Dark Stories: Sadie

Well, this is the last of them.  At least the last one that I am posting here.  The final one takes place deep into the last book, and is quite brief.  It will be appearing on the kindle and smashwords version of the trilogy, but I can’t put it out here, because it reveals a bit too much of a book that has yet to be released.  So I will leave it with this little back story on Sadie, the little girl in the RV camp from Into The Dark.  I realize she has a very minor role in that story, although it increases with the last book.  This particular flashback was originally written into the third book, and just gives us a glimpse into the reality of a small child during the zombie apocalypse, or so I hope.

It has been fun posting these, and I hope you’ve enjoyed them.  I will have to figure out some other stuff to start posting soon!  Bits and pieces of some of the short stories I have out there in some of the anthologies I’m in, just to give you a taste of them.  Well, that’s a topic for another day.  I hope you enjoy this tale of Sadie.

 

Sadie

Sadie was a good little girl.  A little angel.  She knew that because her daddy had told her so time and time again.  Now, after all this time, she could barely remember much else about him.  He was just a shadow in her mind.  There were no pictures, no recordings of his voice to refer back to and so she had begun making up new details about him.  Little things about his hair and his kind and handsome face.  For a time he looked like Ben, though there was a little spot in her brain that remembered that he looked nothing like the big burly bear.  She had forgotten so much about her dad that she was starting to replace those lose memories with new ones.  She recalled how brave and strong he was, how kind and gentle he had always been …

All she knew for sure anymore was that he had left their little two bedroom apartment one day and never came back.  She could remember him and mommy arguing over his decision to leave, but even that was hard to recall clearly.  It seemed so long ago to Sadie, even though it had only been a few weeks.  When he did not return after a few hours, momma took it pretty badly for a couple of days, barely speaking or doing much of anything.  She would still hold Sadie close and let her get what little food they had left in the kitchen to eat when she was hungry.  Sadie remembered the first time momma smiled after daddy left.  That was when she told her what had happened to him.

Sadie knew her daddy had gone up to heaven to be with grandma and grandpa, who were taken away from them a year before.  Momma told her they would see him again real soon and that she should not worry about daddy anymore.  She cried as she said it but at the same time, she told Sadie there was no more room for tears.  They had to move on because that was what daddy would have wanted them to do.

Momma had already taught Little Sissy, as she called Sadie, how to be real quiet all the time.  It was a game they played, to see who could last the longest without speaking or making any noise.  Sadie remembered momma telling her about a little girl named Anne Frank who had lived in an attic for years with her entire family without making so much as a single peep.  Anne had to be quiet because of the bad people who were outside, just like the ones that were outside now.

Sadie could hear the bad people outside and pretended they were Nazis like the ones who wanted to get the little girl in a faraway land called Amsterdam.  She even began to scribble in a notebook that her momma gave her, pretending it was her diary.

After a couple of days pretending to be Anne it got really boring, but momma was so proud of her little girl that Sadie did her best to continue playing the game.  The two of them slept a lot and played boards games in the dark with a flashlight.  Sadie missed the outside world, she missed her daddy, and she missed the friends she had made in their little apartment complex, but momma told her everyone had left, just like daddy, and were up in heaven now.  They only had each other now and that was what was important.  Somehow, Sadie understood that it was true.  No matter how hard things got she still had momma and that was good enough.

Until they ran out of water.

Sadie knew the water was getting low and had been for several days.  Momma had stopped drinking and had insisted that Sadie still drink a full cup of the warm, stale tasting tap water that they had collected in a couple of plastic milk jugs and several glasses.  As their supply diminished Sadie had whispered, asking what they would do when it was all gone.  Momma gave her a look that scared the curiosity away and then walked to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.  Sadie couldn’t hear her crying, but as the tears rolled down her own face she imagined it was exactly what momma was doing.

For a day after the last drop of water was drank momma stood by the front door, still as a statue as she listened carefully, for over an hour.  The noises had died down a couple of days before, going silent for long stretches.  It had been nearly a week since Sadie had heard the last scream and sat shivering in momma’s arms as she cradled her and covered up her ears, rocking her back and forth.

