WILLA, стр. 4
I slept in my bed that night. I’d have rather slept with Mom, but she still hadn’t left the sofa. I didn’t know how much longer she could go without urinating or eating.
I’d eaten her sandwich and fruit after packing up our stuff. I was not about to waste food.
The sofa is where I found her the next morning sound asleep. She’d moved in the night. Nothing stank around her, so she had to have gone to the bathroom. She’d also changed clothes and gotten a blanket to cover herself. The television was still on, and the news stories were both different and the same.
Outside, I could hear my next-door neighbors talking. With a peek through the curtains, I could see that they were loading their car. I didn’t know the Janson’s well. They’d only moved in last year, and their twin boys were only five. I think Mom might have said hello a time or two to one of the dads, but they weren’t friends. I had no idea where the couple and their kids were going, but I wished I were with them.
A glance up and down my street told me that a few others had the same idea. The rest of the houses sat quietly. I didn’t know if the occupants had left in the night or were hiding inside as I was.
Leaving my mother to sleep as long as she wanted, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast and to try again to reach my father. The call wouldn’t go through. None of the numbers I tried would go through, not even the one to Grandma’s home phone. She still had a landline, but only two phones in the house: one in her bedroom and one in the living room downstairs.
I could understand Grandma not hearing my calls yesterday. If one of my uncles was there, as they usually were, to help her move her stuff to her large cellar, she would be too occupied to pay attention to her phone. But by ten o’clock the next morning, things should be calm enough around her house that she would answer the phone. And it might have been, but since the call wouldn’t go through, I didn’t know.
By noon, I was panicking.
Mom was awake, but she was back to staring at the television and repeating her mantra. She wouldn’t eat anything. She wouldn’t help me nail boards over our windows. Nor would she tell me who to call for help. She stared at her television.
I hadn’t seen anyone acting weird in the neighborhood, but the more the news showed footage of how ordinary, healthy people were behaving, the more I worried that we were too vulnerable the way we were.
I became even more worried when I heard a large vehicle pull up in front of my house, and the footsteps of what I knew were men walking up to the door.
With one hand, I held a knife. With the other, I shook my mom to get her attention. All the while, I kept my eyes on the door, waiting for the man or men on the other side to kick it open.
3.
“Molly? Willa? Terrance? Anyone home?” my Uncle Jamie’s voice called from the other side of the front door.
I burst into tears and all but jerked open the door. Before my uncle could lower his gun, I threw myself into his arms, bawling.
Uncle Jamie wrapped himself around me, picked me up, and carried me into the house. His two sons, Chad and Kris, followed him, shutting the door behind us.
“Are you hurt?” Uncle Jamie asked, pulling me away from him and looking me over.
“No,” I said through my tears.
“What about your mom and dad?”
“Mom is in the living room. I think she’s gone into shock. Dad’s not here. I can’t reach him. I’ve been calling for two days.”
“It’ll probably be a day or so before you talk to him. Too many people are making calls and slowing down the services. Take me to your mom. Chad, Kris, keep watch,” Uncle Jamie said, pointing from his sons to the front and back doors.
The boys followed his orders without a word.
“Mom hasn’t moved from the sofa since yesterday morning. At least, I haven’t seen her move,” I said, leading my uncle into the living room where Mom was still sitting, watching the news.
“Molly,” Uncle Jamie said, tentatively approaching his baby sister. “Sis?”
He knelt in front of Mom and touched her shoulder as he spoke. When she didn’t acknowledge him, Uncle Jamie turned off the television and took a seat beside her on the sofa. Still, she didn’t glance his way. He turned her face and made her look him in the eyes.
“Sis, you have to snap out of it,” Uncle Jamie told her. “We need to get you and your daughter, who’s relying on you to take care of her, to Mom’s house. We’ll be safe there, but you have to help.”
“Is it real?” Mom asked, shocking the hell out of me.
Nothing I’d done had gotten a response from her.
“Unfortunately, but so far, we haven’t run across any of those creatures. If we move now, we might get back to Mom’s before they get here.”
“Okay,” was all Mom said before rising and heading toward the front door.
“Molly, go pack your bags.”
She turned to give him a puzzled look.
“You’ll need clothes and toiletries, maybe food. You can’t go as is,” Uncle Jamie said, pointing at her sleep shirt and yoga pants.
Mom nodded and headed to her room.
“Shit,” uncle Jamie said, watching her zombie-walk down the hall.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh.
“Go pack a few bags while the boys and I pack up the kitchen.”
“Most of the stuff is in the attic,” I said before he could move.
At his quizzical look, I told him what I’d spent my afternoon doing with