Necrosis

By C. L. Schneider

Amidst the chaos and fear of an apocalyptic virus, a mother fights to protect her daughter from the rotting remains of society. Navigating a frightening new world where survival is paramount and trust is a gamble, infection is only a misstep away. Despite her doubts and imperfections, Amy's love and resolve are without question. But are they enough? Can she shield her daughter from the violence and savagery, and keep them both alive another day? For, at the end of the world, there's no second chance. With a single bite, necrosis will set in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. L. Schneider
• Release date: Sep 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201527082

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Necrosis

Copyright © 2022 by C. L. Schneider

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

Independently Published

Highland, NY

Contents

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

To all the mothers out there.

You’re braver and stronger than you know.

Acknowledgements

A special thank you to my dear friend Amy, the inspiration behind Necrosis. I appreciate you trusting me to twist and expand on your messed up dream. Now, keep ’em coming. Who knows what you might inspire next!

As always, immense gratitude to my friends and family for their unwavering support. To Sara at The Right Words Editing, for friendship and advice, and for always knowing exactly what my story needs. To Atra Luna Designs for the perfect cover. Doelle Designs for her formatting services. And a final, heartfelt thanks to Dawn. Remember the day we were out walking (right after you finished reading Necrosis), and you stopped in the middle of the road to tell me: Can I just say, what an incredible writer you are? No? Well, I do. And it meant the world.

Chapter one

Raspy sounds of hunger pushed from her rotted throat, washing over me with the smell of old blood and things long dead. I didn’t understand how breath still rattled in her lungs. How her vocal cords, exposed and moldy, were still capable of producing noise—a terrible wet, scraping that was so far from human. So far from her.

My mother had a sweet voice in life. Melodic. Powerful, when she wanted it to be. Her songs were one of my sharpest memories as a child. They were the soundtrack of my youth. Everyone used to say, "Bridgette could have made it big." If she didn’t have four kids, two jobs, and a husband who cared more for drinking than working. Now she’ll never sing again.

For some reason, the thought struck me harder than the look of her gray, decomposing flesh and patchy hair; sporadic clumps of white strands, matted and darkened with bloody tissue.

Beside me, my daughter screamed, with all the gusto of a nine-year-old whose world had fallen apart. Her gaze darted from the horror inching toward us in the dining room to the real-time carnage of my boyfriend’s death happening in the kitchen, and she screamed louder.

I put a hand over her mouth, silencing the high-pitched dinner bell before it carried into the street and brought more of the undead in through the busted front door. Shhh, Lila, please, I whispered. You know better.

She nodded, tears streaming, and I removed my hand. Her shoulders shrugged in a fast, heavy breath. Grandma… It was all she could get out before burying her face in my leg.

I peeled Lila off me and shoved her toward the bathroom. In there. Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me. Go!

Lila hurried off, messy, brown ponytail bouncing, as her short legs carried her down the hall and into the bathroom. The door closed. Locked. I imagined her hiding in the bathtub, curled up in a ball, clutching the dirty ladybug covered backpack she hadn’t put down since we left home. I raised the tire iron in my grip and vowed, as I had a hundred times, to do whatever was necessary to protect her. Lila was the only good thing I’d ever done in my life.

We shouldn’t have brought her here, I thought, watching my mother’s bloated jaw, snapping involuntarily, searching for a meal. My stare darted to the body in the kitchen, blood-soaked and twitching, as the mindless fiends bent over my boyfriend, devouring him alive.

It’s too much.

It’s all too much. No child should have to see what we’ve all become.

We should have gone to the country like Rusty wanted. There’s too many in the city. Coming home was a mistake.

The outbreak was too widespread for an old, wheelchair dependent woman with a bad hip to survive on her own. If I’d gotten here sooner…. But there were too many states between us, and with the roads clogged and gas scarce and wandering bands of the undead everywhere, the trip became painfully long. My mother couldn’t run, couldn’t fight. But I let wishes override common sense, and convinced myself she’d be here, barricaded in, alive and well. Maybe, with Mr. and Mrs. Hitchens next door. Or the Walker family on the corner. It was a close-knit neighborhood. Everyone looked after each other. Particularly her, after my father left.

Yet, in my heart I knew better.

I knew I’d find her stricken with the virus, holed up in the dusty rooms of the ramshackle house I grew up in. I knew what she’d look like, flesh disintegrating and mind gone. I knew what I’d have to do. I’d seen, and killed, enough of the ravaged these last four months to be prepared.

Except, I wasn’t.

