Counting Sundays

The last Sunday of October was always the final day of the annual fall harvest festival that took place in Huntsville, Indiana. The festival was well-known in the tri-county area, with folks coming from all over to eat pie and taffy, play games and go apple picking.

Everything went to hell in a handbasket about twelve Sundays ago. Alex counts them because it feels like something she ought to do. She doesn’t think anyone else is doing it.

It had been the last day of the harvest, which Alex had come back home from college especially for. She and her best friend, Vicki, had been driving back from the last of the festivities on the outskirts of town when it had hit.

No one is sure where they came from, or what they are. Most townsfolk think they’re demons, but Alex doesn’t think demons are the sort that eat people. She figures they’re more abstract, you know? Vices and temptations damning souls to Hell, if what she learnt in church is anything to go by.

What lies outside is very, very real.

They just look like regular folk, mostly. But their eyes weep black and when they open their mouths all you can see are thousands of fine, needle-like teeth so bloodstained and congealed with viscera that you can’t quite tell what color they’d been in the first place.

They can talk too. They sing and chitter and jeer outside the high school gates where the town’s small number of survivors have been camping for safety. Early on, Alex had helped wrap barbed wire around the tops of the spiked fences and barricaded gates with gym equipment.

Needle-mouths are mostly active at night, but a couple of lone stragglers can be seen on the outskirts of the woods in the daytime.

Waiting.

-----

A body rolls off Alex with a huff. He hits the floor beside her with a groan.

Alex cants her hips upwards, shimmying her jeans back on. The only sex she seems to be getting these days is all business. Though half the time it’s not so bad; squirrely guys who are all too aware of their wives sleeping in the high school gym only a few paces and a couple of flights of stairs away. Though there are a few guys that like to go a bit too hard and rough. She normally sneaks a few swigs of the vodka she’s stashed before a round with them just to psych herself up for the long haul.

‘That was-’

‘Pills. Now.’

‘You really ought to work on your bedside manner,’ Dabb, her father’s old fishing buddy, grumbles. A hand that had been pulling up his work-worn jeans dips into a front pocket to scoop out some aspirin. ‘Here.’

Alex sits up boltright, hands outstretched to catch before the contents can fall to the floor. She snatches them to her chest, examining them in her hand. She feels her eyes bulge. ‘I said ten, jackass.’

‘What?’

‘I said ten. This is six. I need ten.’

‘That’s all I can give you,’ he says, going from lying to standing with a few laboured movements.

‘What am I supposed to do with six? This isn’t even enough for the next two days.’

‘You figure it out, ain’t my Goddamn problem.’ His jibe is punctuated by the closing of his belt, his gut protruding slightly as the belt cinches in. He turns to leave.

Realising there’s scarce room for argument, Alex flops back onto the roll mat that she’d stashed in the school supply cupboard, listening to Dabb’s feet scuff on the linoleum as he shuffles away.

Her fingers skim down the edge of the mat, nails scratching at the material, lost in thought. Surmising she’s been gone long enough, Alex sits up.

Checking the box of condoms hidden at the bottom of her backpack, her heart sinks at the sight of only a handful left. Pharmacy supplies are a scarce resource, worth their weight in gold in camp, but things like condoms and pregnancy tests are even harder to come by. They’d been among the first things to be banned.

-----

The Huntsville ministry had appointed themselves in charge amid the chaos and the townspeople, frightened and vulnerable and lost, had let them.

‘These times can only be interpreted as the beginning of the End,’ Reverend Michaels had said to a rapt congregation. ‘The time is now to be absolved of our sins and secure our place in Heaven for when Judgement Day comes.’

Reverend Michaels then announced sweeping changes to be adhered to, sacrifices needing to be made. The townspeople had feverishly agreed, fingers twitching and heads nodding, eager to please. To see their loved ones again. To avoid eternal damnation. To, if they pleased Heaven enough, drive the needle-mouths away.

Alex, a firm believer and regular church-goer, hadn’t been sure what to make of it.

Premarital sex and adultery became punishable by death. Drinking and gambling were outlawed.

It was nearly ten Sundays ago since anyone could get a cellphone signal. After that they relied on radio, but all the messages were the same. At one point they stopped listening, though Alex always wonders if someone out there is still broadcasting. She isn’t sure. She can’t get to a radio to find out because the school’s only one had been smashed in the yard nine Sundays ago.

‘We must turn away from the outside evils of the world who bear false prophecy,’ Reverend Michaels had said as the crowd looked on, stunned.

Two Sundays ago, the townspeople had turned the only two out homosexual couples in Huntsville out of camp. They opened the gates and led them out, guns in their backs, helpless, into the dark.

That night Alex slept with her pillow over her head, willing the screams to stop as she and Vicki had lain beside each other, knuckles whitening as the cries rang loud and final and stopped.

‘We have purged ourselves of sin and made us stronger,’ Reverend Michaels had said the following day, beaming at the exhausted congregation.

A sigh was pulled from the crowd like a ripcord, tired eyes brimming with tears knowing they were safe once again.

