Chapter 8 - Waverly
Three Years Ago
I never found out why there was smoke in the distance, hovering over the city like some menacing cloud that promised an imminent storm that would soon destroy us all. Perhaps it was an explosion? Maybe someone tried to set a building full of those grey people on fire? It didn’t matter. Hattie was driving us as far away from the city as possible. She tried calling her husband, Charles, but there was no answer. She stared straight ahead, her eyes wide as we moved forward, but I knew she was worried that something might have happened to her family.
I felt sick about my own family. My mom…my dad. I used Hattie’s phone to try and call my sister, but I got no answer. For a couple of minutes, we listened to the radio as she drove, but it was all the same. No one knew what was happening, and all the reports said that it seemed to be a virus that had affected people. Hattie switched it off and we rode in silence the rest of the way to her house.
I never knew that she lived almost forty-five minutes away, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I had always just assumed that she had a house somewhere within Oakridge. It was small, but comfortable. A giant oak tree in the front yard shaded most of the property, and Charles’ truck was parked in the driveway. We looked in every direction to make sure none of those grey things were lurking around before we got out.
Hattie ran toward the front porch, but before she reached it, Charles and their son came out to meet her. Both of them held a rifle in their hands.
“Are you all right?” Charles asked her, hugging her tightly. “I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour.”
“So have I,” she said, “but I haven’t been able to get through.”
“Who’s this?” Charles asked as I walk toward the porch.
“This is Waverly,” Hattie said.
Charles nodded at me and then looked at Hattie.
She shook her head. “She doesn’t have any place to go,” she whispered, though I could still hear her.
Charles nodded again and smiled at me, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It seemed like pity as he motioned for me to come toward the porch. “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Let’s get inside,” he said.
I looked at Hattie’s son and did my best to smile at him, but my heart wasn’t in it. I had met him a couple of years before when he had been with his mom and she had to drop something off at our house. He was about my age, maybe a year older. He had a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. The gun he carried seemed too big for him, but he carried it like he knew how to use it.
“Have you seen one of those things in person?” he asked as we walked through the door.
“Yeah,” I said. “They are scary.” I didn’t want to talk about it, but I had to accept that this would be talked about non-stop for a long time, wouldn’t it? This was the kind of thing that would be the top new story on every station for months. They would be debating over and over. Was this a terrorist attack? Was it a virus? Would there ever be a way to fix this problem? Someone would find a fix or a cure eventually, but it would be too late for my family.
Charles locked the door behind us and stood for a moment, looking at each of us in turn. “We don’t open the door for anyone,” he said. “We keep the blinds drawn and keep the noise minimal. Nobody should be interested in our place.” He took a deep breath and looked at me. “We will be safe here tonight.”
I swallow and look at the floor, avoiding his stare. I don’t want to be around anyone, but I have no choice. To be alone is to be in danger.
I nearly jump when I hear my name.
“Waverly,” Charles said. “In case Hattie hasn’t ever told you, I’m Charles.” He motioned to his son. “And this is Lucas.”
I didn’t want to watch the news but it seemed there was nothing else to do. Hattie sat on one couch next to Charles while I sat on another with Lucas, a cushion between us. The television screen glowed with images of these grey people and I found myself having to turn away more often than not. Hattie looked at me a few times, but I just pretended not to notice. She tried to ask Charles to turn it off but he shushed her and said important information might come up.
The world was becoming chaotic and they were calling it an outbreak of a new, unknown virus. The news anchors weren’t certain how to explain it, but they interviewed all kinds of scientists to try. One of the interviews was particularly interesting in which they spoke with a professor who lived in the epicenter of this outbreak.
“We have with us Professor Jeremiah Adams, from the University of Elkhorn on the phone with us,” one of the news anchors said. “First we want to ask, are you in a safe place?”
“Yes I am,” the professor said.
“Now, from what we understand, it has been determined that this sickness, this virus, originated around the university at one of your labs, is that correct?”
“I have several high-tech labs with a lot of people using them,” the professor explained.
“Is it not true that there was a shooting at one of your labs and that many infected rats escaped more than a week ago?”
