We With Daisies Lie

All Dead

 

            The car sat leaning half on the asphalt and half on the grass. I drove past not thinking much on it.   Someone probably had to pee or got car sick. But as I drove by, I saw two leaning heads inside, one in the front seat, one in the back. It gave me pause but not enough to stop, not until I saw the little boy sitting alone on the breakdown lane a few hundred feet down the road.      

I pulled over- he was instantly afraid of me. If I'd know what he had just seen I wouldn't have been so crass. I recognized his fear as the same I had felt growing up. My head grew hot as the memories of my father pulling over because he was too sick to drive came creeping back. I looked at my watch. I was going to be late to the wedding. I wanted no part of this but I couldn’t let that boy sit there alone like I had done so many times. I raised my hands in surrender, I wanted him to know I was not here to fight. “Don’t be scared, I just wanna make sure you’re okay, okay?” I said. As I got closer I noticed the details I had initially missed. His teeth clattered in the ninety degree heat, his eyes watching something that wasn’t there.

            “Is that your mom in that car? Is she okay?” he finally looked at me, body shaking, eyes wide. I wondered if his mother had a heart attack or stroke while driving- but he wasn't sad or confused, there was just an empty awe in his eyes. Shock. I couldn't tell at the time because I didn't know what that   looked like yet.

I slipped the cell phone from my pocket as I started to walk towards the car. I got about ten feet away before I saw the blood. I dialed 911. The number was busy. I couldn't believe it. I had never heard of an emergency number not working. I dialed again with no luck. We were in the middle of nowhere, it didn’t make sense. I looked up, the windows were covered in dried blood. The woman was dead, she had to be. I stepped closer to see who was in the back seat, that’s when I saw her move. Her eyes had already begun to fade. There's no explaining it. The way you feel when you see one. First you think maybe they were just beaten up. And then you get closer and… maybe it was rabies? And then you smell it. Death.

You look around for a hidden camera but there isn't one. There are only trees and wind and a scared little boy. After you see enough of them the shock of it drains away, but the pit in your stomach, the thing that tells you that something is wrong with the world, that's always there. No matter how many you kill, how many good people you meet, something's always off about the world now.

            The woman scratched at the window. She wanted to get at me more than anyone has ever wanted anything. The little girl sat stiff in the back, still strapped to her seatbelt. Her jet-black hair matted in blood and brain. Her mother had started with the throat and somehow had enough force to break the girl's skull and tear out what was inside. I still see it sometimes.

            The door popped open and the woman spilled out to the road in front of me. I jumped back- there was a car coming in the distance. He was doing about a hundred miles an hour and the fact that I was in the way didn't seem to make a difference. The little boy saw his mother- the monster that used to be his mother and ran. He took off into the woods by the side of the road and as much as I'd like to say we became roadside companions, that I was like a brother who protected him from all things big and scary- the truth is I never saw him again.

            I kicked the woman's face so hard I felt her cheekbone crack under my boot- it didn't even faze her, she grabbed my leg and I fell as the SUV came plowing past. It swerved- missing my head by no more than a single inch. The pen dropped from the jacket pocket and in a move I've mastered since, I jammed it through her eye. She fell, dead. Actually dead.  

            I lay there, elbows up on the road waiting to wake up. If not for the smell to convince me this was real, I may still be there now, lying on the road, waiting for the nightmare to pass. Maybe if I'd gotten up right away I could have still found the boy. But I didn’t. I only lay there and stared at the sky as soft white clouds passed lazily overhead.