“We can’t let them in. What if they’re one of those…things?”
The group stood huddled behind the door of Bunny’s house, arguing amongst themselves. On the doorstep stood a boy and girl. The boy shouted, “Please! I saw your truck. I know you’re here. Please let us in. I saw the man and the little girl. Sir? Are you in there?”
Patrick Riley hardly heard the boy. He was busy telling himself a story. He told himself the story over and over again. One minute Sharon had been beside him and Izzy, and then she’d been underneath the two men. He’d turned back toward her, had thought to grab for his pistol, but then Izzy was in the middle of it.
“Riley!” Erma was shaking him. He turned to her. “What is it?”
“Did you see them? The boy said he saw a man with a little girl. Did you see him? Should we let him in?”
“I…” Could he have helped her? Could he have saved Sharon, or did he do all that he could? If he had have pulled the gun out, maybe, but it had all happened so fast.
“Riley!”
He looked at Erma, at all of them huddled there, Izzy standing beside him, her thumb in her mouth, a habit he’d thought they’d broken her of but which she’d obviously reverted to in this time of stress.
Izzy saw him looking and removed the thumb. “Daddy, don’t let ’em hurt me. Pwease, Daddy?” The words came in a lisp around her sweet baby teeth, the teeth he’d missed seeing come in because Sharon had stolen her away from him.
Riley’s face hardened. It didn’t matter what had happened with Sharon. All that mattered now was Izzy. He had to keep her safe. Which meant he couldn’t take any chances. He thought of the boy he’d seen in the streets, the boy hefting his ax to kill one of the Feeders. He’d recognized him immediately, though Javier Martinez obviously hadn’t recognized Riley out of uniform. “No,” he said. “I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anybody.”
“There!” said Bunny. “See! They’re Feeders. They’re trying to trick us.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Erma. “I’m letting them in. If they’re Feeders then we’ll…we’ll kill them if we have to.”
“You can’t tell,” said Pill. “Not until they’re dead or have been one for a long time. Feeders can look and act just like us at first.”
But Erma was already moving toward the door. “They’re just kids, dammit!”
Riley watched as Bunny stepped between Erma and the door. “Don’t you dare. I’m not letting you put us at risk just because you have some misguided idea of being a savior, or—”
John took a step toward Bunny. “Let her by,” he said. Maxie followed him, and it was the dog that drove Bunny from the door. She jumped away, defeated, as it approached.
“Do something, Patrick,” she said, turning toward her nephew. “Do you want your daughter to get killed?”
“No!” Izzy squealed. “No, Daddy! I don’t want to be killeded! No!”
Riley scooped his daughter up and drew his gun from his holster. He saw that the old man was doing the same, his gun pointed toward the door.
The girl’s hair fell in lank, sweat-dampened tendrils across her face. She raised an arm to wipe it away, and on its underside Riley saw a bear.
“It’s her,” he said, turning to find Erma. “It’s Star Williams, Erma!”
Riley felt ashamed of himself. What if that had been Izzy on the other side?
Erma yanked open the door, and the boy and girl fell through, leaning against each other.
“Thank you,” Javier said. “I didn’t know where else to go. We saw your truck and—”
“Star!” Erma said, moving toward the girl. Star took a step back, looking at the woman as if she were crazy, and Erma’s hands fell to her sides.
“You okay?” Riley asked.
Star nodded.
He had found her, after all, Riley thought. And though it wasn’t the way he’d intended, he was glad she was safe. A small victory in the midst of a nightmare.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Riley said. “What happened? Where’s your dad?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Pill interrupted. “If you saw us come in here, then They probably did, too. Which means that we don’t have a lot of time.”
“What do you want us to do?” Erma asked. She gathered herself up in a straight line and faced Pill, leaving Star to hide behind Javier.
“I’ve already tried calling the station,” said Riley, pulling the two-way he kept on him at all times out of his pocket. “There wasn’t any answer on the walkie, and my cell’s not getting reception.”
“Mine either,” said Erma.
“That can’t be,” said Bunny. She walked briskly across the kitchen to the landline phone. “Obviously there has to be some of them working. We have to call for help—you can’t shut an entire town down.” She picked up the phone, and it was evident from her face that there wasn’t any dial tone. “Not an entire town,” she repeated. “It’s just crazy.”
