Title: The Custody
Author: Kassfinol
Genre: Post-apocalyptic horror – Body horror – Psychological tragedy
All rights reserved
The cart squeaks, and every damn squeak sounds like a scream in the dead silence of the highway. María pushes while her arms burn, her palms raw from gripping the rusty handle. The sun turns the asphalt into a frying pan, but she keeps pushing.
Sofía is inside, well, what’s left of Sofía.
The chain is rusty, stained with brown shit María prefers to think is rust, but it isn’t. Sofía moves when the cart goes over a bump and her head bounces against the metal with a wet sound, like a rotten melon hitting the floor.
—Sorry, baby. —María wipes the sweat from her forehead with her forearm while her hand trembles—. We’re almost there.
Sofía moans, but it’s not a human moan. It’s the sound air makes escaping a swollen corpse when you squeeze it. María pretends she doesn’t hear it.
Three dead come out of a collapsed Seven-Eleven. One was fat in life, now he’s a bag of hanging skin full of God-knows-what. The other two drag their broken legs, bones sticking out through blackened flesh as they move toward María with their jaws snapping.
María stops, plants her feet, and bites her lip until it bleeds.
—Come on, my love. Do it again.
Sofía lifts her head in a sudden, unnatural movement, as if someone were pulling the strings of a broken puppet. Half her face is gone. Her left cheek is a crater of rotten flesh where María can see the teeth, white and perfect because the dentist had done a good job six months before everything went to hell.
The dead stop and sniff. The fat one tilts his head while a piece of scalp slides off and falls onto the pavement with a plop. Seconds later all three back away, because they always back away from Sofía. Apparently the dead recognize something worse than themselves.
—Good girl. —María wipes her tears with the back of her hand, leaving a trail of grime—. You’re my good girl.
Sofía opens and closes her mouth in a repetitive movement while her black tongue hangs between her split lips. Around her, as always, there are flies.
María has walked twenty-two kilometers today, she knows because she counts every damn step when there’s nothing else to do except think, and thinking will drive her crazy if it hasn’t already.
The water ran out three days ago and María’s tongue is so swollen she can barely swallow.
Then she sees the smoke: straight, controlled. She knows living people make that kind of fire.
María pushes faster and the cart squeaks louder while Sofía shakes inside, her bones rattling like maracas.
—We’re going to be fine, baby. We’re going to be fine. —María laughs, and the sound comes out hysterical, broken—. Mommy is going to get water. Mommy is going to get help.
Sofía bites the air. Snap, snap, snap.
The camp has real walls: walls of welded metal, shining under the sun, with barbed wire that looks new. María approaches with her hands up, pushing the cart with her hip while her legs tremble.
—Stop right there, damn it! —a guy shouts at her from a tower. Young, maybe twenty-five, with a fat scar crossing his forehead as if someone had tried to open his skull—. Bitten?
María shakes her head. She opens her mouth to speak, but only a croak comes out. She clears her throat and spits blood.
—No… No, I’m clean, I haven’t been bitten.
—Alone?
The chains jingle when Sofía moves. María feels her stomach tighten.
—Yes. Just me.
The guard comes down the ladder with the rifle aimed at María’s chest. When he reaches the ground, he approaches slowly, each step measured, his eyes narrowed against the sun.
—What the hell are you carrying in the cart?
María bites her lip and tastes the metal of her own blood. She needs water. She needs to sleep without waking up thinking Sofía freed herself from the chains and is eating her face.
—Supplies.
—Show me. —He raises the rifle—. Now!
—It’s my daughter.
The words come out and María wishes she could swallow them back. The guard doesn’t lower the rifle, he takes a step back.
—Excuse me?
—She’s sick. —The words come out in a rush—. She needs help, she needs a doctor, you have doctors, right? You have to have doctors… no, no, don’t tell me you don’t have doctors here.
—If she’s infected, get lost. Right now or I’ll blow your head off.
María feels something hot run down her cheeks: tears. When was the last time she cried?
—She’s seven years old! Just… just let me talk to someone. Please. —Her voice breaks—. Please, I need… she needs…
The guard spits on the ground and stares at her as if María were just another dead one, with contempt and disgust. He immediately climbs the ladder and disappears.
María waits while the sun hammers down and Sofía moans, that sewer sound. María puts her hand in the cart and touches what’s left of her daughter’s hair, sticky with something that smells like rotten sweetness. She pulls her hand back and wipes it on her jeans.
The following minutes seem like hours, but to her momentary joy, the side door of the place opens. An Asian woman comes out, in her forties, with gray hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She wears a white coat stained yellow and brown, also a surgical mask and latex gloves.
She walks toward María with firm steps and stops two meters from the cart. She leans over and looks inside.
She goes very still.
