Isabella Harris, Izzie to most. Cheerleader. Secret Brain. Monster Slayer.
At the back of her mind, an exaggerated, deeper version of her voice provides a narrative as though she is in a blockbuster movie trailer. She wonders if she is losing her mind.
Izzie stares at her hands, covered in blood so red that it looks fake, blood from a creature that before yesterday she had never imagined could exist. Her fingers clench around her plunger handle, pushing even though there is no way that it can go any further. She has pushed all the way through and hit the ground below. The creature is no longer moving, but she doesn’t trust that. She tugs upward, her knees sliding on the wet ground, stopping when they hit the bodies in front of her, but the pole won’t come free.
Laughter, coated in hysteria, burbles up in her chest. She carefully raises one knee, plants one foot on the ground, lodged against Sasha’s arm, and stands up. Shifting her weight to keep her balance, she places her right foot on the body of the creature and pulls the handle straight up. It comes free with a squelch, the limp body of the beast raising an inch and then dropping down once the stake is free of its skull. Izzie tenses, arms raising again to drive her stake back down, but it appears dead.
She braces when something moves from the other side, but it is just Joseph. He moves slowly, and she isn’t sure if it is because he is unsure if the thing will attack, or if he is worried that she will. She lowers the pole as he reaches for the shovel, eyes steady and watching for movement. Muscles bunch and strain when he pulls the shovel free. Her foot and weight keep the thing from sliding toward him more than a few inches. As soon as he is clear, she moves her foot to solid ground and steps back.
There looks to be more blood outside of its body than in, there is no way it can still be alive. She kicks it once to be sure.
“It’s dead,” Joseph announces, and she looks up. His empty hand is stretched out, beckoning for her to come around to the other side, to be with everyone else.
Izzie walks around to meet him with shaking legs. The dramatic inner narrative may have helped her to jump into danger, but now that the danger has passed she feels as though if she doesn’t sit down she will fall. She has never thought of herself as brave. When Logan burst into the room, he came in at full speed and she barely had time to dodge before he could knock her over. The following moments seemed to move in slow motion. She watched the life fade from Sasha’s pain and terror-filled face. Then Joseph tried to kill it but almost became the next victim, and she heard a tiny voice at the back of her head shout for her to save him. A blink later and she was standing over it, and-
Before she can fall, she pulls a chair closer to the fridge and sits down. Her face feels wet and hot. So do her hands Izzie lets go of her weapon with one hand and reaches up to touch her cheek, but stops when her hand is mere inches from her face. Her brow furrows as she watches smoke rise from her gore-covered fingers. No, not smoke. Maybe steam.
She looks between the two boys standing in front of her and wonders if her eyes are playing tricks on her. Just like around her hands, a shimmer of heat seems to be coming off the dead creature. Before she can ask if anyone else sees it, something scratches at the door.
Her legs won’t listen to her, so she stays in her seat and grips her little pike with both hands again. A minute passes, and then something hits the door from the other side, and the doorknob rattles with the impact. Joseph hurries to the table and starts to push at it and Logan joins him. The concrete hits the door with a thud that doesn’t drown out the sound of something large hitting it again. The boys put their hands against the table and brace themselves like they are pushing one of the sleds during training. The sound gets louder, the door creaking on its hinges.
Impacts begin to come quicker. As soon as the door stops shaking from one, another comes.
“They are throwing themselves against the door,” she whispers, her eyes growing wide. The pounding is constant, and she wonders how many of them are out there. And why are they suddenly attacking?
Her hands are uncomfortably hot. There is no doubt anymore that heat waves are rising off of them. Izzie tries to focus through the fog that has seeped into her brain after the adrenaline crash. The pounding on the door seems to be constant, as soon as one body hits another follows. Claws rake against the metal, several times catching on the door handle and jerking it down. ‘Why are they trying to get through now?’
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She looks again at the corpse on the ground, steaming like a mug of coffee on a cold day. “It’s the blood,” she announces quietly. Her legs tremble as she forces them to hold her weight. She calls out louder. “It’s the blood! It’s signalling them!
The two boys glance over their shoulders, but their bodies are taut and straining as they hold the table in place against the barrage. A slip of thermal blanket sticks out from the area between the fridge and the outside door. Leslie might be hurt from her fall or just hiding, but whichever it is she isn’t coming out. Shepherd is huddled against the vending machine, cradling his unconscious daughter’s head on his lap, eyes wide as he stares toward the door. The question of what happened to her flits through Izzie’s mind, but if he is uninjured and refusing to help then she has to do something herself.
