Her First Day
His heart breaks all over again.
He shoulders his rifle and his pack, snatches up his keys, and chambers a round in the pistol. Just in case.
The knocking is weaker this time and he holds back tears because he knows what that means. Shaking it off, he tells himself there will be time to mourn later. Always more time, always later, but for now he has to focus.
An old calendar hangs on the wall next to the door. The actual month and year long past, it is now marked up with x’s and o’s of a dozen different colors. He checks the most recent series of blue x’s. 17 days. Longer than the last time by nearly a week. Maybe it would be over soon.
The knocking comes again and he swallows the lump in his throat. A coil of rope hangs on a hook under the calendar. Pistol at the ready, he grabs the rope, then throws the bolt and opens the door.
Standing on the threshold is a tiny figure, not even three feet tall. Tendrils of baby-fine blonde hair hang limply from the peeling skin on its head. It wears a dirty nightgown and weaves uncertainly on tiny feet, the bottoms of which the flesh has worn off completely, leaving only ragged flaps of dried skin across the bony tops. It makes no sound save a barely audible wheeze and the creaking of joints as it moves towards him.
Careful, he tells himself. Even this far gone they’re still dangerous. He watches as it takes tiny, labored steps across his porch. “Oh Penny,” he moans, “Oh, my sweet girl…”
The plague had taken his wife and son in the first wave, only days apart from each other. Fortunately, they’d been buried before the resurrection began. He thought of them often, somewhere beneath tons of earth, writhing, eternally trying but unable to break free from their steel and wooden boxes in their unmarked graves. Their headstones hadn’t arrived before the world ended.
He and his four-year-old daughter had managed to survive. The plague killed everyone around, but not everyone had been reanimated. And the resurrected were easy enough to dispatch as long as you didn’t get surrounded. He’d done okay with Penny by his side. In the weeks and months that followed, he’d managed to make it back to the house they’d lived in before the evacuations and the chaos had sent them away. He’d cleared the area of zombies and could find no signs of any other survivors. They set about living as normally as they could. He began teaching her to read and write. They played games and went for walks. She chased bubbles in the front yard while he watched with his rifle on his lap. It wasn’t ideal, but it was as good as he could make it under the circumstances.
Then she got the fever.
He did the best he could to play through his grief while she was alive. He sat for hours by her bed and sang every song he knew to make her happy. He only left her side when it was absolutely necessary and even then, rushed back to her, lest the inevitable happen while he was gone. Then one morning she just slipped away.
He lay on the floor wailing for hours. What would he do now? She was the only reason he kept going and now there she lay with her blankey and her bear, and she didn’t need him anymore.
He winced at each step she took toward him. Her arms slowly raised as if to give him a hug. He waited for a moment before uncoiling the rope and wrapping it around her tiny frame. She barely registered her capture, tiny teeth clacking together as tiny jaws tried to bite him. He cinched the rope at her waist and with one hand, picked her up like a suitcase and walked her out to the car. He set her in the back, next to the baby seat he’d strapped her into so many times before, avoiding her teeth as he clicked the seatbelt into place. He then got into the driver’s seat and started the car. He watched her in the rearview mirror and chided himself for his lack of courage. The kind thing, the merciful thing to do would be to put her out of her misey- snap her neck or put her down with a shot from his .45. But he could not. He’d come to terms with that fact long ago. Nope, he would just take her back and hope that this time would be the last. Although he knew it wouldn’t be.
She lay in her bed as if asleep for a few hours before she began to stir. At first he had a glimmer of hope that she’d just been sleeping, but the wretching, hissing sound she made let him know she’d only turned. He tried, then; putting his gun to her head and willing himself to pull the trigger to end it for her. But of course, he failed.
He avoided her attacks while trying to figure out what to do. Then it occurred to him to just let her go. Take her out and let her… it… fend for itself. Some other survivor or maurader would deal with it and he could go on without knowing he’d put a bullet in his daughter’s brain. He’d wrapped her up in a bedsheet and put her in the car.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“When I dwow up I want to doe to stool.”
“Go to school?”
“Dat’s what I said. Doe to stool.”
“Well, honey, I don’t think they have school anymore.”
“Ben doed to stool.”
“Yes, he sure did.”
“So I tan doe to stool too. Humph.”
A tear rolled down his cheek as he remembered her folding her arms in an exaggerated sulk. She would never understand. But here they were, on the playground of what would have been her elementary school. He’d unwrapped her from the sheet then. He untied the rope now. He stood away from her for a moment. Then said, “Have a good day at school, sweetheart. Daddy loves you and will be waiting for you when you get home.”