First Light Read online

  Lyra watched Rose as she stood and wandered toward the kitchen. She opened the fridge with the intent of salvaging what might have been the last little bit of wine when she realized the door light hadn’t switched on.

  Unsure of what she’d just witnessed, she closed the refrigerator, then opened it again.

  The light was still off.

  “What’s wrong?” Lyra asked.

  “Turn something on,” Rose said.

  “What?”

  “The lights, the TV—something.”

  Lyra did as asked. Her fumbling hand through the dark and then her insistent thumb upon the remote control were enough to prove her point.

  The power was out.

  Lyra had only one thing to say. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” Rose said. “Fuck.”

  The women looked at each other from their places in the dark.

  The silence between them was immense. Even the world outside, so dark and hollow, could not break the bleak atmosphere inside their flat.

  Though no words were spoken, their thoughts led them to the same place.

  They pulled the candles from the cabinet above the stove, matches from the drawer right beside it.

  There was no denying it now.

  They were in this for the long haul.

  The pale flicker of a candle snuffing out stirred Rose from her dazed half-sleep on the couch.

  Lifting her head, she narrowed her eyes to regard the smoking countenance of the now-extinguished light source, and wondered if the events of the previous day had all been a dream.

  It couldn’t have been real, she thought. It couldn’t have.

  But if it wasn’t, why wasn’t she in her room, in her bed? And why had there been an unwatched candle burning where it could set the living room on fire?

  The halfhearted notion gave such life to her disbelief that when she heard footsteps approaching from the hall, she didn’t even flinch.

  “Rose,” Lyra said, her voice low and alien. “Mary’s dead.”

  There was no reasonable reply. The only thing she said was: “What?”

  Lyra didn’t speak. The only things Rose could hear were her friend’s uneven breaths and the sharp inhalation of developing snot.

  Turning, Rose regarded Lyra through her sleep-deprived eyes and waited for her to say anything further.

  Once more, her friend remained silent. She merely turned and started back down the hall.

  Rose was quick to follow.

  “What happened?” she asked when they were in the bedroom.

  “I don’t know,” Lyra said, crossing one arm over her chest and using the other to balance her chin atop her hand. “I just went in to check on her and she… wasn’t moving.”

  “Did you check her pulse?”

  “Yes. Goddammit Rose, do you honestly believe I don’t know how to check a pulse?”

  Anything was possible. Shock could frame everything in such dismal light. For that, Rose slid around Lyra and leaned over Mary’s unmoving body, reaching carefully for her roommate’s jugular, struggling to maintain focus on the matter when Mary’s eyes were open and unmoving.

  Her fingers touched cold flesh.

  If temperature wasn’t an indication, the lack of discernible heartbeat was.

  “She’s dead,” Rose said, confirming what they already knew.

  Lyra lost it. She startled to sob immediately.

  “There wasn’t nothing you could do,” Rose said, reaching out to close Mary’s eyes. “You did everything you could.”

  Her warm flesh upon Mary’s dead skin was the most unnerving thing she had ever felt.

  Though peace washed over her when her friend’s eyes were closed, it could not dissuade the flood of feelings that followed.

  Rising, Rose reached for the end of the bed, pulled Mary’s sheet over her body, then led Lyra out of the room, careful to close the door to only a crack behind them.

  “I know this may sound in bad taste,” Lyra said, “especially considering what’s going on, but… do you want a coffee?”

  Rose couldn’t refuse.

  Given that the power was out and Lyra was unable to use the electric stove, she took to pouring the mixture into the machine and allowing the drainer to filter the excess shit while she stirred purified water and the melting remains of ice cubes about a large mug.

  So diligent was she that her eyes never left her work.

  Though shocked as one would be, Rose could never have imagined seeing Lyra so morose.

  She did find her body, she thought with hurt and bitter sympathy. It’s not like you can expect any more of her.

  She couldn’t, and wouldn’t. Even in the medical field it was preposterous to think that one who witnessed such pain and suffering would eventually become immune to it. Lyra was beautiful—a person who saw the life and light in everything, even if she happened to convey it in a mocking manner—and regardless of whatever anyone thought of her, Rose had always seen her friend as nothing less than a treasure who had walked into her life.

  “Coffee,” Lyra said. She passed Rose a mug over the kitchen island and propped an elbow on the table as she poured herself one. “I gotta tell you, Rose… I’m not sure what we’re going to do.”

  “About what?”

  “About anything. What’s going on, where we’re gonna be… what we’re going to do with Mary.”

  Rose kept her silence. She sipped her coffee in favor of interrupting her friend’s stream of consciousness, but when Lyra made no move to press further, she sighed and leaned forward, cupping her mug in her hands. “I’m not sure what you’re saying,” she said.

  “We can’t just leave her in there. She’ll start to smell after a while. And the bugs… God. Can you imagine?”

  “What if we just plugged up her door so the air couldn’t get out?”

  “It’d still get back in. Not much you can do about open ventilation, Rose.”

  “I know.”

  Lyra took another sip of her coffee. This time when she lowered her mug, her eyes had the fire that had always compelled her fighting spirit. “We have to move her,” she said. “Before the day gets older.”

