Chapter One
When the lights went out, the sirens made sense. Every time the power died, they always sounded off. What was odd was that there was no storm, so that wasn’t to blame for the lack of power.
No, Beryl told herself. That wasn’t strange. There must have been an accident, and a terrible one from the sounds of it. Had every emergency vehicle in the area been called in? Was it that serious?
She shifted in place. Was the accident close by? Was Darina all right?
Of course, she was. It wasn’t time for her to go to work yet. Darina was inside, so she was safe. Nothing bad ever happened in this trailer park. It was the biggest reason Darina had uprooted everyone to live here.
Then the screaming started.
It wasn’t just one person. It was dozens, maybe hundreds. They weren’t screams of joy like on Fourth of July night or during a baseball game. These were ones of terror. Of pain.
Some were coming from nearby trailers.
Beryl moved again, debating whether she should risk getting down from her shelf. She rarely did it when she wasn’t home alone, fearing that she’d get caught. Darina was way too old to believe that if she saw Beryl moving, it was all a dream. That excuse had barely worked the two times Beryl had used it when Darina was a child.
She had to see if Darina was all right, though. There was no noise coming from the living room, where Darina had gone after getting up that morning. Why was she so quiet for this long? That wasn’t like her. Ever since Beryl had been gifted to her, Darina had always talked to herself when no one was around.
Maybe she wasn’t alone. Could Kyler, her fiancé, have come home early? Had whatever was going on outside forced him to cut his workday short? Had he come back to check on her?
If they were both at home, why was it still so quiet? They rarely went long without having a conversation. Or, better explained, Darina rarely went this long without babbling at him. Kyler wasn’t a big talker, and he was just happy to be there when Darina needed to direct her words at another person.
Something large crashed against the trailer. The vibration shook the wall behind Beryl. Luckily, Darina hadn’t put her flush against it, or she might have tumbled to the floor.
There was another crash, and then Darina cried out, “Kyler!”
Snarling followed, and Darina screamed. Loud crashes, like furniture being overturned or thrown, came next. Glass shattered. Darina screamed again, though this one was filled with agony—like the ones from outside.
“K-Kyler, no!”
More growling, like a demonic cat had gotten into the trailer.
Then frantic footsteps—Darina’s footsteps—came down the hallway. She was headed toward her and Kyler’s bedroom, where Beryl was. A lumbering, aimless body chased after her, bouncing off the walls and smashing the hallway’s single window. If it cut itself or suffered serious injury, that didn’t slow it down. Nor did it cry out.
Darina raced into her room. Her eyes were as wild as her hair. Blood ran down her face from a gash on her forehead. Her clothes were torn, and she was missing her left sleeve. In one hand, she carried a knife. Blacker than blood, a substance coated the blade.
After a long second, Darina slammed the door shut. She shoved herself against it. As she did, what was chasing her knocked against the door. The faux wood groaned from the impact.
The door wouldn’t hold long, maybe two minutes. If Darina couldn’t get something heavy against it, the threat was going to be in the room. It would get Darina.
“The dresser!” Beryl yelled.
Darina’s head snapped in her direction. Her mouth hung open. “Did you—”
The door splintered inward. The pieces pushed into Darina’s face. Startled, she stumbled back onto the bed.
Without her weight against the door, it flung open. Kyler sprinted into the room. His pallor was an awful light green color, and black gunk covered his entire face. His irises glowed with a strange red tint. Several of his fingers were bent at odd angles, and there were large pieces of glass and wood embedded in his shoulders. He moved like he didn’t notice his injuries.
Kyler advanced toward Darina. He sniffed the air like a dog searching out a treat. He growled as he neared the bed.
“Kyler, no,” Darina whimpered.
He paused mid-step and cocked his head. Then he shrieked and pounced on top of Darina.
“No!” Beryl screamed, leaping into the air.
She didn’t think about how high her shelf was from the floor. It never occurred to her that her vinyl limbs might not withstand the impact with the ground. All that mattered was getting to Darina. Her child needed her. She couldn’t let Kyler hurt her.
Beryl landed on her feet. She wobbled as she gained her footing, but there wasn’t an audible crack. Once she was stable, she ran to the bed. Before she could pull herself up to the mattress, Darina bucked Kyler’s unmoving body off her.
She no longer held the knife. It was wedged into Kyler’s head, through his bottom jaw, all the way to the handle.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Darina chanted, slowly sitting up. She looked around the room, seeing nothing. Tears streamed down her scratched, swollen cheeks.
Beryl walked to the side of the bed, where Darina’s legs hung down. She touched her calf. “Are you okay?”
Darina’s attention fell on Beryl. Her mouth moved without sound for several seconds. Finally, she let out a small squeak and shook herself.
“You’re alive?”
Beryl nodded.
“This is real?” Darina looked at Kyler and then back at Beryl. “All of it?”
As much as Beryl wanted to make her happy, she couldn’t lie to her child. “Yes.”
Darina paled. “He’s a zomby.”
