Don’t Fake Your Sorrow

I don’t know you

You don’t know me

But welcome to my family

Our house is dark

Come inside

To watch the battle tide

Please don’t fake your sorrow

For I may need your real sympathy tomorrow

What good would it do

for us to cry together?

You’re a part of my life

But my life’s calamity is not your strife

Please bear the brunt of my pain

For I am young and vain

In years to come

When my wound has healed

I’ll be there to hold your shield

Until that day

Remember

I don’t know you

You don’t know me

But we are family

Chapter Ten

Mom has been sleeping for the majority of the day in the past week, and her frame is thinner than it has ever been, like her body is a real-life example of an exponential decay graph. She only drinks from the bottled water we find in other houses and occasionally will eat canned soup, or at the very least the broth from canned soup. The meat and vegetables upset her stomach too much and go to Persistence. Emily, Lila, Tom, and Brian all have a tendency to completely avoid her now. Like this walking corpse is no different than the others they fight in close combat.

Today I am sitting in the entranceway on our small white couch with Emily and Lila lounging on the floor. We each have a book. I am finishing up the Delirium series, a post-apocalyptic book for a post-apocalyptic world. I get to the last page and I am irritated. Love triangles always leave something unsolved and someone unhappy and a reader with unrealistic ideas. I set the book down on the blue cushions that I pushed to the end of the blue couch. There is that color again. So depressing. I get up and look through the cracks in the window. It’s sunny out, not a cloud hangs in the blue sky.

“Zoe, come here!” Dad yells from the kitchen. He sounds irritated, which means I am about to be even more irritated.

I walk into the kitchen and say, “What?”

“Your dog made a mess on the floor. I’m not cleaning it.”

“Okay,” I roll my eyes, “It’s not like it was my choice to get a dog. I didn’t beg for it.” I love Persistence, but he came to our whole family by chance, not by choice so why do I get the nasty dog duty?

Dad just throws a towel at me. It’s blue.

“I hate this stupid house!” I shout. Dad just gives me a dirty look.

“Your mom is sleeping.”

“Yeah, under a blue blanket in her blue room and probably wearing a blue shirt! I hate this crap.” I wave the dish rag in the air.

Dad slams his hands down on the counter top. I throw the towel on the ground and soak up the dog’s mess. I take the towel and throw it in the trash can under the sink by Dad. I give him a glare to match his to me.

“What’s going on?” I hear Mom from the doorway. Dang it, I did wake her up.

“Nothing. I just,” Mom looks tired, and I was right she is wearing a blue sweatshirt. I can’t tell her that her favorite color is the worst color. “I’m just irritated at the dog.” I go to the living room to grab another book from the shelf. Mom heads back upstairs. I wait a few minutes taking my time picking a book out to avoid turning around and facing the glare I am sure Dad is giving me. I hear him leave and make his way to the back room. Emily and Lila are both giving me strange looks from the floor.

“What’s wrong with the color blue?” Emily asks.

“Everything.” I walk up the stairs.

I sit next to Mom as she naps, and I read The Grapes of Wrath in a wooden stool from the counter I have brought to the corner of Mom’s room. I am reading the line about the dog’s entrails being strewn across the highway as a car hits it, when I hear someone running down the hall.

Tom comes tearing down the hallway towards me. “Carl ran downstairs to tell your Dad, but Zoe we have to move. Now!”

“Huh?” Mom is stirring from her nap. Her eyes are sunken in, mostly closed, like she is fighting so hard to open them.

“Mrs. Markson, there is a horde. I…I think it’s the one from the city…only bigger. Collected a few, from your description. I saw it from the roof and shouted it down to Carl in the window. About a mile off, I saw a large chunk of them get stalled at a house with lights on, but I couldn’t see much detail.”

“Leave me,” Mom croaks.

I whip my head from Tom to Mom and stare at her. I feel angry. How dare she do this? Is this some sick attention trick?