  “What about…” Rose turned to look at the doorway. “Him?”

  “‘Till death do them part,” Lyra said, rather bitterly at that. “Isn’t that what the old man used to say?”

  Rose wasn’t one to quote Shakespeare, so she chose not to answer.

  “I’m just worried that if we open the door, someone will hear us,” Rose continued, strumming her fingers along her mug. “It was bad enough yesterday. What if someone slipped in and decided to wait out on one of the floors? Who’s telling what could be in here with all the shit that’s hit the fan?”

  “Ruh-Rose,” Lyra said.

  “What is it?” Rose asked, lifting her head, taking in the wild expression framed within the bold confines of the woman’s carefully-managed brows and strong cheekbones. “Lyra? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s… I thought…”

  “What are you—”

  “Mary?”

  From the depths of the hall, the door to Mary’s room creaked open.

  Rose spun in her stool, every nerve in her body on edge.

  “I… I thought she was dead,” Lyra said as a sheet-covered silhouette stumbled out of the bedroom. “I… I checked her pulse.”

  “I know,” Rose replied.

  “What if I was wrong? Oh God, Rose… what if I thought she was dead when she really wasn’t?”

  “She was dead, Lyra.”

  “How do you—”

  Pushing herself to her feet, Rose extended an arm to prevent Lyra from stepping forward and walked into the threshold that separated the living room and kitchen. Her eyes took note of the shuffled movements, her nose the undeniable stench of death.

  These eyes see through the storm, some would have seen fit to say.

  But what storm was it they weathered, and whose eyes, she wondered, were the ones that witnessed it
?

  Swallowing the ever-growing lump in her throat, Rose lowered her arm to keep from barring Lyra passage and said, in the most fragile voice possible, “Mary?”

  The figure stopped moving.

  Shrouded beneath the satin-white sheet, the only thing that could be made out of Mary was her polka-dot socks.

  Not once in her life had Rose ever experienced the sensation of time going still, but here, in this flat, in this threshold, and in that hallway, she felt just that.

  Mary didn’t move.

  Lyra’s breath was hot against her neck.

  Rose’s heartbeat, so still, suddenly roared to life.

  It was as though that single moment was enough to trigger a firestorm.

  The sheet slipped from Mary’s body.

  Her head tilted up.

  Within her doleful eyes lay nothing: a slack expression that quickly changed into rage upon seeing the two women before them.

  “Run,” Rose breathed.

  A scream ripped from Mary’s throat like gutted lambs on the coldest nights before she ran right for them.

  Lyra threw herself around the island just as Mary closed in on Rose.

  “MARY!” Lyra shouted.

  Rose whipped her mug of iced coffee off the island and clocked Mary upside the head, sending the thing that used to be her friend into the wall.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Lyra screamed. “THAT’S MARY!”

  “It isn’t Mary anymore,” Rose said, stepping back into the kitchen. “Mary’s dead, Lyra.”

  The creature lifted its head to regard her with filmy eyes.

  Lyra gasped.

  The corpse immediately snapped its head about and shrieked.

  Lyra yelled as Rose grabbed the massive mug of iced coffee and threw it across the island.

  The mug impacted with Mary’s shoulder and exploded.

  Glass rained everywhere.

  Iced coffee splattered the linoleum and sent Mary to the floor.

  Stunned by the reaction, Lyra ran, slipped, and flipped over the couch, where she landed somewhere Rose couldn’t see.

  By this time, the corpselike Mary had navigated to her feet and now stared directly at Rose.

  “Hey!” Lyra cried. “Wanker! Get a load of this!”

  The black woman threw one of several couch cushions at Mary, prompting a snarl directly after a moment of disorientation.

  “Yeah! You!” she said, her panic growing clear as her eyes sought Rose beyond Mary’s lifeless body. “Yeah! Yeah! I’m talkin’ to you! Why don’t you come over here and get a load of this!”

  The creature screeched.

  Rose’s gaze darted across the counter.

  Knives.

  She pulled the largest she could from its wooden rack just as Mary whipped her head around to look at her.

  Nothing Rose could’ve done would have prepared her for the force of Mary’s assault.

  The knife, poised at waist-level, sunk directly into her friend’s waist.

  The momentum ripped the weapon free and spilled blood across the floor.

  “She’s not dead!” Rose screamed, struggling to free herself from the creature’s assault as it pushed her into a corner. “Do something, Lyra! DO SOMETHING!”

  Mary snapped.

  Teeth came just inches away from Rose’s face.

  Rose brought her knee up into Mary’s stomach and rammed the knife into her sternum.

  The blow did little to faze the creature as it lunged for her.

  An immense cry that Rose first thought came from the creature sounded throughout the room.

  A paperweight came down.

  The corpse jerked as the ornament collided with its skull.

  Lyra—lips torn in a scream—slammed the object into Mary’s head three more times, until the corpse ceased to move.

  Breathless, trembling, and almost unable to move, Rose took in a deep breath and trained her eyes on her friend. “Lyra?” she asked. “Are you ok?”

  Her friend said nothing. She merely kneeled there, crouched over the body, and began to laugh.

