“Noooo!”
Everybody rushed to the source of the bellowing that echoed through the basement and their hackles rose quickly as they took in the scene. Anger and suspicion filled the air. The men tousled, yelling at each other in rage and astonishment.
“Tie up!” Sara shouted. “Tie up! Tie up!” The newcomer secured the scarf around her own eyes and, as the last sound left her mouth, her words mixed with the rustle and thumps of bodies falling to the ground.
Sara and Derek stood with bandanas tied across their faces and their hands outstretched in the suddenly quiet space. Peter hadn’t blindfolded himself. His jaw slack, he slowly spun. Wide-eyed. Stunned.
Four bodies lay around him; Chad, Anya, and Ray had fallen dead, forming a near perfect circle on the floor around Phoebe.
PART 2
Fallen
CHAD
It always happened in the kitchen. Maybe the violence inherent in the act of slicing cucumbers and ripping lettuce tapped a vein of deep rage, or the chore of preparing sustenance for the family inspired a surge of righteous resentment. For whatever reason Shelly always picked that room to lay into him.
Admittedly, making dinner together provided the only space in the day to talk. Shelly’s administrative job followed a standard eight to six. That and the 45-minute commute didn’t leave room for much else. After the requisite parenting of their fifteen-year-old—a relentless exercise in coercion, compromise, and patience—they barely managed to squeeze in food and basic hygiene, let alone talking or laughing or fucking.
Chad adored his wife. She radiated competence. She embodied a rigor that he’d never witnessed in anyone else. He certainly couldn’t match it himself. He felt incredibly lucky that their strengths and deficits meshed so well. Their relationship wasn’t seamless. It definitely had seams. And rips. And creases. Particularly when he was out of work. Which happened more often these days than either of them would prefer. When the inevitable tensions rose between them, Shelly had a way of finding his sore spots and, with her characteristic rigor, poking at them. Sometimes that would get him moving, motivate him, which was good, but it always hurt. And pain sparked his temper, which in turn fed her own.
“Is it really worth five bucks just to flirt with the girl at the stand?” Shelly didn’t mention that it was her five dollars, but he heard it anyway. He wasted her money, money she earned with her time. Probably about six minutes of her workday, he figured. So sorry.
Shelly’s beauty sparkled when she got angry. She looked almost feline with her small body and cascade of wavy hair, and her blue eyes flashed like the hottest part of a candle’s flame. She looked beautiful, but the words stung.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, his whine irritating even himself. He hadn’t. Not even something simple like asking the barista how she spent her time when she wasn’t slinging coffee. Maybe she was a runner and they could have commiserated about the drizzly autumn weather. Or maybe she was an artist and they could’ve arranged to paint each other. He hadn’t done anything, but he felt guilty anyway. Because he wished he’d been more courageous. Because he would have felt pride at doing exactly the thing Shelly would have a reason to object to, and now he felt chastised despite the fact that he’d wimped out.
The tension in Shelly shoulders and arms strained, like a spring tightening then releasing as her words shot forward like bolts from a crossbow. “Do anything? You never do anything!”
Now that wasn’t fair. It’s true he hadn’t seduced the barista—as if Shelly would have preferred that—but he did things, a lot of things. He played guitar and painted portraits (mostly self-portraits, but some of Shelly or Phoebe, if he could get them to pose for him)and he’d learned a fair number of skills from part-time jobs over the years. He had some basic landscaping so the garden always looked nice, he kept their cars tuned up, and he knew his way around the kitchen, particularly when grilling or frying. All things that Shelly seemed to take for granted because she did ‘real work’ in a real office.
He never should have mentioned that the coffee girl at the grocery store had finally remembered his name, then Shelly wouldn’t have snapped at him about spending his time ogling women instead of looking for a job. Now she was on a roll.
“You never take responsibility.” Shelly’s eyes turned from candle flame to glacial ice. Her attractiveness dissipated, lifted off her like steam, leaving only anger. “How ’bout you do… something?!”
Chad had leaned into a fire and realized too late that it burned. Shelly’s words slammed shut around him like the walls of a cage. He’d been caught, not just by the argument, but by his entire life—his wife, his daughter, the endless demand to ‘do something’ and ‘be somebody.’ If he really had the space to explore, maybe he’d find his true purpose. Maybe if she supported him instead of nagging him all the time. Why did she have to be so mean? It wasn’t as if he didn’t help out, didn’t try.
“God damn you Shelly.” Sometimes he wished she would just go away, leave him once and for all. Or just drop dead. Anything so that he could…
Shelly collapsed on the floor, the knife falling from her hand.
“Mom?” Phoebe’s voice called from the other room.
Chad snapped awake. Cold sweat covered his skin, the same as every morning since that evening in September. One hundred eighty-six days. One hundred eighty-six nightmares replaying that moment—the first time he’d killed someone. Not just someone. Not some nameless stranger, like so many after—but his wife, his lover, his life partner, the mother of his daughter. One hundred eighty-six days of regret, of paranoia, of fervently protecting his daughter from a world populated by homicidal maniacs who, quite literally, couldn’t control themselves.
Chad couldn’t count the number of people he’d killed over the last six months. He stopped counting soon after he stopped caring. After he realized that half the people he murdered had probably committed suicide and that if he’d only been brave enough, or selfish enough, he would have killed himself too.
The Curse seemed to arrive for everyone on the same day, maybe even the same moment. Within 48-hours the population was decimated. In less than a week, infrastructure around the world collapsed. After an initial blast of panicked social media the internet went quiet even though the cell and wireless services hummed along, empty, for another month or so. When everyone suddenly acquired the power to kill one another with a glance, anarchy descended upon the world. Any and all pretense of order and hierarchy fell away and the life he’d known receded into distant dream-like memory. The world before only felt real when he visited in his sleep.
The first few post-apocalyptic months had been a flurry of encounters and standoffs, brief coalitions and bursts of betrayal. Chad rabidly defended his daughter, wielding a ruthless, wanton distrust that undoubtedly sent many well-meaning and potentially valuable allies to their graves. His commitment only redoubled when, after a few weeks, Phoebe confessed that she didn’t believe she had the power at all and she felt defenseless, unwilling to even glance in the direction of anyone’s face for fear of death. It hadn’t occurred to him that some people might not have the curse.