I bite my tongue, and honey pours out, “No, Mom I can’t leave you to rest more. We have to get going,” I say as I start to untuck her from the covers.

“Stop, I feel sick. I’m going to die soon. I’ll only slow you down,” and she pulls the covers up to her chin.

I just stare at her, dumbfounded. She sounds different, plain like a white wall. “Tom, uh, go get everyone else ready. I’m going to go get my dad. Jesus Mom, this is no time to pull this crap,” I say more to the floor than Mom, who has pulled the blanket up over her face now.

Tom pulls me in for a hug, and my tears wet his shoulder. I didn’t even realize I was crying. He pulls away holding me at arms length and looks me up and down as if he is checking to be sure I am not going to collapse, lets go and turns out the door.

I bend down and hug Mom and run out the door to go find Dad. If anyone can convince Mom to come with us, Dad can, or he can carry her. Either way she’s coming.

I find Dad in the kitchen throwing our scavenged food haphazardly into grocery bags.

“Guess we may actually get to use those emergency backpacks Mom made,” he says.

“Yeah…Dad, she refuses to come. You need to go talk to her, she says she will only get us all killed.”

“She will,” he whispers so quietly I am not even sure he said it.

Dad stares at me for a moment, then leaves the kitchen and makes his way upstairs with a fast trot on the blue carpeted steps. I begin opening all the cabinets to be sure we have grabbed all of our food. Brian comes into the kitchen and walks over to me as I stuff the last of the canned food into a bag and tie it off.

“Zoe, we have to leave now. I just looked out the window. The start of the horde is starting down the street.” He bends down and kisses me on the lips. The tears are still streaming down my face despite how emotionless I feel on the inside as I pack the bags and try to think about nothing.

“We have to wait for Dad to get Mom,” I say.

“Babe, you know your mom is trying to do the right thing. She will just slow us all down.”

The sympathy in his voice is disgusting to me. How can he say something like that to me and mean it?

“You’re wrong. People don’t leave people to die because they are weak,” I push him away.

“Zoe, she is going to die soon either way without treatment.”

I slap him hard on the cheek. My own hand stings from the blow. He looks shocked, hurt, and understanding all at the same time, right before the expression changes to furious. Brian grabs my hand just as Tom enters the kitchen. Brian lets go and looks at his own hand with confusion.

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Tom shoots Brian a glare and lifts up two backpacks in his hands. His is already strapped to his back. I walk over and grab mine out of his hands. How could we possibly leave the woman who prepared these for us?

“I’m not leaving without both my parents,” I say to them. I give them what I hope to be a furious face, but it feels contorted with tears pressing to escape.

“I know, Zoe,” Tom says. He steps close to me and wipes a tear from my face.

“Back the Hell away from her, Tom,” Brian sneers. “She has me, she doesn’t need you.”

“Looked to me like you weren’t doing a very good job of that when I came in.”

“She needs to be realistic,” Tom hasn’t moved an inch away from me yet, and Brian’s eyes are beginning to pop out of his head. He slams his fists down on the counter top, and I jump at the anger. Tom puts an arm around me to comfort me, a very arrogant idea.

“Knock off the macho competition!” I am still crying. I can feel the hot tears run down my face.

I hear footsteps on the stairs. I turn around to see Dad carrying Mom down in his arms. She is folded in their pale blue comforter. Someone clears their throat. I look at the sound. Both Lila and Emily have been standing in the darkness of the living room this entire time. They stare at me, and I feel naked.

“Let’s go,” Carl says as he jumps the last few feet off the stairs. He has his backpack swinging on one shoulder, and he spins a machete in his right hand like a baton, slicing through the air.

Brian walks over and snatches the bag from Tom. Lila grabs Dad’s bag since he has Mom, and Emily grabs the two bags we have of random food supplies Dad and I packed. We crawl out of the hole one by one with Persistence following in the rear.

“SUV or run for it?” Lila asks. I hear the undead scream now; they must only be a few doors down now.