  “Lyra?” Rose asked again. “Are you hurt?”

  “We are fucked,” her friend said through the hysterical laughter pitched from her throat. “We are so fucked.”

  “You never answered my question.”

  “Am I hurt?” Lyra asked. “I’m the one who should be asking. I just didn’t have some homicidal corpse bride try to eat my face off.”

  “She wasn’t alive.”

  “No shit, Sherlock! What the hell are we going to do about this?”

  Rose gazed down at the corpse, its mangled skull, and the blood speckled across the floor. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we can just wait it out and—”

  “Wait it out?” Lyra barked. “Wait it out? What the fuck are you on about? It’s the fuckin’ zombie apocalypse!”

  “You’re fucking kidding.”

  “No I ain’t fucking kidding! How else do you explain this?” She jabbed the bloodied paperweight at Mary’s body. “Boy meets girl. Girl loves boy. Boy is dumb. Really dumb. A fuckin’ slag. Girl goes to meet boy and comes back bitten like she was a turkey sandwich. Then she dies, and then… oh, can you guess what’s coming next?”

  “Get on with it,” Rose said.

  “She wakes up! Don’t you get it, Rose? This is fucked. This isn’t some drug shit. This is real. Spencer tried to eat her, then she tried to eat you. If there’s not something wrong with that, then fuck me, you can call me Cleopatra!”

  Rose sighed and shook her head. She pressed a hand against her face and wished for a moment in which she could change everything, to turn back time and do anything to keep Mary from going and seeing Spencer. At least then she would be safe—here, with them, in their dingy little flat, alive.

  Her few moments of solitude were broken by the sound of the paperweight dropping to the floor. “So,” Lyra said. “What’re we gonna do with her?”

  Rose looked down at the body.

  His bite… the blood… her reanimation…

  They couldn’t leave her here. That much was obvious.

  “Go grab the sheet,” Rose said. “We’ll wrap her up and throw her over the balcony. That’s the safest thing we can do.”

  The sound of a falling body should’ve drawn attention, especially on such a normally-crowded street. Instead, it landed with a resounding impact that went unnoticed by everything but the pigeons.

  Inside, Rose and Lyra repeated the actions of yesterday’s encounter—scrubbing, sanitizing, then washing and sanitizing again until nothing could be made out.

  “Now we have another thing to worry about,” Lyra said. “Where we’re gonna go.”

  Lyra had made it increasingly apparent that she was not comfortable remaining in the flat. High-traffic with its local shops, bakery, bars and an old shopping mall, the market district was bound to be a draw to both people looking to raid during what she continued to call the ‘zombie apocalypse’ and the corpse-like creatures she had now started calling ‘zombies.’

  There’s no point, she had said when Rose suggested boarding up. We lock ourselves in, we’re stuck. We run out of food, we have to go out, then come back in. Sooner or later someone’s going to catch up to us.

  And when they did, Lyra said, it wouldn’t matter who or what they were. They’d be fucked.

  What little water could be pulled from the sink and bathtub was drawn with the utmost care, while the next short while was spent gathering and placing canned goods in the hallway. Eventually, they deemed the bathroom their storage den.

  The food could be rationed, Lyra noted, if there was careful math involved, but that didn’t factor in proper nutrition.

  She’s right, Rose thought as she continued to mark down how many cans of green beans they had left. We’ll have to leave.

  Waiting for someone to rescue them was preposterous. At this point, it was pretty apparent that they were, as Lyra had been eager to say, fucked. There was no police pres
ence within the streets, no sign of the British Armed Forces, no local militia arranged at the advent of the end of the world.

  The fact that the power was still off begged the question as to whether or not their plight was being broadcast, or if they were even being instructed to remain indoors or seek shelter elsewhere.

  It was as Lyra had constantly been saying: there was no point in staying here.

  A quick tally of their inventory showed that they would have to leave within days.

  Though their ultimatum presented only one path, the most apparent was the one that led Rose to drag her university knapsack from the closet and dump its contents onto the floor.

  “Well,” Rose said, returning to Lyra’s place in the hall. “This is all I’ve got.”

  Her friend lifted her head and scrutinized the pack with uneasy eyes. “You’re sure?” Lyra said. “You don’t have one from last year? Or the year before?”

  “Last year’s got torn when that drunk in Liverpool grabbed the strap. And don’t even get me started about the year before.”

  Lyra shivered at the subtle mention of the Great Liverpool Head Lice Outbreak and shook her head before returning her attention to her work. “All right then,” she said. “You got anything else? Sacks? Big purses?”

  Rose paused to consider her friend’s question and realized she hadn’t. Most of her personal identification was kept in a wallet, and any travelling luggage she had managed to pick up over the years wouldn’t serve their purpose.

  When no response came, Lyra sighed and ran a hand across her brow. “All right then. Guess this is it, then. Whatever we can shove into your sack.”

  It didn’t turn out to be much. A few mixed cans of greens and tins of SPAM, a handful of bottled waters, a mixture of first-aid supplies. Lyra started to slip her can of pepper spray along the outer mesh of the knapsack, but when Rose tried to interject, her friend shook her head and reached into her pocket, from which she drew a lighter.