Interlude Two

INTERLUDE TWO

Using the creases you have made, bring the top three corners of the paper to the bottom. Flatten. After this, fold the top triangular wings into the center and unfold. Finish this set by folding the top of the square downward, and crease. Unfold.

“Did you grab the card, babe?” Jordan asked.

The look Emily gave her husband said it all: Why of course she’d forgotten to grab the card. It was inside on the study desk where she’d stopped to write the inscription, thinking, So do I make this out to Kevin or his parents? It’s not like a three-year-old is going to read it anyway. He’ll just throw it aside as he rips off the wrapping. Emily couldn’t blame him for that. Lucette, who was the same age, had done a similar thing at her birthday party the month before. And although they often pretended otherwise, adults weren’t so different—everyone knew cards were an overpriced pit stop on the road to the good stuff. But formalities were important.

They help trick us into thinking things are normal again.

Emily ended up making the card out to both Kevin and his parents, Conrad and Sally, old college friends of Jordan’s. They had lost touch for a while there, a gap that having kids bridged. There were over 60 daycares in Charleston, so it was a little surprising to run into two familiar faces at their first parents/teachers ‘meet-and-greet’ day. The world, as they said, was small.

A little too small for Emily’s liking, especially in the south, where even the biggest cities had a small town feel.

She often daydreamed about moving away, somewhere up north where the weather was cooler. New York State. Or Illinois, even.

It was another pipe dream, of which Emily had many. Sure, she was a nurse and could find work anywhere, as could Jordan to varying degrees of success. He was an accountant after all, and who didn’t need help outrunning the taxman? But his clients were here. Jordan had spent the last four years building a reputation, building loyalty; they would be mad to uproot it all. There was a future for the Samuels family in the not-too-shabby city of Charleston, South Carolina, and like most new parents, Emily only wanted what was best for her daughter, even if it meant those dreams of her own would never come to fruition as a result. No, moving wasn’t in the cards. This small world was destined to be theirs for some time yet.

Jordan raised an eyebrow. Groaned. “So I’ll take that as a ‘nope, I don’t have the card’ then?”

“Do you love me?” Emily said, putting on her cutie-pie voice.

“I don’t know,” he replied, playful. “Do I?”

“Do I?” chimed Lucette from the backseat, where she sat buckled into a car seat she was already close to outgrowing. The three-year-old kicked her feet, proud as punch for joining in an adult conversation. Her favorite doll, Natalia, rested on her lap.

Jordan grabbed the steering wheel. “Let’s just forget about it. It’s not like he’s going to read it anyway.”

Yeah, you’re right. But formalities, babe. Normalcy.

The car idled at the end of the driveway, the gate to their barricaded property having already swung shut behind them. Jordan flicked on the left-hand indicator.

“But I wrote a nice message to Conrad and Sally on it, too. Can you just run back in and grab it?”

“Card! Card! Card!” Lucette yelped.

“See? Even our darling girl thinks Daddy should run back inside and get it,” Emily said, touching her husband’s thigh. “It’s in the study right on the desk. Next to the present itself.”

“You forgot that, too?”

“I know. I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t screwed on. But I’m tired. The heat has really thrown my sleeping pattern out of whack.”

“You, babe, have a hangover.” Jordan clapped his hands together. “Booya! Man, it feels so good to see the shoe on the other foot.” He switched the radio on and music filled the cramped interior of the car. “Em’, every time I hear this song I’m going to think of this moment.”

“I do not have a hangover. Turn it down.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. You downed that wine last night.”

“I drank just as much as you, thank you.”

“Yep, and ever since a certain somebody came into our lives, you’ve become a total light-weight.” He gave her a poke. “Say it and I’m out of this car in two seconds flat.”

Emily put all of her might into a dramatic sigh, one that would have given the local repertory club a run for its money. “Okay. Maybe I have a little bit of a hangover.”

“Hangover!” Lucette echoed.

Emily faced her husband. “Now look what you’ve done.” She softened, leaned over, the leather seats groaning, and planted a kiss on Jordan’s lips. The toothbrush bristle of the moustache he was attempting to grow tickled the underside of her nose. Emily raised a hand and impersonated their daughter waving, a pretty-as-a-picture clenching of the fingers.

Jordan—working that equally adorable smile of his, the one that made the dimples she’d fallen in love with zing into prominence—gave her a salute and stepped out into the summer heat that lent him his tan. The door thumped shut. He wiggled his ass at her in the mirror.

“Your dad’s one cheeky monkey,” Emily said to her three-year-old. Over Lucette’s shoulder she could see Jordan stepping up to the bars of the gate to punch in their security code. Emily felt a familiar twist of the knife each and every time she laid eyes on the barricade separating the safety of her family from a world that was so much more dangerous than she’d ever anticipated it could be. And the blade of that knife had been dipped in the vinegar of loss. It burned. She mourned for the carefree days she’d had as a child, days her daughter may never have the opportunity to experience.

