Revenence: Dead Silence, A Zombie Novel (15 page)

"Precious!" she called, raising her fat arms to cup her hands around her mouth.  "
Precious!
"

"It's okay, mom," Jason said.  "I'm sure she'll come back."

"I sure hope so," Mrs. Anderson sniffed.  "It's supposed to be down around thirty tonight, and she can't sleep outside in that kind of cold.  It would be cruel!  She's
got
to come back, that's all there is to it.  I can't bear the thought of leaving her out here."

Daphne gritted her teeth.  Hearing those words come out of her foster mother's mouth made her blood boil.  It took everything in her not to dig out her knife right then and there and kill them both, mother and son. 
More fun to wait,
she thought. 
Enjoy their pain.  Besides, I can't take them both on at once.
  The garbage truck had come and gone, carrying with it any chance of the Andersons finding the body of their pet.

They beat her, of course, for letting the dog get away.  She knew it was coming, but it only fueled her hatred, only compounded the certainty of their fate.  She told them the dog must have gotten away while she was sleeping, but they held her accountable, nevertheless.  She couldn't help but be surprised that it never seemed to cross their minds that maybe
she'd
done something to the dog.  They really thought they'd broken her spirit...and although it worked in her favor, she was a little dismayed and insulted by the fact. 
They really think they're my keepers,
she thought.

She had formulated in her head exactly what she would do.  The sun went down, blanketing the countryside in velvet darkness.  The sky was entirely overcast, hiding the light of the moon, so it was very dark. 
All the easier to hide,
Daphne thought.  She waited until a few hours after sunset.  Then she yelled at the top of her lungs...

"Precious!  Precious is back!"  It sounded as if an elephant were on the loose in the house.  She knew Mrs. Anderson would come bounding out the door, and that she'd be the first.  She kinew that Jason and Mr. Anderson didn't give a damn about that dog nearly as much as Mrs. Anderson did.  Daphne stood outside the back door, waiting.  She covered her eyes with her hand, preserving her night vision, just before her Mrs. Anderson flipped the switch that was inside the back door, turning on the back patio light.  As soon as she exited the house, Daphne smashed the light fixture with a brick, bathing the yard in darkness once again. 

"Huh?!" she heard Mrs. Anderson gasp, confounded.  She came up behind the woman, noiseless, slitting her throat as she had the dog.  She gurgled, unable to speak or yell out.  Daphne watched coldly as her foster mother sank to the ground, still alive for the time being.

"You shouldn't have treated me like shit, and you shouldn't have let that fat fuck you call your son rape me all the time," she said calmly, quietly.  "It's a shame you people call yourself Christians."  As the words left her mouth, she mounted the woman and brought the knife down into her abdomen and pulled it back out, the gut hook snagging the intestines on its way out.  A half-dozen meals worth of digesting food spilled out.  As an afterthought, she cut the woman's right ear off, tucking it into her pocket. 
This is mine
, she thought.

She heard Mr. Anderson call out from the house.  "What the hell was that breaking sound?" he demanded as he opened the door.  Daphne was ready for him, leaping from the darkness onto his back, slitting his throat. 
He never saw it coming
, Daphne thought as he slumped down.

"I killed your wife," Daphne said indifferently as she waited for him to bleed out.  "And I'm going to kill your son."

"Why?" he whispered, then passed away.  She cut his right ear off as well, putting it in her pocket with that of his wife.                                     

Where's Jason?
she wondered. 
That lazy fuck is probably still sleeping through all this.
  She slipped silently into the house and up the stairs.  She paused, wondering which room was his.  This was her first time being upstairs.  She tried a door...the linen closet.  She treaded noiselessly down the hall.  She put her ear against a door...she could hear faint snoring.  She carefully opened the door and approached the bed, where Jason slept.  She stood over him for a moment, watching him in his state of slumber. 
You'd almost think he's innocent
, she thought,
but I know better.
  She slashed his throat while he laid there, as defenseless as she was all those times he violated her.  His eyes shot open for a moment, then began to close as he quickly bled out.  She threw back the blanket, reached into his pajama pants, and castrated him before he died. 

"You don't deserve this," she hissed, "and you won't need it where you're going."  She threw his dismembered phallus at him.  It smacked him in the face before it rolled onto the floor, where she ground it into the wooden flooring beneath her bare foot.  She collected his ear, spun around, left the room, and went back downstairs.  After she took a long, hot shower, she helped herself to some food from the fridge, gorging herself until she vomited, then ate some more.  When she was full, she sank down on the plush couch in the living room, and watched TV until she passed out.

She wandered the woods for several weeks, hunting small animals, sleeping under the stars as she was already accustomed to doing.  She occasionally stole food or supplies from whatever yards or houses she could sneak into undetected.  She had dried the three ears she kept as trophies and hung them on a piece of intestine from a rabbit she had killed and eaten...she had learned how to build a fire from one of Mr. Anderson's military survival guides. 
It's a nice little trinket,
she thought morbidly of the string of ears.

