Keely's own family had succumbed to the odd flu, with the exception of herself. Her mother and stepfather had been laid up in bed for the better part of the week, and her younger sister had just started to get bad within the past few days. She was finding it exhausting to try to take care of all of them, get ready for prom, and keep up with her schoolwork too. She'd never appreciated her mother more.
It seemed like most of the town had been to the hospital and been sent home because the doctors didn't know what to say except for that it was the flu and they couldn't spare the beds. The county health nurse kept saying that it was no cause for alarm and everyone should remain calm. But two people had expired from the flu already -- though they were old and their families admitted they could have gone at any time. Mister Jenkins and Mister Bradford had both been pushing one hundred and that flu was the straw that seemed to break the camel's back.
Keely had more to worry about in the grand scheme of things. Of course she was worried about her family and friends, most of the laid up in bed, but she was sick too.
More accurately, she was pregnant.
Even in a backwoods town like Kingsport, you knew what it meant when you started throwing up and your period hadn't come when it was supposed to. Keely's mother and stepfather had done their best to raise her as a good Christian girl and not to expose her to any of the things they thought were trouble, but even Keely knew that was laughable. They were so busy trying to protect her from the gay agenda and liberals that they'd shoved twenty dollar bills into her hand every time Trace had come a-courtin'. They didn't need the twenty dollar bills to have fun and they sure hadn't bought any condoms with them. You'd have to drive an hour away just to be sure that no one would recognize you when you bought them -- and going to the health nurse for birth control or rubbers was out of the question; it was no secret that the women who ran the joint couldn't keep their mouths shut about who was doing who, who gave Jenny Perkins the bad case of clap they'd treated, and so on and so forth.
They'd done what any curious kids what do and experimented a few times in the back of Trace's pick up in a secluded wheat field. Keely wasn't sure if she liked sex yet. It seemed unnecessary to her at this point in her life, but damn if that didn't stop her from doing it. She thought it would get better with each time (because that's what Trace had told her) but it didn't. The first time hadn't hurt as much as you'd have heard the other girls bleating about during gym class and study hall, all of them so loud about their new achievement, but it wasn't pain free. And like most seventeen-year-old boys, Trace wasn't a seasoned lover and had been more focused on himself than her. He couldn't have cared less whether she'd just laid there or she'd been a hellcat. After those first few times, she'd told him maybe they shouldn't do it anymore. She was getting uneasy about the risk of what had already happened.
Trace wasn't happy about it but in the end he'd laid off and didn't bring it up again for a while. Their relationship had been on a slow and steady decline, but they'd both been looking forward to prom. Even though most of the kids in Kingsport thought it was a joke and an opportunity to blow their parents' money, provided they had any, Keely still thought that it was supposed to be a magical experience. It was something special to her.
Friday morning it had been less special though. It was going on two months without a period and she'd been throwing up with increasing violence. Her parents had assumed that she'd just gotten the flu that was going around and had made her stay home from school one day, marring her perfect attendance record. But they should've known better; she never got sick.
The secret was already festering deep inside of her. She needed badly to tell someone but there was no one she could turn to -- not even her best friend, Reese Hadley. Reese and she had been friends since the second grade, when Keely moved to Kingsport, but she was also as loose-lipped as they came around here. If Keely told her, Reese would no sooner be on the phone with five of her closest friends and then the damage would be irreparable. Keely hadn't even told Trace yet. It was a secret that she intended on keeping as long as she could. Teenage mothers were becoming less uncommon around Kingsport but it was still a thing that just didn't happen to a nice girl like Keely; she was a member of 4-H, she attended Bible camp during the summer, she had a job at the grocery store, and she was a straight A-student with near perfect attendance. It would undoubtedly cause a scandal that Keely didn't feel she wanted to deal with.
Prom didn't start until later the evening and it was Keely's day off. Even though she could hear their phlegm-filled coughing from the other room, Keely merely sat back down on the edge of the bed and let the covers engulf her once more. She loved her family but didn't have the energy to check on them right now and coddle them. She figured that if there was something wrong, someone would holler. Instead of facing them, she slept and dreamed.
It was night and through the fog she saw figures in the distance. Ahead of her were slabs of some sort that she couldn't make out through the pea soup air, squinting as she plodded ahead. The cold night air hit her skin in a violent gust that felt like a slap. She realized that she was wearing her prom dress just as something reached to grab her bare ankle. A hand was sticking up out of the muddy soil and grasping her ankle. She realized that she was smack dab in front of a grave. The combination of dead, putrid skin covered with soil and the sudden rancid smell in the air made her gag. She was frozen for a moment before she kicked at the hand and broke away, running through the fog. It seemed that every steps she was taking, another grave was made to block her path. And then she realized what the other figures were; they were her family members and friends, all of them dead, all of them reaching out to her as if to embrace her.
