I don’t even scream. I can’t. Nothing comes out of my mouth but a heave of air, a little whistle, and I stumble back. It’s a foot. A bare, dirty foot. The toenails are painted purple. Some of the toes are missing. The towel it was tangled in is stained rust with blood. The foot itself is dried, sort of rubbery-looking.
Someone’s foot’s in the dryer, someone’s bare and naked foot, and there’s no way of telling if it belonged to someone normal or a Connie, no way of knowing what happened to the rest of the person. Then I’m trying hard to scream again, but nothing’s coming. Now I see blood I didn’t notice before, because it goes around behind the row of washers in the center of the room. Streaks of it, gone brown. Clots and thick puddles of it. The trail leads from the dryer to the door in the back of the laundry room I’ve always thought led to a supply closet. There’s no way I’m looking inside it. Just because I can defend myself, just because I have in the past, doesn’t mean I want to do it again. I grab my laundry basket, thinking stupid, stupid to care, but knowing it’s all we have, and if I leave it behind, someone will steal it and we’ll have nothing.
I’m halfway down the hall when the ladies’ room door flies open, outward. It knocks the basket out of my hands. I’m already dropping to my knees to try and stop the clothes from scattering, and that’s what saves me from getting punched in the face by the Connie stumbling out the door that was supposed to be locked.
“Unnnngh,” it says. “Unnggghmmmffff.”
It can’t talk. It can hardly walk, and from my place on the floor, I see why. It’s missing a foot. The other has a sneaker on it, but the bare, shredded stump is dragging behind it as it lurches out of the darkness and slaps at me.
I roll.
The knife. It’s in my pocket. I can’t reach it, not on my back, with laundry bulked in piles underneath me and my leg twisted behind me so far, it’ll take only another inch before it snaps. The Connie shambles forward on its one good foot and the stump of the other. That’s what they do. They shamble. They moan. They’re like every worst thing anyone ever saw in those old zombie movies. It’s just like that.
Except it’s not undead or reanimated. It doesn’t need a head shot to drop it. A kick to the gut will double it over, and I give it one, wincing as my sneaker connects with soft tissue, and it lets out another wordless grunt.
If they feel pain, they don’t show it. They don’t react. They just keep moving, keep going after their target. That’s why when the Contamination began, everyone mistakenly assumed the people getting up off the ground after being shot or stabbed or run into by cars were the undead, rising. This one doesn’t even grimace when I kick it again and again. I don’t understand how it can even stand upright on the shredded remains of its ankle, after the loss of all that blood. I roll again, finding my knife and opening the blade, which is laughable. It’s only a few inches long.
It turns out to be long enough.
The Connie’s eye squelches like a grape speared by a fork when I shove the blade into it. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t stop coming after me, even though its eye is leaking down its cheek and it has to at least be partially blinded. And because I had to get so close in order to stab it, now it’s got me in its stiff-fingered grip. Relentless.
It snaps at me, teeth bared. Spit flies. I know even if it bites me, I won’t get Contaminated, but that doesn’t stop me from screaming. It smells bad, like blood and puke and other things. It’s a nightmare in front of me, all teeth and blood and ooze. Hands that are too strong, desperate enough to pinch and clutch, no matter how hard I try to get away.
It’s going for my throat when Mrs. Wentling’s son, Jerry, yanks it off me. Its shirt tears down the back, but he’s got a good enough grip to throw it against the wall so hard, its head dents the plaster and leaves a bloody hole. The Connie falls to its knees. The bloody stump has left smears all over the floor. It has a piece of my sweatshirt in its palm, and I put a shaking hand on the hole in the cloth where I can now feel a cold breeze.
Jerry kicks it in the face with one of his huge, steel-toed boots. I might get annoyed when he clomps those boots up and down the stairs, but they turn out to be useful… except I don’t want to watch him kick in the face of the person who’d attacked me.
Because they are people, no matter what they’re doing or what they’ve done. They’re just people who can’t control their impulses or the natural aggression every person has inside.
We all have it. Upstairs I wanted to punch Mrs. Wentling in the face because I was angry—I didn’t, because I knew it was wrong. But the Contaminated don’t know it’s wrong. They don’t know anything except the need to grab and reach and kick and bite.
They’re not zombies, they’re just people.
I turn from the sickening crunch of bone and blood. Jerry kicks until the thing on the floor is nothing but a pile of broken bones and rags. He keeps going long after I’d have stopped. Then finally he stops, breathing hard, his greasy hair hanging over his face.
“You okay?” He spits to the side and swipes at his mouth. His jaw’s a little slack, but then, it usually is.
The Connie doesn’t even make a sound. I nod. I never thought I’d have to be grateful to Jerry, or that I’d want to do something so gross, like kiss him, but right then I sort of do. Not because he’s cute or anything, but because if this were a movie, he’d have come to my rescue and I’d fall in love with him.
Thank God it’s not a movie.
Jerry’s eyes are bright. In the old days, before even my mom and dad’s time, he’d have been called a hood. A rebel without a cause. But there’s nothing like James Dean about Jerry, who can’t blame the Contamination as the reason he didn’t graduate from high school or why he always has grease under his fingernails or why he steals cars and sells drugs and kicks puppies. He’d have been that way even if the world hadn’t broken. He reaches a hand to help me up, though, and I take it.
I’m shaky, but not crying. I listen for the sound of sirens. There are always cops around. If not cops, soldiers. And even if they’d handled the situation just like Jerry did, it would be okay for them. Not for us. The civil rights groups, the same ones that rallied for the release of the Connies from the labs, have made that a fact. Jerry seems to know what I’m thinking.
“We’ll take care of it. Me and my buddies.” He jerks a thumb toward the door. “We were just getting home when I heard you scream. We’ll get rid of it.”
Jerry’s been in trouble with the cops more than once. If he wants to take care of things…
“Thanks.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. I sound old and tired. Creaky.
I bend to gather up my laundry. He doesn’t help. I think he’s checking out my butt, though, and that gives me the creeps. I don’t look at the Connie on the floor. I can’t. I’ll barf or cry or worse, maybe do nothing. Maybe I won’t even be moved to any emotion at all but vicious relief.
“Thanks,” I say again, and edge past him with my still-dirty laundry piled high.
I leave the knife behind.
FOUR
OPAL ANSWERS THE DOOR WITH SLEEPY eyes and rumpled hair. She doesn’t ask me about the laundry, just stumbles off to the bedroom we share and flops facedown onto her bed. I don’t have the heart to scold her for not asking who was at the door before she opened it. I lock everything up behind us and tuck her in before I take the basket into the bathroom.
I start the shower. The water takes forever to heat, even on the highest setting, and I won’t have enough for anything more than what my dad used to call “pits and privates,” but I’m not turning it on so I can get in. I just want it to mask the sound of my sobs. I’m shaking. Rocking. And I still can’t cry. I want the hitch and burn of my breath in my throat, the salty taste, my eyes to blur and swell, my nose to drip thick snot. Crying makes me ugly. But I don’t care. It’s all right to be ugly every once in a while. I need to just be ugly sometimes.