William Rose: The Seven Habits

So that’s why I’m so fuckin’ special, man. That’s why it swallows me time and time again. Because I opened myself to it. I sought it out. I called for it.

If it hadn’t been for that night, if it hadn’t been for Professor Weed and his Liquid fuckin’ Enlightenment, I never would have known about The End. I never would have known about Ocean. And I most certainly wouldn’t have known about the seven signs, man.

What’s that? Oh yeah… right. I haven’t mentioned the signs yet, have I? Well, as you can probably guess by the clever name, there’s seven of ‘em. They’re like guideposts or even a checklist, if you will. These days, just about everyone exhibits at least a handful. So you gotta be sure . You gotta be positive . ‘Cause only the true infected display all seven traits, see? And that’s how you can tell who’s gonna spread the contagion that levels our world, man.

Ocean may seem like she’s out there in some distant point on mankind’s timeline. She may seem to be this hazy spot somewhere in the future, but she’s not. She only fifteen or twenty years away. Tops.

The virus is already among us, see? The seeds of apocalypse have been sown and, even as we sit here having our little rap session, those microscopic buggers are out there, dividing and subdividing, slowly changing our genetic blueprint through mitosis. It’s spreading faster than you can imagine, infecting more and more people every day. The end really is nigh… the human race really is doomed.

And Clarice fuckin’ Hudson? Well, she had all seven signs, man. See, she was dead a long time before she met ‘ole Bosley Coughlin. You can write that in your little black book in big, block letters and underline it.

She was a dead woman walking. And I’m simply the man who recognized it for what it was.

Ocean’s mother drove the shard of metal down with a growl. Summoning what little strength she had, the young girl rolled her shoulders with a savage jerk, throwing her attacker’s center of gravity off just long enough for the weapon to clang ineffectually off the concrete. Seizing the opportunity, Ocean raked at her mother’s eyes with her hands, feeling a soft squish as her index fingers drove into the moist orbs.

Her mama’s hands flew instinctively to her face as she yowled with pain. Adrenaline gushing through her veins, Ocean found a strength she never realized she possessed and she thrashed on the ground. Her mother toppled over as if she were nothing more than one of the glass figurines in the car, and now it was Ocean’s turn to grapple for dominance. As she pulled herself over her mother’s squirming body, she drove her knee between the woman’s sagging breasts, throwing as much of her weight into the blow as possible. The air whooshed out of the woman’s lungs and left her gasping for breath… but it wasn’t enough to drive the fight out of her entirely.

She grabbed a handful of Ocean’s hair and yanked so hard that it felt her scalp were about to be pulled right off her skull. At the same time, the other woman’s free hand was scrambling across the concrete, her fingers clutching and grasping at the empty air.

Tears streamed down Oceans’s face, cutting paths of clean skin through the filth and grime. She was vaguely aware of her own shrieking voice. “No, Mama, No… stop it! Stop it!”

“Bitch! Slut! Little fuckin’ whore!” The woman’s hand finally found the object it sought and, with an inhuman roar, she rammed the end of the twisted scrap of metal into her daughter’s arm.

Ocean screamed as the pain shot from her elbow to shoulder. Undaunted, her mother continued to stab again and again as blood spurted from the puncture wounds, to spatter against her face.

She’s going to kill you, she’s going to fucking kill you, you have to do something. DO SOMETHING!

Ocean buried her face into her mother’s neck, just as she had done when she was very small and had awoken from a nightmare where the rotters were about to get her. Only this time, there was no comfort to be sought in the warm skin, no reprieve from the anxiety and fear; there was only one last chance at survival.

She sank her teeth into flesh, clamping down so tightly that her mouth was immediately flooded with the metallic tang of blood. Her mother screamed and thrashed, still jamming the metal into her daughter’s body.

The pain caused Ocean to throw her head back and there was a wet, ripping sound as the skin seemed to peel away from her mother’s throat. Something warm and sticky sprayed over the girl, but she was terrified to the point that the most real thing was that voice in her head chanting: she’ll kill you, she’ll fucking kill you, you know she’ll kill you….

Spitting the rubbery chunk of tissue from her mouth, Ocean plunged her face toward her mother’s throat again. Chewing, ripping, snot bubbling from her nose as her tears mingled with the blood, she tore away flesh and muscle again and again until it dawned on her that she wasn’t being stabbed any longer. In fact, her mother was sprawled motionless across the ground, a dark pool seeping away from the ravaged remains of her neck.

At that moment, all of the fear and rage that had propelled her simply seemed to vanish. She collapsed over her mother’s body like a cast off rag doll, her back hitching with sobs as she pressed her face into her mother’s chest.

“Mama… Mama, talk to me… please, Mama. Please!”

She wasn’t sure how long she laid there, clutching her dead mother in her arms as though she could somehow squeeze life back into those now useless lungs. Eventually the crying tapered off and the throbbing pain in her arm seemed to fade; Ocean’s entire body, even her mind, felt numb. It was like all of her thoughts had poured out of her head with the snot and tears. She was nothing but a hollow, empty vessel as she stared into the distance, seeing nothing.

At some point she must have drifted to sleep; the next thing she knew her body was covered in dew and thin tendrils of fog crept across the ground like miniature phantoms. She could see through the windows of some of the wrecked cars encircling her and the fog was thicker on the other side. It was a roiling, gray veil that made the ruined city appear fuzzy and indistinct. She thought she could see a dark silhouette out there, beckoning to her with outstretched arms.

“D-daddy?” Even cloaked in the morning mist, she could recognize his general shape and outline. “Daddy!”

Her heart fluttered with hope as she raised her head and a smile crept over her face. The smile faded however, as quickly as the image of the man in the fog, and she was left with only her mother’s cold, still body beneath her.

Ocean scrambled backward and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees as she rocked back and forth. She was shaking her head, silently saying no again and again, and she could feel the tears returning. Mama was gone. Mama was gone and now she was entirely alone in the world.

The blood had dried on her face overnight and her skin felt stretched too tightly over her skull. She was sticky and dirty and wanted to throw up, but could only wretch and heave as traces of bile stung the back of her throat.

“You’ve got to do the rite of the dead,” she told herself. “You’ve got to give Mama the rite.”

The strange yet somehow familiar voice in the back of her mind whispered again. What? She was going to kill you! You had to do what you did, even if she was you mother. She doesn’t deserve any type of burial ritual, don’t you get that? Mothers don’t try to kill their own daughters…