Little Lucette would grow up surrounded by gates and escorts, and when she was old enough to go out on her own, she’d carry an alert—what they used to call a ‘rape whistle’ back when Emily was growing up. It was such an unavoidable, adult concept. But something science couldn’t justify had taken a bite out of the apple of their innocence. And at the end of the day, it would be Lucette’s generation left hungry. Considering this, Emily thought her resentment wasn’t entirely without justification.

She faced the road.

They lived on the city’s northern outskirts and the isolation this provided was a double-edged sword. The quiet was wonderful; the nearest neighbors, the Crookenbacks, were a three-minute stroll down the street. On the other hand, it also meant they had to travel far for groceries, gas, and to see friends.

Well, maybe I’m okay with that. Small doses. Conrad’s okay, I guess. But Sally’s too churchy for me. And damn, what a gossip.

Emily switched off the radio, ran her fingers through her hair. Scratched. She needed to change shampoos, the brand she was using made her scalp itch. Her skin had always been on the sensitive side, so something with a lower pH level might be more appropriate.

This small, insignificant desire for something better would scurry back into her mind the following day, as she bent over the washtub in the back laundry, cleansing blood from her blouse. It, like so much else, would reduce her to weeping.

“You okay back there, bub?” Emily asked.

Lucette didn’t reply so much as yawn.

“No, no. No sleeping, I’m sorry.” Emily felt bad giving her daughter’s foot a caress, one that was strong enough to make those eyes of hers open again. But nap times had to be scheduled and adhered to. Any derailment resulted in either undue sleep-ins, or worse, pre-dawn rising.

With Lucette roused, Emily reached into the backpack she took with her on outings and rummaged through loose diapers, pacifiers, and stuffed toys for the boxed juice she’d slipped in there before leaving. A just-in-case natural sugar hit for moments like this. As Emily dug, her eyes rose to the dashboard where the little hula girl in the grass skirt was stuck, rocking her Hawaiian hips, ever the beach-bound provocateur. It was the souvenir from the honeymoon that never happened, but which, all going to plan, someday would.

When the finances were right.

When they knew it was safe.

The dewy surface of the juice box could be felt at the bottom of the bag. Emily laced her fingers around its corners and yanked it out.

“Here we go, sw— ”

Emily broke off mid-sentence, her arm half-extended. The air curdled, and as she breathed it in, it seemed to expand within her lungs. Hurt. Choked.

Through the rear window of the car she could see the side door of their single-story brick house. It was ten yards away. The hot westward wind blew, throwing flower spores through the air. They twirled, danced, their unpretentious beauty a direct contrast to her blood-splattered husband. He wrestled a naked man on the grass.

The juice box slipped from Emily’s grip. Lucette gave a cry, her sweet treat having been snatched away from her.

“Jordan!”

Emily unlatched her belt, flung the door open. Extreme heat blasted, burning on contact. Bullets of sweat rolled down her neck as she ran through that sickened air, around the back of the car to the gate.

Her hands at her mouth. A ball of panic snuggled inside.

Jordan’s white Polo shirt—the one she’d bought for him on Father’s Day, the one that she’d picked off the rack because she knew it would show off the contours of his pecs—was no longer white. It was red. As red as the mouth of the naked man hovering over him. Emily saw the gash at her husband’s neck, right near the shoulder, the ripped tendons torn and flailing as though another hand had grown there, one that was waving yet another goodbye.

She hit the pin-pad’s CLOSE key and stepped beside the seven-foot-tall fence, ensuring the gate didn’t side-swipe her as it shut. Were the bone-eater to take Emily as it had her husband, at least Lucette would be safe within the car on the other side.

But what if I die? What if Jordan does, too?

Emily had an answer for that one, too.

The Crookenbacks walk this road multiple times a day. Their doctor told them to exercise more, and they have been! They stopped to chinwag just last Sunday, remember? You were out here at the time, fishing bills from the blue mailbox.

The mailbox Jordan had decorated with a stick-figure family. Mom, Dad, and Bub etched in yellow paint.

Yes, Emily prayed. The Crookenback’s will come.Just please, don’t let it come to that.

The gate clicked into place, locked—as did her plan. She wouldn’t run to her husband empty handed. Jordan had been doing some landscaping the prior afternoon, and had left a wheelbarrow and shovel by the flowerbed. Emily had scolded him for leaving it out at the time. “I’m all for roses, Jordan. Just put your stuff away, okay? It makes the place look messy. The Crookenbacks will see it all when they go on their walk. They always peer in.”

He’d looked so handsome there in the twilight, dirt on his face. Even with the stupid moustache that wore him and not the other way round. Even though she was annoyed. But staying mad at him had been too difficult. It always was. Love was better.

Jordan’s screams stretched on.

Heart pounding, mouth dry, she ran to the flowerbed and picked up that shovel, a splinter spearing the palm of her hand and going unnoticed. Emily’s adrenalin shifted into overdrive.

