Pushing Up Gravestones - Pushing Up Gravestones – Chapter 8

Denise
used to wonder what the end of the world would look like, though she never
imagined for it to look like this. Ferrah’s
house had been looted just like everyone else. Now what was once a home looked
more like a dump. There was nothing in the house. It was completely empty. The
walls were covered with graffiti, the carpet was covered in ash and broken
glass.

The
house smells like a mixture of alcohol,
smoke, and blood. Her home was filled with an eerie silence that made Denise
wonder if they would ever be safe again. The taste in Denise’s mouth was a mixture
of vomit, fear, and sweat. Denise vowed to herself she would never show the
fear she was felt inside, nor the sadness that was squeezing inside her gut. It
strangled her so much she could just curl up in a ball somewhere and cry. She
fought the urge because that would just be embarrassing.

Ferrah
ran her hands across the walls of what used to occupy her family room. Denise
watched as Ferrah’s pained face slowly fell into something she had never seen
before. Ferrah didn’t look like the same curly red haired, blue-eyed princess who pranced around like she
owned the school anymore. No, now she looked shattered and broken. Like she had
finally just realized the life they all
had was gone.

The
life they used to know was just a past memory and this was their future, a very
bleak future. Denise watched Ferrah as she slowly walked down the hallway like
she had stumbled into a nightmare that she could not wake up from. Denise just
watched her helplessly not knowing what she could do. She couldn’t help but
feel somewhat happy to know that the evil witch queen bee was dead, but immediately felt guilty at the
thought. Denise couldn’t tell her everything was going to be okay because she
didn’t know if it was. She didn’t even know if she wanted to be nice to the
girl who had made her high school life more annoying than necessary.

Tina
and Denise made their way around the house collecting whatever survived that
could be of use. The kitchen cupboards were left with a few tins of baked
beans, soup, and spaghetti, the living
room was bare but they were able to find a lighter that someone else had left
behind and cigarette butts.

Tina
sat on the carpet of the living room and put her legs to her chest curling up
in a ball and Denise sighed. Denise left her in the living room to find Ferrah.
Denise cautiously walked through the house, not knowing who or what could still
be in this house now. She suddenly could already hear the soft sobbing coming
from an unknown room. Denise followed the sound and found Ferrah sitting by her
bed in what Denise guessed used to be a bedroom. The room was just like what
Denise imagined a prissy school brat’s room would look like. It was covered
with posters of attractive guys, pictures of her with her friends, and filled
with white furniture, now broken and damaged.

Black
mascara was running down Ferrah’s face and that’s when Denise noticed the burnt
clothes over the bed and the photos scattered across the floor. Denise didn’t
say anything as she sat down next to her. Ferrah was staring at a photo that
had been burnt along the edges and Denise glanced at it. The photo was of two
older people holding a baby, they smiled up to the camera happily while the
small baby giggled in their arms.

“Is
that you?” Denise asked quietly.

 It was a stupid question to ask, she knew that
as soon as it exited her mouth. Of course,
it was Ferrah, this was her house, this is where her family would have lived
her whole life and now it was ruined. Everything was shattered, tarred, and
burnt. Denise couldn’t help feeling much the same. Ferrah nodded handing Denise
the photo so she could look at it more closely. Ferrah rested her head on
Denise’s shoulder. Denise couldn’t describe how weird that was for her to have a
girl she hated resting her head on Denise’s shoulder like she was her friend.
Denise definitely was not her friend, but she didn’t know what else to do so
she let Ferrah lay there wiping the stray tears from her eyes.

“They’re
vermin,” Ferrah hissed causing Denise to turn a little to face her.  

“The
zombies,” she answered the question that was rolling around Denise’s mind, “They’re
the enemy… they’ve done all this…”

“Those
zombies used to be our friends Ferrah, our families, and the people we knew in
our neighborhood. They’re not the enemy.”

“Then
who is!” she exclaimed, “If they’re not the enemy why are we killing them
without even giving it a second thought? This is a war, Denise. The sooner you recognize
what side you’re on the better!’

