Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (8 page)

He chose to die in this room, which must mean it was his comfortable place, where he could sit in his pajamas and read a book. It’s wrong for me to be here. Even if the books won’t do him any good, I can’t take them.

I do, however, know where the keys must be.

I hold my breath as I pat the pockets of his robe. I know that even if he were Contaminated, he’s not going to lurch back to life and grab me. The Contaminated aren’t the undead, just people who drank protein water that gave them holes in their brains and made them incapable of controlling their rage. But he’s still a corpse, maybe not dead long enough to be totally rotten, but long enough to bloat.

He sighs when I press his belly. Now there’s a stink that
makes me gag and choke—I swallow back the rising sting in my throat and force myself not to spew. Worse, that noise goes on and on, more than a sigh. It’s a low, groaning noise that sounds like he’s trying to talk. It’s the gas inside him. The pressure of my hands as I dig inside the other pocket, finding the jumble of keys. I’m the one making him wheeze and moan. My hand gets stuck inside his pocket, my fist bigger coming out than going in. I can let go of the keys and get away from him, or I can yank.

When I do, the corpse … settles. The stink is rich and thick and enormous now, and all I can see is the bulge of my hand in his pocket, and all I can think is, “He made sure his slippers were on. He made sure his slippers were on,” over and over, but as I tug and pull the keys free, the body’s feet shift on the floor and one slipper comes off.

Gasping, the keys in my grip, I stumble back. The body slides sideways, head lolling. His hand falls away and his arm knocks into the table, which rattles the bottle and the glass for a moment before the whole table tips over and everything shatters.

I’m not screaming, I’m whistling breaths in and out of my lungs through my clenched teeth. I don’t want Opal to hear and come in. I don’t want to breathe the air full of dead-guy germs. The world tips and turns as I push myself away from him, but the body moves toward me, shaking and sliding onto the floor, and I jump out of the way just in time, before it can land on me.

I can’t move. The keys in my hand are hung on a key ring of plastic with a picture of a smiling couple inside it. It’s the guy on the floor in front of me—I know it—though in the picture he’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a ball cap. He’s smiling, his arm around a pretty woman with reddish hair. The names on the back are KEVIN and SANDRA. The sun’s shining on them both, and I don’t want to see their happiness because I know how terribly it all ended.

Without even a second longing glance at the books, I back out of the room and close the door behind me. At last, I suck in great gulps of stale air. I want to scrub my tongue and the inside of my nose, but I settle for washing my hands in the tiny powder room that’s completely dark because there are no windows. I have to keep the door propped open with my foot, because it keeps wanting to swing shut, and I can’t deal with being in the darkness right now, even in a room too small to hide any monsters.

In the kitchen, I open the back door and holler for Opal, who’s still playing with the dog. “I’m going to see if the feed’s in the basement. You stay there!”

She gives me a curious look, probably at the shaky tone of my voice, but she’s too busy playing with the puppy to argue. At the kitchen sink, I wash my hands again, then rinse my mouth. I imagine the taste of that death smell still inside me, and for a minute I’m sure I’m going to barf.

It never gets easier, seeing dead bodies.

I saw a flashlight in one of the drawers when I was
looking for the keys. So I take it, then I unlock the door and make it halfway down the stairs before remembering the
Evil Dead
. I’m so stupid. Anything could be down here, ready to grab my ankles and pull me down, ready to swallow my soul.…

Freaked out, I leap the last couple of steps to the concrete floor and turn, waving the flashlight, expecting to see the red eyes and bloody mouth of something horrible coming after me. All I see is a tidy basement cast in shadow, but it isn’t completely dark, because there are a few windows in wells.

I see at once why he locked the basement door. Shelves and shelves of food and supplies. Cans, jars, bottles, plastic bins, neatly labeled. Camping gear. Jugs of water. Everything’s arranged so neatly, it’s like being in a grocery store, and for a few seconds, all I can do is stare.

Every time I go into town, I risk getting pulled for a random screening, and I know the consequences of that. They’d be immediate and terrible. With this stuff, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting our rations. Or stretching them to last. This is better than the money I pulled from the purse in the closet, because this is food, and I want to hug each and every can of creamed corn.