“The shooting is still under investigation, and I don’t know enough about the rats to comment,” the professor said.
“Is it not true that the officers investigating your labs were killed as a result of the virus?”
“This has been a tragic situation,” the professor explained. “The sickness has caused the death of many people already and the problem is that it is spreading. I don’t know enough about the officers, and no one has contacted me directly about it. I am here and ready to help in any way that I can.”
“Can you confirm that it is a virus?”
“I cannot, but it would seem that it is,” Professor Adams said. “I have not been able to take a look at any of the rats or people that seemed to have contracted the sickness, but I have been able to make the same observations that you have. It seems that the sickness is not airborne, but passed by saliva or blood. Once someone or something has the sickness, they seemingly die and reanimate. That’s when they desire to eat living flesh and their skin turns grey. When these greyskins see someone or something living, they attack.”
“Greyskins,” the news anchor said. “Why do you call them greyskins?”
There is a slight pause before the professor answers. “It’s a crude term to describe what they look like."
“In your professional opinion, do you think we will find a cure for these sick people? The greyskins?”
“I fear that the greyskins are already dead,” the professor said. “But I think that one day soon we will be able to find a way to eradicate the problem. But for now, people need to gather supplies and rely on each other to stay alive. The most important thing is that you have a safe place to stay.”
I didn’t care about some scientist who was near the start of it all. The news people were just looking for some answers, someone to blame maybe. I knew there was no one to blame. Looking for answers felt meaningless. Hearing this Professor Abrams, or Adams…whichever he was…did nothing more than add to the endless questions people might have had.
I got up and walked into the kitchen to get some water. When I filled the glass and brought it to my mouth, I could see that my hands were shaking. I didn’t feel fear. I didn’t even feel loss - that would come later. I guess in that moment all I felt was shock. It was as if I didn’t believe any of it was actually happening. I couldn’t believe that I heard my father die over the phone. I couldn’t believe that I saw my own mother’s blood seeping through the crack of the door. I couldn’t believe that I had been chased by the…what did that scientist call them? Greyskins?
It was a name that fit. I had been calling them grey people, but greyskins seemed right. They were less than people. They were sick animals. To call those monsters people gave them too much credit.
“Are you all right?”
Lucas’ voice startled me and I turned quickly, spilling water on the floor at the same time. “Yeah,” I said, grabbing a rag from the counter to wipe up the mess. “I just…I don’t know.”
“The greyskins,” Lucas said, staring past me as though he were deep in thought. “I suppose the news stations like the name. That’s what they’re calling them now.”
“Have you seen them?” I asked Lucas.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t really want to though.” He pulled a chair out at the table. “Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“I don’t think I’m very hungry,” I said as I sat.
“Dad seems to believe that this thing will last longer than people think,” he said, pulling down a jar of peanut butter from a cabinet.
“Why does he think that?” I asked.
“They say it has been going on for a week and has just spread like a forest fire. It’s hard to contain something like that.” He pulled out the bread and started to spread the peanut butter thickly onto one of the slices. He then walked to the refrigerator and grabbed a jar of jelly and applied it to the other slice of bread. “Dad thinks we should be safe out here, though I’m not so sure. We’re so close to everything. If as many people out there are infected as they say, we aren’t safe.” He put the jelly back in the refrigerator then grabbed the milk and poured a glass. When he finally set the sandwich and milk in front of me, he sat at the table and looked deep into my eyes. “But I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe with me.”
I wanted to tell him that no one was safe no matter what, but instead I just took a bite of the sandwich. I remember it being strange not being able to taste it. It was as if my mind was so preoccupied with the events of the day that I didn’t even know I was eating.
“They crashed into my house,” I said. “Doors and windows won’t keep them out if they are determined to get in.” I could feel my eyes sting with water, but I just took another bite of the sandwich to distract myself.
“Are you scared?” he asked. At first I thought he was taunting me cruelly, but then I saw the sincerity in his face. His light-colored eyebrows crinkled and his blue eyes stared into me as though he were trying to read my thoughts.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Me too,” he said. “But there is nothing wrong with that.”