Denise
went silent at that because she didn’t know what else to say. Denise knew Ferrah
was right of course, but that thought still didn’t give her comfort. These were
the people they used to live with, the people they used to go to school with,
the people they knew and now they were supposed to think of them as an enemy?

A
long silence stretched between them as they both stared down at the photo that
was now in Denise’s hands. Suddenly, a piercing scream echoed through the
house. Ferrah and Denise glanced at each other before jumping to their feet and
running to the source of the noise.

They
found the source just down the hallway outside Ferrah’s room. It was Tina. She
was standing in the doorway to the
bathroom and all the color had faded from
her face. Tina was trembling, her hands were shaking and her eyes seemed unable
to blink.

“What’s
wrong Tina?” Denise asked softly as she bent in front of Tina.

She
looked deep into Tina’s eyes but they had gone completely hollow like she had
seen a ghost. Tina slowly raised her arm with her hand pointing at the thing
that had made her scream.

Denise’s
head slowly turned to the source of Tina’s terror. Then she saw it, wishing
that she had the will to look away. Ferrah stepped around Denise to see what we
were all gawking at and immediately a second rippling scream went through the
house. There, lying in the bathtub was a body of a zombie. The zombie body was
lying in the bathtub. It had been shot in
the head; its blue eyes were still wide open staring up at the ceiling. Blood
had oozed from the open wound on its face and spread across the rest of the
body. The translucent skin was white as snow and its lips were blue as ice.

Denise
immediately covered her nose to block out the stench. An eerie silence filled the
air as everyone became speechless. Ferrah made her way over to the body without
saying a word, but her face matched Tina’s. Her hands went out to touch the
body and that’s when Denise finally found the ability to speak again.

“Don’t
touch it!” Ferrah’s head immediately flung back to Denise, “We have to find a
way to get rid of the body; you don’t want to get infected do you?”

“No,
no one else is touching him,” Tina said with more tears springing in her eyes.

Denise
looked back to Tina with a confused expression on her face. Denise tried not to
think of this zombie as a person, but it was. The boy had blue eyes and dirty
blonde hair, he looked about ten. His eyes looked scared and the rest of his
body was pale and lifeless. I turned back to Tina to see little tears were
pouring down her face and Denise rubbed her arms up and down as she asked the
question that Denise hoped wasn’t true.

‘Do
you know this boy Tina?’ Denise whispered gently and she could feel Ferrah’s
eyes were also on Tina waiting for an answer.

 Tina slowly nodded as she lowered her head to
look at her shoes.

“He’s
my brother.”

*****

It
was the middle of the night when they had finally filled their packs as much as
possible and buried the body in the backyard. Denise was hugging Tina as she
watched the fire that was flickering in the middle of the living room. They ate
from the cans of soup they had found in silence. Ferrah was the one to break
the silence.

“What
happened to your family Tina?” Denise shot her this-is-not-the-time look but
she just shrugged, “What? We have a right to know.”

“Ferrah!”

“No
Denise, it’s okay,” Tina replied as she sad and unwrapped Denise’s hands from
around her, “My mother was a full-time
doctor while my dad stayed home to look after my brother and me.”

Ferrah
and I both nodded understanding. I couldn’t help wondering about my parents at that moment. Denise wondered if Tina’s
mother and her parents knew each other or if she knew where her parents were.

“Even
though my mother had a busy job we still managed to all have time together… we
were a really close family and I knew they loved me.  My parents loved each other a lot, so when my
dad became infected we tried everything to help him…”

 Denise wondered if her parents had done the
same. If they were safe somewhere trying to make an antidote that would take
this nightmare away.

“My
mum tried everything to find an antidote but nothing would work. The people in
our neighborhood started turning against
us, saying we should just kill him… but my mother… she just couldn’t do it. She
loved my dad too much…”

“So
what happened did someone end up killing him?” Ferrah pressed.

Denise
through her another dirty look, but she just shrugged again.

“No,
she wouldn’t let anyone touch him… except her,” Tina immediately broke out in
sobs, “After my brother got bitten by my father, she was afraid for both
herself and my safety. So she decided to do the unthinkable…”

Little
tears started rolling down Tina’s face and her whole body started shaking, “I
watched my own mother kill my father right in front of me!”

