A woman’s piercing scream came from downstairs. Sitting bolt upright, it took a minute for Brook to remember where she was. The clock read 8:37 A.M. Raven had shared the queen-sized bed with her. She was eleven now, but still a little small for her age. Being a heavy sleeper, she was slower to wake from the commotion downstairs in the kitchen.
Brook kept quiet, fearing an intruder had entered the house and attacked her mom. She stared at her daughter as she awoke with a start. She kept Raven quiet with a serious glare and a vertical finger to her lips. Stillness pervaded the house. She strained to hear anything more. Brook thought, Dad must still be in bed, how could anyone sleep through that?
Brook’s dad was an emergency room physician at Grand Strand Regional Hospital. Yesterday evening about 9:00 P.M. he was bitten by a patient. The feverish, hallucinating man bit him as he was leaning over, probing with his stethoscope to listen to his heart. As the orderlies tried to restrain the combative dying man, the hospital’s first confirmed pandemic victim also bit one of them.
Before her dad came home, one of the other ER doctors cleaned the bite wound, bandaged him up and administered a shot of antibiotics. He had gone to bed before everyone else the previous night. He had cramps and was burning up with a high fever. The superficial bite wound on his abdomen was the least of his worries; he had a strong suspicion he was sick with the new flu pandemic. The man that had bitten him had shown identical symptoms to the ones he was suffering from. Keeping his distance just in case, he had said, “See you in the morning. I love you Brook and my little bird, Raven.”
The noises resumed downstairs. To Brook it sounded like someone was moving furniture around. She silently ushered her daughter into the adjoining bathroom and gingerly pulled the door shut.
On stocking feet, she crept along the upstairs hall to the closed door of her dad’s study. He kept an antique Ithaca shotgun displayed in his office on the wall behind his desk.
She found the closed office door unlocked. As she entered, the familiar smell of Dad’s personal quiet space greeted her: leather, tobacco and of course Old Spice aftershave. Happy memories of her childhood flooded her brain.
Everything was where she remembered it, a black leather swivel chair behind his big wooden desk, and two maroon red overstuffed leather pub chairs, one in each corner by the door. All types of artifacts filled every nook and cranny. Above the bronze wild bronco statue and world globe was Dad’s prized over and under Ithaca shotgun. Its pale walnut stock gleamed and the light from the hall reflected in the ornate etchings on the blued metal.
Cade had introduced her briefly to the basic workings of a firearm. They practiced a small amount of target shooting every time they went camping together.
Brook retrieved the shotgun and opened the breech. As she suspected, it was unloaded. After quietly rummaging through a couple of drawers, she found some loose shells. Carefully, she loaded both chambers. Then she descended the steps slowly one at a time. Loaded shotgun in hand, she went to investigate the noises, pausing on the bottom step to listen.
What she heard reminded her of a big dog greedily wolfing down wet canned dog food. Gun poised at the ready and safety off, she said, “Mom, Dad... is that you? I’ve got Dad’s shotgun, it’s loaded.”
She thought, I’ve lost the advantage now if there is an intruder in the house.
Just then a mournful, haunting moan came from the kitchen. The sound made her hair stand on end. She had an urge to flee but stood her ground between the kitchen and the dining room. Craning her head to the right, she could see the blood-splashed travertine tiles beyond the black granite island. It looked like a slaughterhouse floor. Making her way into the kitchen, she noticed that breakfast ingredients were on top of the island. Eggs were broken on the floor and a plastic gallon of milk rested on its side, most of the milk pooled on the floor.
A strong coppery odor hung in the air, overpowering her mom’s potpourri. The sight, smell and volume of blood caused Brook to gag. She could see a foot twitching on the other side of the island. She willed herself to put one foot in front of the other and cautiously rounded the corner enough to see the backside of her dad, still in his pajamas, tending to her mom.
Letting the barrel drop, she approached the scene frantically, calling out, “Dad, what happened to Mom? Did you call 911 yet?”
He rose slowly, turning towards her. She expected to see pain and anguish. Instead she saw his pale, slack face, bloody teeth and expressionless glassy eyes staring her down.
Leveling the gun without conscious thought at what used to be her father, Brook backpedaled. He came for her with a clumsy but determined, steady pace.
She had a feeling someone was watching her. Brook glanced back towards the bottom of the stairway where Raven, eyes wide as saucers, watched the horrifying events unfold.
Raven screamed “Grandpa!” as he neared the business end of his own shotgun.
Returning her attention to the advancing ghoul, Brook made the split second decision that saved their lives. She aimed for center mass, just as Cade had taught her. Brook pulled the trigger. The boom was deafening in the small hallway and the buck of the big gun caused her to fall back; the barrel rose and the buckshot blasted the creature in the neck and underneath the chin. Jaw bone and teeth disintegrated and its head whipped backward, impacting between the shoulder blades before tearing free, falling and rolling out of sight under the table. For a brief moment her dad’s body trembled, and then with a slow motion tilting movement like a felled tree, the headless body smacked onto the tile floor like an unconscious boxer hitting the canvas.
Brook rushed around the island. What she saw sickened her. There was barely enough of her mom’s neck left to feel for a pulse. Brook’s training as a nurse dictated she check anyway. Putting the shotgun aside, she checked a wrist and found no pulse.
She fell to her knees next to her mom, crying uncontrollably. After allowing herself a moment of mourning Brook pulled herself together, grabbed the phone and called 911. She got a recording saying all circuits were busy. She tried repeatedly, never getting anything but the same recording.
Brook bolted from the house with her daughter in tow and together they went next door.