The Safe Room and The Docks

“Did you guys watch the news the other day? I sure did. That old woman is crazy, but she scared me enough to believe something is happening,” I tell the girls over a video chatting site called Chatter.

“Oh, yeah, I did!,” Bea says. “She’s right, though. Something is happening. People are getting sick. The newsman said if we see anyone foaming at the mouth or with discolored eyes then to call the cops.”

“It’s like they got rabies or something. Everyone here is okay. I checked. How about you guys?” Eve asks.

“Yeah, same here,” Bea and I say in unison.

“Guys, I think we should stick together and maybe sleep over at each other’s houses for a couple of nights. We can switch off houses every night. I think it will be safer for all of us in case something happens,” Bea explains.

“I agree. My mom wants us to stay here for the first night. You know how she is with all the zombie stuff. She thinks it could be the start of an apocalypse. You know, she locks the doors and windows every morning and night. She keeps the curtains closed all the time and now she only lets us use flashlights at night and no lights at all except for the day time because it’s already bright out. Isn’t that ridiculous?” I tell the girls.

“Wow. That’s a bit extreme Bianca…” Eve says and gives me a weird look.

“I know! Soon she will be hoarding food and starting to search for weapons. Then stocking up on ammo!”

“Maybe she will think of a safe house for all of us if anything actually does happen!” Eve laughs.

“Or maybe she already has… Ooh!” Bea giggles along with her.

“Guys, shut up. This isn’t that funny. My mom is seriously going crazy over this.”

“Don’t worry Bianca, we will stay at your house tonight and we will sit down with her later to talk to her about all of this nonsense,” Bea says.

“Okay, sounds good. Thanks girls. Now start packing a bag and get over here!” I laugh.

“Okay, okay. But what if she is right? What if this is the start of a zombie apocalypse?” Eve asks.

“It’s not. We are fine, now don’t worry.”

We all click off of Chatter. I run downstairs to let my mom know about my sleep over.

“Mom? Mooooommmm?!”

My mom walks through the door from the basement.

“What Bianca? I was busy downstairs.”

“What were you doing down there?”

“I was getting some stuff ready. I want to show you something…,” my mom says in an uneasy voice.

“Alright… What is it?” I follow her down to the basement.

The basement is normal as usual. Nothing is different except there's a door that I’ve never seen before. It is a large steel door. That’s never been there before…

“Hey, Mom? Why is there a steel door there? It’s never been there before. What’s in it?”

My mom walks to the door and types a code into it. The door makes a noise as if it were a door to a large freezer. “It’s the safe room.”

She stands back as I walk in the room. It’s about as big as a bedroom. How have I never seen this before in my own house? I walk around slowly, just looking all over at the shelves stacked with canned and boxed foods. There’s crates full of waters. What shocked me the most was the chest in the back corner. It was my grandpa’s old chest that he always kept his war guns in. I opened the chest and sure enough they were all still there and more. Pistols, shotguns, rifles, and even bows just placed carefully in this chest.

My mom watches me look in the chest amazed. “The little box next to it has multiple boxes of ammo for each gun. And the box on the other side is filled with knives, so be careful. Oh and the window on the door is bulletproof, so nothing can get through it.”

“Mom…”

“Yes, dear?”

“Why do you have all of this in our basement? How did this room get here? Why is it all steel and unlike the other rooms? Why do we have a safe room?”

“Honey, slow down. I know you have a lot of questions. I will answer them all. Let’s go upstairs and talk,” she says calmly.

We walk upstairs and sit down at the table. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, the girls are staying at our house tonight. They will be over soon,” I tell her.

“Sounds good! We will wait until they get here then. We can all talk about the safe room. You all need to know. I want you girls to be safe and don’t hesitate to save your other friends like that one boy who’s like in love with you. What’s his name? TJ…? Dj…?”

“It’s JT, Mom.”

“Yeah, him. That boy is a real sweetheart!”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about him right now. I haven’t even seen him in a while. We don’t have any classes together,” I tell her and roll my eyes.

