WILLA, стр. 2
“Mom? What’s wrong?” I asked, looking at my mother and not at the television playing in front of her.
“This isn’t happening,” was all she said.
“What’s not h...?” I started to ask before cutting my eyes to the screen.
A video similar to the one I’d just watched on my phone was playing on the television. The scroll on that video said it was taken in Georgia, just south of Atlanta. It was footage of people eating other people. The images were more than graphic, something I would’ve never thought a local station would air.
What the fuck, I thought but didn’t say, though I doubt my mother would have heard.
Mom was repeating the same three or four similar phrases. Her face was pale, eyes wide, and her hands shook. She didn’t appear to notice me in the room.
I left her in her shocked state to get my laptop. I took a seat in a chair beside the sofa to Google what I was seeing. The videos had to be a prank. I’d heard stories about a radio station or stations doing something similar a long, long time ago. That event had been about aliens, not zombies.
To my utter shock, what the anchors were screaming was a zombie outbreak appeared to be true. Every reliable news outlet was saying the same thing, some even showing duplicate footage, others showed different footage, with more people sending them videos from cell phones every few minutes.
Instagram was abuzz with photos and videos that most people were sharing from someone else’s page. The zombies—and that was what those people were because they sure as hell weren’t cannibals—were everywhere. More than one video showed someone dying and coming back to what those creatures considered life and promptly began eating the nearest person, be it their child, their spouse, their parent, or a stranger.
The stuff I saw in those first hours was worse than any horror movie I’d ever watched. I didn’t throw up. I think that was because, despite knowing, logically, what I was looking at was real, my brain wouldn’t believe it. What was even harder to comprehend was the time stamp on some of the videos.
Judging by the oldest video I saw, the first of the outbreak occurred nearly four days ago.
Four freaking days.
Zombies had been real in my world for a little over half a week, and I was just then hearing about it.
I didn’t cry.
Mom did.
I was too shocked by the unreality of the situation to cry.
The only time after calling me to wake me that morning that I talked to Lilly, she was crying. So was her mother. Lilly called to tell me that she and her family were heading to their cabin in Montana. She didn’t think she would have much in the way of cell service when they got there, and her parents wanted them to stay off their phones, especially the Internet for the time being; therefore, Lilly had to call then to say goodbye.
I sat numbly through the brief conversation.
Afterward, I tried calling some of my other friends. No one answered.
Eventually, around noon, I realized that Mom and I hadn’t moved from our places in the living room and that Mom was still repeating her variations of, “I can’t believe this,” mantra.
“Mom. Mom. Mom,” I said into my mother’s face after leaving my spot in the chair.
I’d closed the laptop and shoved it aside. I couldn’t see any more. All the informational sites said to keep calm, stay inside, ration food and water, and to let the military control the situation. That would go tits up within a day or so. At least, that’s what happened in movies, TV shows, and books.
We needed to leave. We needed to pack up everything we had and go to Grandma’s. We needed my dad.
Dad.
I hadn’t thought about calling him until that moment.
“Mom, have you talked to Daddy. Mom, I need you to snap out of it and help me,” I said, taking her by her upper arms and shaking her.
My mother barely flinched. Her eyes stayed glued to the television.
Fuck, I screamed in my head.
Dad was supposed to be flying to New Zealand that morning. Chances were he wouldn’t be able to answer his phone, but I tried anyway. Then, I called my grandma and my Uncle Jamie, my favorite uncle, who always treated me like a person and not a child. No one freaking answered.
For another hour, I called everyone in my contacts list. Most calls just rang. On some, the operator said the service couldn’t complete my request at that time.
When I wasn’t on the phone, I was trying to get my mother to talk to me—to help me make a plan—to do something.
2
By late afternoon of that first day, our local news channel was sharing footage of empty shelves in grocery stores, packed gun stores, and convenience stores with lines of cars waiting for gas. A few of the shops were price gouging or closing their doors to the public, but not many. I don’t know if their owners thought the outbreak was a hoax or would blow over soon or what.
“In a few days, the entire city will be locked down,” I said over my mom’s shoulder.
I understood that what I’d said was correct, but the knowledge was only abstract. I couldn’t honestly picture a world where there would never be food on the shelf of the local grocery store again or that, in less than a week, there wouldn’t be anyone to grow food, let alone package and deliver it.
Mom was still sitting on the sofa, gently rocking and repeating herself. I was trying to get her to go to the bathroom then join me in the kitchen for supper. Mom wasn’t having any of that. I knew she had to pee and had to be hungry. She hadn’t moved in over eight hours.
My comment hadn’t