Keely woke with a start at two-thirty in the afternoon, cold sweat running down her back. She reached instinctively for her phone, which she'd usually had set to vibrate. One missed call, one voice message. When she listened to the voicemail, the gravelly voice of her hairstylist crackled. "Hey Keely, this is Trish. I won't be able to do your hair today." There was a coughing on the recording that sounded all too familiar to Keely. "I had to cancel all my appointments. Guess I finally caught the bug, huh? You girls all have curlin' irons, go have a hair and makeup party. Sorry, hon." The recording stopped there and Keely sighed. She might have known this would happen, but not getting Trish to do her hair for prom was hardly the end of the world.
She stared over at her bedside alarm clock for a moment and then replaced her phone on the nightstand, rising from the bed. She stood and listened to the noises in the house and noticed that there was a disturbing lack of them. Just when she was starting out of the room to go check on her parents and sister, their rattling coughs started almost in unison. She knew they were getting worse and yet hearing them ail was a cold comfort of some sort. Keely went into the adjoining bathroom that she and her sister Hanna shared, peeked around for any signs that the younger girl had been in lately, then shed her clothes and stepped into the shower.
Keely stared down at her washboard thin stomach. She'd always been a beanpole and she somehow had the distinct feeling that she wasn't going to be able to conceal the pregnancy for as long as she'd have liked to.
After washing and drying off, Keely put on a button-down shirt and started to curl her hair for prom, applying liberal amounts of Aquanet. She managed to make it look halfway decent for a girl who didn't often bother with her hair besides pulling it up into a ponytail, then put on a pair of cut-off shorts and finally decided to do what she hadn't wanted to and start checking on her family before she fixed her makeup. She slowly opened the adjoining door to her sister's bedroom, stepping inside.
The shallow breathing at first alarmed her, but her sister was breathing and that was something. Keely crept closer to the bed and stood over it. The pink gingham sheets matched the rest of the room's decor; pink, girly, and yet somehow with the slightest bit of old-fashioned country sensibility. Despite the fact that the girls were actually half-sisters, they resembled each other quite a bit, owing to the fact that they both took after their mother. Hanna had dishwater blonde hair that was now unwashed for days and matted with the sweat of her sickness. Her brown eyes were shut and bore some of the darkest circles underneath them that Keely had ever seen a child with. Her skin had always been fair but now it was rife with an unhealthy pallor. She didn't look like the same girl that Keely knew.
"Han?" Keely asked, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. She reached out to give her sister the same kind of shoulder-shake that she'd have used any day of the school week to rouse the child from her slumber.
"What?" Hanna finally responded, her voice sounding hoarse, but carrying the same edge of irritation it always did when Keely woke her in this manner.
"You should go shower. Do you want me to make you some soup?"
The younger of the sisters started to bustle out of bed. At first Keely had thought Hanna wet herself, but then she realized that it was all sweat. She gently shooed Hanna from the bed and helped her to stand upright before reaching down and stripping the sheets from the girl's bed, balling them up as quickly as she could. She was not eager to touch anything that her sister or parents had.
"Maybe just broth. My stomach still hurts." There was a thoughtful pause from the little girl. "Your hair looks pretty."
"You think so? Thanks. I had to do it myself." Keely almost reached up to touch her hair before stopping herself, half-smiling at her sister. "While you're taking a bath, I'll change your sheets and fix you some soup."
The younger girl nodded and headed off unevenly to the bathroom. She looked like a tiny drunkard to Keely, but figured that her sister was still dizzy. And yet it was a relief to see her sister up and moving around, to be talking to her. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as she'd thought and they would all bounce back after some tender love and care. Keely went back into her sister's bedroom and deposited the dirty sheets into the pink hamper on the far side of the room before finding fresh ones on the top shelf of the small closet. She made the bed quickly and then went downstairs to the kitchen. They had boullion cubes in the fridge and despite wishing that her sister would be eating something more substantial by now, she didn't want to force a larger meal on the poor girl and be changing the sheets again in such short time.
