Coming Home

I keep my head down as our group of seven walks along the abandoned road. Not that thinking of it as abandoned makes it special. These days every city, road, and house can all be described the same way.

Our group walks quietly, careful not to attract the attention of anything in our vicinity. On scouting missions like this our main goal is to find the next place we can move base camp. In total we have thirty-three people in our base camp, so we can’t wander around hoping to find shelter and risk losing anyone else. We’ve already lost so many people to the pandemics.

First was the Pandemic of 2020. It shut the world down. People were antsy, anxious, and by the end angry to have their lives restricted to a fraction of what they once were. When the restrictions were lifted people went out and lived life to the fullest. Family gatherings, barbeques, weddings, parties, every small milestone was treated as an event. We’d made it. I myself had gone to no less than sixteen bonfires in a month after the restrictions were lifted. Life was bliss, and we all thought that meant we were in the clear.

In less than a year we’d all practically forgotten. No longer was I worried about matching my mask to my latest outfit, or worried that my upcoming college courses would be made to go remote, like my high school classes were. Then, came the Pandemic of 2022 which brought back our restrictions. It was then closely followed by the pandemic that has left us in this hellscape, the Pandemic of 2023. Unlike the first two, this one seems to have spread randomly. No one had time to discern the cause or how it spread before it was too late.

I had started to believe it was a hoax, intended to keep us paralyzed in fear for longer. That is, until I woke up one morning while home from college to a shriek. At first I’d rolled over, disgruntled that my mom was freaking out, assuming she was going to scold one of my little brothers for sneaking out of bed and breaking into the jars of peanut butter and jelly. But she didn’t say a word, just howled as if she was wounded.

I drug myself out of bed and lumped down the hall to see my mom on her knees. She was bent over the lower bed of the bunkbeds, clutching at the blankets. The younger twin, Brayden, didn’t react as Mom sobbed next to his ear. My eyes drifted to the top bunk where Jackson also lay unmoving. My body moved on it’s own, maybe it was the denial, or the need to know, but I pulled back the blanket from Brayden’s body. His skin was pale. On the side of his neck, his veins were like raised black mountain ranges. The pitch dark extended down the side of his neck disappearing underneath his Batman pajama shirt.

What happened next became a blur, until I was shaking in the car with my boyfriend, drinking Kraken like it was water. It had only made the haze worse, and by the time I’d gotten back home days later, I couldn’t find either of my parents. I’d pounded on neighbors' doors, only to find that no one would answer, and what doors were open had pale bodies with pronounced inky veins.

I kick a rock, and it scuttles along the road, a gnawing tearing away at me, as I recognize the 7/11 I took the twins to for birthday Slurpees when they turned 4, and the park bench my best friend and I would sit at to gossip about boys in middle school.

It was inevitable that we’d come back this way to find the next base. If we can board up enough windows, a small grouping of houses is good for a group of us to camp out in and hunt for supplies for a while until we have to move again. Our expedition leader Dave turns and says, “we break into groups and scout out a few houses. Remember, decent sized, and as few windows as possible. We don’t want those things getting in.”

I nod, knowing that that is what I will do, eventually, but my feet are already carrying me down Dresden Street. Footsteps slap on the road behind me. “Barb, you can’t just wander off like that,” my scouting partner Molly mutters.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just...have a good feeling about going this way.” Of course I have a good feeling, since I know this way by heart. From the park you turn down Dresden, and walk until you hit Redwood Avenue. From there it’s the house of tan bricks with blue shutters. I walk straight up to the front door, it swings open silently.

Dust floats up into the air, as I step into the living room. “Barb?” Molly says softly. “Why are we here? Who lived here?”

“Me,” I say softly, heading down the hallway to my room. The dingy white door has a pink sign with a foam crown on it. “Barbie” is written on it in Sharpee, but I can’t go by that name anymore. Not until I know my parents are okay.

I push open my door to see it exactly the way I left it. My laptop is on my desk with my now useless econ for business majors textbook lying open to chapter four. I snort, everything about that choice seems foolish now. The idea of opening my own dress shop. Picking up a major in design to be able to make my own line of dresses to sell.

Molly looks around the room, picking up one of many cheap tiaras from a shelf with trophies and sashes. A framed photo of my mom and I hangs above the shelf. Even without looking I can picture the younger version of myself with tightly curled hair in a frilly lilac dress covered in big plastic gems. The wide smile of my five year-old self shows off my missing tooth, and a crown that was probably half as tall as I was with a pink plastic cotton candy cone in the center was sitting lopsided on my head.

