Dead Woman's Journal Read online

  I lost both legs almost to the hip. It was so fast that I barely had time to be afraid. That’s the mercy of such a disease; the speed of it. I’m lucky, because many people lose their lives, or at least more limbs. The extent to which I lost my legs made using walking prosthetics impossible.

  I have only hip joints and a bit of my upper thighs. My nerves never really got with the program, so pain was near-constant. That was especially true if I put pressure on what was left to me. Walking on prosthetics was simply not an option, not for me. Instead, my prosthetics were for show. The wheelchair was my only method of locomotion.

  Well no, that’s not entirely true. Though I never let anyone except the care aides or Grant see me do it, I used to get around the house fairly quickly using my hands. I kept my core strong for that. A little hunch of the shoulders, a curling inward of my hips, and voila…I could use my arms almost like legs. I think I was a little embarrassed about the way it looked, which is why so few people saw me scrabbling around the house like that.

  I remember waking up after surgery, but barely. I woke because I thought my feet were on fire. Not metaphorically or figuratively, but actually and in reality. I was told later that I was screaming, but all I remember is a sharp beep next to my ear, a cool pinching at my arm, and then blessed, dreamless sleep.

  The weird thing is that now I can vaguely recall waking and asking what happened multiple times in the days that followed, but I still can’t remember the answers. I can remember the mouths of the various doctors moving, but I can’t remember what they said. I think I didn’t want to know.

  Still, I’m alive! And many years later, I became the fastest human on the planet. Well, I was for five months. Now, others like me can go as fast or faster. Go figure. And now you know why you shouldn’t trust the well water entirely. I hope you heed my warning.

  I can feel that dark mood coming, so I’m going to make hot chocolate and read a good book. I also have ten days left to decide and I’m no closer to a decision now than I was the day I started this journal.

  Day 16

  Soon I have to decide. One way or the other, I have to decide.

  Yesterday may have made that decision a little bit easier. Again, I had a busy day so I didn’t write, but in this case, it was a bad kind of busy that ended up being a good thing. Also, a bad thing.

  It’s complicated.

  Those bad neighbors I mentioned before went from suspicious to downright bad almost overnight. It’s probably been brewing since the beginning, but if we can’t see it, how can we know? Behind closed doors lie many secrets. It’s only when that door opens and the bad spills out that the rest of us get to see it.

  Here’s what happened. I usually wake up early every day because it’s my nature to do so. Except for a few brief years in high school when I apparently required more sleep than a newborn, I’ve always been that way. With the dawn, my eyes open. It may seem odd that I have a two-story house, what with the no legs situation, but I loved the view and the lift on the stairs solved many problems. A second story and the dawn go perfectly together in this part of the world.

  My habit in the mornings is to walk around upstairs, going from room to room and looking at the view. Well, it’s my habit now that I have legs. Before, I rolled from room to room, or hand-walked when I was feeling chipper. The rosy light used to creep over the trees facing the river and it was beautiful.

  To the rear of the house, the edges of the forest and those beautiful trees are what I see. Along the front, it’s my neighborhood and all the little things that live parallel lives with us, like birds, foxes, owls, and squirrels. Sometimes I’d even get a glimpse of an eagle or other bird of prey.

  It probably sounds lame to you, but I made those rounds every morning since I got my new legs. It’s like a little affirmation that I can look at the world and engage with it if I choose. It’s a small thing, but it’s important to me.

  Most mornings since the apocalypse began, I don’t see a whole lot. Maybe a light in one of the houses, but usually not. People keep watch these days and we don’t advertise we’re at home. We’ve agreed on that as a group. Except yesterday, I woke up extra early and there was no light in the sky yet. I may wake with the dawn, but I never wake before it comes. I had no idea what woke me, and of course, that made me worry.

  I sleep with my legs attached now, so I immediately went from window to window. I wanted to see what woke me. During these rounds, I sometimes hear the faint sound of screaming Awakened, so I thought perhaps my sleeping mind registered one of those. At worst, I figured one of them might have reached our neighborhood. It’s happened before.