Keely realized that she was hungry too. It was something that she'd experience with more frequency in the months to follow. While stirring the cubes in a pot of hot water on the stove, she shook her head as she considered her options. There really weren't any. Her parents were fairly far-right Christians who after getting over the initial shock that their daughter wasn't a little girl anymore and had succumbed to the temptation of flesh, they would insist that she keep and raise the baby. They'd help, of course, but that didn't mean that they'd necessarily like it. They might even make Trace and she have a shotgun wedding, which was the thing that she'd least wanted in life. Keely had wanted to go to college out of State and now that was a sore improbability that stuck in her side like an ever-present thorn. She still had one year of high school and she might even have to drop out, or just get a GED. Her parents would never let her give the baby up for adoption; they were strongly against the very idea that someone would give their own flesh and blood up to strangers who they didn't know from Adam.
Keely finally got the broth to boil, then emptied the pan into one of their white China bowls with a rooster pattern in the bottom. The first time Trace had seen her dinnerware, he'd later made a crude joke that he thought would turn her on. All it made her was annoyed that she'd ever slept with him in the first place. She grabbed a spoon and a pack of crackers, plopped them onto one of their old-fashioned silver trays and carried the beef broth upstairs to her sister's bedroom, where the girl was smelling of soap and already back in her fresh linens.
Hanna took the tray from her and began to eat at what Keely felt was an acceptable pace. "I'm going to check on mom and dad. Just put the tray aside and I'll pick it up later." Hanna nodded at this, but her mouth was too full for her to respond properly. Keely started out of her bedroom and down the narrow upstairs hallway, knocking first on their parents' bedroom door. There was no response, but behind the door she could hear their rattling breath made hers catch in her throat. Finally she decided to enter the room anyway.
Their dark, dank room smelled of sickness and something akin to decay. She'd smelled it on farm animals who were sick before and the idea of it made her stomach churn. Keely crept into the bedroom slowly, as if the floor creaking underneath her foot would make their state of health even worse. Finally when she beside the bed, she reached out to put her hand against her mother's clammy forehead. Her mother opening her eyes startled her and made her jump backward, nearly knocking the lamp off of the bedside table.
"Honey? What time is it?" Her mother asked. She coughed after she said it and Keely couldn't help but back up once more.
"Almost four-thirty. You guys have been sleeping since yesterday morning, but I didn't want to wake you... but I think you guys should get up and shower. Do you want something to eat?"
Bryce still hadn't stirred yet. Keely had never thought of her stepfather as her real father, but he'd always been there. Yet even now there was something she couldn't bring herself to fully trust. "No... but we'll get up in a little bit. How's Hanna doing?"
"She's eating some broth and crackers. I changed her sheets. I think she's sweating it out."
"That's good. Thank you so much, honey. I'm so sorry... hey, did Trish do you hair? Looks good."
"No, Trish had to cancel. She's sick too. I did it myself."
"That's too bad... but it does look nice. You make sure to get some pictures taken, okay? You should be able to remember this night forever."
"I will. I'm gonna go get ready now... I've gotta see if Trace is still going to meet me or not."
"Sure." There was a pause from her mother wherein she resisted the urge to have another coughing fit, then resumed. "We'll get up in a little bit, I promise. You just go and concentrate on having fun. Tonight's your night, sweetheart."
"Thanks, mom." Keely didn't argue with her this time. She left them to lie there and went back to her bedroom, pulling open the closet.
Her prom dress had been picked out three months ago and at the time, Keely thought it was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen. They'd gone shopping all the way in Roxborough for it and Keely had thought it was the best thing she'd seen in maybe her entire life. The burnt umber satin affair came to just underneath her knees and the top of it was pulled into a halter style. It didn't show off too much skin and was modest compared to what several of the girls had worn to prom in recent years. The girls working at the boutique had all commented on her size and told her it was a relief to finally be picking out a dress for someone thin.
Now with the dress staring back at her, Keely could hardly find the strength to get it out of the closet. It felt wrong knowing that her family was ailing and she'd be going to what would surely be the most dismal prom in the history of the universe. She stood and stared at it for a moment before finally reaching to take it out of the closet. She shimmied out of her clothes and put the dress on carefully, followed by the gold high heeled sandals she'd chosen. She chose her makeup after that and shook her head. This wasn't how she'd envisioned her prom night. Pregnant and taking her care of sick family hadn't been in tonight's plans.
She remembered then that she still needed to call Trace. She reached for her cell phone and speed-dialed him. He coughed when she answered.
"Hey, babe. I'll meet you in just a little while. I'm getting my tux on right now."
"Hey. Alright. I'll leave in about half an hour. But if you're sick, maybe you shouldn't come..." She was relieved to hear his voice though. A familiar warmth filled her heart and for an instant she thought things might be okay.