Cursing loudly, she staggers to the hanging cloths and pulls a few to the sink with her. Icy cold water rinses the hot liquid off of her hands, numbing them quickly. The numbness turns to pain when she holds them under the water while she soaks the rags. She lays them over the pool of blood spreading out from the creature and yanks the remainder of the thermal blanket out from underneath it. Luckily, it was pushed aside during the attack and remains mostly unharmed. It feels very wrong to think anything is Lucky while standing over the body of her classmate. She flips the side with the creature’s blood on it over and places it over the bodies. Then, she gathers more rags and repeats the chilling of them before adding them to her cloth dam. When no more fluid is leaking past the blockage, she rips off her sweatshirt and throws it under the still-running water before splashing her face to get the liquid off that splattered before.
Teeth chattering, she turns off the water. The haze is gone, trapped under the blanket for now. She doesn’t know enough about the blankets to guess how long they will block heat, or if they are blocking it all. Her hand hovers over the shiny material, but they are too cold and she feels nothing.
The answer to her unspoken question comes quickly. One moment, the door is shaking and it sounds as though something will rip through it any second. The next, silence. As quickly as the attack on their barrier came, it ends even quicker.
The three teenagers stay where they are, crouched over a silvery mound or braced against the grey table, straining their ears for any sign that the attack will begin again. Minutes tick past. It’s Izzie’s legs that finally make the decision to stand down. They shake violently but support her long enough for her to make it to the chair again and drop into it.
Joseph straightens slowly. He watches as Logan slides down to the floor and pulls his knees to his chest, back against the table. For a moment, he looks as though he wants to say something to the other boy, but in the end, he turns to Izzie and asks, “What was that?”
“That moron almost got us all killed, that’s what!” Shepherd supports his daughter, who has come around and is looking around, confused. “He got that other girl killed right in front of us!”
It is an issue that would have to be dealt with, but Izzie chooses to ignore it and answer the question as it was intended. “It’s blood was calling them, somehow. It was getting hot, and signaled them to come help it. Maybe that is a defense mechanism? Once blood is spilled it superheats and calls to the others so they can come to its aid.”
“Yeah, but how long will that last? Are they going to be back if some of the blood seeps out?” Joseph is looking at her so earnestly, his confidence in her worn clearly on his sleeve.
She isn’t sure why, but it annoys her.
“I don’t know! Why are you asking me? I must have slept through the biology class where we learned about cryptos in the woods of Wisconsin!” Her voice is getting louder, and higher, but she doesn’t stop. “For all I know, they are some kind of mystical animal that was summoned forth by an elaborate ritual, meant to clear the land of all people who vape and swear it is healthy, but the creatures got confused and are just eating everyone!”
Her eyes dart around the room, as though she will find an answer somewhere, something she missed before.
“A ritual? What, because there is a reservation nearby you assume that my people did something to conjure up these things? That’s kind of racist.”
Her eyes zero back to the muscled football player leaning against the table across from her. “What? How am I racist? I didn’t say it was a Native thing, for all I know it could be fucking Vikings risen from the dead and living behind the fucking gas station where they summoned these things to create more souls to fucking offer to the goddess Hel!”
By the end, she is almost shrieking, and she catapults out of her chair to stand glaring at him. Joseph watches her closely as she catches her breath, her chest heaving. “I know you didn’t mean it that way.” His lips quirk up in a sheepish smile. “I thought you needed a chance to get it all out before you collapsed. Do you feel better?”
Izzie stares at him, her mouth slowly dropping open. “You-” She stops and listens to her body, which is no longer shaking. Swallowing hard, she lowers her voice and tries again. “You suck.”
The tiny smile on his lips falls away, and his brows lower in consternation. She sighs and sits back down, running her hand through the bits of hair that had fallen from her hair elastic during the bout of violence. “But I think that did help. I don’t know what happened.”
Joseph pushes off from the table and moves over to crouch in front of her. “Fear and adrenaline happened. I remember that happening to me when I found my dad.” He settles on the ground, legs splayed out the sides. “He was crumpled up against the base of a huge tree, dead for days. Mountain lion got him. Or, that’s what I was told later. But it was horrible, and I was shaking so hard I couldn’t run to get help or tell anyone. I fell down into a little ravine and I was sure I could hear something near me and I thought I was going to be eaten too but I couldn’t move. And I screamed. As loud as I could, hoping to scare it away. Soaking wet and freezing, I screamed and yelled until my voice was hoarse. But my shaking stopped, and I was able to run along the creek until I reached the road and found someone. So I thought if you were crashing maybe yelling would help.”
“You could have just told me to yell.”
“Would you have done it?” She starts to nod but ends up shrugging instead. “See, you might not have, and I think it worked for me because of all the fear and anger I had bottled up that needed to be released. That was a lot more ‘fucks’ than I expected, though.”
At that, Izzie does nod. She feels lighter, though still scared.
Joseph reaches up and pulls down his shirt, dangling on the line near them. He pulls it over his head, shaking out his arms when the cold fabric clings to them, then grins up at her. “So. Zombie Vikings?”