Tasha whimpers. The creature slithers closer until it’s nose to nose with her, Annie’s fear and sadness staring her straight in the face. How selfish she has been. How selfish she has always been—desperate and arrogant, terrified and yet determined not to show fear. Telling stories. Telling nonsense.
“It’s just a thought,” Tasha whispers. She closes her eyes. “It’s just a thought. It will go away.”
But it’s not enough, and her own creature crawls out of her ribcage—dark and silent, sticky with blood and lumpy bits of brain matter. It stretches its wings and makes for Annie.
“No,” Tasha says. “You’re not real.” But the creature doesn’t stop. Annie sobs in terror and now Tasha is sobbing too, shaking as she says the same useless thing over and over.
It’s just a thought. It will go away. It’s just a thought. It will go away.
The creature opens its mouth wide, showing its long, rotting black teeth. Annie screams and screams.
The creature bends, and Annie’s face disappears.
Tasha screams, and faints.
She opens her eyes. There are no creatures.
Beside her Annie sits up slowly, a hand pressed to her head. “Did I fall?”
Tasha shakes her head, sits up on her own. “Something happened,” she whispers. “Do you remember what you did?”
Annie frowns. “I remember—the fire,” she says. “I remember how you stayed in bed for days.”
“Yes.”
“I was in our house,” Annie continues. “And you were there, in every room, and in every room you turned away from me. In the hospital, too—at work, at home. And then—and then we were here, and you were doing the same thing. Over and over.”
She watches Tasha’s face for a moment, then swallows. “Something came out of your ribs.”
Tasha nods, swallows hard.
It’s dark outside, maybe one or two in the morning. A gust of chilly wind blows on them through the broken window. Annie turns to look out the window and sees the dark shape of the body slumped over the broken glass. Her face alive with horror, she turns back to Tasha. “Who is that? What did I do?”
Tasha takes Annie’s hands and squeezes them tight. “No. She did it to herself. But first—” and she watches Annie’s eyes find the crumpled body of the little boy—“first she did that.”
Annie covers her mouth with her hand. When she turns back to Tasha, they’re both wondering the same thing. “The city?” is all she says.
Tasha closes her eyes. The screams, the long silence. “I think so,” she says.
In the morning they make their way out of the clinic, armed with scalpels and scissors.
The dead are everywhere, and already vines are growing over the bodies. The only sound a faint swoop as vultures circle overhead.
They don’t go in the houses, just walk up and down the streets, finding no one.
“Are they all dead?” Annie says after some time.
Tasha wants to weep, but she’s too tired. She also wants to be back inside—away from the living green that masses all around them, especially thick and lush where the bodies lie.
Annie touches Tasha’s shoulder, hesitantly, as though they are strangers. “You need to lie down,” she says.
“We both need to lie down,” Tasha says.
“Let’s go home,” Annie says. “Let’s go home and sleep and we’ll see what we can do after that.”
“What about Elyse?” Tasha whispers, shocked that she hasn’t even thought of her. Annie has no answer, just takes her hand. When they reach the townhouse, the door sticks, and Annie has to shove it open with her shoulder. Tasha grabs her arm. “What if she’s inside?”
They pause, horrified, but Elyse is not behind the door. They creep from room to room but there is nothing—no body, no voice, no shock of blonde hair. The house feels like a museum.
It is a museum, Tasha thinks. A museum of a world that is never coming back.
In the kitchen, everything has a faint greenish tint—the windows are almost obscured by vines. A handful of red amaryllis she brought back from her last trip to the greenhouse still bloom on the windowsill. Tasha checks the vase. It is bone dry but the flowers sit unchanged, deep and red.
She picks up the vase and smashes it against the tiles. Then she gathers up the flowers and throws them out the back door while Annie stands looking at her as if it’s Tasha, now, who has lost her mind.
Tasha takes a deep breath. “I don’t want them in the house anymore.”
They climb the stairs to the bedroom, crawl into bed, and curl close together. Annie is weeping silently now. Tasha raises her hand and wipes her tears away. She falls asleep to the rhythm of Annie’s heartbeat, firm and strong beneath her ear.
In the morning they go outside, armed with scalpels and scissors. They walk up and down and up and down the streets, screaming names until they lose their voices.
Elyse!
Kevin!
Alan!
ANYBODY!
They retreat to the clinic, pry open a can of baked beans, share it between them.
“What do we do now?” Annie says.
“We leave.” She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall. “Annie,” she says, “I’m so sorry.”
“We’re still alive because of you,” Annie says.
“Maybe that’s why I’m sorry,” Tasha says. “How long can we survive on our own?”
Annie clears her throat. “Well,” she says. “We have each other. At the end.”
Tasha reaches for Annie’s hand. “Yes,” she whispers, and she closes her eyes. “We do.”
When she opens her eyes again, vines are slithering over the woman’s body in the broken window and stretching out toward them. Tasha scrambles to her feet and pulls Annie with her.
“Out,” she breathes. “We need to get out of here.”
They lurch out of the clinic and into the stillness of the day. It is a stillness that feels different now—heavy, waiting.
“Let’s go back to the townhouse,” Tasha says, and they walk quickly. Everywhere they turn it feels like green things are moving, and yet everywhere they turn things are too silent, too still. Even the wind seems to be holding its breath.
“Run,” Tasha says, suffused with sudden terror. “Run, run, run.”
They take off down the street toward the townhouse—halfway there, Annie grabs Tasha and they both stop.
“Did you hear that?” she gasps.
“Hear what?”
But then Tasha hears it too. Tap. Tap tap. A faint rattle. Followed by a slow, almost imperceptible moan.
Annie turns her head. The vines and flowers—Tasha’s not imagining this—freeze around them. “Where is it coming from?”
Tasha listens again, and then points. The screen door on the front of the house next to theirs trembles, just a little bit.
Tasha takes the scissors out of her pocket and walks slowly toward the house.
Get inside! a voice screams inside her head. Get the fuck inside!
“Tasha,” Annie says. “Tasha, you don’t know—”
She doesn’t listen. She crosses the path to the house and climbs up the front steps. She takes a breath and puts her hand against the knob, then pulls.
Tasha drops to her knees, and Annie comes running.
It’s Elyse, crumpled on the floor. She slowly turns her head.
“I heard you,” she gasps. “I heard you call my name.”