Chapter Two
When the sun rose the next morning, the house was silent. Krystal didn't understand; her mother was usually up early cooking breakfast. She got up and walked quietly to her bedroom door, opening it just a crack and peering out.
"Mom?" she called. There was no answer, but Krystal thought she heard movement in her mother's room.
She opened the door further and ventured across the hall to her mother's door. She knocked, but there was no response. She put her ear to the door, and could definitely hear movement.
"Mom? Are you okay?"
She listened again, and could faintly make out an odd moaning sound. That was enough to worry her, so she opened the door.
Shelby was standing at the side of her bed with her back to the door. When it opened, she snapped her head around to look at Krystal, and Krystal choked on a scream. Her mother's face was pallid and gaunt, and her eyes were that lifeless, murky grey.
"Mom," Krystal whimpered. "No…"
With a snarl, Shelby charged at the door, and Krystal slammed it shut, locking it. A series of bangs followed as Shelby tried to break through the door.
"Oh, fuck," Krystal choked, leaning with her back against the door. "Fuck! Fuck! No…Mom, no…"
There was no one she could call.
Her father was long gone and hadn't left any contact information. Krystal hadn't spoken to him in almost three years.
Her only other relative was her uncle, but she hadn't seen or heard from him in six years; she had no idea if he was even still alive.
You have no choice, she told herself. You have to do it.
Composing herself as much as she could, Krystal retrieved the revolver from her bag. She unlocked the door and opened it, and her mother came bursting out, snarling and rasping and snapping her teeth.
"I love you, Mom," Krystal said, raising the gun. "I'm sorry."
She pulled the trigger, and screamed in anguish as the shot rang out. It missed. Her hand shaking, she fired again, nicking her mother in the shoulder. Sobbing and slumping against the wall behind her, Krystal fumbled with the gun before firing a third shot. Instinctively she pulled the trigger again, but the gun clicked. It was empty, and she had no bullets left to reload it with.
The bullet entered her mother's face, just above her top lip, shattering everything. It exited the back of her head, spraying blood and brain matter across the wall behind her. Shelby's body hit the floor with a sickening thud. Krystal dropped the gun, buckled at the waist and vomited. Gasping and heaving, her entire body flushed hot, she sat down on the bed and examined the pill bottles. One was Ambien, the other was aspirin. The Ambien still had a few pills in it, but the aspirin was empty.
"Fuck, she took all of these," Krystal said aloud, picking up the empty aspirin bottle. "She killed herself."
Then, it hit her. Her mother had felt guilty over sending her to Diego's house. Did she blame herself for Piper and Aubrey's deaths?
Krystal broke down again. She lay on the bed, sobbing into the pillows, which still smelled like her mother. Soon, the sobs became howls, and she screamed into the pillows until her throat felt raw. She sat up, and gathered up the remaining Ambien pills from where they had spilled out of the bottle onto the bed. She stared at them for several seconds, disjointed thoughts rattling inside her head.
I've got nothing now. They're all dead. I've got no one. What's the point? Just do it. Do it.
Tilting her head back and tipping the pills into her mouth, she dry-swallowed them. They tasted bitter as they stuck to her tongue briefly before going down. She lay back against the pillows and waited. It didn't take long for her body to begin to react.
Her stomach cramped violently and she curled into a ball with her arms wrapped around her abdomen. Her head began to throb, and she could hear her pulse in her ears and feel it in her head.
Water, she thought hazily. She tried to stand, but stumbled.
She managed to stagger her way into the kitchen, tripping over her own feet as though she had been drinking heavily. Shakily she filled a glass with water and downed it, spilling some down the front of her shirt.
"Hmm, fuck," she slurred, fruitlessly trying to brush the wet patch off.
She stumbled back to her mother's room, stopping in the hallway to vomit up the water she had just drunk, as well as fragments of undigested pills. Going back into the bedroom she lay back down, staring at the ceiling which appeared to be rippling like the surface of a pond.
Her entire body felt heavy and a wave of fatigue washed over her. Hoping that this was it, Krystal allowed herself to succumb to the darkness.
She didn't remember falling asleep, but when she woke up the sun's position over the house indicated that it was early morning. It was then that she realized she had slept through the entire previous day.
She sat up, and her head started pounding.