I took a bite of the sandwich, but it wasn’t enough of a distraction to stop the tears that began down my cheeks. One after the other, the water flowed like a fountain. I set the sandwich on the table in front of me and let my head fall into my hands. My body shook as I sobbed there in the kitchen, but it was only a second or two before I felt Lucas’ strong arms wrap around my shoulders.
“It’s okay to cry,” he said. “It’s okay to cry.”
I didn’t know how long he held me. I couldn't remember much after that until I woke up on the living room couch with a pillow under my head and blankets tucked around me. It was night time and everyone seemed to be gone. I jerked upward and looked around the living room and that’s when I saw Lucas on the floor just a few feet away. He slept soundly on top of some blankets, his breath going in and out slowly. Hattie and Charles must have been asleep in their bedroom.
I was happy that the television wasn’t still on. I was tired of seeing the images of the greyskins eating people. I was weary of hearing about all the death. I wiped away the crusted tears around my eyes and sat up on the couch for a moment. My stomach rumbled and I realized that I was very hungry. The few bites of sandwich that I had eaten must not have been enough for me.
I got up and walked into the kitchen, being mindful not to turn on any of the lights for fear of being noticed. I saw that Lucas or someone must have wrapped my sandwich in plastic wrap and left it sitting neatly on the counter. I took it and sat at the table. As I unwrapped it, I noticed that some of the jelly had bled through the white of the bread. Something resembling the feeling of a grin formed at the corner of my mouth. That was my favorite way to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When I was little, my sister and I would make them and add extra jelly. We would then wrap them up only to eat them hours later when the bread was completely soaked on one side. It was always best when it was so wet with jelly that we couldn’t even taste the bread.
The sandwich felt like sweet memories, but the memories only made me feel sick inside. I took another bite and started to get up to make another glass of milk when something made me freeze in my tracks. A shadow moved slowly behind the blinds of the window above the sink. I licked some jelly off my thumb as I tiptoed to the window and peeked through the blinds. It was all I could do to stifle a gasp.
One…two…three… I counted eight greyskins in the front yard alone. My hands began to shake again. I dropped my hand from the blinds and snuck back into the living room. I knelt over Lucas carefully and shook him.
He sat up suddenly and wiped his eyes. “What is it?” he whispered.
“The greyskins are here,” I said.
He stared at me for a long moment before the information seemed to register. Then he threw the covers off of him and quietly went to wake his parents. Within a minute we were all in the living room holding a gun. I held the pistol close to my chest, though I felt that my hands shook too much for me to be very effective.
Lucas and his parents stared through cracks in the blinds as I sat on the couch, trying to calm my nerves.
“Incredible,” I heard Charles whisper. “They barely seem alive at all, but they are moving around.”
“That’s just it,” Hattie said. “They aren’t alive.” She left the window and sat on the couch across from me. “Waverly and I shot them in the chest enough to kill any normal person. These things didn’t even notice that we hit them.”
Charles stared at her with creased eyebrows. “You mean, they can’t die?”
“They can,” she said. “You just have to shoot them in the head. Destroy whatever brain function they might have that keeps them going. Waverly and I finally managed to kill one today.”
Charles nodded thoughtfully and turned back to the window, but this time he let out a gasp.
“Don’t move!” Hattie whispered a little too loudly.
Charles stood like a statue as he found himself face-to-face with a greyskin at the window. The creature stared into the glass, tilting its head from side to side almost as if to study what it was looking at. I could see Charles holding his breath, but he couldn’t hold it forever. With each little breath, the window began to fog.
I don’t know what it was - a twitch, a noise - but the greyskin went ballistic, letting out a loud groan as it smashed its hand through the glass and reached for Charles’ shirt. The greyskin had taken him by surprise and it latched on to him, pulling him forward against the glass. Hattie brought up her gun, but hesitated because she feared she might hit her husband. Charles tried to wrench free and Lucas jumped forward to grab his father, but the greyskin had a good hold on him. It pulled Charles forward until his torso was pressed against the broken glass, the edges cutting into his skin.
“Shoot it!” he yelled, “shoot it!”