Dad looks at Mom in his arms, “SUV.”

“Hell, no. Haven’t you ever read The Zombie Survival Guide? Cars are bad in a horde,” says Carl.

“We just have to get ahead of this horde, Carl. We can’t run with Mom.”

“So let’s get going!” Tom shouts in a let’s end this and hurry tone of voice. We all pile into the SUV, doubling up on a seat or two. Persistence is on the floor by my legs. I thank God he isn’t fully grown yet.

A hand smacks on the window, I turn to see my old teacher again from the hospital. His dangling mustache and clothes are the only recognizable trait left. The lower half of his jaw is torn off and I can see straight down his throat, which is gunked with black-crusted blood and bits of human jerky. The same horde from the hospital has made it all the way here. Carl rolls down the window and aims his shotgun at the zombie. One second I am staring at his dangling mustache the next his entire head is a firework of black blood. I hear the splatters rain down on the cement driveway like a summer sprinkle. He was a good teacher, funny.

Mom vomits, or more or less dry heaves out the window. Dad starts the engine and backs out of the driveway, stepping on the gas. His insane driving skills have me almost as sick as Mom as he dodges walking and lying corpses.

“Where are we going?” I ask as Dad swerves for an old woman with a cane speared through her stomach.

“North until we run out of gas. Not much else to do.” We make it out of the neighborhood, a mass of zombies heading our way to be seen through the rearview, but at Dad’s speed we should lose them soon enough.

Raindrops begin to hit the windshield.

By the time our half a tank of gas has depleted we have driven almost 3 hours north and the few raindrops have turned into a thunderstorm for the ages. Our vehicle slows to a stop on a back end dirt road and we sit in silence watching the storm. There are fields on either side of us. To our left is overgrown winter wheat and to our right is a barren field, still unplanted. The rain is so thick I can’t even see more than 20 yards out.

“You know, I just don’t get it,” Emily says from the back seat after about a half hour of silence and thunder on this abandoned country road.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I ask as a crack of lightning zips across the sky.

“How does a zombie that has been reanimated from a type of radiation infect others with a bite like an infection?”

“You know, I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Tom said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe the radiation is more concentrated in humans and can be shared,” I say as a random thought.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Brian says as he stares out the window to my left.

“Yeah, Zoe thought you were supposed to be smart,” Carl jeers in a way only a sibling can do without getting their teeth knocked down their throat.

There is another fifteen minutes of silence and the rain thins.

“Best get going. I see an old farmhouse in that field up to our right. Only house I’ve seen for miles on this road,” Dad says from the front seat. He pops the back hatch of the SUV.

“Seems legit,” I say looking at an old white farmhouse, the details of it still fuzzy in the letting-up rain. I stir Persistence with my foot to wake him. He yawns, his pink tongue sticking out and then swiping his lips. He wags his tail. He is the only one happy to be here. I open the door, and he jumps out right into a puddle. He starts lapping up the muddy water at his feet. I step out next to him with my backpack on. Mom opens the car door and slowly swings herself to place her feet down. Persistence trots over to her and puts a comforting, wet paw on her leg. She bends down and pats his head. She braces the door to lift herself up and stands there, looking around at the place we have stranded ourselves in.

“Mrs. Markson,” Tom calls. She looks up at him. “I found this on the side of the road, might help you out,” he hands her a weather worn stick that almost looks like it has been carved by woodland elves.

“Thank you,” and she reaches out and takes the walking stick. Everyone has gathered on my side of the SUV, their backpacks and a few food bags straddled on them. We begin our small trek to our hopeful haven. The only way we can see to the house is through the plowed field. The clods of dirt break under our feet and swallow our footsteps up in mud. Dad hands his bags over to Tom, and Mom clings to Dad’s shoulders like a child. Her walking stick hanging useless in her left hand over Dad’s shoulder.

