This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) Read Free Page B

sure Brandy was dead. She should run back to the van. How long had it been since she entered the house? Two minutes? Five? What if she ran out now and found the lieutenant waiting for her, his pistol to Anna’s head?
    One bad investment after another, she thought. At the mall she had gained a couple of road atlases, hiking boots and a handful of plastic bags. What could she gain here except to satisfy sick curiosity?
    But Brandy was her best friend. She had to know what happened.
    Jack held her breath and leaned all her weight against the door. It opened just enough for her to press her head into the opening.  
    The body against the door had been Brandy’s first husband, Tom. His eyes were open, staring through her into forever. By the look on his sagging face, his death had taken him by surprise. A wide, straight gash crossed his throat. The floor was dark with dried blood. Brandy’s bathroom tile had been bone white, but a stranger couldn’t have guessed that now.  
    Brandy was in the bathtub. Her clothes were torn. One perfect cold breast was exposed. A long kitchen knife, the blade the same color as the floor, lay on the edge of the tub. In the light that shone through the frosted glass above the tub, Jack could see that Brandy had bled out. She was drained, almost marble white.  
    Jack could see the knife wound down her friend’s right arm. It stretched from elbow to wrist. Brandy’s eyes were closed. Eventually she had gone to sleep, but the wait must have been…what? Excruciating? Or had there been euphoria? Had it been a relief?
    Jack pulled back, dropped to her knees and threw up on the closet door. She should run. She should jump in the van and go and go. That was the plan she had laid out the night before: leave the nightmares behind. Jack got up, steadied herself against the wall and made for the front door.  
    She got to the better light of the family room and looked out the window. She could see Anna leaning up against the driver’s side window, watching for her mother but looking for enemies, as well. Anna’s right hand hovered over the van’s horn.
    She was sure Jaimie’s eyes were on the dictionary in his lap. He wouldn’t move except to turn the page. Most of the time, it seemed her son was made of impenetrable rock. She envied Jaimie his world. Exposed to horror and loss, he’d take it in as more information. Her son, the moron. Her son, the robot. Her son whom some kids called Ears and Retard. Jaimie was above all this blood.  
    Her family waited for her, safe for now, but less safe for indulging this ghoulish goodbye. But there was no goodbye to that memory was there? The scene in the bathroom would visit again when she slept, Jack was sure. She’d get the awful reward of that bad investment over and over in the years to come, if she lived that long.
    Brandy would come as a familiar ghost in nightmares, asking for company. “It’s lonely in the bathtub,” she would say. “That bathtub was a lonely place to lay down and die after I killed Tom. Come join me in the bathtub, Jack. It doesn’t hurt long and then you go to sleep. Sleep with me until the end of time. When time ends, we’ll have bubbly champagne in heaven.”
    I’m not going to cry anymore, Jack thought. Or I’ll cry someday, a long time from now. I don’t have time now. I’m sorry, Brandy, I can’t afford to cry anymore. Not now. When I can, I will. I promise.
    The phrase “slit your wrists” is so common, she thought, she would have expected both Brandy’s wrists to be slashed. When you do it right on one arm — and from the looks of it, Brandy had been determined and thorough — you can’t slash the other wrist. Once you cut the tendons, you can’t hold the knife.
    Unless you hold the blade in your teeth, Jack thought.
    There was an interesting detail she hoped she would never have occasion to use. But there might come a time when that factoid would be good to know. She tucked that thought away as she headed