  While I was looking out of the front windows, a light flicked across a window at Marcy’s. There was a single muffled scream, but one that cut off short, then the light disappeared. Awakened don’t have cut off screams. They wail as soon as they sight something to go after, but never do they scream if there’s nothing to chase. That scream came from a human and I understood immediately what was happening.

  Yep, you probably guessed it too. They went for the lady all alone in a house whose mom just died. What a freaking bunch of lovely people.

  Don’t get the idea that I ran out there and kicked everyone to death like a superhero. That so did not happen. My contribution was more like adding extra keystone cops to an operation already replete with them.

  Fred Williams—next door in the dark green house with the gorgeous front door—was already on the job and ran over to keep me quiet when I came out of the house. As a group, we’ve agreed to an informal watch rotation at night. This was Fred’s night.

  You may have already noticed that my front door squeaks. Or maybe it won’t by the time you get here, given that I should probably exercise more stealth. That squeak was very loud in the still night. I barely recognize it, but Fred heard it and ran over waving his hands like I was shouting in the street. Also, he had a large gun and was waving that along with his hands. So, there’s that. I can only really describe this by giving the play-by-play. It aptly describes the neighborhood where I’ve made my life.

  Once he was done making faces at all the noise I’d made, Fred pointed to the house with his gun and whispered, “They’ve got Marcy.”

  “Who?” I asked him, because I’d already figured out that Marcy was the target. I had also guessed who broke in, but I wasn’t yet sure.

  He shifted his point to the bad neighbor’s house and I puffed out a sigh, because we all knew this was coming eventually. Fred is a fairly serious guy, so it kind of shocked me when he hissed, “Asshole shitbirds!” I’m recording that here for posterity, so I can tease him about it later. Fred never curses.

  His plan was straightforward. That is to say, he intended to bust in, shoot everyone, and hope for the best. This was not a smart plan. He also turned and waved at someone I couldn’t see in the general area of his hedges. I guessed his wife, Linda.

  “Listen, Fred, you can’t ask Linda to go barging in there and shooting. She’s liable to get shot. Even worse, what happens to her if you get shot. We need a plan that won’t get anyone killed.”

  That brought him up short, meaning he’d clearly not thought that far ahead. I’ve spoken with Fred and Linda many times since this started. I was well aware of their general fear with respect to the “druggie” neighbors once they couldn’t call the cops. Heck, even before this, I know Fred was trying to figure out how to rid the neighborhood of them. Legally, I mean, nothing involving firearms.

  Once the possibility of running in and shooting was gone, Fred was clearly at a loss. I really like Fred. He’s funny. I was sorry to rain on his parade.

  “What about Marcy? We can’t let them do whatever they might do. They’ll probably kill her or hurt her.” he whispered. Like I said, he’s a nice guy.

  I agreed with that, but I also had a little idea. It was stupid—and now that it’s in the past, I still haven’t decided precisely how stupid it truly was. It was all I had at the moment, and I wasn’t sure
how long we had to formulate plans. I’d just been woken from a sound sleep and I was tired. That’s my excuse for the bad plan.

  The way I figured it, the sketchy people would be the first to run out of things like food. I didn’t know if they had a well, but if so, they sure weren’t using it on their lawn before lawns became irrelevant. Given that, I also figured they would eventually try to steal from one of us.

  I also thought it would be me they targeted. I’m the logical choice, which is one of the reasons I sleep with my legs on. I guess I underestimated how intimidating those legs are, since they went for Marcy instead. That made me feel like it was sort of my fault.

  I had only one idea to offer. “Okay, what if I jump to the second-floor balcony, go inside, and make them think there are other people home.” Eyeing his gun, I added, “Maybe shoot a gun so they think the house is armed?”

  The way he tucked that gun close to his chest like a baby answered my question, but he also said, “How about you set off her alarm instead and I keep my gun where I can use it.”