“Alright, fine. But just remember he was always good to you.” My mom walks out of the room and leaves me sitting there to think about everything that I just witnessed.

~~~~

There’s a knock at the door and my mom goes and answers it. I’m  sitting in the kitchen when Eve and Bea walk in with my mom.

“Okay, girls, sit down. We need to talk,” she says to us.

“Uh oh, are we in trouble Mrs. Lane?” Bea asks.

“No, of course not, Bea. I just want to show you girls what I showed Bianca earlier today. You girls need to know. It might save you one day.”

Bea and Eve glance at me with a scared and questioning look. I just look at them and give them an unsure smile.

“Follow me.” My mom gets up and heads for the basement. We get up and follow her down. She unlocks the door to the Safe Room.

The girls gasp and walk in, looking and touching everything they see. They make a high pitched sound and jump back when they see what’s inside the chest in the back corner.

“Be careful, girls. They are all currently loaded,” my mom warns them.

“Um, Mrs. Lane? Not to be rude or anything, but why do you have a safe room filled with weapons and food like a crazy lady?” Eve asks.

“Well, Eve, you remember Mrs. Westerton at your school? The librarian lady? She is a close friend of mine. I’ve known that old woman since I was a young girl. She strongly believes in the apocalypse. She has taught me and showed me all of the information she knows about it. She is the one that helped me build the Safe Room. I’ve been stashing extra bullets that your grandfather kept and food when I go grocery shopping. I do a really good job at keeping this a secret.”

“Does Dad know?” I ask.  

“Yes, he doesn’t know that I still stash food and weapons in it, but he does know that it’s here and he knows the passcode. And I think you girls should know the passcode,” she hands each of us a sticky note with the passcode on it.

The code was a word but made up of numbers also. 4p0c4lyps3.  

“What happens if we lose the notecard?” Bea asks nervously.

“Well, memorize it so that doesn’t happen,” my mom tells her. She shows her ankle to us. There is a little tattoo of the passcode for the Safe Room.

“Mom, why do you have a tattoo of it on your ankle?”

“I need it there in case I forget.”

“Oh okay then,” I said kind of weirded out that she has a tattoo of the passcode.

My mom walks upstairs while the girls and I stay down in the Safe Room to look around more. It’s amazing how well she kept this hidden from me all these years. It’s also kind of terrifying considering what else she could be hiding from me… I’m kind of wondering if I can trust anyone these days. Teachers are lying to all of us about what is happening and my own parents have been keeping this huge secret from me for years now.

I just thought of one of my favorite quotes, which is another hobby of mine. It’s about trust. “Be careful who you trust, the devil was once an angel.” I should keep that in mind when I am around new or untrustworthy people. I mean it’s 2020, weren’t there predictions that the world was supposed to end? People make crazy accusations these days and I don’t know how well I believe them right now. I believe what I see, not what I hear.

“Earth to Bianca! Hello are you there?” Bea taps my head and waves her hand in front of my face.

“Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking.”

“What on your mind, girl?” Eve asks and walks over to me.

I sit on one of the crates and tell them how I am still shocked about this Safe Room and how it was kept from me for all these years. Also, that my mom and Mrs. Westerton were friends!

“Yeah, I am pretty surprised too Bianca, but maybe it’s a good thing that she brought it up now or even has the room in the first place. I am seriously thinking about this whole apocalypse issue. I’m thinking it could be true. I just know I plan to watch my back at all times,” Eve says.

“I don’t believe it as much as you guys do,” I say. “I just have to see it to believe it.”

“Hey, let’s get this off our minds and go have our sleepover! Might as well make the best of it right?” Bea says as she gets up and runs out of the Safe Room to go upstairs.

We follow her out and head to my room. The girls pick out some scary movies while I make popcorn for us. My mom sets up blankets and pillows in the family room. She decided to join us for our sleepover. To my embarrassment, she even brought a bat. I give her a look that says “why do you have to embarrass me like this?”

“Just in case. You can never be too cautious,” she says.

I roll my eyes.

~~~

3 A.M. Noises. Scraping. Slowed foot steps.

What is that? I can hear it getting closer. Everyone is still sleeping though. No one else heard it. I get up and grab the bat. Could actually come in handy… Thanks Mom. I look out the peephole on our front door. It’s too dark to see. I can’t turn the porch lights on though… Who knows what could be lurking around.

I debate on whether I should wake the girls or not. Definitely not my mom, though. She would go on crazy lock down mode. At least she made sure that every door and window was locked in the house.

I hear more scraping, like a foot dragging on the porch. It’s going towards the back now. Our porch stretches all the way around the house. I take the bat and go around to the back window. I look out, but I don’t see anything. I unlatch the window and pull it up. I push my face close to the screen for a peak to the side of the porch. Bad idea. I hear moaning and growling, but it wasn’t coming from an animal. The dragging footsteps are picking up speed as they are getting louder, closer… I only hear the steps of two feet, it must be a human. Who would be out this late? Early, I should say.