“A zomby? Like in those stories you used to read?”
Darina shrugged. “Well, what else would you call him?”
“I-I don’t know.”
There’d been something wrong with Kyler, something unlike any illness Beryl had seen. He’d looked worse than Darina’s grandmother, who’d lived with Darina and her family when she was younger, while she’d battled cancer.
Darina frowned. “But if he is…”
She ran a finger over a deep bite mark on her right forearm. The blood there was almost black (like what had been all over Kyler), and the edges were raised and covered in pus, like it’d been festering for several days. Red lines branched away from the mark.
“I’m going to be one, too.”
“No, no, you’re just hurt. Go to the doctor. They’ll fix you up.”
“Beryl, it’s crazy outside. There… there are no doctors. There’s nothing like that now.”
“No!” Beryl clutched Darian’s pant leg. “It just seems that way because you’re scared. Remember those monsters you always saw in the shadows? They weren’t real. Your mind was just playing tricks on you because you were scared. It’s like that now.”
“I can’t—I can’t pretend—if you’re really talking to me, then I can’t deny what I’ll become.”
“You won’t become anything!” Beryl tugged Darina’s pants. “Come on. Get up!”
Darian shook her head. Her skin had taken on a greenish tone. There was a redness to her eyes that had nothing to do with her tears.
Despite it all, she bent over and picked up Beryl. She set her on the bed beside her, avoiding the stain of blood Kyler had left behind. She pulled on one of Beryl’s blonde, silk ringlet curls, much like she used to when she was younger. It was a gesture she’d carried over to motherhood and did all the time to her daughter.
“I can’t stop it,” she said.
“There’s nothing to stop.”
“Beryl, no, we can’t keep going in circles. There’s no time for that.”
“If you’d just—”
“Ssh! We have to hurry.” Darina cupped Beryl’s cheek. “Please, do this for me.”
Beryl leaned into Darian’s touch. She wasn’t human, so she couldn’t feel it much. There was the vague idea of sensation, but she treasured it all the same. This caress was love—the very thing that had brought her to life all those years ago.
“I’d do anything for you.”
Darina smiled. Or she tried to. The muscles in her face seemed no longer hers to fully control.
“I have two requests, okay?”
“Okay.”
“First, I want you to find Deirdre and keep her safe.”
“Find Deidre?”
But how? This was her daughter’s weekend with her father. Beryl had never been to his house. Even if she had, she wouldn’t know how to get there. She wouldn’t have gotten there by foot but by car. She wouldn’t have seen the route.
“Yes, she’s on—” Darina paused. “Did I actually teach you how to read?”
For the first few years of school, Darina hadn’t been a strong reader. To improve, she’d taught herself by making Beryl ‘take classes.’ She’d read aloud to Beryl, sounding out the letters until she got every word just right. By third grade, Darina was the top reader in her class, with a fierce love of books, and Beryl was the most educated Historical Youngster Doll to exist.
When Darina was away, Beryl used to read all her books. Her favorite had been the high fantasy adventures that Darina had lost interest in when she entered high school.
Beryl nodded.
“All right. I’ll write down the address.”
Darina reached for the pen and notebook on the nightstand—Kyler’s favorite pen and notebook. He’d trained himself to wake up after every dream to write them down. He’d seen meaning in them and thought they revealed his inner self.
Darina’s hand stilled above them. The moment lasted so long, Beryl thought Darina couldn’t do it, and she’d have to get them. But Darina would still have to write it. Beryl had never learned that skill.
A spasm went through Darina’s legs, and then she continued her task. It took several minutes of severe concentration, but she finally had the address written in her clear, loopy script. She ripped off the sheet and handed it to Beryl.
“It’s only on the other side of Jamestown.”
Beryl gazed at the paper. Jamestown wasn’t a big city, but it was far from a tiny town, and she was barely two feet tall. How did Darina expect her to do this?
Instead of voicing that concern, Beryl folded the paper until it could fit into the knapsack she wore at her hip. It wasn’t the original one she’d been manufactured with. That one hadn’t been big enough for Darina’s liking, so her grandmother (the one with cancer) had made Beryl a new one. Its bright blue color clashed with her khaki dress, but Darina hadn’t cared. The knapsack was the last gift she got before her grandmother died.
“I’ll get there,” Beryl vowed before tucking away the paper. One way or another, she would.
Darina nodded. “Thank you.”
Her legs spasmed again, and it traveled upwards to her torso. It lasted longer than the last time, and when she stilled, her breathing was labored. The bite mark was now all black.
“Now… my second request…”
Berly looked away from the bite mark. “Yes?”
“I want to die human.”
Surprise startled Beryl. “What?”
“I want to be me. I don’t want to be a monster. I… can’t do this to someone else.”
The realization of what Darina was asking hit Beryl, but she wouldn’t accept it. She couldn’t. To do so would be her acknowledging that she would lose her child. By her own hands.
This was one thing she couldn’t do for Darina. She was supposed to protect her, to be her greatest friend. That was a loved toy’s job. Once they came alive, their only purpose was to be there for their child. Fulfilling Darina’s last wish would go against all of that.
