexandra, I know you think I’m a mess and I’m flaky and read too much.”

“No-” I argue.

“You do,” she says but laughs. “It’s true, but I’m also a mother and to be a mother you have to have a lot of strength. I have the strength to take care of us when I need too.”