—Oh, God. —Her voice comes out muffled by the mask—. Oh my God.
—It’s my daughter. —María takes a step forward—. She’s sick but still… she still knows me, see? When I talk to her she calms down, she still knows who I am.
The woman steps back and takes off her mask. Her face is marked with burn scars on her neck that climb up to her jaw.
—That girl is dead. —Her voice is flat, without emotion—. She’s decomposed. She has… God, she has maggots in her left eye.
—She’s just infected, I’m sure she can be cured.
—She’s reanimated! —The woman runs a hand over her face—. She has rigor mortis, advanced necrosis in her limbs, her nails are falling off… how long has she been like this?
María counts in her head while the days blur together.
—Three weeks. Maybe a month… I don’t know. —She shook her head while running her hand desperately through her tangled hair.
—Jesus. —The woman approaches again, studying Sofía as if she were a lab specimen—. And you keep her chained up?
—Of course, of course, it’s so she doesn’t hurt herself.
—You mean, so she doesn’t hurt you.
The silence stretches while María feels her legs are about to give out.
—She still… when I talk to her…
—No. —The woman shakes her head—. Whatever you see there is your brain filling in the blanks. There’s nothing of your daughter left in that thing.
María clenches her fists while her nails dig into her palms.
—You’re lying.
—I’m Dr. Chen. You’ll come with me. —It’s not a question—. Now!
The room smells of chlorine and old sweat. Five people are around a metal table: Chen at the head, a huge guy with a three-week beard, a Korean woman with burn scars worse than Chen’s covering half her neck, a skinny nervous guy who can’t stop drumming his fingers on the table, and the tower guard.
María stands against the wall. They gave her water and she drank it so fast she vomited half of it on the floor. Nobody got up to clean it.
Chen sits down and folds her hands on the table.
—How long have you been dragging your daughter’s corpse around?
—It’s not a corpse —she answers reluctantly.
—Answer the question. —The bearded guy hits the table with his fist—. How long have you had your daughter like this?
María runs her tongue over her split lips.
—Twenty-three days.
The Korean woman lets the air out between her teeth.
—Shit.
—And what have you been using her for? —Chen leans forward—. What exactly do you keep her with you for?
—To protect her.
—Lie. —The skinny guy stops drumming—. The other dead avoid her, right? That’s why you bring her with you.
María doesn’t answer, but the answer is in her silence.
—Holy God. —The guard, Javier reads on his badge, runs his hand over his face—. She’s using her as a shield.
—I’m taking care of her!
—You’re dragging a fucking corpse through the desert! —The bearded guy stands up suddenly and the chair falls backward with a crash—. We have nineteen people here! Six children! Do you think I’m going to let an infected in because you’re too crazy to accept that your daughter is dead?
—My daughter is…
—Your daughter is missing half her face. —Kim, the Korean woman, speaks for the first time in a voice soft but sharp as glass—. She has worms in her eyes. Her skin is falling off in pieces. She smells like rotten shit. Is that what you want to protect?
—She still…
—No! —Kim hits the table—. There’s nothing left. Nothing. Whatever your daughter was left weeks ago. What’s left is rotten flesh animated by a shitty virus we don’t understand.
María feels the room spin.
—The other dead avoid her. Why do they avoid her if she’s just a corpse?
Silence.
—It must be the size. —The skinny guy, Marcos, bites his nails—. Small bodies rot differently. Or the smell. Maybe she smells too rotten even for them.
—Or they recognize terminal disease. —Javier cleans his rifle with a rag—. Like animals that avoid sick carrion.
María laughs, but the sound comes out broken, hysterical.
—They don’t care about the why. They care that it works. She’s kept me alive. She’s kept us alive.
Chen stands up slowly and rests her hands on the table.
—So you admit it? Have you been using the reanimated corpse of your seven-year-old daughter as… what? Dead repellent?
—I’ve been taking care of her while she takes care of me.
The bearded guy spits on the floor.
—You’re sick, ma’am… You’re sick in the head.
—She has traumatic dissociation. —Kim rubs her temples—. I’ve seen this before. My brother carried his wife’s corpse for two weeks. He ended up biting her face while he slept. I had to put five bullets in his skull.
—Sofía won’t bite me.
—That thing isn’t called Sofía anymore. —Chen walks around the table and stands in front of María—. What’s in that cart is a walking biological weapon. A risk. A threat.
—It’s my daughter.
—Your daughter is dead. —Chen doesn’t blink—. You have two options. One: neutralize the infected properly and join us. We have food, water, beds, security. Or two: leave here with your dead pet and die in the desert.
María feels something break inside her chest, because she knows what’s coming. She always knew.
—Do I have to do it?
—You kept her alive. —Chen crosses her arms—. You’ll put her to rest.