  That, I have to confess in retrospect, sounded like a brilliant idea at the time. Key phrase: at the time. Not so much now, of course. My thinking had been that the very last thing these guys would want is to have the whole neighborhood collected and gunning for them. Where would they go? There’s no way they could stay in their house after that. No way. And we’re all here because it’s not safe out there. If we panicked them and got them to run, then they’d go home and hope to play this off. Either that, or leave the neighborhood and get eaten by Awakened where we didn’t have to worry about them.

  Wouldn’t they? Like I said, stupid ideas ran rampant that night.

  “How do I set off the alarm? They got in, so they must have disabled it or something.”

  Fred grinned and it was comforting. I can say that here, can’t I? According to him, Marcy kept a key fob in her bedside table. Someday, I’m going to find out exactly how Fred knew this. Our alarm companies may not be much good to us now, but the sound alone might spare us some violence. Or violence of the wrong kind anyway.

  Fred stationed himself behind the house in the hedges, and I did my thing. Yes, I can jump to a second story balcony. Not only that, I can entirely clear the railing. Honestly, I can jump to the roof if I try. What I can’t do is land quietly. The noise was appalling. Rather than try to play it off, I opened the sliding door—which was unlocked because it was upstairs. Then I ran straight into her bed, as in, collided with it at a full run.

  Let me confess, running and flipping all the way over the bed, ass over teakettle, was incredibly disorienting. Ending by slamming into the dressing table on the other side was just the icing on the cake. The yelling downstairs was underway before I stood up and got my bearings. The jig was up. Time for plan B, which was not a plan at all and simply something that popped into my head.

  “If I find out who you are, I’m going to hunt you down!”

  I really tried to throw some bass into it, but I sounded like a kid with a squeaky voice. I’m grown up enough to admit that. The whole point was to make them think I didn’t know who they were. Running away would be attractive if they thought they were unknown and might get away with it, right? A great deal of banging and cursing came from downstairs, then the sound of breaking glass, then a door slamming. A good short description would be: abrupt general chaos.

  I don’t even want to mention what I found in Marcy’s bedside table, but I will never recover from seeing it. It’s very clear that Marcy and her husband had a creative private life. Fumbling around and trying hard not to touch anything, it seemed to take forever to find anything remotely like a key fob. I had to turn on the bedside light, which would have made me a wonderfully obvious target if anyone came upstairs.

  And there it was, right at the front of the drawer. I pushed the panic button and the whole house erupted into noise. That also meant I couldn’t hear a dang thing in the rest of the house. I went to the balcony, but only caught a glimpse of someone running in the dark. Lights started going on all over the place.

  You’ve probably already thought about this and are wondering if I’m a total idiot. But we didn’t really understand what you must already know. Not until that moment, we didn’t. The monsters are drawn to noise with a keen sense of the source. Yes, we knew that in a general sense, but it wasn’t ingrained into us the way it is now that this has happened. Plus, we were in a bit of a panic. I’ve already admitted that we weren’t thinking clearly.

  I couldn’t hear it with the alarm going, but the way people started running for the house told me something very bad was happening far beyond the current situation. Even Fred stood up from his hiding spot, his head cocking as if he’d heard something ominous. Then he started waving his arms at me, heedless of any robbers left nearby that might see him.

  I clicked the button to turn off the alarm. My ears were ringing, but I could hear Marcy screaming, so I ran for the stairs. Should I have looked to be sure no one was lying in wait? Yes, but honestly, I knew no one would be left inside that shouldn’t be here. Marcy was tied to a dining room chair in the middle of her living room with a pillowcase over her head. Piles of stuff lay all over the room and like I figured, it was mostly food.

  But not only food. I found that out as soon as I untied Marcy. She grabbed me, asking if I’d seen her wedding ring. She was frantic, her face sporting a swelling that would bruise badly, but all she cared about was the wedding ring her now-missing husband had given her to seal their marriage.