How on earth did it get in here? The perimeter is fully secured. Or at least it should be.

“Hey!” she yelled at the creature, standing her ground and holding the tool like a spear. The viciousness of Emily’s voice shocked all three of them.

Because Emily wasn’t a violent person.

Never in her life had she seriously hurt another living thing, except for once when she was a teenager, the night she’d struck a possum while driving her father’s car to the Dairy Queen where she worked. The animal had dodged out from between two trees, a white blur in the headlights, clipping the grill. Emily had screeched to a halt and saw the possum on its back, its broken legs kicking. Still alive. Disgusted by what mercy dictated she must do, she opened the trunk and took out the tire iron her father kept in there.

For emergencies.

She beat the possum to death and went to work with red splotches and possum fur across her uniform. There she broke down.

Emily clenched the shovel now and called her husband’s name. The vibrations in her throat reminded her that yes, this really was happening. And that yes, there was the potential for violence in all things. Even her.

She’d seen enough infection-orientated documentaries to realize that this was a textbook attack. The zombie wanted one thing: to devour the bones of living humans. Authorities had tried dead animals, live ones too, with no success. This had been a phenomenal realization, one that echoed in Emily’s mind in a David Attenborough-esque voice-over: “Thus, the species that had mastered fire, visited the moon, and created the atom bomb, found its place at the top of the food chain compromised.”

And that last comment had almost proven correct. It took four years for the outbreak, which was suspected to have originated in Central America, to be brought under control. Time enough for millions of casualties. Time enough for the human race to trick itself into thinking they still had ‘control’.

But things slipped through.

Textbook.

The preliminary bite had been to her husband’s neck, the aim being to bring him down. If she didn’t act quickly, the zombie would use its calcified fingernails to slit open his arms and legs, gaining access to the goodies underneath. Alternatively, it would roll him over and rip out his spine.

The spines, said the voice over, are their favorites.

Emily gagged. That this could be happening in quiet Charleston struck her as impossible—let alone to them. This kind of thing happened to those who let their guards down, people who had grown complacent.

And that’s not us!

Or was it?

(Did you grab the card, babe?)

That simple, innocuous question rung again. A death knoll.

Perhaps they had grown complacent, snug within domesticated denial. The bank-owned home; the car (such good mileage!); beautiful Bub, who —if all went as planned—would have a brother or sister within a few years’ time; their visits to see friends for birthday parties; babysitters; news rants; wives harping at their husbands for not putting away their tools—

Emily clenched the shovel. Roared.

She jumped, aiming for the zombie’s head but striking its shoulder instead, snapping the collarbone. It shot its glare at her, eyes glassy and black. They didn’t blink. Emily watched its skeleton contort beneath the drum-tight pull of its skin. It looked so frail; only it wasn’t. But worst of all was the way the muscles around its mouth had drawn back in a permanent smile, revealing all those elongated teeth.

A smiler. A bone eater. A zombie. No matter what it was called, the outcome was the same. Jordan was bleeding, and if he was bleeding—

(don’t say it!)

—then he would, in time, become one of them.

Emily swiped again, connecting with the side of the creature’s head. A chunk of decomposing flesh with an ear attached slapped the earth, maggots flew through the air. The man rolled off her husband’s chest. Blood jetted across Emily’s sneakers.

The bone eater thrashed, long legs kicking, revealing the nub of its cock and withered balls. That’s where Emily aimed her next swing. Thud. She castrated it with a single arc, drew the shovel back and ground the genitals into a pulp. Inky soup ebbed from the mess left behind, slow as honey, and her victory just as sweet.

“Fuck you!” Emily screamed.

Jordan joined her side. He stunk of cut grass, copper, sweat. “Give it to me,” he said, snatching the shovel. The creature pivoted up onto its haunches. It perched, frog-like, fists punching the ground. Its hands and arms were stained with earth.

You dug under the fence, Emily thought. Like the dog you are.

“Go to the car,” Jordan said. “Protect our girl!”

Emily, her blouse doused red, ran for the gate, thumbed in the code. She glanced behind her and watched Jordan beating the zombie to death. At first his blows were aimless and punishing, connecting here and there, until he delivered the first debilitating carve to its neck, flipping the still snapping head back on its shoulders.

Emily almost laughed, delirious. The gate swung inwards.

Jordan knocked the man who had attacked him flat onto its ass. He severed the skull from the rest of the body—brutal, crunching. It was the only way to kill them, that’s what that calm and collected voice-over had whispered on those late-night documentaries. And her husband knew this because he watched them with her, the two of them laying there in bed, clicking their tongues, shaking their heads, thinking: Well, it’ll never happen to us.

Emily stepped out onto the footpath. Turned a final time. Saw the man she loved, one of Charleston’s most up-and-coming accountants, grind the creature’s head to a paste.

Bone dust and flower spores.