*

Mandy Wharton had never been quick to make many decisions during her lifetime.  It had taken getting pregnant with Sadie before she would finally accept Paul’s proposal of marriage.  She had debated getting an elementary education degree up until her little girl was born, which meant she would have to put that off for several years, at least.

Paul had always been the one who made all the decisions for them, for better or for worse.  So when he had decided to leave their little apartment, she had pleaded with him to stay, even though the walls had already started to close in.  He insisted he would not be gone long.  Enough time to either get them some more supplies so they could hunker down for a couple of months, until this entire thing blew over, or to find them a better place to hide out.

When he didn’t return, Mandy was forced to figure out what the hell to do for her and Sadie.  Even that decision was put off until the last moment.  She knew they could survive for a few more days with no water, but then they would be far too weak to escape.  Besides, she had heard nothing outside for a long time.  It was probably safe enough to make a break for it.

Mandy knew that her beat up old VW Bug would still be sitting in the parking lot where she’d left it.  She had stared at it several times through the closed blinds earlier on, desperately wishing that it was closer to her front door.  Their unit faced the parking lot and her old beat up car was on the far side of the lot.  The last time she parked it, the lot was full.

Everyone had been home then, glued to their televisions as they watched the world falling apart before their eyes.  Soon after that, many of the residents of their little community began taking off, ‘heading for the hills’ as Henry Chu, one of their upstairs neighbors, had put it.  Big chunks of the parking lot became barren over night, but several cars still remained.  Other folks had made the same decision Paul and Mandy did: to stick it out even with warnings that the National Guard was conducting house to house and apartment to apartment searches for anyone who had been infected.  They were also carting off anyone else they came across and tossing them into the closest shelters.

There were enough horror stories about the shelters and the how clogged the highways were for them to decide that they would take their chances in their modest little home, where they would hole up and try to hide out until the military came knocking.  But they never did.  A couple of days later, Paul decided to head out on his journey, leaving his wife and child behind to fend for themselves.  Mandy was still not sure if she was more angry or sad that he had abandoned them, leaving her alone to make all the decisions for her and Sadie.

When Mandy finally broke out of her stupor and decided they had to leave to avoid an agonizingly slow death, she did her best, as she had been doing all along, to make it into a game for Sadie.  Something that both of them could play so they could make believe the world was not filled with hungry monsters like the TV had been saying before it had gone on the fritz like everything else.  The two of them would be spies, sneaking around outside doing their best not to be seen by anyone.

Mandy knelt down in front of her little girl and told her that she had all the faith in the world that Sadie would do great with this new game.  She told her that daddy would be looking down from heaven and expecting her to do her very best.  Sadie nodded excitedly at that, ready to prove that she was as good at sneaking as she was at remaining silent.

But when they opened the front door it was clear that it would not matter how good Sadie was at sneaking around.  Mandy had her fingers wrapped tightly around the car key that she was prepared to jam into the lock as quickly as possible so she could get Sadie inside.  The car had remained dormant for over two weeks, but despite its rusted out and banged up exterior, it had always proven to be a warhorse that started on the first turn of the key.  It had been her most trusted ally since she had bought it with some help from her mom and dad five months after her sixteenth birthday.  Her dad had nicknamed it ‘The Beast’, but she ignored all the jibes from him and her friends.  It was her pride and joy and had carted her all over the place for the past ten years.

So as they passed through the threshold of their apartment out onto the concrete path, Mandy’s eyes were locked on her car, their salvation.  That was why she missed the movement off to her left, in the overgrown bushes, as they strode forward.  It was only a short term mistake.  Mandy had every intention of scanning the area before she had opened the door, but once she did her eyes were drawn to her car like magnets.

She got no more than a couple of steps out the door with Sadie running ahead when the smelly old cat lady who lived two doors down stepped out of the shadows and grabbed Mandy’s arm.

The elderly woman had been behind the bush, where she had stood for several days with the hot sun beating down upon her weathered and befouled body.  She hadn’t had a meal since she had caught one of her older, lame cats and devoured the old tom, fur and all.  Despite her nearly catatonic state she had reacted quickly to the sound of the opening door and the scent of human sweat.

