WILLA, стр. 21
“What do we do now, Momma?” Uncle Jamie eventually asked, taking up watch by one of the living room windows.
By then, we’d all relaxed our stance some, feeling sure that the creatures that had once been our family weren’t going to be able to get to us.
“Wait for now. We need to regroup and rest. In the morning, we’ve got to take care of the bodies. We need those supplies,” Grandma said, pointing to the cellar.
“You’re going to kill them?” I asked, turning to her in shock.
Logically, I knew that was what we were supposed to do, but they were our people: our mothers, fathers, and children. I couldn’t fathom being able to kill someone I loved. Tears were streaming down my face. My mother hadn’t been the sanest person since the outbreak, but she was my mother, and everything she’d done was because she loved me and feared for me.
“Honey, they’re already dead, and we won’t be able to survive much longer without what’s left of our food, all of which is down there,” Grandma said, putting her hand on my shoulder and steering me to the sofa.
She was also crying, but she was thinking with her head, not her heart.
I couldn’t do anything more than stare at the cellar door and the furniture piled on top of it as we moved. My mother was down there, and she was dead—dead. My mind couldn’t grasp that concept. Even with all the death that we’d seen, I couldn’t reconcile the knowledge that my mother wouldn’t be hollering for me ever again.
“Where were you?” Grandma asked me, motioning for my cousins to take a seat as well. “Why weren’t you downstairs?”
Her tone wasn’t accusatory, but it was firm.
“I couldn’t listen to Momma anymore. When she started ranting again, I went upstairs to your room. I just wanted to see the sky. I took a nap in your bed. Your gunfire woke me. Oh, God. I could’ve been down there—I should have been. If I had been, maybe I could’ve...,” I said, realizing how close I’d come to dying and how I might have prevented my mother’s death.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done,” Grandma said, hugging me tightly.
“How did Jace get inside, is what I want to know,” Uncle Jamie said, staring at me as if he didn’t believe my story.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone when I came up the stairs,” I said.
“Who was supposed to be watching the front door?” Grandmother asked, nodding at the door that was in plain view of the kitchen, living room, cellar door, and stairway.
“Cousin Julie,” Chase said, looking down at the floor. “She had to be the one to let him in. They were always close.”
“Fuck,” was all Uncle Jamie said.
We let the word hang in the air. It was the perfect sentiment for our situation.
15.
I wasn’t sure if Uncle Jamie believed the story of Julie letting Jace in the house or not. Probably not, because we didn’t have proof and Julie was dead, and I was alive. Throughout the afternoon and night, he watched me as much as he watched the yard surrounding the house. I guess I was someone Uncle Jamie could blame. If Grandma hadn’t been there, he might’ve questioned me further to try to force a confession out of me.
Despite the constant banging on the cellar door, we stayed in the living room late into the night. We barely spoke to one another, but no one seemed to want to separate. Every so often, Uncle Jamie would disappear outside to kill a zombie that got too close to the house. Eventually, Grandma sent us kids upstairs to bed.
We begrudgingly went.
The three of us found out the following morning that Grandma had sent us away because she, Uncle Jamie, and my cousin Sam weren’t going to wait until the next day to go into the cellar. In the early hours before dawn, while my cousins, Kaylie, Chase, and I slept upstairs in Grandma’s bed, the three of them removed the items covering the cellar door and crept down to face what was below. Only my Uncle Jamie and my cousin Sam returned.
Later, when asked, neither would talk about what happened to Grandma.
My cousins and I had woken to the sounds of gunshots and ran downstairs to the kitchen to find the cellar door open, and blood and body parts rimming the entrance. Screams floated up from the cellar, making the three of us cower in the living room.
More gunshots burst through the silent night, followed by a few more screams, and an arm sailed through the opening to roll across the kitchen floor. My cousin Kaylie shrieked, and Chase threw up. I think I fainted for a second. I’d seen a few things early on before Mom banned me from going upstairs and through the only window in the cellar the time or two when no one was guarding it, but the stump of the arm was too real. I guess that was because it belonged to someone we knew. Who, I couldn’t tell because it was too mangled.
A few minutes later, Uncle Jamie and Sam made their way out of the cellar, slamming the door shut behind them. They were covered in gore, trembling, and looking shell-shocked. I knew we were in trouble when Grandma didn’t follow them. I broke into tears at the thought of never seeing her again—alive, that was.
No one said a word as Uncle Jamie and Sam left the house and went to the well to draw water to clean themselves. Kaylie and Chase cleaned up Chase’s vomit while I merely sat in the corner and cried.
Later that day, after Uncle Jamie and Sam had rested from their ordeal, the two, along with my cousin Chase went back into the cellar while Kaylie and I cleaned the kitchen. I began crying again when Chase and Sam came up the stairs with Grandma in their arms. Luckily they had wrapped her body in a blanket before