Finally, we step onto grass, the large lawn of the farmhouse is shaggy and dark green from the rain with rain beaten dandelions scattered every few feet. Dad sets Mom down. The grass is past my ankles, the evergreen bushes along the porch are scraggly, and as we step closer I am almost positive I see a rat dive under the white, wooden porch. The paint is chipping on the siding of the house, and though the windows look clean, thick yellow curtains are pulled on all the downstairs windows on the porch. No one stirs inside the house as we all climb the steps and stand in a group in front of the yellow painted door. Its paint is chipping everywhere, but the wood looks sturdy. I reach out and knock three, heavy times. There is silence; I knock again.

Mom reaches forward from my right side and tries the handle. It’s locked. Then we hear a bolt of thunder again off in the distance. We need to get inside.

Brian steps up and takes out his pistol. He shoots the handle, and it swings open only to be stopped short by an inner sliding lock. He kicks the door and the chain pops off the wall. I stare at him. His face looks angry still, as if the tiff in the kitchen was the only thing on his mind for the last three hours, like it was the door or someone’s face. I see Dad shake his head at his behavior. I feel embarrassed for him.

The doorway reveals a dark hallway with older Victorian style furniture covered in dust. We all file into the entranceway.

Mom shuffles towards a high back chair set back in the corner and sits down and closes her eyes. It’s dusty red upholstery and her pale complexion makes her seem like a corpse who died along with this house's prime. The rest of us set the bags down off to the side and without prompting we all take out some sort of a weapon and begin moving throughout the house. I look to my left and see Lila has her knees bent like she’s waiting to pounce with a baseball bat raised in her hands.

The rain starts pattering on the rooftop and windows more fiercely the deeper inside the threshold of the house I go. I have a machete out this time. It was thrown into my survival bag.

I turn into a room a little down the main hall. It must be the living room. There is a high cathedral ceiling, with long lace curtains to compliment the length of the windows in the room. The hardwood floor is now losing its finish, but it matches the oak furnishings in the room. My eyes are drawn to the main attraction of the room, the bay window. I see two identical red chairs facing out the large window that overlooks the field and the small patch of woods beyond that. I step closer and see two hands clasped together between the chairs.

“Excuse me?” I say as I approach. I know only too well something is amiss. The stench is unbearable as I enter the room. The closer to the chairs I get the more the reeking like hot sick smell wants to gag me. I pull my shirt up over my nose. I turn and look at the couple in the chairs. The corpse to my immediate right was the wife, a plump body in a faded floral print dress. Both her hands are tight, one died clinging to the armrest, and the other in the embrace. The husband is wearing normal clothes you may find on a farm, dirty, and worn overalls, but in his other liver spotted hand lays a pistol, limply clinging to his fingers.

The wife’s head is completely blown away from a close range shot. The first thing not gone is her wrinkly throat. The husband’s skull is clean off, save for a few bottom teeth poking out of the now decaying gums.

I hold my nose and run over to a plastic covered couch that has a brown and red quilt draped on it. I drape it over the couple and make my way out of the room. I shut the tall door behind me. I wander into the kitchen across the hall; Tom is here, opening the cabinets and pulling out jars and cans of food. I step over to him.

“I found the owners,” I say, “heads blown clean off,” I answer before he can ask.

“Oh… Well I guess they won’t mind Brian shooting their door off then.”

“I think everyone is stressed out lately, including Brian.”

“Geesh, Zoe. I didn’t mean anything by it. But if he ever takes his stress out on you, well, just know I’m always here.”

I sigh, “I know, Tom. You’ve always been there for me. Except that one time in second grade when you pushed me in the mud.” I give him a glare.

“You stole my cupcake,” he says as he play punches me in the shoulder. I poke him in return and soon we are playing back and forth until I hear Mom coughing. It’s a rattling cough that makes you want to clear your own throat. She gasps for breath when the fit ends.

Dad walks into the kitchen, “Does the water run here?”

I turn the sink handle, and after a short sputter the water comes out smelling of rust and eggs. “Yeah, well water, but water.”