I can see the stairs leading to the backyard at the basement’s far end, and moving toward them, I let my fingers trail along the shelves, cataloging the contents while I imagine the look on Opal’s face when she sees it all. I’m not
paying attention to anything—just salivating over chocolate (real chocolate chips!)—when I come to the end of the shelving units and into a brighter part of the basement.

The woman was pretty once. I know that because I’ve seen her on the key ring I have shoved in the pocket of my denim shorts. She hasn’t been pretty for a long time.

A dirty quilt is bunched up next to her but provides no comfort, because she crouches directly on the concrete. Her hair has mostly fallen out, leaving big bald patches and wispy strands of some dull color I can’t name. She’s the color of snow and so thin, the knobs of her spine stick out. So do her shoulder blades and hip bones. She’s wearing only a threadbare sleeveless nightgown that does nothing to hide any bit of her.

She’s also wearing a collar.

The lights are steady green, which means it’s working and she’s calm. I stand staring, unable to speak. She rolls her eyes toward me. There’s no recognition in her gaze. Barely a flicker of interest. She shifts on the balls of her feet, and I can hear her body creak from where I stand. The woman rubs her fingers on the concrete in front of her, over and over. The tips of them are raw and bleeding, and on a few of them, I can see the bones.

I want to tell her to stop it, but I can’t make myself say anything. I stand and stare, frozen, as she rubs and rubs. I want to cry. I want to run, but all I can do is stand there and watch her wear away the skin of her fingertips. She doesn’t
even flinch. Blood spatters the floor, and I can see by the stains that this isn’t something new.

Then she turns her face to me and grins. Most of her teeth are missing, and the ones that remain are gray or black or broken. Her tongue slides out to lick her cracked lips. Her eyes were dull before, but now they’re very blue and very bright. She makes a low, grinding noise from deep in her throat and rocks herself back and forth.

She pushes herself to her feet.

Because of how far into the basement I’ve come, she is now between me and the kitchen stairs. I don’t wait. I run toward the backyard stairs, pushing off the concrete like I’m defying gravity. Five steps, six, and I’m there, but I’ve forgotten something important.

The doors are locked from the outside. The keys in my pocket might open the lock out there, but right now I’m pressed against the slanted metal doors, crouching on the top step. I see her shadow before I see her. Then her bare, dirty feet. Pale legs. The torn hem of her nightgown and her thighs, covered in bruises.

Then she ducks, still grinning, to get inside the stairwell, and I can’t hold back the screams. They rise up and up, stealing my breath. From outside, Opal cries my name. She pounds on the metal doors, and the ringing is loud and fills my head. She’s pulling on the chains, but she can’t open them. Can’t get the doors open.

I’m trapped.

The woman tilts her head curiously and moves forward, teeth bared in that horrible grin. The bloody bones of her fingers stretch toward me. The lights on her collar glow steady green. She’s still making that awful noise, and I realize it’s … laughter?

“Opal! Stop yelling and banging!”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m … I’m fine, I just got startled.… I’ll be out in a few minutes.…”

Opal babbles something else while the puppy barks and scratches at the metal doors. The woman below me comes closer, no longer laughing. Drool gathers in a corner of her mouth and slips down her jaw. It drips.

Oh, God, she stinks. Blood and body odor, the stench of rotten teeth. She wipes her bloody fingers on her nightgown, smearing it with fresh stains. Closer, inching closer.

“Stop.” I try to keep my voice calm.

This is different from the cheerleader in the woods, when I was already running, already pumped up. That girl was Contaminated but uncollared. The Connie in front of me is not supposed to be able to get aggressive because the collar around her neck is meant to keep her subdued. But she’s scarier than that cheerleader, and my heart is trip-trapping so fast, I feel it all over my body, and I can’t breathe.

“Velvet!”

“Opal,” I cry desperately. “I’ll be right out, I promise!”

“Should I come inside?”

“No! Make sure the chicken’s okay!”

The woman in front of me hisses out a sigh. Dark yellow urine slides down her legs and patters on the floor while I cringe away. She looks at it, then at me, her gaze gone blank again. She stands in a puddle of her own filth and doesn’t move except to put a mutilated hand to her head and pluck at the few remaining hairs.

