AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Tomorrow, I will come back out here and take care of them, so they don’t attract more zombies.” Nova looked at them somberly and sighed. “Poor fools probably froze to death, and they were so close to the house.”
Nova steered Sage away from them, leading her back down the hill, back to the farm. Frost and Sable didn’t seem overly concerned about Sage, but they still gave them a wide berth.
When we finally reached the farm, we parted ways. Nova took Sage to her “home” at the edge of the property, and I went to the house, with the wolfdogs following me. The fact that they chose to accompany me over Nova meant they clearly had some aversion to Sage, even if they seemed tolerant.
Nova joined us in the house several minutes later. I was sitting at the kitchen table, with my leg propped up on an empty chair to ease the pain in my knee. She didn’t say anything or look my way, and instead went straight over to the kitchen sink and washed her hands thoroughly.
With her back still to me, she pulled two large glasses out of the cupboard, and then, from on top of the fridge, she grabbed a half-gallon jug filled with a deep purple liquid.
“I made this blackberry moonshine.” She set it down on the kitchen table beside the two glasses. “You want some?”
“Yes, I will take a drink.”
She poured my glass full, and when I took a sip, it burned going down. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had any alcohol, so my tolerance was probably low, but I didn’t care. I gulped it down and felt it warming me through almost instantly.
“So…” I said at length. “Are we going to talk about your sister?”
Nova took another drink, then began, “Even before the virus, it was only the two of us left. Our mom, dad, both our grandmothers, they’d all died in a string of completely unrelated bad luck. Or that’s what I thought at the time. Once the zabies hit, I realize that they were the lucky ones after all.
“Sage lived in the city, because she was a doctor, and she wanted to help people, and I lived out here because I wanted to help animals and be left alone,’ Nova went on. “It worked out great for both of us until the virus, but so it goes. My sister came out here because she wanted to survive and she wanted to find a cure. But, well, you can see how that story ends. Sage is infected, and she never even came anywhere close to a cure or a vaccine.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s awful seeing someone you care about eaten away by the virus.”
Nova stared off at nothing, her eyes dark and misty. “Before she lost herself, she told me she was getting sick, and she asked me to chain her up so she couldn’t hurt me or anyone else.”
“That was the little arrangement downstairs?” I asked, and my wrists throbbed at the memory of my time handcuffed.
“I had to keep us both safe,” she replied, her tone turning defensive. “And in the early days, that was very difficult. She was so angry and violent. I fed her every single day, but she clawed at her own skin and chewed off her own lips.”
“I don’t mean to sound cruel, because I know you love her, but… why didn’t you…” I stumbled, unable to find an inoffensive way to ask why she hadn’t killed her sister.
“Why didn’t I put her down?” Nova finished for me, and she shook her head. “Sage didn’t want me to.”
“But she’s dangerous and suffering,” I contended.
“There’s still something in there,” Nova insisted. “She’s not the sister I knew, but there’s something alive and vital inside her. Something feels pain and anger and hunger and sadness and I think – I think happiness.”
“Nothing you’ve described so far sounds like happiness,” I pointed out gently.
“The first weeks were the worst, but eventually, she calmed down,” Nova explained. “She stopped hurting herself, stopped trying to attack me. She’d stand and wait when I brought her food and water. I gave her bones and toys to play with, enrichment stuff I had around for the wolfdogs and other animals. She tore it up and destroyed a lot of it, but not all of it.
“Now she responds to her name, and she lets me hold her hand, she enjoys eating and hugging this ratty old stuffed bear,” Nova argued emphatically. “She’s got a nice place to live, and she’s contained, so she can’t hurt anybody.”
“But you killed the zombies that came on your property?” I asked, growing perplexed by Nova’s stance.
She nodded. “I did, and I will again. The same way I would kill marauders that came on my land to hurt me or a wolf that came to eat my animals. I resort to it as a final option, but whenever it ends up in me versus them, I’ll always choose me.”
What she was describing sounded similar to what Sage had written in her journal about Adam. But Nova hadn’t made any mention of him, so I wondered what became of him. Was he still here, and Nova was hiding him from me?
I wanted to ask questions directly about him, but Nova had specifically told me not to touch Sage’s things. I couldn’t very well ask her about what I’d read in them without seriously upsetting her.
“Sage did seem more compliant and calm than any zombie I’ve seen. Do you think there are others like that?” I asked her carefully.
“Maybe they could be, after a time,” she answered. “In the beginning, Sage was incredibly violent, and I seriously thought about putting her out of her misery. But I knew she’d want me to see it through, and I wouldn’t give up on her if she was a scared opossum. But if I hadn’t had her chained up before she completely succumbed to the virus, I likely would’ve had to kill her to save myself.
“Now, with me feeding her and caring for her every day, so she’s not hungry or anything, she’s become… domesticated, for lack of a better word,” she finished with an uneasy shrug.
“So the others might not be monstrous so much as they are feral?” I asked.
