She was only sixteen when they killed her.
The way the world was supposed to work was that we would stay on our side, and they would stay on theirs. It was only a matter of time before one of us broke the promise—it was only a matter of time before someone died.
That someone was my sister.
Anywhere east of the Mississippi River belonged to the night crawlers. The vicious demons that gnarled and crept and did nothing of value to this world. The sickening ghouls of the night that terrorized and drank with the thought that their insatiable thirst might be quenched. Anywhere east was quarantine zone; a place that no one went, unless they were armed and dangerous. Anywhere east was a desert of the damned.
Everywhere west of the Mississippi River belonged to us. Our economy thrived, the sun shone brightly and everyone seemed to be in a general bright disposition. It was a consensus that the divide had been necessary and had turned out to be a good thing. Before the divide had been made, those diseased things had been living in homes next to us, driving in cars next to us, and voting right along side us.
Until the war started—and until the war ended not twenty years ago now. We had put them in their place, given them their own piece of land and left them. We had moved on, and hadn't heard so much as a murmur from them for the past twenty years.
But now my sister was dead—vanished into the gray abyss that had been calling her name.
It was a Monday afternoon, and instead of being in class I was sitting in the directors office of the funeral parlor with my parents and older brother. My mother and father had, appropriately, worn black since the untimely death of my younger sister. Kieran had been officially pronounced dead by the authorities the day before, and we were at the funeral parlor setting up plans for her shotgun funeral. It was going to be quick and discreet before the paparazzi showed up like a field of fans. It wasn't every day that this happened.
"Mrs. Duff, the price of the cherry casket is the most economically savvy. It is the exact casket I'd choose for my loved one…"
My mother, Elizabeth, dabbed the corner of her eye with a handkerchief. Ever since Kieran had disappeared, my mother had been inconsolable and my father had stopped talking altogether. I hadn't seen him cry yet. All he did was stare off into space as if he was watching Kieran walk away. Mother just sat around the house, the blinds and curtains closed around her sobbing into Kieran's clothes.
For solace, I only had my brother to turn to. Callum was three years older than me and had moved back home after graduating from college a few months earlier. He had had trouble finding a job, and had decided instead to find a band. He had taken to practicing in the garage instead of searching for a job and was happy now. I could see that his smile had broadened and that he was enjoying himself—not that my parents noticed or cared. They had decided when Callum was born near the end of the war that it was his duty to become part of the National Guard. It was his duty to protect people like us from things like them. Callum never liked the National Guard, and never liked that we lived so close to the river, either. When Kieran disappeared, Callum stopped playing in his band and picked up National Guard brochures.
Kieran disappeared on Thursday night.
Friday, Saturday, and for the better part of Sunday, I sat on the corner of Callum's bed, listening to the silence as he looked up the specifics of the National Guard. The only time we ever exchanged a word was when we heard the doorbell ring early into the evening on Sunday. He and I looked at each other, and then he said, "Ready to hear some bad news?" I told him I was ready to get this hell over with. We walked downstairs, received the news that Kieran was no longer with us, and then walked back upstairs. Callum picked up one of his brochures, and I continued to stare at his poster of the long-ago band of the Rolling Stones. He was better company than my parents. Mom let out small wails from her dungeon in the living room, and father had barricaded himself in the master bedroom.
We didn't eat, we didn't sleep, and we didn't progress with our lives until Mom had walked into Callum's room earlier this morning and told me to get dressed in black. We were going to figure out how to bury Kieran.
It's strange, planning a funeral when the body of the deceased isn't even there. I wondered why Mom was even bothering to pick out and pay for a casket. We didn't have Kieran's body to put in it.
Everything else had been arranged. It was going to be a strictly family ceremony with ourselves and the grandparents that were able to understand what was going on. No one else was invited because it was too much trouble. Afterwards, we'd have a brief luncheon in honor of the dearly departed and then that would be it. The casket would be put in the family plot and Kieran would be erased from out memories.
"Mrs. Duff?" The director of the funeral parlor asked, gesturing to the photographs of the caskets in front of him. "Make a selection and we'll make sure it looks nice for the funeral tomorrow."
My mother looked up through her veil of tears, "The cherry will be fine. Won't it be fine, John?"
My father turned from looking out the window to looking at my mother. His eyes didn't seem to register what was going on.
"Don't you like the cherry? Cal? Roxie?" Mother turned around, her eyes hopeful.
"Yeah, Mom," Callum chirped in. "It looks real nice. Something Kieran would've liked, you know?"
I nodded, and gave a brief smile—the best I could produce given the circumstances.
What no one seemed to realize or understand was that I was the closest one to Kieran. I had been her rock, the one she had gone to when she had problems. And I had been the last one to see her alive.