Suddenly, we heard the faintest of whimpers. It was barely audible, but there. A soft orange glow illuminated the hallway, seeping from the crack of a hardly-opened doorway just ahead. It was enough for us to quicken our pace and burst into the room.
Kyle moaned out loud and left the room while I stood paralyzed. There was Peter and all the children surrounding a fire built in a barrel. They were eating… pieces… of something that once were human. I could only guess who it was they were piling into their gaping mouths. Several pairs of eyes followed my movements as I dropped the severed finger to the floor. I thought I knew these people, but never expected this. I’d heard stories of cannibalism from the inner part of the city, but never foresaw this horror.
“Jackson?” Peter’s faint voice picked up from around the fire.
I was in a pure daze and couldn’t hear the rest of what he was saying. The scene was too gruesome. Body parts lay close to the fire while others roasted in the heat. My stomach rolled as the smell finally hit me. I wanted to leave but couldn’t, as if my feet were glued down. I dropped the shotgun and looked at each child, wondering how they could commit such an act. One of them started crying, softly at first, until bursting into full tears. Soon the others joined in.
“What the hell…,” I trailed off, holding down vomit. “What is this?” There was no way of understanding this, yet I still needed some sort of answer.
Peter turned his eyes to the fire before bringing them back up to me. That's when I noticed how sunken his eyes had become. His skin was stretched over bones. He looked weak and defeated. Peter pushed himself around the fire and stood beside me.
“She,” Peter dropped his head and whispered. “Zoe said…” Peter got chocked up and his legs swayed side to side. He could barely hold himself up and placed a skeletal hand on my arm to steady himself. “This was our only way. She tried killing herself a little a while ago, to make it easier on us…” Peter’s voice cracked while the children cried louder.
I thought back to the bloody sheets in Zoe’s bedroom, to the patch of blood in the entryway. She’d tried to end her life, but apparently had failed. One of the kids came running forward and picked up the severed finger, and cradled it like it was precious. It was Joanne, with her violet purple eyes. She returned to the others, crying and wailing.
“So you, you, you…” I stuttered and squinted, trying to comprehend. The idea was so unfamiliar, so troubling. I turned around, away from everything. I didn’t want to comprehend.
“Zoe said it was the only way. We tried to find food. We foraged for weeks. People Downtown don’t care. They have their own rations and stores, but nothing else. There is just so little left up here, you know…” Peter said, choking up for a second. “They were getting so weak. Look, I know. I know this isn’t right. But there was nothing else.”
“She… was… going… to… turn… tomorrow,” Joanne managed through sobs.
“What?” I asked, eyeing the girl. Joanne didn’t speak another word.
“She was turning tomorrow,” Peter explained. “She said she didn’t want to leave us unless it was on her own terms. She said it was ok.” Peter struggled to cling to my arm. He was shaking terribly and his legs trembled, threatening to send him crashing to the ground.
“Her twenty-sixth birthday…?” I trailed off. I thought she was younger than that. I didn’t realize she was so close to my age, and to the turning. But still, to do this to someone was disconnected from everything I knew about family. Guilt welled within me as I remained disjointed. We had supplies to last them some time, if we’d only known about their situation. If I’d shared some supplies this might have never happened.
“The gunshot?” I asked, already knowing the answer. If she’d tried to shoot herself, then a shot from a pistol would be quick and hopefully painless. I just didn’t know how they could eat her. I looked around at the children’s tear-streaked faces, noticing out boney they were, and how terrible their breathing had become.
Peter began crying, matching the others in the room. The children gathered to their feet and huddled around him. It was too much. I left the room without as much as a glance back. I wanted out of this hell and grabbed Kyle on my way back to the stairs.
Chapter 4: It Begins
The rest of the day passed by in flashes of dismembered body parts and ambient smells. Nothing felt solid or real. The ground shook but didn’t move, and it was cold outside even with the sun at its peak. Olivia talked, but I couldn’t hear her. Everything buzzed but I was stuck, lifeless, in the most silent world that had ever existed. I was broken.
I did my best to put on a smiling face as I tucked Olivia away for the night before returning to the outside world. I took a seat on the cement just outside the door. I wouldn’t sleep tonight; I didn’t think Kyle would either. Too many images were cascading through my mind.
Instead, I tried to focus my attention on the sky. Bright little specks sparkled in the darkness. A full moon hung just near the center of the sky. Somehow it eased my mind. I returned inside and made sure to double-check the locks on the door.
Striding into the living room, I crashed on the couch, my legs aching and my mind shot. That familiar, musty smell of the house thankfully replaced the odor of burnt flesh my mind kept fixated on. I was used to the silence of the room, but now it reminded me of the same quietness at the Palmer’s. I needed to do something to distract myself.
I lit the globe inside a nearby lantern. The shallow light enveloped the room, and I felt much better. I kept a few old binders underneath the couch that were filled with clippings and pictures from someone else’s life. I reached without looking and grabbed the first one that touched my fingers. I tossed the brown, leather binder into my lap and opened it to the first page.
I had remembered how to read not long after The Forgetting, something that most in this city had not been able to achieve. The words on the front page weren’t exactly foreign, but they also didn’t hold much meaning, at least to me. The words on the flap read:
To Julie,
From the first moment to our last,
I will always love you.
The second page held photographs. There was a couple in each picture, smiling and holding the other. They were young in the first couple pages, but as I went on they aged before my eyes, a lifetime captured in photographs. I saw the beginning of a relationship, the middle, the end. In one picture they were up in the air somehow, lights of blue, purple, and pink flashing in the background as they looked down upon a lake or a river. In another they had the sun setting behind them. The glare was strong in the photo but I could still see them laughing. Further in the book they were in strange outfits and shoving cake in each other’s faces. I had no idea what that one was about, but it seemed fun nonetheless.
Flipping through another couple pages I saw them holding a baby. The woman, now a mother, was exhausted and hooked up to some kind of machine. Again I was confused, but I didn’t really need to understand. The next few photographs were when everything changed. Something was wrong. The lady was still hooked up to tubes and things, but she was bald and looked sick. Soon it was only pictures of the father with the little girl.
I grasped the side of my head and felt a headache coming on. These weird, mini migraines happened so often I knew this was going to be a bad one. Gently laying the photo album on the couch, I cradled my head with both hands just before the blistering pain overcame my senses. My vision blurred and even the back of my eyes hurt. It passed rather quickly, but it left an overwhelming need to fall over.