"No, don't say that. I know you want me to come and I want to come... so I'll be there. I'll see you, okay?"
"Okay. Love you. Bye."
"Love you too." He hung up the phone and Keely sat, waiting as she considered what she was going to do.
When the time came, she hollered a goodbye to her family and walked out the front door. She slid into her pickup and repositioned the shotgun that was in the passenger's seat, propping it up against the floorboard. It had been her very first, given to her by her real father when she turned thirteen. It was one of her prized possessions.
The country street she lived on was empty as usual, but there was a strange stillness in the air that worried her. She barely heard any birds chirping and it was a reasonably nice day. Instead she heard Garth Brooks singing about his friends on the radio, which she reached over and turned down in order to listen to the eerily still wilderness around her. Keely glanced around for any signs of the animals that usually littered the fields surrounding her home and saw none. The motor of her large red pick up sounded atrociously like metal scraping metal as she sped up, feeling the need to leave her home with an astounding amount of urgency.
Reaching town she realized that things weren't much better. There were no cars cruising up and down the main street. Their one street light town usually had at least a few cars filled with gawkers young and old alike who were simply trying to see who else was out and about. She noticed that several cars parked in front of business had their doors open. Under more normal circumstances she would have shut the doors and tried to find the respective owners of the vehicles, but she sensed deep in the worrisome pit of her stomach that something was seriously wrong.
She deviated from the mainstreet and headed north toward the residential area near where Trace lived with his family in a house that had been built years before, obviously a product of the Germanic architecture that so rampantly littered the area. The house stood three stories and imposing black and white. She divided her attention between the empty road in front of her and looking at the other houses. She glanced to the left side of the street in time to see Ray Kinley stumbling out of his house in what she assumed was another drunk. At least some things never change, Keely thought to herself.
Keely finally reached Winter Street and sped up when she saw two figures in Trace's yard. She knew that one of them was Trace; he was dressed in the tuxedo that they'd picked out together at the local flower shop where they could be rented for a surprisingly modest fee. His white shirt was splattered with crimson blood and the sight of it made Keely's blood run like ice in her veins. Her heart thudded in her chest as she parked in the middle of the street and got out, leaving behind her high heeled sandals. They'd be no use to her if she had to fight. The shotgun was retrieved from the passenger seat. She'd always been taught that you should never shoot anyone unless it were a life or death situation, but no one had ever told her it wasn't right to pistol whip someone in defense.
It took Keely a moment before she could make out who the person was and even then she erred between disbelief and denial. Her former third grade teacher, Mister Banks, had died months earlier but was now standing in a grapple with her boyfriend. He was at least ninety when he'd died from a combination of pneumonia and heart failure. Now he was snapping his teeth at Trace. She remembered that he'd always prided himself on the fact that he'd never needed dentures. Now his pearly white teeth were covered in blood and Keely felt weak in the knees. She didn't make a sound as she watched them, frozen with terror.
As Trace screamed, Keely suddenly sprang from her position and ran across the street and lawn. She could see that Mister Banks had bitten him on the neck; the wound was gushing rapidly out over the rented tux that they wouldn't be returning any time soon. She hefted the shotgun back and nailed the old man in the head three times before he fell, groaning feebly and reaching with arms outstretched toward each of the children. Keely could see now that he was covered in dirt and maggots, his skin still well-preserved from the embalming procedures, but not without a little putrification.
"Oh God, Trace!" Keely cried out as she reached his side and tried to cup one of her hands over his neck, her eyes welling with tears.
He shook his head at her and sunk to his knees on the ground as she tried to pull him back up. She was no pansy but she wasn't strong enough to support his weight. He'd been on the football team since junior high. "Just go, Keely. Go! Please. I love you. Just go. Get out of here. Get as far away from here as you can."
She knew he was dying. She couldn't have gotten help quick enough even if she'd tried. She leaned in to kiss him before pulling away. Mister Banks was getting back on his feet. Keely heard an ambulance in the distance and sobbed quietly before she ran back to the truck and climbed in, starting to speed away. She made the mistake of looking back and saw Trace getting his entrails ripped out by a man whom they'd both mourned just months earlier.
The tears blinding her eyes made it difficult for Keely to drive but since there was no one else on the road, it didn't concern her. She was gripped with a plethora of feelings that she had no idea what to do with. She didn't even realize that she was white-knuckling the barrel of her shotgun with her right hand, the barrel pointed at the door.