  Bastards.

  Suffice it to say, I heard the screams everyone else had been hearing as soon as my ears stopped ringing. The alarm was on for twenty seconds, tops, but the rest of that short night was no fun. Neither was the rest of the day, because we had more than monstrous Awakened to worry about. It came down to priorities. Handle one kind of monster first, then take care of the less dangerous kind. Awakened from the woods had heard the alarm and were inbound. Those would definitely have to be considered the more dangerous threat.

  We also discovered something really disturbing that night and morning, though I’m sure you must know it by now. The monsters are even harder to kill than we’d originally thought. And considering that we already knew they weren’t easy, that’s saying something.

  Fred shot one of them point blank in the face and all that happened was it had a little seizure. It got back up a few seconds later, but this time with half its face hanging off its chin. It was clumsy and looked more like a marionette getting its strings jerked, but it got up. I had to run over and kick it like I did Grace. Smashing their whole head still seems to work fine. That one had been a man wearing the remains of a cop uniform, his throat and arms shredded and disgusting. He had been just a human…but had become a nanite-infected Awakened. A monster.

  Even weirder that that, several of the Awakened that showed up should have been dead already, like that cop. We’d not seen anything like this before, not here. Seeing one monster that shouldn’t have survived might be explained away, but not so many. I really don’t want to describe what I saw. There’s no way in hell that some of them should have been alive. Just, no. Gross. Remembering that made me gag a little.

  If the alarm would have gone on much longer we would have had more visitors. What we got was enough. The woods are deep and thick, with plenty of Awakened to find their way to our homes once their interest was piqued. They’re coming from the care home out on the highway, we think. Or most of them are anyway. It was a new facility and very big, with hundreds of beds. When I say hundreds, I mean it. It was touted as the most cost-effective, yet also pleasant, new and improved type of facility. That’s really biting us now.

  Two new apartment complexes went up near it as well, a little further down the highway. There’s one complex in each direction, so there are even more potential threats nearby. It’s a very good thing the Awakened take zero care with noise, because you can hear them coming.

  It was a really bad morning.

>   And then we had the problem of the neighbors to sort out once the Awakened were down. Everyone knew it was them. While Fred didn’t see the two people that ran out of Marcy’s side door, he did see a shadow running up to their front door. No lights came on in their house during or after the alarm…yet we do see lights there on other nights. They don’t have solar power, but they must have batteries for flashlights, because we see light there. Just not that night.

  Also, they were the only ones not to show up to fight the monsters. With that much mayhem and noise, there’s no way they could say they didn’t hear it. Even Marcy grabbed a hand-cannon from Fred and went to work—more shocks, since he handed it over without so much as a word of protest. I didn’t even know she could handle a gun. I think she was still really pissed off and simply hadn’t had time to process the fear portion of her anger. She expressed herself in gunfire.

  The best evidence for who broke into her house was provided by Marcy. They got her in her sleep and put a pillowcase over her head, but everyone with a brain knows you can see through most cloth if it’s not done right. Boneheads. They were wearing bandanas over their faces, but she knew exactly who they were. You don’t see people for a couple of years and then get fooled because they cover up their noses and mouths.

  Like I said, total boneheads.

  Marcy also said they were freaking out, with shaky voices and the like. She said they reminded her of drug addicts on TV who need a fix. I’ll be honest, I thought she was exaggerating. I mean, who wouldn’t be nervous when taking their neighbor hostage? I’d have a shaky voice if it was me doing such a thing. No drug withdrawal required.

  We had the neighborhood meeting right there in the street. Out of sight of their house, which is one house down on the fork, but still in the street. The votes were split, but the ugly truth is that there’s no distance we can take them and not be in danger from them. They can return, possibly with other bad people. And we’d be in dire danger taking them anywhere, even assuming we could get through the streets. This is their city as much as it is ours, so it’s not like they’d be lost. All they’d have to do is find a street they recognized and come back.