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  I didn’t file for bankruptcy, although I might have been able to, considering his medical bills near the end were outrageous. The plus in the entire scheme of things was that my kids qualified for good financial aid, and so, even though they’d have to take out student loans, they wouldn’t have to be burdened by too many. And, after another year of working two jobs, I no longer needed to and quit the part-time one. That was the beginning of summer, just before my daughter graduated from high school.

  I had one more summer with my kids, only this time, when they weren’t working their summer jobs, they and I did lots of things together. We went to the movies, went out to eat on occasion, went to visit the grandparents.

  And now they were gone, back to school, only my son was working on a master’s degree now and my daughter was a freshman. So I had the empty nest feeling on top of how I’d been feeling already.

  I’d been feeling hollow since late August when they’d left, and I’d taken to sitting on the porch again.

  I almost wished I had a cigarette.

  I’d smoked for a lot of those years. It had been a dumb decision, really, but I’d justified it at the time. Smoking seemed to be beneficial—it helped me stay awake when I needed to work extra hours; it helped curb my appetite so I wouldn’t eat as much and the kids could have more food; it seemed to keep me calm and on an even keel, especially at times when I thought I was going to crumble. But Darren had begged me to quit, hadn’t wanted me to slowly kill myself.

  Which was probably in reality what I’d been doing. Oh, I’d wanted to believe I was a strong woman, but I was really collapsing under the weight of it all. Cigarettes were a slow death, a legal one, and I’d still be able to see my kids to adulthood. But my husband’s words made sense and, coupled with the requests from my kids, I agreed and fought through withdrawal to give them up.

  I learned then that maybe I was stronger than I’d given myself credit for.

  But since the kids had left for college again, I’d taken to sitting on the porch once more, the place where I used to suck down a quick smoke before heading in the house to do a load of laundry before hitting the hay or before I’d wash the dishes with the kids’ help before heading to the second job. So this porch and I had a long history. I felt comfortable there, usually more comfortable than I did inside. The porch was my place. I’d be out there when it was one-hundred-one degrees and the sun had been beating down or in the dead of winter when the snow was ankle deep and the biting wind was blowing, slashing at my face. It was my spot, my haven, the one place where I could be by myself before being a mother, wife, worker, and housekeeper. Inside used to be filled with laughing kids or, later on, studying kids, kids on the phone or kids fighting over who got to use our shared laptop. And it had usually also been filled with my husband, whose life slowly wasted away, year after year as he got sicker and sicker.

  Yes, I felt much better outside.

  The vibes tonight, though, were strange. There was something in the air, something I couldn’t put my finger on.

  I was too weary to worry, too sad to care. It was mid-October, and I wouldn’t see my kids till Thanksgiving. All I had was me, my memories, and my crushed dreams, and I wasn’t sure how to pick up the pieces so I could finish living my life. I hoped contemplating in my spot would give me some answers.

  It had to at some point.

  Chapter Two

  Past

  “Fatal Passion” – Lita Ford

  IT WAS EARLY fall. I was a senior in high school—the year of my first job, my first taste of Hot Pockets, the first time I heard Twisted Sister. I’d started out the year feeling a little irritated with my teachers. They’d told us they expected us to behave like adults, but they continued to treat us like children. I was so ready to lose the shackles of that learning institution in favor of giving adulthood a real try.

  But by the time October rolled around, I’d settled back into the routine, ready to enjoy the last year of my youth, prepared to work my ass off so I could get into a decent college. I knew I had to keep up the good grades, even while working part-time and participating in plays. Boys? Well, I’d had my eye on several of them throughout my high school years, but I was the girl who was just a friend. I didn’t know how to remedy that¸ and—even though I wasn’t shy exactly—I wasn’t outgoing when it came to flirting. I didn’t have the first clue about how to attract a boy, and so I’d put up a front. I tried to act like it didn’t matter and like I didn’t have any secret crushes. I thought it kept me safe.

  Oh, but that acting career I was working on? I was probably a little too good at putting out the disinterested vibes.

  Yeah, most definitely, because no boys were beating a path to my door. Hell, they weren’t even sauntering up to it. Not even one.

  That was okay, because I knew it wouldn’t be like that forever. I went to a small school, but in a year, I’d be attending a university somewhere far away from home, somewhere where I could start fresh and explore my attractions. I just had to sit tight.

  Anyway, one Saturday night, I and my theater buddies—some of the folks involved in our current production—decided to go to the movies. The cool thing about being in the theater program was that it made anyone at school a potential friend—seniors and freshmen would hang out together without giving it a second thought. We had a common interest and, even though the freshmen were a titch on the immature side, they were still friends, and we had a common goal.