Her
cries became louder and more desperate as she put her head in her hands to hide
how much the whole thing had affected her. Denise could already feel her
stomach turning uncomfortably and Ferrah’s face went flat with emotion,
resembling something unidentifiable to Denise. There was a long silence between
them where no one knew what to say. The only sound was the fire flickering in
the middle of the room and quiet sobs of Tina’s crying.

Denise
took Tina’s hand gently, “What happened to your brother?”

Tina
sighed and wiped her dripping nose with her right hand.

“After
my brother also witnessed my mother kill my father he went feral. He actually
seemed perfectly calm at first. When my brother turned into a zombie, we kept
him locked in a room so we could observe him and he didn’t act like anything
we’d expect a zombie to act like. He walked around gloomily and sat in the
middle of the room while small tears came down his face. I don’t think zombies are
always evil; I think my brother was still my brother
until something made him feral… when he heard that gunshot it changed him. He
wasn’t my brother anymore, he was an animal. It felt like I didn’t just lose my
dad, but I lost my brother as well.’ 

Denise
never imagined zombies could be like that. She never imagined that the ones who
got turned weren’t just savage monsters from the beginning, she genuinely
thought they were. Denise never imagined that maybe they weren’t a monster at
all. Maybe the zombie was just a cage that the real human inside was trapped
in.

Denise
couldn’t help thinking about the zombie she had killed at that moment, maybe she didn’t just kill a monster like she had
tried to justify to herself, maybe she had killed an actual human, a human that
was trapped inside a zombie body. Don’t think about it, Denise.

“My
brother broke out of his room as soon as he heard the gunshot, he latched his teeth on to my mother and tackled her to
the ground and before I knew it he had sunk his teeth into her neck. I remember
screaming and begging him to stop and promising him we could all be a family
again and that we would find a way to help him. He had already turned though.”

“When
he looked at me then, it was like he saw right through me. It was like he
didn’t even remember who I was anymore. He didn’t care who I was anymore, all
he cared about was killing.”

There
was another silence as Denise watched Tina’s head turn to me. “What I will
never understand is why my brother spared me, why he didn’t turn me when he had
the chance because after he bit my mother he ran off and I never saw him again.”

“And
your mother?” Ferrah finally asked.

Her
voice was croaky and sad like she had finally cracked Denise had never seen Ferrah
like this.

“She
told me to save myself,” Tina shrugged as she got off from the ground, “So I
ran off… And now my brother is dead in the ground.”

She
wiped more stray tears from her cheeks as she walked away from us and Danelle
listened as her footsteps echoed through the house and the back door slam shut.
She knew Tina was going outside to cry alone and that made my stomach churn
even more. Danelle felt the vomit rising
in my throat and her own tears threatening to escape from her eyes.

“Good
riddance is all I can say,” Ferrah spoke up sternly.

That’s
when Denise jumped from her seat and grabbed Ferrah by the collar tightly. Ferrah
looked at Denise, her eyes nearly bulging out of her sockets. Her face went a scared shade of white.

“Do
you still think they’re the enemy Ferrah?” I hissed as she looked up at me with
her piercing blue eyes, not making a sound.

I let
go of her collar, making her fall to the ground. Ferrah unsteadily walked away
in the same path as I just seen Tina take.

But
if they weren’t the enemy, who was?

Denise
still couldn’t answer that question as her head lay on the torn carpet of the
living room. She kept tossing and turning wondering if something or
someone might just break through the window and kill her – just like that. After
a while, Denise went looking for Tina and Ferrah.

She
found Tina almost asleep lying out on the grass in the open, and picked her up,
bringing her into the house with her. She wrapped her arms tightly around
Tina’s frail, tiny, scared body. She had cried herself to sleep that night.

As
for Ferrah, it looked like she had gotten to sleep hours ago. Unlike them, Denise
couldn’t get her eyes to close as more and more questions ran through her
mind and more and more faces of loved ones she had lost haunted her each time
she tried to close her eyes. Denise was scared and for the first time
since this began, she began to cry. Maybe
it was just in fear or perhaps confusion, but all Denise knew was that this
wasn’t going to her last sleepless night.