In the picture Mom is squeezing me tightly. “Barbie, you were born to be a princess,” she’d said when I ran off the stage with my crown and 1st place sash, and insisted Dad take a picture of the ‘little girl, who’s gonna rule the world someday’.

“Barbie?” Molly says softly.

I pull open the closet door. “Don’t call me that,” I say. My chest tightens and for a moment my lungs fight to get air. “Please, just don’t.” Molly doesn’t respond. She sits down on the bed and watches as I sift through my closet. I ignore every last ‘favorite’ sweater, and the pair of shoes I just had to have even though I only wore them once like Dad said I would.

I knock glittering, organza dresses to the floor until I find the shelf in back with a cardboard box. I pull it open. My 6th grade diary, friendship bracelets with broken chains, and a stuffed bear from my first boyfriend tumble from my hand to the floor until I find a threadbare gray bunny. I pick it up, cradling it in my arms. “Hoppity Floppity,” I say to myself, feeling at once like I’m two years old, and Hoppity Floppity is going to protect me from the monsters in my nightmares. I press the bunny tightly to my chest feeling as though I can still smell my mom’s perfume on his limp body.

I leave the closet. “You done princess?” Molly asks. “Because your place wouldn’t be terrible to make a base for a bit, but you know we have to clear the place first."

I nod.

Molly leads the way out of my bedroom and back down the hall. She turns the knob on the closed bathroom door, only for it not to move. She steps back and brings her leg up to right below the door knob. There’s a cracking sound as her foot makes contact with the door. She brings her leg down only to kick the door a second, third, and fourth time until the door bursts inward.

For a moment my brain doesn’t register much beyond the bathroom. Bit by bit the scene starts to register. The once blue bath rug, now half red. The figure laying on the floor with a gun having fallen from their open hand. The “world’s greatest dad” is now stiff from dried blood. My dad’s dull green eyes, that once were so full of life are now vacant, while his right cheek has a thin coat of blood stemming from the hole in his temple.

Suddenly, it's as if I’m back in my brothers’ room all over again. I hear a howl. Thousands of claws drag themselves along my throat. A hand comes up to cover my mouth. My body gets pulled away from the bathroom and shoved back towards my room. The shrieking doesn’t stop, and it echoes loudly in my ears.

“Barb, you have to calm down. You have to--” Molly’s eyes go wide and she whips around, pulling the machete off of her hip.

As the screaming dies down to a sniffle, my mouth feels dry and my throat feels raw. I sniffle, realizing how wet my cheeks are, and there's liquid running from my nose, dripping onto my shirt.

Then I hear it, the banging and the moaning coming from down the hall that must’ve made Molly stop. My heart beats once, twice, three times, in my chest before a figure appears at the other end of the hall from my parents’ bedroom. It shambles towards us in a tattered yellow sundress that was my mom’s favorite for family cookouts. Her once shiny chestnut hair like my own is matted. In some places the hair is completely gone, showing a skeletal white scalp matching that of the pale papery skin. On its neck is a silver heart shaped locket. The same locket my mom wore every day since her and my dad started dating. The same locket I admired in every one of their wedding pictures. The locket she promised I would get to wear someday when I get married to the love of my life.

The figure stumbles closer. Every last vein of her body is the color of midnight in a downpour. Her neck is twisted to the side, and one eye is faded and lifeless, while the other is the same haunting shade of her veins, the same shade of black I saw on Jayden’s body the day we found them in their beds.

“We need to get out of here, Barb,” Molly says in a shaky voice.

I want to move, but I can’t. I clench Hoppity Floppity tightly to my chest, remembering the way my Dad would kiss me on the forehead when tucking us into bed and Mom would set out an extra sandwich so Hoppity Floppity could have lunch with me. The more I look at the figure, the more I remember. The way they laughed, smelled, smiled, and how much I’ve missed them since I left.

Molly backs away towards my bedroom door. “Barb, come on,” she hisses. “We have to go now.”

I don’t look back at her. I can’t tear my eyes away from the eyes that are almost familiar. I hold tightly to my stuffed rabbit, my eyes drift once more at the locket and sundress. Seeing her as the cheerful kind woman I always knew her to be. Tears spill down my face, my body trembling. Hoppity Floppity is tight in my arms like it’s just another night where I crawled out of bed from visions of monsters. I softly whimper, “Mommy.”