Sadie turned as she heard her mother cry out in surprise.  Seeing what was happening, she started running back, totally prepared to kick the mean old woman right in the shin.  The cat lady had always scared her, even when she smiled.  Her yellowed teeth, those that remained in her gingivitis infected mouth, and her taunt and leathery skin, made her look like a jack-o-lantern to Sadie.

Sadie was no longer afraid of her, just angry that she was grabbing her mother.  She was going to save momma from the horrible witch.

It was then that Mandy looked up and screamed at Sadie as she tried wrestling her arm away from the old crone.

“Don’t get any closer Sadie!  Get away from here now!”

Sadie was confused by the command.  Her mother had cried out, which was enough of a shock, but now she was yelling for her to run away.  It was the first time she had heard her speak above a whisper in a very long time and the raspy croak coming out of her lips did not sound a thing like momma anymore.

Sadie stood stock still, trying to comprehend what was going on.  She was mesmerized by the contortions of the two women battling in front of her.  It was not until the crusty old biddy leaned over and bit deep into her mother’s arm that Sadie reacted again.  She screamed long and loud, louder than the voice her mother had used to reprimand her.  She watched as mommy gasped with pain and stumbled backwards, her feet getting tangled with the other woman, whose teeth were still lodged in mommy’s arm.

Sadie started moving forward once again, her mother’s command to leave forgotten.  That was when her momma got really angry.  Mandy turned and twisted, wrestling desperately until her eyes locked onto Sadie’s one last time.

“GET OUT OF HERE YOUNG LADY BEFORE I SPANK YOUR BUTT!”

Sadie still hesitated and her mother’s words were cut off for a few seconds as she rolled around on the ground with the old bag of maggots on top of her.  She wanted to help her mother, protect her from the mean old woman, but the fear of a spanking was like an electric jolt to her senses.  Momma almost never spanked her.  She had in fact only done so once before.  The memory of that whipping was still fresh in Sadie’s mind and had come after she decided to play with a fork near an electrical in her bedroom.

“SADIE, DO AS I SAY!  RUN AWAY FROM HERE AND FIND SOME PLACE TO HIDE.  DO IT NOW!”

Sadie turned slowly, still hesitating, unsure of what to do.  It was then that she noticed some of the other neighbors opening up their doors and stumbling out of their doorways.  At first she thought they were coming to help.  She opened her mouth to plead with them to get the crazy old lady off momma, but instead she found that she couldn’t speak as she looked closer at each of them.

They all looked funny.  Sadie had not gotten that close a look at the old woman, but she could see all these other people quite clearly.  A couple of the neighbors looked like they had been bashed over the head with a giant hammer, like the ones they always used in the old cartoons they showed on the Boomerang network.  They looked like they should have stars and little birds flying around their heads, but instead they just had a lot of blood all over them.  It was like they had all decided to dress up for Halloween and chose the same costume.

That was when the smell hit Sadie’s nostrils.  The mean old lady smelled bad, but she had been out in the fresh air for days.  The miasma that crawled out of the steamy hot apartments where numerous corpses had been festering for days and weeks was overpowering.  To Sadie it reminded her of the smell of manure she had seen piles of at the farm she’d visited with her preschool class.  The teacher had called it manure but she knew what it really was.  It was like all her neighbors had decided to roll around in a big giant pile of poo.

Sadie noticed one person in particular.  Someone who she had always liked.  Unlike the others, he was shuffling toward her instead of towards her mother and the old witch.  It was Mr. Gonzales, the building superintendent.  He had always been nice to her.  He always had a quarter or a dime in his pocket and gave her one of the shiny coins every time he saw her.  His thick black mustache that drooped down over his upper lip always made her laugh.  That and the neat little tricks he could do, like the one where he made it look like his thumb was detachable.

Sadie took a couple of tentative steps towards him, calling out for him to help mommy.  He was in charge of all the buildings in the complex and was always there to help them when they had any trouble.  She cried out again to him, repeating his name.  If anyone could take care of the crazy old cat lady, it was Mr. Gonzales.

