We With Daisies Lie

Five Sisters

The hikers had left a map of the area which gave us a vast layout of the land for about a twenty mile radius. There were woods, woods, and more woods. No place was safe. The dead had already begun to infest the forest. Finding animals bigger than squirrels to hunt became harder and harder as the days rolled on. With only a couple of small critters a day, we were running dangerously low on food. Our only option was to look for shelter and supplies in one of the surrounding towns. That's when I first heard Ryan's voice.

“My scho- school's in the next town over,” he said. He stuttered as he tried to get the words out and looked to the top of his shoe when we all looked up at him. “It's right at the edge of forest. The- there's a broken lo- lock on a second story window. The chemistry lab. I could get in through there, the cafeteria's full of cans and stuff.”

“There's probably people there already,” I said.

“Gotta try,” Spencer replied, “Ain't nuttin' else to do,” and again, he was right.

The forest wasn't an option anymore anyway. I'll skip the journey. It wasn't easy and it wasn't pretty. We got there two days after we started walking and had the last bit of rations about ten minutes before we saw the school. The possibility of finding food almost hurt. Spencer and Ryan reached the clearing first. Emily fell behind; I hung back so she wouldn’t be alone.

“You took off your tie?” she asked me. I had almost forgotten I was wearing a suit. The white shirt had turned mustard yellow. I took the tie out of my pocket.

“I was going to throw it away but couldn’t. Don't know why exactly.”

“You should keep it.”

“Why?”

“I like it,” she said with a weak smile and walked ahead of me. I had never seen her smile before. It was nicest thing to happen in weeks.

The school was nothing more than a single brick building. Red leaf vines grew bright along the corner walls in three separate columns, like running blood. Spencer began passing out the weapons.

“Ryan'll go in through the broken window and open the back door for us,” he said. “Emily, you can be the look out in case any-” Spencer swallowed his words.

I turned to look at what he was staring at. A girl no more than sixteen poked her head out from the back door of the school. She looked around, making sure there was no dead around. She held a small black handgun in both hands. She stepped out of the building and waved to someone behind her. Another girl appeared, this one much younger. They were both in dirty white dresses. They crossed the yard to the garden which lined the edges of the once mowed lawn behind the school. The dreary gray sky did nothing to stop their bright blond hair from shinning. The older girl knelt in front of the flowers and plucked each one careful not to tear the pedals.

We watched in silence and confusion. The dying garden reflected both girls’ meager appearance. Their arms were thinner than I had thought possible. They walked with slow, calculated steps. Their legs were not weakened by crooked spines or torn muscles but simply hunger.

 Picking the dying flowers, the eldest girl stood with her sad bouquet already in hand. I now saw their sunken eyes. It took a minute of watching to be sure that they were not dead, only starving. They looked similar. Both had the same soft round cheekbones and small, sharp noses. Sisters I thought.

They walked back toward the school hand in hand. The youngest stopped- they stood for a moment and looked up to the sky. I looked at Spencer, at Emily, no one seemed quite sure of what to do. The girls disappeared into the school. No one moved for another minute. We had all been caught off guard, even Spencer.

Once we were once again able to move, I jogged as quietly as possible to the back door. I looked through the glass but saw no on in the hallway.

“We should knock,” I began. “We don’t have to break in if those girls-”

“We don’t know who else is in there,” Spencer said and tugged on the locked door.

Ryan pointed out the broken window and I gave him a boost. As he climbed I realized he had done this a thousand times before for sun, probably with friends. Now he was doing it to survive. He crawled in and in a second he was gone. We waited in silence for a few seconds, the door clicked open. Ryan smiled when he saw us.

“See anything?” I asked him. He shook his head. We went in slow and quiet. We had learned the silent walk technique in the woods. Dry twigs were death traps. We were almost to the cafeteria when we heard the shots, four in quick succession, then and a space of about ten seconds until the fifth.

            All our weapons went up. “The gym,” Ryan whispered. Spencer ordered Emily outside to keep watch. We had to move fast, the dead would have heard it. Spencer reached the gym doors before the rest of us. He looked through the glass square for a moment then turned to us, “Forget it, it’s nothing. Come on,” he said and started moving for the cafeteria.

“What do you mean? What were the shots?” I asked.

“Forgot it man, they’re dead.”

Spencer and Ryan kept running but I had to know. I opened the door and looked inside. The horror of what I was seeing didn’t register. I walked closer to their bodies, my hands shaking, my mouth dry. That was the moment I knew things would never be okay again.       

Five sisters had come to this school for safety. They'd made it as long as they could; they'd eaten all the food but the world outside hadn't changed, hadn’t gotten better. They had no one to take care of them. No parents, no policemen. All they had was a gun with five shots left inside. The younger ones had stood in a line, those ten seconds before the last shot- that was the eldest looking at her family and turning the gun on herself. In my dreams I jump out of the tree lie before those girl go inside, I tell them I can help them, I tell them we will be a family.

As I stood there and watched their blood spread out into a pool beneath them- I prayed for something to happen, anything that could change what I was feeling. I didn't care if it was a bomb going off or a military parade outside; I just needed to feel something other than the hopelessness I was feeling. And then something did happen. The youngest of the girls stood up. Her sister had aimed for the heart. There was no bite. This wasn't an infection, this wasn't a disease. This was Hell, and it was coming for me in a white cotton dress and flowers in its hair.