"Fuck," she groaned. "Why am I still alive? Surely that should've been enough…"
She picked up the empty Ambien bottle.
"Obviously wasn't."
A cloying, rotted smell reached her nose and a wave of nausea rolled up from the pit of her stomach. Instinctively, she leaned over the side of the bed and dry-heaved, despite having no food in her stomach.
Shakily, she stood up and went to the foot of the bed, crouching beside her mother's body.
"Mom," she sobbed, pushing her mother's tangled blonde hair away from her face. "Why'd you do it?"
The body was pale, and had settled to room temperature. The eyes, still that murky grey colour, stared blankly.
Krystal sat with the body for a while, holding her mother's limp hand in both of her own. Soon, she could no longer tolerate the smell of death lingering in the room, and decided it was time to do what was right for her mother.
She pulled the bedsheet from the bed and laid it on the floor. Gathering all of her strength, she rolled the body onto the sheet, wrapping it up.
Slipping and struggling as she went, she dragged the body down the hall to the back door, stopping to push it open by leaning her back against it. She half-carried, half-dragged the body down the back steps.
Halfway across the yard, she collapsed beside the body, gasping for air and her arms aching. A wave of nausea hit her and she dry-heaved again.
Leaving the body where it was, she forced herself to stand and went to the shed. She retrieved the shovel and, moving to the base of the tree, she began to dig.
All concept of time had faded. She was barely aware of her surroundings, only the sun beating down on her and the monotonous scraping of the shovel as she dug.
Deciding that the hole was deep enough, Krystal dragged the body into it, letting it drop as carefully as she could. She made sure it was face-up; she couldn't bear the thought of her mother lying face-down in the ground.
she began to fill the hole in, until a mound of earth was the only indication left that there was even a body buried there.
Exhausted, Krystal dropped the shovel and fell to her knees. She lay beside the grave, allowing sleep to wash over her again.
When she once again awoke, it was late afternoon. She sat up, brushing grass and dirt from her clothes. Her palms were flecked with dirt and her skin was damp with sweat. Her whole body ached. Getting to her feet, she went back to the house. Entering the kitchen, she gathered a mop and bucket, and the last remaining bottle of liquid soap. She filled the bucket with hot water and half the bottle of soap, before taking it into her mother's bedroom.
She first mopped the spot where the body had been. Then, she mopped up the spot beside the bed where she had been ill.
Dumping the contents of the bucket into the toilet, she then went around the house opening all the windows, hoping the smell of blood, death and vomit would dissipate.
Finally, she went to take a shower.
Krystal awoke the following morning with a mission.
She went out to the backyard and stood by the shed, looking it over. She spotted a loose plank of wood on the wall and began pulling at it. It creaked and cracked as she did so, and splintered a little. She persisted, despite the pain of the splinters cutting into the pads of her fingers.
She didn't even stop when she broke a fingernail, right at the quick, causing her finger to bleed. Finally, the plank came free from the wall. She took it into the shed and raided her father's collection of tools until she found a handsaw, nails and a hammer. She got to work, sawing the plank in half. She then drove as many nails into it as she felt were necessary to fasten the two halves together into a large cross. She grabbed a screwdriver and crudely carved her mother's name, birth date and date of death into the wood. Under her arm she carried it to the grave, and forced it into the ground as firmly as she could. Then she sat down beside the grave.
Her mind was racing. In that moment, she decided that she was alive for a reason. She didn't know exactly what it was, but she knew there had to be a reason. If she was going to survive, she would need a better weapon to protect herself.
A butcher's knife wasn't going to cut it – no pun intended.
she went back into the shed to see if she could find anything useful. She briefly considered the handsaw, but she would have to allow the zombies to get too close before she could use it. She rummaged through the rest of her father's abandoned tools, but found nothing of use.
It was then that something hanging on the wall caught her eye.
A gardening sickle.
Perfect, she thought, as she retrieved it. Gripping the handle, she tried it out, swinging it like a golf club.
The handle's a bit short.
She then spotted the retractable broom leaning against the workbench. Sitting on the floor, she unscrewed the brush head and inserted the sickle's handle into the hollow broom handle.
She then wrapped it in duct tape hoping that it would keep it secure. She got to her feet and held her new makeshift scythe aloft with pride.