I can’t see anything, it’s too dark. Not daring to turn any lights on in the house, I use the light from my cell phone screen. Looking to my left, I can only see about two feet in front of me, the light fading the farther it gets. Nothing there but the wood of the porch and a long swing that hangs there for socializing outside. The next thing that happens is only a blur to me, it all happened so fast. The loud banging of something large tripping over itself and falling hard onto the porch, its loud groans of pain.

My phone light goes off at that moment and everything is black and quiet now. I struggle quickly to type in the passcode and I’m blinded by the white screen that comes on. My heart is racing as I turn my phone screen towards the porch to see what happened. A large man was lying still on the wood. He was covered in blood and his shirt was torn to bits. He had a scruffy beard and long, wavy brown hair. He kind of looked sort of like a lumberjack. A very bloody lumberjack.

I looked around the room for half a second to make sure the girls were still sleeping. I hope they don’t wake from all of the noise. I look back out the window, but he was gone. There was a large puddle of blood, but he was nowhere to be seen.I didn’t know what to think. My mind has so many different things going through it. I turned away to go and wake my mom, but before I could get anywhere, he grabbed me. He ripped through the screen and took hold of the back of my shirt and ripped me back towards him with all of his strength. I flew back against the window and he let go. He went for me again. I could barely get up, the wind was knocked out of me. My mom woke up from the ripping sound of the screen on the window. I screamed for her, but nothing came out. Her screams were ear piercing when she saw what was happening.

The girls were up and screaming now too. “Help me!” I finally screamed back. My mom raced over to me and tried to pull me away from the man. Sweating and panting, she picked up the bat that I had dropped sometime during all of this. She swung hard at the man holding me, trying to drag me out of the window. He won’t let go. She hits him a couple times in the head and he falls back onto the porch. He just lies there, but my mom knows he’s not dead. She climbs out of the window and smashes his head in anger and fear. I turned away for this part because it was too gruesome to watch and I had no idea what had just happened. My friends grab me and pull me over to the couch and we all sit there crying and shaking in shock.

My mom comes back into the room, her clothes and face splattered with blood. “Be quiet,” she shushed us. We covered our mouths, our hands dripping with tears because we were crying so much. She looks out of the tattered screen to see if anything else was out there. She brings her head back in and shuts the window.

“W-What was wrong with him?” Eve chokes on her tears.

“He was one of them.” My mom tries to catch her breath. I can see her shaking a little as well, but not as much as we were.

“One of them? Who’s them?” Bea asks.

“You remember how your librarian, Ms. Westerton said that something was happening? Well it’s true. People are getting really sick. It’s like they crave human flesh. They are attacking random people, friends, and even their own family. Their mind goes blank and they start acting like animals. Sloppy animals,” my mom explains to us.

“Why, though? Why are they attacking other people and trying to eat them?” Eve asks.

“Are they cannibals?” Bea interrupts.

“No, I’m not sure. It’s more than that. Cannibals are still people that can talk and understand commands. These people can’t. They refuse to even react to the slightest command. Do not go around saying things, but in the hospital they are keeping a woman down in the basement. She is the first discovered one since 1840. They are keeping her under heavy lockdown, but they are running tests. Tests to analyze the wants and intentions of these people. I don’t know much more than that. Your aunt is a nurse there and she helps out. She knows it all.”

I sit there quietly, just taking all of this unbelievable information in. This can’t be true. I have to be dreaming... I pinch myself and wince. Not dreaming. My mom tells us we need to try and get some sleep because we have work to do in the morning. She falls back to sleep. I put another movie in for the girls and I. None of us will be doing much sleeping after what just happened.

“Bianca, are you okay?” Bea asks me. I realized I haven’t said a word since I screamed for help.

“I don’t know. I think so…”

The girls come over and hug me again. They tell me everything is going to be okay and we’ll all get through this. I agree with them, but I know that everything will not be okay. Something bad is really happening. I just don’t know exactly what. I watch the movie, not being able to keep the images of that man out of my head. All of that blood and ripped clothing. It was like a scene from a horror movie. Something I never actually wanted to see for real.

It’s 7 in the morning and the girls finally fall asleep. I know my mom will be wanting us all to be getting up around 10. That gives me three hours. Three hours to try and sleep. No, three hours to stay up thinking about what happened. Around 8:30 I must have dozed off because I was awoken by the ruffling of the tarp and creeks of the wood on the porch. That brought all of the memories rushing back into my mind.

“Bianca, you up?” My mom yelled from the porch.

“Barely…,” I said in a voice just above a whisper. My voice is crackly from screaming so loud last night.

“Well time to get up because we need to clean this mess up,” she replies.