“It isn’t crazy, it’s true,” said Pill. “It’s the first thing they did the last time it happened. Only they didn’t have to do as much then because there weren’t any computers or cell phones or all that nonsense. But Cavus is just as cut off now from the rest of the world as it’s ever been.”
“What do you mean ‘the last time’?” asked Erma.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Pill. “My wife, she wrote it all down. She was here for it. She survived.”
“He’s lying!” Bunny yelled, and Riley saw that his aunt was near tears. “There wasn’t any last time. This is just a sickness. People are sick, and we need to get help. That’s all.”
At the sight of her weeping, John turned and exploded on her. “Jesus, woman, will you shut the fuck up!”
Riley felt his dislike for the man rise. “You want to watch yourself, mister,” he said. “That’s my aunt.”
“I’m sorry,” John said. “It’s just—”
“It’s okay,” said Erma. “We’re all a little rattled, is all.”
Riley felt a tug on his shirt, and he looked down to see Izzy smiling at him. “I’m hugwy, Daddy. Can you take me out? We can get a Happy Meal?”
“Soon, Izzy. I promise. Hang in there.” He needed to focus. To start thinking like a cop, for God’s sake. What was the first thing he’d do if this were a normal case, just another fucked-up druggie loose or a normal human on a killing spree? He shut his eyes and wrinkled his forehead. Think. What would he do on a regular case?
Information. He’d get information.
“You say you know what’s going on?” Riley asked, shifting Izzy from one hip to another. She was much too big to be held, but he wasn’t planning on setting her down anytime soon.
Pill nodded. “As much as anyone does.”
“Then I vote we hear him out. There isn’t much else we can do, is there? Unless anyone else has another idea?”
The room remained silent. Outside, there was the sound of breaking glass and a scream.
“Then let’s get to it, old man,” said Riley.
“First let’s find as many supplies as we can,” Pill said, and Riley kicked himself for not thinking of that. Information and supplies. Of course.
“You got any guns?” he asked Bunny.
“My husband keeps one,” she said. “In our bedroom. I don’t know if it’s still there, though. He might have taken it with him.”
“Taken it where?” Riley asked. “Jesus, Aunt Bunny. Where is Uncle Bob? In all this mess I’d completely forgotten about him.”
“That’s not important right now,” John said.
“Don’t you tell me what is or isn’t important,” Riley said. “That was my uncle.”
“He’s right,” Bunny said, tugging at his arm. She met his eyes and then looked meaningfully down at Izzy. “Let’s just focus on keeping who we do have here safe.”
Riley nodded, and Bunny dropped her hand. “I’ll go look for the gun,” she said. “The rest of you can get the flashlights out of the cupboard over there and check for anything else that might be useful.”
Everybody moved in silence to accomplish their chores, Erma and John pulling flashlights, candles, and matches out of the cupboards, and Star sticking as close as a shadow to the boy. Riley stood near the door, keeping a watch out the windows. He held Izzy close to him and felt her body grow heavier as she drifted off to sleep. He was all she had now, he thought, kissing the warm curls on her head and inhaling that sweet dirt smell that only children have. And she was all he had. He wouldn’t lose her, wouldn’t let anyone take her from him. Not ever again.
Bunny left the room quickly, trying not to let the others see her face. But as soon as she was around the corner and out of sight, she couldn’t hide it any longer. Her face broke into a wide grin. He was here! Javier Martinez was actually and truly in her house! She knew it was crazy to think about love at a time like this, knew that if the others could see her, they’d count her a loony, but she couldn’t help it. From the kitchen, she could hear the muffled voices, the fear, the arguing, but here, she let the full joy she felt spread across her face as she remembered. The rest of the world melted away, and there was only Javier. Javier Martinez.
She’d “woken up,” which was how she thought of it, when she saw Javier Martinez for the first time. She wasn’t paying attention to the paperboy that first Saturday Javier was on duty. Instead, she was busy cleaning out her closet. What she saw depressed her. Almost everything she owned was a neutral tone. A black, or a brown, or a beige. There was no excitement in her life. She remembered, as a little girl, receiving a red party dress one Christmas and wearing it so often that it had fallen to pieces. When had she stopped wearing colors? When had she decided that she had no right to these things, that she was a woman doomed to shadows and background pieces?