They give her a shovel. An axe would have been faster, but Chen says: “we want you to think about what you’re doing. To feel it.”
They also give her an hour.
Kim escorts her out of the camp. There’s a field beyond the wall, dry, cracked earth, some dead trees twisted like bones.
The cart squeaks while Sofía is quiet today. Sometimes she has days like that, days where she barely moves. María prefers those days.
—Here is fine. —Kim stops with the rifle hanging from her shoulder—. Dig.
María drives the shovel into the earth, hard as concrete. Each shovelful tears a groan from her throat while the sun falls directly on her, without mercy, and the sweat burns her eyes.
Thirty minutes later there’s a shallow hole, barely a meter and a half. María can’t go on: her hands bleed, all her blisters burst.
—Enough.
María looks at the hole, then looks at Sofía. Her daughter. Her baby. Her dead thing that still moves.
She raises the shovel.
—Forgive me.
Sofía lifts her head in a slow movement, as if her neck were almost dislocated. Her white, milky eyes look at her without seeing. Her mouth opens, closes, opens.
Is there something there? Some piece of her little girl hidden in that rotten skull?
The shovel trembles.
—I can’t.
—You have to do it. —Kim spits on the ground—. Or I’ll do it with one shot and you get lost.
—What if there’s a cure? —The words come out desperate—. Someday. What if they find a cure and I killed her for nothing?
—There’s no cure. —Kim approaches and crouches down to be at María’s level—. My daughter was six. I waited too. Three weeks I waited for her to come back, for her to look at me and recognize me.
She stops and bites her lip.
—What happened?
—She got loose while I slept. She tore my husband’s throat out. He… was still alive when I walked in. He was drowning in his own blood while she ate his face.
Kim wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
—I had to do it twice that night. First my husband. Then her. And both times it was like killing them again.
María looks at Sofía, really looks at her.
She sees the maggots writhing in her left eye. She sees the flesh peeling off the bone of her jaw. She sees the small hands, those hands that used to cling to her neck, now with blackened nails falling off her fingers. She sees the pink dress dirty with shit and dried blood. She sees her daughter turned into carrion.
—She’s already gone. —Kim stands up and puts a hand on María’s shoulder—. Long ago. Let her go.
María raises the shovel high while tears fall, mixing with sweat and grime.
—I love you, Sofía. I’ll always love you.
She brings the shovel down.
Sofía’s skull splits with a wet crunch: pieces of bone, gray rotten brains, white worms exploding. The second time is easier. The third is almost automatic.
When she finishes, María vomits and keeps vomiting until only bile and blood come out.
The room they give her is small, but clean. There’s a bed. María sits on the edge with her hands still trembling, still feeling the skull splitting under the shovel.
Someone knocks.
—Come in.
It’s Javier, he brings a glass of water and two pills.
—Chen says you’ll need them. To sleep.
María takes the pills and swallows them without water.
—Did you have to…?
—My brother. Sixteen. —He touches the scar on his forehead—. He gave me this when I tried to stop him. I had to put a knife in the base of his skull while he tried to bite me.
—How do you go on?
Javier shrugs.
—Most days I don’t even think about him. Other days I can’t think about anything else. —He pauses—. But I know he wouldn’t want me to die too. To drag his corpse around until it killed me.
He leaves and María stays alone.
The pills take effect. Her eyelids weigh tons. She lies down on the bed.
She sees Sofía. Not the dead one. The living one: laughing, asking for a story. “I love you, Mommy.”
She opens her eyes.
The room is dark. Outside she hears the wind against the metal.
She gets up and walks to the window. She can see the field from here, the dead tree, the mound of earth.
Something moves.
María freezes.
Something small emerges from the earth, crawling, leaving a trail of dark shit.
No.
It can’t be.
She dug deep. She smashed the skull. She made sure.
But the thing crawls toward the camp with its broken legs dragging, its small arms digging into the earth.
María runs to the door: closed, locked from the outside.
—Open up! —She pounds with her fists—. Open the fucking door!
Nobody comes.
She runs to the window. The thing is at the foot of the wall: small, broken, impossible.
But it climbs. Its hands find cracks. Its broken bones bend at impossible angles.
Sofía falls on the other side of the wall, gets up. The smashed skull hangs to one side while pieces of brain fall to the ground.
She looks straight at María’s window.
And smiles: a smile of split jaw and exposed teeth.
She walks toward the barracks, where the children sleep.
María pounds the glass until her hands leave red stains.
—NO! SOFÍA, NO!
In the distance, a door opens. Small steps. A child’s voice asks “Mommy?”
Then the screams.
The screams don’t stop.
María slides to the floor with her bleeding hands while the pills do their work. Her eyelids close.
When she wakes up, the camp is silent.
A dead silence.
The End
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