“Please, Beryl,” Darina whispered. “There’s not much… time.”
“You ask too much.”
“Do… you love… me?”
“If I had a heart, it’d be with all of it.”
“This request would be one of love. One of… mercy.”
Beryl shook her head. This had to be a nightmare. She didn’t sleep, so she didn’t dream, but somehow that had happened. She was doing what humans did, and of course, it was going the worst way it possibly could.
“Beryl, it has to be… now.” Darina convulsed again, harder than ever. “I’m slipping away.”
If this was a nightmare, then it didn’t matter what she did. It wasn’t real. Maybe if the nightmare went to the extreme, she’d wake up. She’d be back as she was supposed to be: perched on the shelf, watching over her adult child as she navigated life, and available whenever Darina needed a cuddle.
“Okay.”
“The knife… Kyler…”
Beryl looked at Kyler’s unmoving form. From here, she couldn’t see his head. If not for his ruined clothing, he’d look like he’d fallen asleep on the floor. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Hurry.”
Beryl scrambled off the bed. Once on the carpet, she didn’t have far to go to reach Kyler. Luckily for her, he’d landed on his side, with his face turned toward her. Had he been lying face-first, she couldn’t have retrieved the knife. She couldn’t roll a human, especially not a dead one.
Closing her eyes (and so glad she could), Beryl grasped the knife handle with both hands. Several hard yanks later, she dislodged the knife enough so that she could wiggle it the rest of the way out. She didn’t open her eyes until she was facing the bed. From the corner of her vision, she saw that the black goo coated the blade and her hands, but if she didn’t look directly at it, she wouldn’t panic.
Darina gasped, breaking the horrifying spell on Beryl. She climbed on top of the bed once more and stood beside Darina.
“I-I don’t know that I—”
“Now!” Darina squealed.
The demonic emptiness that had been in Kyler’s expression overtook hers. Her hooked fingers reached for Beryl, but she stopped at the last second from grabbing her.
More reflex than the act of mercy Darina wanted, Berly stabbed Darina’s face. She wasn’t aiming anywhere in particular, but Darina’s sudden movement led the knife to go cleanly into her right eye. It slid into the socket and then the brain with less force than Beryl had anticipated.
A massive shudder went through Darina. Something like a smile brushed her lips, and she collapsed backward onto the bed. She didn’t move again.
She was dead.
Beryl’s child of twenty-five years was dead.
And she was the one who’d killed her.
Chapter Two
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
How long Beryl chanted this, she didn’t know. Being a toy, she could have gone on forever.
Why wasn’t the nightmare ending? She’d done the worst thing imaginable. Her child was gone. What more must she endure to end the torture? Was this the hell that all humans risked when they slept?
Beryl wouldn’t let herself think about the alternative: that this wasn’t a dream, but her terrible new reality. That couldn’t be the truth, though. There was no reality where her child would ask to be killed by her before she turned into a creature of fiction. It wasn’t possible.
She slapped her face and shook herself. Beryl would have pinched herself if it had any chance of working. The same with dunking her head in water.
Yet no matter what she could do to herself, the gruesome sight before her didn’t disappear. Darina didn’t spring back up as her whole, happy self. Kyler stayed unresponsive on the floor. The chaotic noise outside didn’t fade away.
The longer she stood staring at the bedroom, the stronger her acceptance of the situation grew. Darina had been turning into a zombie after her fiancé had turned into one and bitten her. To hold on to her humanity, she’d had herself taken out before she succumbed to the illness. Beryl had helped her in her last moment.
But even bigger than that, Beryl was trapped in a zombie outbreak, and nothing made sense anymore.
She touched Darina’s unmoving form. “Get up,” she whispered, though she knew it was futile. But if she didn’t try one last time, just in case, could she say that she truly loved Darina?
When no response came, Beryl got down from the bed. Without thought, she shuffled down the hallway. It emptied out into a large room that was half living room and half kitchen. There, she stopped to absorb more proof that she was now in hell.
The desk that had once been where Darina did her puzzles but had become Deirdre’s catch-all for her toys had collapsed in on itself. Several of the couch cushions were on the floor, and the couch had been torn open. The carpet and kitchen tile were covered in bloody footprints. The television, bought just last month for Kyler’s birthday, now lay cracked beside the television stand.
Much like the bedroom door, the front one was splintered in the center. There was more of a hole in this one, one large enough for an arm to go through. Was that how Kyler had bitten Darina?
For the briefest moment, Beryl considered getting a new knife from the kitchen. She would need a weapon, wouldn’t she? How else could she deal with the zombies? She couldn’t outrun them or overpower them. All she could do was stab and hope for the best.
But she didn’t know where Darina kept all her silverware, and she didn’t have the time to explore every drawer. Beryl had to keep moving. She couldn’t give herself time to fully digest what she’d done and what was going on. If she did, she’d never move again. She’d never get to Deirdre.