But he kept moving towards little Sadie, totally oblivious to her plea.  Even when she started screaming at him, he ignored her desperate cries.  He was certainly interested in the little girl, but not in anything she had to say.  It was not until he was fairly close (in Sadie’s mind, he had been right above her and that was how she remembered things every night when she had nightmares about Mr. Gonzalez) that she realized his shirt was bloody and ripped in several different places.  His brown skin beneath looked dipped in blood as well, most of it dried to a tacky consistency.

Mr. Gonzales was the superintendent, but it seemed like no matter what job he had to do, no matter how messy it got, he always had a clean shirt on.  That was something Sadie knew for sure.  He liked to tell the kids his shirts were magical and dirt was afraid to stick to them.  Sadie always giggled at that, especially when he winked at her and gave her his best fuzzy mustache wiggle and great big grin.

Mr. Gonzales always had a smile for Sadie.  But not today.  His shirt was almost black with blood and though she could see his teeth underneath his thick black mustache, there was no smile there.  As he reached out for her, she finally turned and ran; her mother’s screams fading in the distance.

The little girl didn’t look back, no matter how badly she had wanted.  Past the little playground and down the hill that ran out back of the small huddle of buildings that made up the Pleasant Pines Apartment Complex.  She kept running, making sure she never stumbled.  She kept running until she couldn’t run any longer.

Sadie knew that her mommy was dead.  Just like her daddy, she was up in heaven now.  Because Sadie had screamed.  Her mommy had taught her how to stay quiet and Sadie had been good at that, but once they had left the apartment she had screamed and mommy had died because of that.

It was then that she decided she would never scream out loud again.  She would keep all her screams on the inside so that the bad people would never find her again.

For two days Sadie hid in an empty drain pipe beneath a road that had been under construction.  She heard noises up above sometimes.  Ones like she had heard outside their apartment day after day with momma by her side.  She remained still and thought about her parents.  Wondered what they were doing right at that moment up in heaven with grandma and grandpa.

She dipped her hand in the little trickle of water than ran through the pipe and though her stomach rebelled at the taste of it, she was able to keep the water down and not get sick.  It was only when she became too hungry to remain in the dirt encrusted tube any longer that she finally climbed out, desperate to find something, anything to eat so she could crawl back down into the dark confined space that she accepted as her new home.

That was when Ben found her, an hour later, wandering in a small stand of trees, rooting around on the ground for acorns.  He had been watching a group of about twenty biters for the past couple of hours when he saw the little girl stumbling around in the trees not a hundred yards from their position.  She looked as dirty and pathetic as the ghouls, but it did not take Ben long to figure out that she was still amongst the living.  Once he did he immediately swooped in, abandoning his hiding place and snatching her up before she could even react.

He had expected her to scream out and was surprised when she didn’t make a single noise.  Instead, she only tried to struggle, beating uselessly against his chest as he carried her away from danger.  Even at full strength, nothing she could have done would have bothered him, but she was as weak as a newborn kitten and after ten minutes of urgent, but futile attempts to squirm free of Ben’s iron grasp she was fast asleep in his arms.

He raced her back to the others, handing her over to Lydia before he returned to his scouting mission.  From that moment on she became Lydia’s responsibility, joining the two little boys Ben had found only a couple of days before.

Sadie adapted as well as could be expected to her new environment.  No matter how scared she got, she never raised her voice or cried out.  Over the next few weeks she set an example for the two boys to follow as they moved forward with the group of adults that expanded and contracted as they fought to survive.

Even as the group was attacked everyone was amazed at how little Sadie did not utter a peep.  Over time she grew closer and closer to Lydia and Ben; curling herself up around the two adults she trusted the most.  But she never forgot her momma and daddy who were up in heaven, or what her momma had taught her.

But there were nightmares of the old cat woman and Mr. Gonzalez that haunted her dreams.  Those two ghouls chased Sadie endlessly, night after night, as she raced to get back to her mommy.  Sooner or later, they would catch up with her, but so far, she had eluded them.