Page 29 of Dyana
“Well, Bryce,” Evan replied, “this would be an assortment of tools.”
I rolled my eyes at his sarcasm. Asshole. Jack snickered, and I shot him a glare. “I meant, what are you doing with them?”
“I thought I’d fix some things around here.”
“Need help?” I offered.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“No.”
Evan sighed and punched me playfully in the shoulder. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Going to college was the best thing I’d ever done because it brought me to Jack and Evan. They gave me a rare taste of what family was supposed to feel like. I came from a family of abusive addicts, and while I never got addicted to drugs or alcohol, I did get addicted to the feeling of being cared for. My found familywas my addiction, and I would do anything to keep them in my life forever.
Past
The closer we got to where I grew up, the more dread I felt. I didn’t want to be here, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, not come back to check on my siblings. I didn’t know what I would find, but if I could save them, I would. It had killed me to leave my little brothers and sister when I went to college, but I couldn’t have helped them if I had stayed. I had planned to stay in college long enough to make a name for myself in football and then go pro. Once I did, I could get my siblings out of hell once and for all. I could afford to care for them and give them the life they deserved.
On a good day, our parents were drugged out of their minds, sitting on the couch, drooling all over themselves. On a bad day, they were angry drunks blaming us for their sorry lives. I’ve put myself between them and my siblings to take a beating more times than I could count. Neither of those days ever included much food. I’ll never know why the school never stepped in and called Child Protective Services. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t gone to them and told them what was happening. It wasn’t like there weren’t obvious signs of abuse and starvation. The system failed us, but I was determined I wouldn’t fail them.
“Turn here,” I instructed Jack. “The trailer park is at the end of the road.”
When Jack stopped the car, nobody moved to get out. Zombies stumbled around the shitty trailers in various stages of decay. It looked like the apocalypse started here years ago, but I knew that was how it always looked.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said, grabbing the knife I had picked up on our way out here and leaving the car. There weren’t enough zombies around to pose a considerable threat to us, so long as we kept quiet and took them out as we came across them, so they didn’t group up. Zombies were at their most dangerous when they were in herds. I led us through the park to my little slice of hell and went inside. The inside looked like it always did. Liquor and vomit stains covered the mustard yellow carpet, accompanied by scorch marks from various runaway cigarettes and joints. Bottles and dirty dishes littered every available surface, with plenty of drug paraphernalia littered among them. All the state had to do was step inside our house to know it wasn’t a safe environment for a child, but they never bothered.
The living room was empty, and so was my parents’ room. I walked past the kitchen and down the hall to the kids’ bedroom. The door was locked from the outside, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. I opened the door, and the sliver of hope I had stupidly clung to dissipated, and my heart fell out of my chest. “No!” A ragged sob tore from my chest at the sight of the little bodies huddled together on the bed. The decomposing, unzombified bodies. They had died before the outbreak. This was my fault. I left them here to die while I was living it up at college. I could have done more. I should have done more. Why didn’t I do more?
Because I didn’t think anyone would listen. They hadn’t before. Still, I should have fucking tried.
“I’m so sorry, Bryce,” Jack said.
His voice broke me out of my stupor, and in a rage, I barreled past him and Evan back toward the living room. If they weren’t already dead, I’d kill my parents with my own bare hands. I reached the living room and overturned the coffee table, sending forgotten drinks, glass, and whatever the fuck else was on there, smashing into the wall. Everything became foggy as I took my anger and guilt out on the house. I stood in the kitchen when the front door opened, and my parents ran inside.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” my father bellowed. “How dare you come into my house and destroy it!”
Their presence momentarily stunned me. As I watched them, I noticed they couldn’t keep their balance, so they kept swaying and knocking into each other. “Of course, you pieces of shit are still alive. You’ve probably got so much vodka in your veins that the zombies don’t even want you. Hell, you’re practically zombies already. You’re brain-dead and stumbling around. You fit right in.”
“I’ll fucking teach you to talk to me like that, you ungrateful bastard,” my father roared as he rushed toward me. Not this time. This time, I wouldn’t take his beating. I grabbed a dirty butcher knife from the sink and met him halfway, plunging the knife into his chest with a roar. My momentum sent us falling to the dirty floor, and I stabbed him again and again as Billy, Eric, and Janna’s little faces kept popping up in my mind. When my arm got tired, I planted the knife through his eye socket and left it there.
My mother was screaming at the top of her lungs the entire time. Slowly, I looked up at her. “Shut the fuck up.” Her mouth slammed shut immediately as I rose from my father’s corpse. “Where are the kids, Patricia?” I asked, unwilling to ever refer to her as Mom again.
“What do you mean, where are they?” she asked. “They’re in their room being punished.”
“And how fucking long have you been punishing them, you dumb fucking cunt?” I screamed. I grabbed her by her hair, dragged her kicking and screaming down the hallway, and threw her through the bedroom door.
“Should we stop him?” I heard Evan whisper behind me.
“Stay out of it,” I warned without turning around.
When Patricia tried to stand, she grabbed the bed for support and finally noticed the bodies. She screamed again in shock and then started crying. “My babies! What did you do to my babies!?”
“Your babies!? Don’t you dare fucking call them that! You’re what happened to them. You locked them in this room and then fucking forgot about them! They starved to death because of you!”
“No, no. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what happened. It was your father!”
Sick of her fucking excuses, I shoved her to the ground and wrapped my hands around her throat. “You aren’t going to hurt anyone else ever again. You were our mother! It was your job to protect us, but there wasn’t anyone here to protect us from you.”