“Get your Mom a water bottle. We can drink from the sink. Give her the good water.” I dive into my backpack and pull out a fresh water bottle and hand it off to Dad.

“Thanks,” and he turns to leave.

“I know it’s rough, Zoe,” Tom says, putting his big hand on my shoulder.

“Three years, Tom. She’s been sick for three years. I’ve never seen her so bad. She’s more bone than flesh. She’s not even spit and fire anymore.” We stand in silence for a moment before I continue, “She used to get mad about everything for a while there. I mean she’s always had a temper, but that first few years of treatment. God, one minute she was your best friend and the next your worst enemy. Almost like she knew she could lose it at any second and tried to make up for it triple fold in the good times.”

“Ha, one time me and her got into it because I wanted to go out with my friends Junior year at midnight for some movie. I think it was some Johnny Depp movie premier. She threw a plastic cup at my back as hard as she could, left a welt. Then I stormed out of the house. I probably shouldn’t have done that at 11:30p.m. She called the cops and an officer found me two blocks away and took me home…I still went out for the movie,” I laughed. “Climbed out the window, and hoofed it to Lila’s truck waiting at the end of the road. I don’t even know if my Mom knows about that. She never mentioned anything the next day, just brought me breakfast in bed. Isn’t that funny? To get into a fight with someone: call names, throw shit, and freak out. Then just bring you breakfast in bed the next day like it’s no big deal.”

“Yeah, Zoe. You’re Mom’s weird, but she’s got a kind heart. She was always bringing my grandma cookies and soup, even up until last month. I mean it was less frequent these past few years, but your Mom always made it a point to help my grandma out when she wasn’t down on account of chemotherapy,” Tom smiles.

“I didn’t know she did that,” I say looking up at him, suddenly Tom’s dead grandmother’s corpse creeps back into my mind. I feel guilty, I should have checked on her. My stomach does a flip as I think of her screaming at me from the grass, eyes glazed over.

“Oh, yeah. My grandma loved it; she wasn’t the best cook so your mom’s cooking was a treat.”

Persistence comes into the kitchen, his tail wagging so hard it makes a thudding noise that sounds almost painful against the yellow painted cabinets. I find a bowl in a cupboard and get him some water from the sink. He laps it up furiously and lays down panting with new excitement at being in an unfamiliar place.

Carl comes into the kitchen shortly after Persistence. He is quiet and just sits down at the table. Tom and I exchange looks at this out of character behavior. I open my mouth to get Carl’s attention but before I can he clears his throat and starts scratching Persistence behind the ears as per usual.

“I’m going to take a watch,” Tom says and he walks out of the kitchen. I slide into a chair across from Carl. There is silence for a minute as we both study the dusty, brown tabletop.

“This sucks,” Carl says, still staring at the table.

“I know. It’s not fair, but it could be worse,” but I know those words are a lie as they come out.

“Could be worse? Yeah, right. We aren’t functioning like we should be. This whole surviving thing would be a lot easier if God didn’t choose to take a dump on our family.”

I look at my brother. He’s angry, an emotion not often seen. “God didn’t do this to us, Carl,” and I pause, “but He isn’t helping either.”

“Mom should be making things home-like, Dad should be helping more with the food and watches, we should at least have some happy moments even if the world is going to shit. We should have some damn hope we can all survive, but I know, you know, Dad knows that Mom is going to die soon.”

“She could survive,” I sound small. I know any talk of miracles is out of the question, but I find myself clinging just in case, so God doesn’t see that I don’t believe.

There is more silence as we both think to ourselves. “I’m tired of everyone acting like Mom is a bomb,” I say.

“You mean how no one talks to her unless they have to? How they avoided her room at all costs? Yeah, I know. It pisses me off.”

“I guess I would do the same thing though.” I see Carl thinking at my reply.

“I guess I would too,” his expression is blank, “Cancer sucks.”