Her sallow, blood-stained eyes (once a soft brown) locked on me, not with the love of a mother, but with the malice of a starving predator. Her bloated fingers, tips torn down to the nailbed, dug into the floor as she crawled toward me. She wouldn’t stop unless I stopped her.

The infected were strong beyond reason. Strong and stubborn.

I needed a new weapon. Something quick. Bludgeoning my own mother with a tire iron until her skull caved wasn’t a memory I wanted. I had options: my boyfriend’s gun on the floor, the butcher knife on the counter in the kitchen. Both were mere steps away from the slaughter, but still reachable. The undead consumed a fresh meal with focus and frenzy. They wouldn’t look up unless I gave them a reason. If I keep my distance, move quick, and stay quiet…

Okay. I can do this.

Move!

But I didn’t. Instead, I stood and sobbed with my heart racing and my lungs forgetting how to work, my body frozen in fear—like it had so many times under this roof. Not now…. Please, God, not now.

I hadn’t suffered a panic attack in years. It was a complication I hadn’t considered when I convinced Rusty to bring me home. It wasn’t a difficult persuasion. Being a momma’s boy, he understood how badly I needed to know if mine was alive, dead, or one of them. The woman had been my only guiding light, my shelter from the storm, for many years. If there was even a chance, she was still alive…

Yet, being here again—with the same family pictures staring at me, the same peeling paint, dented walls, worn yellow curtains, and scuffed furniture, the same clutter of knickknacks no one had looked at or moved for decades—came with a rush of unwelcome memories. And I was suddenly no longer a woman, forced to grow up fast in a world that owed her nothing. I wasn’t the desperate, young mother who’d learned how to kill to keep her daughter safe. I was someone I hadn’t been in a long time: the little girl hiding in her room while dad punched holes in the wall. The child who watched her three older brothers lose their way, one after the other. The insecure, troubled teen. The submissive mouse whose sense of self grew dull and worn with each passing season, fading like the sun-bleached daisies decorating the kitchen wallpaper. Just like my mother.

It was the last thing she wanted for me. Dead-end jobs and shitty apartments. The overbearing boyfriend with a bad temper; one in a line of many. Bounced checks, food stamps, black eyes, and track marks. Some would say I was destined for it. But not her. Even after Lila was born, and single motherhood pushed me deeper into the hole, my mother never gave up on me.

Every year on my birthday, Bridgette Keller would lament her own choices and try to open her daughter’s eyes. When we were together, I’d blow out my candles, then she’d hug me and whisper in my ear. If we weren’t, she’d call me on the phone and impart the same advice: Don’t be like me, Amy-girl. Be brave. Be strong. Don’t let the world keep you down. Live your dreams while you can, or you’ll be buried with them.

Now, she’d never speak those wise words again.

I shouldn’t care so much. I never listened to her.

I never learned how to be brave or strong. I didn’t climb up and out like she wanted, I fell back—lower even than her—and was steadily dragging my daughter down with me. But not anymore, I thought. Not since the virus struck. The world was reset. Sins were washed away.

We were all on the same level now. We all had one shared goal. Survival.

I fixated on it, giving my racing thoughts a singular focus: Lila. I pictured her bright eyes, her smiling face, and my breathing quieted. My pulse slowed. And reality hurled itself in my face with the wet riiiipp, as my mother’s bare foot snagged on a nail in the floorboard. She didn’t notice the separation as a strip of putrid flesh tore loose. Pain meant nothing to those claimed by the virus. She just kept coming in some robotic attempt to reach me, uttering harsh screeching sounds, dragging her broken legs over the floor; a bullet in her shoulder; a hammer sticking out of one thigh.

When we got here, she was upright, shuffling awkwardly about on her bad hip, propped up by an increased strength and a loss of physical sensation. Shattering her bones was my boyfriend’s attempt to protect me, as she lunged unexpectedly for my face. It was his last act before the others found their way in off the street and commanded his attention. Rusty shot four in the head before he tripped and lost the gun. Then the rest dragged him to the kitchen floor.

Run, I thought. Grab Lila and run out the back. There was nothing I could do for him. Fingers and teeth were in his stomach. Life was draining rapidly out, flowing like spilled wine across the linoleum. Rusty screamed, choking on his own blood as he begged for them to stop. His pleading eyes held mine over top of their bobbing heads, and I should have been horrified. I wanted to be. We were together ten months before the virus broke out. Lately, that was a record for me. And Rusty was good to Lila from the beginning. I had to give him that much.

He gave us a roof over our heads when we had none. Food. Clothes. A smidge of stability. We had some good times. He even said he loved