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When the Kerrigan zombie came at her again, she hit him hard across the face. He stumbled backward, and she kicked his good leg out from underneath him so he fell back onto the floor.
Kimber stomped her foot on his chest, and she began smashing him in the face with the metal bowl, as hard as she could. He’d only just turned, so his skull was still strong, and it took several powerful blows before I heard it cracking.
The strikes had been powerful enough to stun him, though, so he wasn’t fighting Kimber so much as spasming. Eventually, he stopped moving entirely, but she kept bashing his head until it was a literal bloody pulp.
“Kimber, he’s dead,” I said.
She hit him one more time and let out the growliest scream I had ever heard a human make. It was enraged and primal, and I wished I could scream with her.
The metal bowl was battered and soaked in blood. Kimber tossed it aside, and she stood in the moonlight, covered in splatter from Kerrigan’s zombie corpse. Tears left streaks down her cheek.
I moved toward her, but she shook her head and waved me off.
“I have to clean off his blood first. I’m contagious right now.” She knelt down in the straw and started using it to wipe the blood off her, but dry straw wasn’t a very effective way to wash her hands.
To be safe, she kept her distance from me. Not too far, but enough that we weren’t touching. Neither of us slept, and we didn’t really speak. We sat there, leaning against the wall, waiting and watching as the sun slowly rose and illuminated the carnage that had been Private Kerrigan.
Not long after dawn, Elmyra finally returned to visit us. This time she’d brought someone other than her son Bly, the man with the moustache that I had seen when I had escaped the stall.
Elmyra surveyed the mess with a twisted little smile. “Well, it looks like the two of you had quite an adventurous 24-hours.”
“You left us in here without food or water with a zombie. Did you expect us to die?” Kimber asked, glaring up at them both.
“You’re thirsty then?” the man asked. He stepped into the stall, and I instinctively cringed backward, but Kimber’s glare never wavered. Not until he spit in her face did she flinch.
“Waylon!” Elmyra admonished him, sounding genuinely upset by his actions. “There’s no need to be disgusting. Get this body and get it out of here. The girls have been through enough.”
“Fine, Mama.” He let out a sigh of annoyance, but he went over and grabbed Kerrigan’s body by his hands. He pulled it out of the stall, leaving a long bloody streak behind on the concrete.
“Sorry about my son, Waylon,” Elmyra apologized once he was gone. “He’s my oldest, and he takes his role here on the ranch very seriously.”
“Why are you keeping us here?” Kimber demanded. “What do you want from us?”
“I’ve already told you,” Elmyra said with her warm smile. “We need help around the farm. Right now, you’re in quarantine because I don’t want anyone else in my family getting infected. With the scene in here, I will need to wait a few more days to be sure you’re still safe to mingle with us. This should all be over by the end of the week, and then your work can begin.”
“We’re going to starve to death before then,” Kimber warned her, and I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it felt true, honestly.
“One of my sons will bring you something later on today,” Elmyra said. “You’ll only be fed this once until you’re let out, so make it count.”
She departed, locking the door behind her once again. It wasn’t much longer after that Waylon returned, this time with a hose. He sprayed down the bloody floor, and when he offered to spray Kimber clean, she accepted, even though the water was freezing cold and came out in a hard blast.
Before he left, he dropped off another bowl of rotten meat, but at least he filled the other one with water from the hose instead of that awful sewage we’d gotten before.
Kimber started shivering from the cold, so I lent her my sweater, leaving me in a tank top for the time being. I grabbed the plate of food and sat down beside her, cuddling up close to share our body heat, and I piled up the clean, dry straw over us, like a blanket.
Together, we ate the rancid meat, and I was so hungry, I hardly even minded the maggots this time. We stared ahead at the drying bloodstain from Kerrigan’s body.
“How are we going to make it out of here?” I asked.
Kimber was silent for a moment, then she said finally, “I don’t know. But we’ll find a way if we stick together.”
27
Harlow
We passed the time huddled up together in the corner of the stall, trying to keep warm and not think about food. We told each other stories about the movies and books we remembered, because talking about real life was too depressing and way too hard.
We didn’t try to escape again. With Kerrigan gone, we didn’t have quite the same urgency, and I hadn’t been able to find a key or any useful tools when I had been out last time. I wasn’t about to leave Kimber behind, and we were both exhausted and weak.