One day, she saw a poster on a telephone pole on the edge of the small town near her former home.  As she examined it, she saw that it offered a reward to anybody with information on the whereabouts of one Daphne Anderson.  The poster had a drawing that resembled her face, as nobody had ever taken her picture since she lived with her real parents. 
They'll come to get me soon
, she thought. 
I better hide my knife, and the ears.  I'll be damned if anyone's gonna take those away from me.

She hid her things in a small leather pouch that she had stolen from somebody's shed and buried them in the woods.  She had looked for a spot she would remember--a bend in the stream where an ancient, gnarled tree grew, its trunk at least six feet in diameter.

She continued to wander the woods, waiting for a search party to come and place her under arrest.  She didn't know what would happen to her, but she was certain that she didn't want to spend her life running.  After three days, she woke up to the sound of somebody speaking her name. 

"Are you Daphne Anderson?"  Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw the local sheriff looking down at her. 

"I'm Daphne McAllister," she retorted groggily, and thought to herself,
I'll never answer to that name again. 
"But I think I'm the girl you're looking for, yes."

"I found her," he said into his radio.  "Young lady, I'm gonna have to ask you to come with me."  She rose up from the sleeping bag, offering no resistance, and walked with him to his squad car. 

Because of the unusual abuse she had suffered, she had been sent to a mental hospital instead of a detention center.  The prosecutor had tried to argue that there was no record of abuse, according to the family doctor's records.  However, the medical examinations she had underwent showed severe scarring on her legs, back, and arms from the lashings that had been inflicted onto her, and confirmed that she was severely malnourished.  The doctor had also assured the court that she had, in fact, been raped...horribly and repeatedly. 

"She'll never have children," he had testified.

After she had turned nineteen, she was released from the hospital.  The first thing she did was to return to the spot where she had buried her treasure. 
It's still here,
she thought, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she finished digging and took out the leather pouch.  She took the knife from the pouch, kissing the blade. 
I hope I never have to use you on another human being.

She reflected on that thought, two years later, as she collected the ears of the men who had tried to rape, and possibly kill, Fauna and Shari. 
I meant it,
she thought. 
I never wanted to do it.  I never wanted to kill anyone again, but I can't let bad people hurt good people
.

She glanced toward the road, and the nearby town.  She could hear a group of undead shuffling in her direction. 
Aw, that's cute,
she thought. 
They want to go after that truck that came through
. 

She took out her knife and cut off each man's right ear, stashing them in her pack.  She quickly finished searching the bodies, and climbed about fifteen feet up into one of the trees on the outer edge of the woods, waiting for her prey.

She had been outside for around an hour when Jon snuck up on her.

"You're gonna get heatstroke if you stay out here much longer," he said.  She jumped, startled. 

"I didn't even hear you come up," she said, and lowered her voice almost to a whisper.  "Should you be out here talking to me?  Isn't you-know-who going to pitch a bitch fit?"  After the words left her lips, she wondered if it was a rude thing to say.  She looked over at Jon, who didn't seem offended.

"She's in the shower," he said.  He stood for a moment, head down, gazing over the garden, formulating his thoughts.  "Listen, I want to thank you again for all you and Fauna have done for us."

Shari smirked.  "You've thanked us a lot already...like, every day!"  She looked back down at the ground, continuing her work.  "You're welcome, though."

"And I want to apologize.  I had a feeling Cindy would start trouble if there was another young female here, although I didn't know before we came that you'd be so attractive."  Shari snapped her head in his direction, her eyes open wide in surprise.  She could feel herself blushing.  He looked just as surprised as she was, as if he hadn't intended to say it.  "I'm sorry, I...that was probably inappropriate."

It wouldn't be
, said that rogue voice in Shari's head,
if it weren't for the fact that we both obviously want to play a game of pole-in-the-hole with one another.

"No, it's okay," she said, "everybody likes a compliment every now and then."  She smiled.  "Besides, I can't fully blame her.  A lot of women would be possessive of a good-looking guy like you."  He grinned sheepishly.  "You two should just count yourselves lucky that you've got each other for companionship and...."  She paused uncomfortably.  "You know, to relieve your sexual frustrations."

He scoffed.  "Yeah, she's not really reliable for that.  I haven't gotten any since a month
before
the zombies showed up."  He shifted awkwardly.  "Well, I'm, uh...I'm gonna go see if she's out of the shower yet."

"Alright," Shari said, turning back to her weeding. 
What was that all about?
she thought.  And then, that rogue voice again...
He wants to do me
.  She stood, deciding that she had finally had enough of the scorching heat for one morning, and headed back to the loft.