Polly Green's grey Convertible that her father had bought her for her birthday last year suddenly careened into her from her right. Keely violently slammed on her breaks as she was pushed against the driver's side door and jostled enough to make her feel the pain from it instantly. She yelped and looked toward the passenger side window. The right side of the car was totaled; she had a feeling she wasn't going to be asking Polly for her insurance information when she the other girl though.
Polly's younger brother David was in the passenger seat beside her, ripping at Polly's face. She had her hands clutched to her face to protect it, but when Polly took them down, Keely saw that she was missing an eye. It looked like it had been gouged out. She could hear Polly's frantic screams and gagged when David succeeded in plucking the other gelatinous orb from her eye socket, stuffing it into his mouth before he started to bite her at. Keely choked back the vomit and put her foot on the gas pedal again.
Keely made a left and turned toward the school. There were a few cars outside, some of them with car doors hanging open as she'd seen earlier on main street. The ambulance sirens were still blaring loudly and were now joined by police sirens. What was considered to be one of the 'safe havens' of the town didn't seem to be safe at all but she couldn't think of anywhere else to go. She reached into the glovebox and loaded the shotgun after all, cocking it a few times with shaking hands before getting out of the pick up and running for the double doors to the entrance.
It was open and the awful sounds that came from inside should have been enough to tell her back. They were coming from the gym, where the prom had just gotten underway. She was suddenly aware that she was bleeding from her cheek, where she'd pinged off of the driver's side door. She ran into the gym and stopped abruptly. The silver and aqua crepe paper they'd strung against the blue gauze curtains seemed out of place. Their theme was 'Under The Sea' and cut-outs of sea creatures hung from the ceiling, dangling in the breeze that wafted through the building. A sappy pop song that had been haunting the music charts for months blared from the DJ booth.
The gym was not devoid of activity though. As if in a macabre dance, Naomi Roberts struggled against her date, Eddie Connor. She was a prom queen nominee -- and a shoe-in in Keely's mind, considering that the other candidates were probably dead by now. In another corner Jeremy Pilchard's body was slumped against a wall and Bryan Jessel was ripping open his chest cavity. There were sounds coming from other parts of the school too.
Keely strode toward Naomi and Eddie, then cocked back her shotgun and aimed it right at Eddie's head. "Move, Naomi!" She cried out before firing away.
Eddie's head exploded in a few pieces, not a billion tiny ones, like so many movies had led Keely to believe. And it hadn't even really exploded at all. There were still pieces of it attached, parts here and there. Eddie fell to the ground, his legs and hands twitching before he lay still. The crack of the shotgun made Keely's ears ring and the recoil had taken her by surprise, making her loose her footing and fire another shot toward the ceiling. Naomi sobbed as she stooped down in front of Eddie's lifeless body and tried to shake him.
"He's not getting up, Naomi. We have to go. Now." Keely was surprised that she'd sounded so tough, but there was still a distinct quiver in her voice.
"You stupid fucking bitch! Why did you do that?!" The other girl cried out in a high-pitched voice. There was blood all over Naomi's seafoam green ballgown and a huge pool of it seeping from the former jock's head.
"He was trying to eat you, stupid!"
"No, he was trying to convince me to leave!"
Keely felt her stomach churn before she shook her head. "I probably did him a favor anyway. Probably be doin' you a favor if I shot you right now. It's either that or you come with me. We have to get out of here. We have to go. No one is coming for us. No one is going to help us but ourselves."
Bryan Jessel suddenly lost interest in eating the other boy's heart. He instead turned toward the two girls who were screaming loud enough to wake the other dead -- the ones who hadn't been awoken. He got to his feet and lurched forward, groaning. "We have to go." Keely repeated as she started to back up toward the entrance again.
Naomi made no movement to stand, simply kneeling over Eddie's body and sobbing. She would have felt worse about abandoning the girl had Naomi not been a thorn in her side since the sixth grade. She felt a twinge of guilt when she heard Naomi scream from the gym a few seconds later. Keely ran back out of the school, her shoulder nearly grabbed by Miss Stenkowski. She butted the woman in the face with the shotgun before getting back into her pick up. In the rear view mirror, she could see two shapes staggering toward the car which was all the incentive she needed to back over them when she started the pick up.
She'd always wanted to make it out of Kingsport one day, but she'd never knew it would be like this. She made her choice in that instant and decided that going home was less of an option that it had been a few hours ago when she'd merely considered telling her folks she was pregnant. Keely didn't look back again as she headed onto the highway.
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