  It has been so long, I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but I do know that a bunch of us were standing in the lobby talking, trying to decide which movie to go to. Our freshman and sophomore friends were too young to get into an R movie (a couple of them could pass, but most of them were too fresh-faced), so we needed to choose one of the ones that were rated PG. We were talking with a group of band kids, and that was when I saw him…a guy I’d never seen before but who allegedly attended my school. He had heavy-lidded dark green eyes and the fullest lips I’d ever noticed on a boy before. He had a firm jaw and red hair—not fire red but a subtle red, close to brown. His gaze, though…it reflected what I was feeling. I was smitten. And then he opened his mouth and I felt my heart skip a beat—he had a beautiful voice, not too deep but masculine and smooth. We talked about—what, I don’t remember. I hardly remember anything about that night except for two things. The first? I was in love. Okay, maybe not real love but I liked this boy about as intensely as a person could after a simple five-minute conversation. Two? He asked my name, not once, but twice. That had to be good, right?

  And two days later, when I wasn’t even thinking about him anymore, the phone at our little house rang. My mom came to my room and said a boy was on the phone for me. I think she was as shocked as I was, because boys never called and asked to talk to me. Not even my friends who were guys. That just didn’t happen. She said the boy on the phone asked for Gina, not Nina. Yeah, that was him. He’d asked twice and still gotten it wrong.

  Maybe that should have been my first clue that it just wasn’t meant to be.

  Chapter Three

  Present

  “Living Dead Girl” – Rob Zombie

  EVER SINCE THE kids had left for college, I’d fallen into a routine. I’d get up, go to work, come home, sit on the porch and reflect for a while, then go inside, force myself to eat a little something (although I hadn’t cooked since the kids had left, so it was sometimes a carrot or an apple, but usually something microwaved when I felt up to the effort), and then go to bed. I was hanging on by a thread, forcing myself to stay alive, but there was no zest, no real purpose to life. My kids had flown the nest and my husband was gone. I stayed because I knew my kids would still need me here and there, but I couldn’t feel excited about anything.

  I couldn’t even remember the last time I smiled. Really smiled. Not the fake smile I gave people at work or at the store.

  I was going through the motions. I’d talk to the kids on the phone once a week from their respective colleges, bu
t I didn’t do Skype. It was easier pretending everything was okay when I didn’t have to look in their eyes. It did my heart good to know they were both going on with their lives, finding meaning and purpose and even happiness. It made me feel like my husband and I had done a good job.

  I was tired of being here, though. I’d worked so hard my whole life and for what? To be left alone with nothing and no one…and I was done.

  Yeah, I had my parents, but now that I didn’t have to lean on them as much anymore and they had both retired, they spent a lot of time traveling. I was glad for that too, because I was tired of acting like everything was okay. My brother and his family lived in Nebraska, so it was the same with them—I didn’t have to put on an act if they weren’t there to see it. In retrospect, I know that isolating myself from the ones I loved only made it worse, but I was afraid of somehow infecting them with my bad vibes…or making them feel as down as I was or even of them trying to pull me out of the morass. I didn’t want to feel better. I’d spent too much of my life being the optimistic one. I was the mom and wife and friend and worker with the good attitude, the helpful words to give someone else a boost, the chipper gal who always smiled, even when the chips were down. I always had a happy expression on my face, tried to keep up a can-do attitude, and I was willing to do whatever it took (whether it was work, volunteering at my kids’ school, seeking new medical advice for my husband)…and today I was tired. I didn’t want to do or try anymore.

  I didn’t even want to be.

  I had lived so long for my husband and children, I forgot how to live for myself. I was struggling to find a way.

  So there I sat on my porch one Thursday evening, quiet, looking around the neighborhood. Things felt a little off, but I just assumed it was my mediocre mood tainting everything I felt and saw of late. The leaves had begun dropping off the trees in my front lawn, one by one, and the early evenings were getting chillier, but I wasn’t ready to give up my reflecting time—not yet.

  Although Larry Dingel, my neighbor across the street, often made it a challenge. He’d pulled his king-cab pickup truck into their driveway earlier and waved at me when he’d gotten out and walked in the house. Yeah, they had a garage but never used it for vehicles. I figured it was much like my house—too much crap to cram inside, so the garage was for storage. That was what I used my attic for, but I was planning to get rid of all the extra junk when I felt like tackling the task. It was stuff I never used and, therefore, didn’t need, but time has a way of slipping by, and getting rid of clutter isn’t a priority…not when you have birth, growth, and death going on around you.

  During the summer, Larry would often walk up to my chain-link fence in the early evening, draping his arms on top of it, and chat about whatever was on his mind. He was a friendly guy and conversation was easy with him. Over the last few years, he and sometimes his wife Vera would inquire about Darren and the kids, asking if they could help with anything. My answer was always no. I felt bad enough imposing on my parents, let alone thoughtful neighbors, but it was nice knowing they were there if I ever needed it…because someday I might.

  Larry hadn’t had an early evening chat with me in a while, and I was sure it was due to dark skies falling earlier and cooler temperatures setting in, but this evening, after just a few moments inside, he walked back outdoors. He had a bag of garbage in his hand that he tossed into the outdoor trash barrel, and then he made his way across the street. I knew what that meant, so I lifted myself up and out of the chair and walked toward the fence, across the patch of dirt that had, at one time, been a lush, green lawn.

  “Evenin’, neighbor,” he called to me before we met at the fence. “Been a while.”

