The Girl in Red

She felt something clogging her throat as she said this, unable to speak of it with the same detachment that Riley had. It didn’t really matter how much time passed, because the deep and profound unfairness of it all surged back on her every time.

Mama would have gotten sick and died anyway but at least that was a normal, natural thing in a world infected with a deadly virus. It was not normal or natural for people to come to your house wanting to kill you for stupid reasons.

Riley scooted a little closer, close enough that Red could have reached through the gap in the brush and touched that solemn little face.

“And they were killed?” Riley said, with the same respectful hush that you might use in church.

“Yes,” Red said, because that was all that she could manage.

She’d thought she had processed it, dealt with it, put it all behind her. She’d thought she wouldn’t drag all that hurt with her like a suitcase with a broken wheel. But she was still dragging it behind her, even if she couldn’t see the tracks. “Me and my brother got away.”

“Where’s your brother?” Riley asked. “How come you’re all alone?”

“My brother is gone now,” Red said.

Riley nodded, seeking no further explanation. It was a world of terrors, after all. “Did your mama get the Cough that makes you explode?”

“Explode?” Red said. If she’d had antennae they would have stood up. As it was she thought some of her curls tried pushing out from under her woolly hat.

“Some of the people with the Cough, you know, they explode. Like their chests bust open,” Riley said. “Not all of them.”

“Riley, shut up,” the other child said.

“I haven’t seen anyone with the Cough do that,” Red said cautiously. “What is it like?”

“Well, after the person coughs a lot of blood—I mean a lot, like a milk gallon of blood, maybe even more than that,” Riley said, waving his/her hands around to demonstrate the pool of blood, “then they split open right here.”

Riley gestured down the center of his/her ribs.

“And then everything kind of peels in a really gross way. I never saw anybody’s ribs before except in a skeleton in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and that doesn’t count because it was fake.”

(“That’s some Alien shit,” Adam said, pointing at the open chest. “Right? It’s that movie you like where the little monster comes out of the guy’s chest and there’s blood everywhere.”

“But it’s not a monster,” Red said, unable to look away even though the sight made her a little sick. Everything inside the person was mangled, no discernible organs, just a butcher’s floor of ground-up meat. “It’s a virus. Viruses don’t do that.”)

There had been those funny markings on the floor near the body, the ones that Red thought at first were something slithering away, and then she’d checked her too-active imagination and decided it was just the man’s clawing fingers because Red wasn’t any kind of crime scene investigator and what did she know about interpreting blood on the floor and it was absurd to think something had come out of the man’s insides.

“What happens after that?” Red asked.

“We didn’t stay anymore after that,” Riley said, glancing back at the other child. “It didn’t seem like a good idea to watch. We might have gotten sick, too.”

“I have to agree,” Red said, but only part of her brain was there, listening to the conversation. She was thinking of Probably Kathy Nolan.

(You saw someone coughing up blood like that, coughing up a milk gallon of blood, coughing all over the window of Swann’s Pharmacy like she was about to burst open)

“Daddy didn’t have that kind in him but one of our neighbors, Mrs. Mikita, she had it. We went over there after Daddy died because she said she would take care of us but then she started coughing and we knew we’d have to go soon anyway but we wanted to stay in a house for a little while longer because we weren’t sure what to do if we went outside, all our relatives live far away.”

Riley trailed off, eyes staring into the distance at some memory Red didn’t share.

“But Mrs. Mikita, she coughed like that? And you saw her chest break open?” Red prompted.

“Yes,” Riley said. “We had to leave the house then. We just ran out as fast as we could because the way she was coughing it almost seemed like she was going to cough blood right into our mouths. And I didn’t want my chest to do that. We didn’t even have our jackets or food or anything really.”