I jumped forward, standing next to Charles as I brought the handgun in front of the greyskin and shot it through the forehead. Charles instantly fell back onto Lucas as the creature’s arms and fingers went limp. Blood covered Charles’ chest, stomach and arms.
“We have to get to the truck,” he said as he pulled himself up.
“Charles, you’re bleeding everywhere!” Hattie said.
“It’s nothing too deep,” he said reaching down for his rifle. “And it didn’t bite me, so I can’t be infected.”
A crash at another window jolted us to attention. Hattie lifted her gun and shot the greyskin through the brain, but it was only replaced by more. They were starting to surround the house.
It felt like earlier when I was at my own house: a reserved panic. Hattie had thought that her house had been isolated enough to escape this virus, this sickness that plagued mankind. But this only confirmed that there never had been an escape and to think so was foolish.
The four of us rushed to the front of the house. Hattie looked through the kitchen window at the driveway only to report that there were at least five between us and the truck. A glance down the short hallway showed us that there was no other way out as the greyskins tore into the living room through the windows. Their moaning and hissing reached my ears and their stench violated my nostrils. Lucas held his gun ready and swung the front door open. He stopped for just a moment to take aim at a greyskin that noticed him and shot it in the head. I shot two down, and Hattie shot the other two as Charles fumbled for his keys and got into the front of the truck. Hattie yelled for Lucas and me to hop into the back as she got into the passenger side. The greyskins from the other side of the house were coming after us, but Charles was already tearing out of the driveway.
Without food, without shelter, and with limited ammunition, we hurried away from another home.
It was afternoon of the next day when we realized that Charles needed more than stitches. He needed a cure for the greyskin virus.
“But I don’t know how it happened,” he said through labored breaths as he sat in the bed of the truck. Sweat poured from his brow and cheeks. His eyes that had been watering were now discharging thick mucous and turning a darker shade. He was turning into one of them.
“Don’t try to talk sweetie,” Hattie said as she squeezed his hand.
“Don’t try to stop me,” he said through clenched teeth.
I looked at Lucas who sat on the edge of the bed, looking down and showing little emotion. He stared with wide eyes and an open mouth as if what he saw before him wasn’t real. I wished that it wasn’t. I wished that all of this was just some horrible nightmare.
“Could the scratches have done it?” Charles asked. He held up his arms and revealed several long, deep cuts running from his elbows to his wrists. “I thought they had to bite you.”
Hattie shook her head as she stroked Charles’ hair.
“You three have to get out of here,” Charles said, dropping his hands. He pushed himself upward so he could sit up straighter. “Somebody give me a gun.”
“What?”
“I’m not about to turn into one of those things, Hattie,” he said. “You’ve seen the news. There’s no cure. If I wait it out I’ll be one of those things by tonight. Give me a gun.”
Hattie’s hands were shaking and Lucas was still staring, but Charles knew what needed to be done, and so did I. I walked to the side of the truck and gave him my handgun. He looked at me through his filmy eyes and nodded, taking the gun from me. He started to scoot out of the bed of the truck, but Hattie tried to keep him back. She wanted him to lie down, to rest. I had never seen Hattie in such despair. She had always seemed so strong. Now she looked broken. Charles shoved her away as he got to his feet out of the truck. He looked at me first.
“You need to drive,” he said. “I don’t know if these two will be in any shape to do it.”
The instruction took me by surprise. I had never legally driven before. I was still two years from getting a license, but I nodded anyway. It was probably safer for me to drive than it was for a crying Hattie, or shocked Lucas.
“Hattie, Lucas, come with me,” he said.
I stepped away from the truck out of respect. The oddest feeling came over me in that moment. For a brief second, I felt jealous of Hattie and Lucas. What they were going through was horrendous, of course, but at least they got to say goodbye to the person they loved. The only goodbye I got from my loved ones was a scream from the other end of the phone and blood seeping through the basement door. But how much worse would it be to see them still alive and having to say goodbye? Perhaps it was easier for me. Maybe if I were in their shoes, I would be jealous of the person that didn’t have to say goodbye to anyone.
I never want to say goodbye to anyone ever again, I thought. I just want this all to be over soon.