  “That is has,” I agreed. If we could keep the conversation to fluffy nothings like it was thus far, I’d be okay with that. I didn’t want to have to lie about how I’d been doing or what I hadn’t been up to. Maybe I could steer the talk in a harmless direction. “How’s work been going?”

  “Crazy. More dumb asses than usual.” Larry worked for the Sheriff’s Office as a guard in their detention facility and he always referred to the incarcerated as dumb asses. There were worse things he could have called them. His theory was that people who were caught were the dumb criminals. He said there were probably just as many smart criminals as there were dumb ones, but we’d never know, because they’d never been caught.

  I sometimes wondered how his theory could be researched. He obviously had a good portion of the day to think about it. I often thought about his job, envisioning it much like old movies, where a guard literally stood outside the cells, just standing and watching, doing nothing, but I knew, from what Larry had told me, that that wasn’t true. He actually interacted with the detainees and didn’t stand outside a cell block staring straight ahead for eight hours a day. That said, it sounded like it was often boring work, and he had time on his hands to think.

  Before I could respond, he continued. “It’s an epidemic, I think.” I nodded. He and I had different ideas about the justice system, and I’d learned long ago that, for me to be a good neighbor and keep things amiable, I needed to keep my mouth shut. “You heard about the weird shit on the news this week?”

  That was almost funny, because Larry and I had had multiple conversations about why I didn’t watch the news on a regular basis. He knew my philosophy: The news was depressing. No, I didn’t want to be informed about things I had no control over and couldn’t help. Starving kids in Africa? Yes, I cared in the same sense that we all care about humanity and, if you showed me one of those children’s faces, my heart would ache for him, and I would want to do something. Could I help that child? No. All thinking about that child would do would make me even more depressed than I already was. The economy was tanking…again? And just what the bloody hell could I, working my barely-better-than-minimum-wage job, do about it?

  Nothing.

  There were horrible, terrible things on the news, and many of them were hyped beyond imagination. It felt sensationalistic and, as I’d told Larry many times, there was nothing I could do about it but worry, and, by not watching the news or reading the paper, I was choosing not to invest in things I couldn’t control or influence or help. Instead, I would focus what energies I had on my immediate world—myself, my kids, my job, the people I interacted with on a daily basis. If I could “fix” things at a local level, I would, but I had long since felt like I couldn’t even do that. I was surprised I still voted in elections.

  Probably just habit and some fading sense of civic duty.

  In spite of my irritation with the fact that he either chose to push a sore subject with me by ignoring my request to not tell me the news or by not giving enough of a shit to remember, I found myself ready to bite his bait. Maybe it was the tone of his voice, but I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about. “What weird shit?”

  Larry stretched his neck and sucked a deep breath of air in through his nose, signaling me that this was a subject he felt like he knew a lot about. He ran his hand over the top of his head, brushing his salt-and-pepper hair until resting his fingers on the back of his neck. “That girl in Georgia?” My blank expression told him all he needed to know. “Oh, yeah. You don’t do the news.”

  I sighed and managed a slight smile. “Go ahead. Let me have it.” It was obviously something that had been tickling his brain.

  “This gal, in her twenties, I think. She’d been complaining that she didn’t feel good, you know, kind of sick to her stomach, I guess, and weak, muscle aches, stuff like that—kind of like flu. One of her friends drove her to the emergency room, and her nose started bleeding or something. Anyway, when they were in the waiting room at the ER, she started eating her friend.”

  I shook my head—surely, I’d misheard him, right? “Eating?” Then I realized this might be one of Larry’s stupid sick jokes and that it was going to be something sexual, so I felt my eyelids lower in response.

  “No, seriously, Nina. I guess she just took a chun
k out of her friend’s arm and then went to town. I guess a nurse and a guard there rushed over and the girl just went fuckin’ nuts—scratching, clawing, biting. You should see the pictures…and somebody who’d also been in the ER even got a video of it all—posted it on YouTube.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Remember that Bath Salts thing that happened a few years ago? Where it was like real zombies?”

  “Yeah…not really bath salts, but drugs, right?”

  “Yeah, that was a street name. Anyway, they’re being kinda hush-hush about it, but it’s not drug-related this time. They’re talking viral.”

  “What? Like a disease?”

  “Yeah…like The Night of the Living Dead kinda shit. Like real zombies.” I shook my head. I chuckled slightly, but something felt…wrong. Like what Larry was telling me was completely viable and the human race had just been biding its time until it really happened. Before I could say anything, he lowered his voice. “You know, they say the CDC has all kinds of shit they been keepin’ from us, but I also heard there were a bunch of scientists experimenting—you know, trying to make a real flesh-eating dead person.”

  “That’s just not possible.”

  “You gotta watch that video, Nina. It’ll change your mind.”

  “That’s gruesome, Larry.”

  It might have been, but that maybe explained the change in the air, the feeling of apprehension charging the atmosphere.

  And it might have been gruesome, but later on that night, I fired up my computer for the first time in weeks and found the video on YouTube. I was right—it was gruesome and gory and horrifying, and if I hadn’t known it was real, I would have guessed it was a clip from a movie, because that girl really was acting like the living dead portrayed in decades of movies.