“Umm, what exactly do you plan to have us do with a body, Mrs. Lane?” Eve asks in a creeped out tone.

“We are going to wrap him up in the tarp, tie it and put him in the trunk of the car. First, though, we need to put saran wrap in the trunk so no blood leaks out into my car. We will take him to the docks a few blocks down and take him out in the boat and dump him out there. We can tie him to bricks so he sinks,” She says. Here, I brought all of you ladies some arm length gloves to use.” She hands us all gloves that go up to our shoulders and steps back out the window.

Bea and Eve put on the gloves and their shoes. “Hey Mrs. Lane, what about our shoes? I really don’t want to get them all bloody,” Bea questions my mom.

“Oh, right. Here, I have some of these plastic slip ons that go around your shoes.” She hands them some plastic covers and hands me a pair too.

We put everything on and stepped out of the window with my mom. Her and I try to pick up the body by his legs and arms and hold him up while my friends lay out the tarp, but he slips from my grip from the blood. I fall to the ground in tears. My mom sets the rest of the body down and comes to comfort me. A few minutes later I get up and we lay the body on the tarp to roll him up. He is so heavy. We are all sweating only fifteen minutes of doing all of this. My mom grabs the rope and ties the legs together and then ties the arms to the side of his body. Bea and I grab the saran wrap and go to the car to place inside of the trunk. I glance around the neighborhood to make sure no one is watching us. Then we run to the porch and help my mom and Eve carry the body. He is kind of tall so we have to put him in sideways in order for him to curl up and fit. This is so not right…

“We will clean the porch when we get back. Get in the car, we are going to the docks,” my mom says as she grabs some more rope and throws in it the trunk. I hop in the front and my friends get into the back seat. Everyone is quiet. I guess no one really knows what to say because this is just so messed up. I’ve seen movies and T.V. shows about this kinda stuff. I’ve also heard about crazy serial killers on the news doing this, but I never thought I’d ever be doing it. Especially with my mother. Does this mean that I am a serial killer? A killer at all? I didn’t necessarily kill him myself, but I was there and it happened.

I continue to think about all of the possibilities if we got caught carrying a body to the docks and dumping it, or if someone had seen us cleaning it up at the house, or hearing our screams last night. I close my eyes and push the thoughts away.

~~~

We arrive at the docks. My mom gets out of the car and pays to take the boat out. She looks around the docks to make sure no one is around or watching. She waves us to bring the body over. We get out and carry it to the boat, but we end up dropping the body a couple of times because he is so heavy. “Man, he must weigh at least 200 pounds,” I grunt as I try picking up his arms again.

We take him slowly to the boat and drop him in the back. My mom puts a blanket over him and tells us to get in. Then she grabs a couple of bricks laying by the boat and the rope out of the car.

“Hey! What are y’all up to?” A male's voice calls over to us.

“Uh oh, mom who’s that?”

It was the sailor who owns a boat house near by. He runs the docks. He walks over to us. “Hey, folks!”

My mother starts talking to him. “Hey Jim, we’re just taking the boat out because it’s a pretty nice morning and the girls wanted to go out.” We sit on the body covered with a blanket to make it seem like it’s just a seat.

“Oh, alright.” He looks over into the boat at us. “You ladies gonna have a picnic?”

“Nope, not today. Just going to enjoy the morning and have some girl talk!”

“Well, you ladies have a nice morning then. See ya around!”

He walks away around to the other boats. The girls sigh. “That was a close one,” Eve says.

My mom gets into the boat. “Yeah, let’s get out of here before he comes back,” she says.

She unties the boat and we head out. We drive the boat out so far that we can’t see the docks anymore. Making sure no other boats or jetskis are around, we tie the rope to the bricks and then to the body. “Are you ready?” My mom asks.

“As ready as we will ever be, dumping a dead body, that we just killed, into the water,” Bea smirks awkwardly.

We laugh a little, which was strange because this is no laughing matter. Then we push the body overboard and toss the bricks in with it. A bunch of bubbles and a small pool of blood rise to the surface as the body sinks.

. . .

Author's Note

Mom might seem a little too casual about the attack, however, she has known about this theory of the dead rising for awhile now.(explained later on). Thoughts? Suggestions? Chapter 3 is currently being written...

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

You did well. You are giving enough. I liked how you made the mother. Sometime people can't believe in things. Even if faced with. I liked the pace of the story. Making each situation come alive for the reader. Thank you Natasha for sharing the excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Natasha]

Thank you so much, these comments help a lot!

[Coyote Poetry]

I'm glad and you are welcome.