We With Daisies Lie

Kin

"Pleeease!" the voice shouted in desperation from somewhere in the distance... I fought my eyelids open but everything was still just a bright white blur. "They'll kill me!" he pleaded, a young man by the sounds of it. Then, someone replied; a woman.

"You're dead anyway," she stated in a matter of fact sort of way. Things were coming more into focus. I could just make out the water-stained floral wallpaper curling from neglect in the corner of the room, the paint chipped radiator by the wall, the angled ceiling above. I was in an attic.

"No!" the young man begged and cried outside. I stood up, feeling stronger than I was anticipating. I licked my lips, they were still cracked but healing now. I moved to the window, a set of generator powered lights shone silver on the grass two stories below. The young man had fallen on both knees in defeat. He sat with one hand up toward the sky in surrender, the other held tight against the side of his neck.          

The woman continued- "I'm sorry but you have to go now. We can't have you here," I could see the barrel of the rifle she was holding peeking from the edge of the semi-circle pool of light.

"Just kill me then," he coughed between sobs. "I got no place to g-" the woman fired. The young man's head popped red and white all across the grass. She moved into the light, her figured obscured by a heavy jacket not unlike the one I had made. She bent down to the dead young man and searched him. She slipped something from his pocket and waved to someone I couldn't see. Emily and Oliver came in from the dark and dragged the body somewhere away from the light. I knew where they were taking him because I knew where I was now. My grandparent's farm house. 

They went in the direction of the barn and were gone for a few moments, the woman who had killed the young man stood alone in the light. She looked up to me from the lawn; it was Bambi, my sister.

* * * *        

"It happened all at once..." she told us as we sat around the dining room table later that night, "...before I had time to react to the news of the outbreak or whatever it was, the TV lost signal and the panic started. I found a way onto a boat, my work had me traveling by ferry from Sweden to Poland and back again almost weekly. It was a massive ship, designed for long distance travel but they only used it to take people across the Baltic. I became friends with the Captain, James. He's the one who let me on. The ride began fairly calm, but someone on the ship had been injured and died a day later. Terrible things happened on that ship. When we finally docked at Boston Harbor, we found the whole place in ruins. A group of those things came at us but there were men there waiting for them. They killed all the dead and took me and James to their hideout. We thought they were friendly but we were wrong. They didn't keep James for long. The first time they tried to rape me, he fought for me- they killed him and threw his body in the street for the dead. It was a week or so before I found my chance. I killed the man in charge. I cut his throat and ran. I took an abandoned car and rode route two all the way here."

There was silence for a while. "I'm okay," she finally said. My heart was broken but I didn't want to show it.

"Do you know what happened to grandpa and grandma?" I asked, she did. 

"When I came, they were down there in the bunker. I looked for the key in the hiding place; it wasn't there but I found a note about how to knock on the door so they knew it was me or you. They were fine. Grandma couldn't stay down there long, she was too claustrophobic and since there was no fallout we didn't have to. Grandpa and I built a barbwire fence. We made all kinds of things to keep the farm safe. They must have known we were protecting something. They came in the middle of the night..." I thought she was going to cry, I moved my hand to cover hers for support but she stood and moved to the window. I asked Emily and Oliver for a moment alone with my sister.        

Bambi told me that she had to fight the men from the town, she ran to the barn where their weapons were hidden and killed enough of them that they retreated. By the time she got back to the house, our grandparents had been shot and were turning. She did what she had to do. Em had been right all along, Oliver got lost in the woods and did the best he could to navigate his way to the farm. Bambi almost killed him when he got to it. He told her he was with me and that we were looking for my family. Knowing the men who were in that town and what they would do if Emily and I went there- she gave Oliver some food and water and they both set out to find us. When they finally did, Emily was trying desperately to drag me from the gunfire."They retreated but only for now," she told me. "...they'll be coming back soon."

"Can we hide out in the bunker?" I asked.

"It's a death trap down there; they would find the air vents and clog them up. Shoot us as soon as we opened the door,"

"What do we do?"

"Not sure yet."

"Why'd you put that guy in the barn?" I asked, it had been bothering me since it happened. "We can cut him up; spread the pieces around the perimeter. Keeps the dead away," she said and swallowed a spoonful of tomato soup. I was hoping for a different answer. 

"Maybe we should leave," I said. "Take as much food and water as possible an-"

"Are you and Emily together?" she asked, cutting me off. 

"Yeah. I mean I think so,"

"Good. It's important to have someone. Now more than ever. If you love her, you have to really love her. No casual crap,"

"I do."

"Good," she said and stood up, she gave me the rest of her canned tomato soup and started to walk out- she stopped at the threshold and turned back, "I don't have anyone. Just you and this house."

Sometimes the bikers would send people who had been bitten, like the man she had killed earlier that night. She suspected they were preying on her humanity. Trying to make her weaker by forcing her to kill innocent people or watching them die and come back as monsters. What they hadn't realized is that it made her even more callous and able to kill. It made her cold.        

The Bambi I knew had died somewhere along the Atlantic. I was happy to see her of course, that same thin smile- that undying urge to be in control, but I wasn't happy to see what she had become. The Bambi who had left the country crying, afraid she would never to see her brother again, that Bambi would have brought the bitten boy inside and cared for him until there was nothing else to be done. The unmistakable spark behind her eyes that told you this girl was special, that she was kind and warm and caring- that had been stripped away from her, and what was left was a simple smiling nothing.        

The world had made us confront our worst potentials. Those of us who knew each other before things changed had to see who we had turned into. I hadn't told Emily this while we were alone in the woods, but when I went to sleep every night, I thanked God that Bambi wasn't there to see who I was now. That night in bed, Emily told me how happy she was that Bambi was alive. She smiled big and pretty, a smile on my behalf. "I love you," she told me with a kiss. 

I replied in kind. I held her close until she fell asleep; I didn't want her to know what I was really feeling. I kept the tears in as long as I could, and when she had fallen asleep, I mourned my sister.