WILLA, стр. 47
I found a bucket under the sink that I put wet wipes and other personal cleaning aids inside for Tanner to wash up with when he finished. I set it on the counter by the back door where he could see it when he entered.
Next, I turned my attention to food prep.
The house didn’t have a gas stove. We could start the fire pit out back, but I was growing too hungry to wait for that.
“Tuna and crackers it would have to be,” I told the empty kitchen.
Once everything was set out and waiting, I went back to the living room to open the windows in there. The smell was dissipating, but not quickly enough.
You probably should find the source of the smell and get rid of it, I told myself, feeling stupid for not doing it earlier.
I couldn’t believe that I’d been so caught up in wanting to know what the girl—Janie was the name on some of the gift boxes—had gotten for her birthday, that I’d skipped that part.
Well, whoever it had been was dead, and had been for a while, judging by the smell, so you hadn’t deemed it a priority. Besides, with your arm, there isn’t much you can do until Tanner gets here, my inner voice rationalized, and I thanked it for giving me a halfway decent excuse for being an idiot.
The source of the smell wasn’t hard to find. As I rounded the sofa to open a set of windows behind it, I found the body of a woman. She lay on her back. She was emaciated and was missing a chunk of flesh from her leg. She’d been dead a while, but not long enough to start to decay. Other than that, she looked peaceful.
The woman’s family must have lived in the house. She probably came to the home looking for them, gotten hurt somehow, and crawled behind the sofa to die.
“You poor thing,” I said, bending down to move hair out of her face so that I could see her better.
I didn’t have a chance to scream in shock when the woman jerked awake and bit into my neck. I didn’t have an opportunity to do or think anything else as she devoured me. She moved quickly for a creature that had appeared on the verge of decaying.
Epilogue
~~~Tanner~~~
“What’s for lunch,” I called to Willa upon entering the back door of the house clad only in soaked boxers. The rest of my clothes lay draped across the lawn furniture to dry.
Willa didn’t answer my questions. At that moment, I didn’t notice.
“Sorry it took me so long,” I said, going to the bag she’d left on the kitchen table. “I decided to rinse off in the river. Wet wipes weren’t going to get me clean. I hope I don’t ever have to do anything like that again.”
I pulled a clean set of clothes and a roll of toilet paper out of the bag before realizing the house was still quiet.
“Willa?” I called again, setting the items down and leaving the kitchen to look for her.
I glanced at the living room, saw that the front door was open, and went to it. The filthy clothes Willa had put on earlier were piled just outside the front door.
“Willa, come on now. This isn’t funny.”
The two of us hadn’t known each other for very long, but Willa hadn’t struck me as a prankster, and not someone who would pull a joke like this in the middle of the apocalypse.
I went back into the house and searched the room. In one bedroom and bathroom, I found signs that she’d cleaned up and changed clothes.
The rest of the house was empty.
Fear bubbled in me.
Someone had taken her. Why they would have taken her and not our food or come looking for me, I didn’t know, but there was no other reason for her disappearance.
“Willa,” I screamed, rushing back to the living room and the kitchen to make sure I was correct that our bags were still in the house. Mine was.
I don’t know what made me notice or think it suspicious, but when I turned back to the living room after grabbing our bags from the kitchen, I saw that only one window was open, and the sofa looked a bit crooked.
“Willa,” I asked, stepping toward the sofa and thinking maybe she’d fallen and knocked herself unconscious.
The closer I got, the more my brain started figuring out that the blood on the wall and furniture was new. I’d become so used to seeing splatters and body parts that I hadn’t registered the sight as significant when I first entered.
“Oh, my...” was all I managed when I rounded the sofa and saw the remains of the body.
I turned and vomited onto the sofa cushion. Once my stomach was empty, I stumbled over to the love seat and sat down hard enough that I think a piece of wood under me cracked.
“Willa,” I said in a soft voice, burying my face in my hands and crying.
The body was missing most of its visible flesh, but that wavy brown hair was unmistakably Willa’s.
I sat in the living room crying for a long time, not caring if the creature that had killed her might still be around or not. A part of me hoped it was. I was tired and would welcome the end when it came.
~~~~~
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all of AWAKE’s fans. Without you, I wouldn’t have wanted to keep the story going with these short stories and novellas.
I want to give a big shout out to La Priel, my editor for the AWAKE series, for helping me make all of these stories so amazing. Also, I want to send a shout out to Rose Holub, who gave this novella an excellent polishing. You both rock, and I love having the two of you on my staff. Hugs and kisses, ladies.
I would like to send love to