Alex’s head turned to Vicki, who was standing statue-still beside her, as if if she didn’t move she couldn’t be seen.

Back when they were eight, Vicki’s parents had taken her to Reverend Michaels for guidance because Vicki had told them that she wanted to marry a girl from their class. Alex hadn’t seen her all summer after that, and Mr and Mrs Codogan began to express displeasure at the girls’ weekly sleepovers. But despite the Codogans attempts, Vicki remained firmly same-sex orientated. Alex and her sister were the only two in Huntsville that knew.

Or so they’d hoped. Michaels finished his sermon with a lingering look at Vicki that made Alex’s blood run cold. That night she had sobbed into Alex’s shoulder as Alex had smoothed her hair back, wishing they could escape.

‘He knows,’ she had whispered. ‘He knows, he knows.’

-----

Today is two days away from the twelth Sunday.

Alex unzips the door to their tent. They’re one of the few families lucky enough to have one. It has three compartments, the main chamber, then two smaller compartments either side. Vicki sleeps in the left one, while Alex in the main so she can keep watch. The right hand compartment’s door zips open as Alex makes her way inside, her sister’s head popping out.

‘You’re supposed to be asleep.’

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ says Maddie, eyes narrowing. ‘Where were you?’

‘Why couldn’t you sleep?’

‘I asked first.’

Maddie coughs then, a deep, rib cracking one and Alex takes that as her answer. As the days got shorter and colder, the flu swept through camp and Maddie, with her condition, still hasn’t recovered. All three are pretty certain she isn’t ever going to recover, but they haven’t said it out loud yet.

‘Where’d you get that?’ asks Maddie, craning her neck to see what is in Alex’s hand. ‘Aspirin?’

Alex fights instinct to shove her hand behind her back. ‘Nowhere,’ she says too quickly. ‘Asked the nurses for extra and they took pity on me.’

‘Okay,’ says Maddie, in a tone that implies she doesn’t believe her.

‘Did you learn anything fun today?’

Maddie grimaces. ‘You know I didn’t.’ She gestures to the books Alex had smuggled for her from the science department. ‘Although I’m reading about thermodynamics now. It’s very interesting.’

‘Okay, nerd.’

They talk about nothing of particular weight for a bit. About Maddie’s day. About Alex and Vicki’s patrol one Sunday ago when a needle-mouth nearly breached the gates and Alex got her first headshot. Then about mom and dad. About home.

At one point Maddie’s eyes glaze over, from memory or pain Alex is never really sure anymore, and her fingers flit up to play with the heart shaped locket around her neck. It’s a tacky, ugly thing, bronze painted silver that was rubbing off in most places. It had been designed to look old and rustic, with crude etchings in it and a thick chain. Alex had gotten it for her when they’d visited Cape Cod when Maddie was nine and Alex was fourteen. She’d begged her parents to give her some money for it and they’d refused, so Alex had snatched it from the rack in the store and pocketed it. She had given it to Maddie later that night, when they had hid under the bed covers, when they’d tell each other stories into the small hours.

Maddie had always been great at storytelling. She has a real knack for it. Not Alex. She isn’t really creative. Brain wasn’t wired that way or something.

Maddie had been ecstatic, never taking it off since. Until now.

Alex watches, confused, as Maddie pulls the necklace over her head. ‘You know, I always loved this thing. Reminds me of you. Whenever you were at college and I missed you I still had this.’

It’s too charged of a conversation for Alex to cope. ‘Yeah, even if it is ugly as hell,’ she jokes.

‘I want you to have it,’ Maddie says, a determined look in her eye. She holds it out. When Alex doesn’t move she shakes it at her, the locket swinging back and forth like a pendulum on a clock that’s been counting down.

‘Mads,’ croaks Alex.

‘I’m serious. I’m not gonna be needing it much longer and I want you to have it.’

‘We’ll find a cure.’

‘There’s no cure for cystic fibrosis.’ Her words aren’t harsh. Just matter of fact. The grass is green, the sky is blue.

‘Mads, there’s a bunch of needle-mouth freaks that eat people wandering around outside. At this point, anything’s possible.’

‘Please. I want to give you this.’

Her face is so earnest, her voice so sure that Alex can’t argue. She nods once, reaching a hand out for Maddie to place the locket in her palm and close her fingers over it. Alex threads it over her head, the locket resting just above her sternum. Maddie gives her a watery smile that Alex does her best to mimic, but she was never good at forcing it. Can’t smile with her eyes, her mom always said.

Maddie’s face scrunches up again, a cough forcing its way out of her before she can catch herself a breath, and Alex’s hands are shooting up to rub her back and grab a water bottle at the same time. The coughing fit lasts over a couple of minutes, but to Alex it feels like years.

After some water, some aspirin, and Alex has wiped the mucus from Maddie’s face with a tissue, Alex sits next to her again as she sleeps, watching, until Vicki is back from her patrol shift and it’s Alex’s turn to walk the grounds, counting Sundays.