Now I understand why the man upstairs killed himself, but I don’t pity him. Anger fuels me, gets me to move. This was someone he loved, and I know how terrible it must’ve been for him to watch her become this, a thing more than a person. But he left her to fend for herself, locked in a basement, while he took his own life to escape.

I have to help her.

“Hey,” I say softly, reaching a hand the way, earlier, Opal had reached toward the frightened puppy. “Shhh, shhh.”

I don’t want to touch her, not really. I want to do almost anything but that. I force myself to move closer, slow and calm. In order to get out of the stairwell, I have to move close enough past her that she could easily grab and attack me. She doesn’t, but I tense every muscle until I’m back in the basement and can stand upright.

I have an idea, and pulling the keys out of my pocket, I look at the back of the key ring. “Hey. Sandra. Sandy?”

She doesn’t move. I try again, touching her shoulder. “Sandra?”

Her head rolls on her shoulders as she looks at me. Shuffling, she turns. Beneath my hand, her bones feel sharp enough to cut.

“I’m going to take you out of here, okay? I’m going to take you someplace safe.” Even as I say it, the words sound like lies. I can’t take this woman home. That’s insanity. But how can I leave her here?

I let my hand drift down her bony arm to her wrist, so narrow, I can entirely circle it with my fingers. I pull gently. Sandra takes a step toward me. Step by step, I lead her past the shelves of food, past her dirty nest, toward the stairs to the kitchen. But she won’t go any farther.

She pulls back, grunting. The lights on her collar flash, first blinking green. Then yellow. Then briefly red. I stop pulling her. I know what red means. Mercy Mode. I can’t force her to come with me, not without triggering her collar to blast her brain with continuous electric shocks.

“Velvet?”

Crap, it’s Opal at the top of the stairs. Before I can tell her not to, she’s coming down them with the puppy scampering ahead of her. She stops at the bottom and gasps. The puppy runs at us, tumbling over its own paws and landing at Sandra’s feet.

Sandra looks at it. Slowly, she reaches a hand. Her mouth twists into a smile, and her lips move, shaping words I can’t make out. The puppy sniffs at her and sneezes, then lies down and puts its nose between its front paws.

“Sandra?”

She looks at me, blinking. Her collar lights glow a steady green. I look at Opal, who’s wide-eyed but hasn’t run.

“We need to help her,” I say.

“She looks bad, Velvet!”

I know Sandra can’t understand us, but I still shush Opal with a gesture. Opal sidles a little closer. Sandra doesn’t look at either one of us. Her attention’s on the puppy at her feet. Drool drips onto the concrete, spattering near the puppy’s head, and it looks up with a whine and rolls onto its back, exposing its belly.

“It was her puppy,” Opal says.

“Yes. I’m sure it was.”

“He’s not afraid of her.”

“No.” I shake my head, watching the puppy butt its head against Sandra’s bloody fingers.

“Can you take the collar off her? Like you did with Mama?”

“No.” The collars need a special key, which I don’t have. I’d unlocked my mom’s collar using a straightened paper clip, but that had been after months of seeing her gradually recover despite the collar. Of believing with my whole heart that my mother would never hurt us. I have no idea how violent Sandra had been before they found her and fitted her with a StayCalm collar, but the way she’s brutalized her own body isn’t a good sign. “And she doesn’t want to come upstairs.”

Opal looks around the basement with a wrinkled nose. “Gross. Why not?”

“Maybe this is all she knows or remembers.” I gesture at the shelves of food and supplies. “And we need to get Dillon to come with the truck. We should take this stuff. Look at it all.”

Opal was also raised right by our parents, and she hesitates for a second. “You mean, steal it?”

“There’s nobody here to use it.” I don’t tell her about the man upstairs, but she nods, anyway.

“We could leave a note. Tell them if they come back that we can pay them back.”

My heart squeezes with love for that kid. “Yeah. We could. But first, we need to figure out how to get Sandra back to our house.”

“How’d you know her name?” Opal inches closer, eyeing Sandra, who is crouching next to the dog. She croons to it under her breath, something tuneless and awful.

I show her the keys and the picture on the front, the names on the back. “How’s the chicken?”

“I think it died,” Opal says matter-of-factly. “It kept breathing really fast and funny, and when I looked under its wing, there was blood. Something bit it.”