Not even her husband paid attention to her anymore. Bob was always gone, seeming to find more and more reasons to stay at work. When he did come home he barely glanced at her before shoving down whatever meal she’d carefully prepared and then falling into bed. Bunny was lonely. The kids were grown and gone and Bunny didn’t have a lot of friends. Correction. She didn’t have any friends. She’d started watching a lot of television—reality shows, mostly, trying to escape into someone else’s life, to forget, for a while, that hers existed.
She had actually just been fixing herself a cup of coffee with lots of cream to go watch one of these shows and take a break from the closet cleaning when she saw Javier for the first time. He was riding a bike that was much too big for him, the paper-satchel swung nonchalantly over one shoulder, and he did it all with such grace that it took her breath away. But mostly, it was the color that threw her. He was full of so much color.
The bike he rode was a bright red, and its paint caught the sunshine perfectly, lighting it up like fire beneath him. He wore a yellow shirt, a color that none of the local boys with their button-up cowboy shirts or ragtag tees would ever have dared to wear. And his hair. It was beautiful. What other people might have seen as black, Bunny knew was in all actuality a rare and startling midnight blue. He was perfection. She actually had to set her full coffee mug down on the counter when she saw him, because her hands were shaking.
In that moment he looked up at her and, seeing her watching from the widow, waved. With a trembling hand, she waved back. And that was that for Bunny. She was in love.
That very night, she got online and used the birthday money she’d received from her mother, money she usually put into her and Bob’s retirement fund, on a bright blue dress she found online. She bought more and more rainbow-colored outfits, got her hair colored a brighter hue, and began to smile more. She only waited a week to tell Bob that she was leaving him.
So when he disappeared a few days later, she didn’t worry about it. She assumed he’d simply left to shack up with one of his buddies from the plant. What she did do was focus all her energy on Javier Martinez. She’d be damned if she’d found the color in her life only to watch it seep out again.
Bunny drove by Javier’s house at least once a day after she found out where he lived. Sometimes he’d be in the yard talking to his landlord, or sometimes he’d be inside. Once, she saw him outside alone, and she’d thought he looked up at her, so she had to put her foot on the gas fast before he could see her.
She watched every show on television that she could think of about how to look younger. She even bought a bikini waxing kit and tried to take all the hair off herself, from her happy trail on down, but it had only left a big, red rash. Still, she had to try. It was what all today’s women were doing, that’s what the shows said.
Javier was sixteen. Bunny knew this. Intellectually, she knew this. But it never entered her mind that liking him might be wrong. If she were a man and he a little girl, yes, of course. But she’d been watching a lot of television, and everybody today knew that having sex with an older woman was like a rite of passage for a teenage boy. Older women now were considered a catch. Cougars, they called them. She watched a show about cougars in her free time, and she imagined herself one of them. She imagined Javier riding by her house, bringing her the paper, she’d ask him in…
They were just dreams. Probably. But maybe not. After the Festival she was planning to finally ask him to come in, finally confront him. She’d decided. She’d make her feelings known to Javier. Whatever else happened, he had let her see the colors again, he’d brought her back to life.
But now…Now he was here. In her very own kitchen, he was here, and maybe the world was ending, but finally Javier was in her house. She would tell him. Sometime, during all of this mess, she would find a quiet moment and tell him.
Bunny returned to the kitchen with Bob’s gun. Javier stood by the counter, watching her, and Bunny felt the smile coming on again. Quickly, she opened the refrigerator door and hid her head inside. From the back, she gathered bottles of water into her arms, and pulled them forward. As she shut the door and turned around, she felt the bottles slipping, and just as she was about to drop them, a hand reached out to grab one of the six-packs from her.
“Let me,” Javier said, taking another batch of bottles from her, and as he did, his skin, warm and alive, touched hers. Bunny shivered, and now she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. And miracle of miracles, Javier smiled back. Outside, a scream sounded, distant but strong. Bunny’s smile widened. She thought she’d never felt so happy in her life.