Steve put his foot up on the ledge, resting his hands on his knee, “Yeah, I see her. What’s your point?”
“Man, come on. Someone that young walking around, it has to be over,” Lex pulled off his dusty, worn-in Budweiser cap and slapped it against his thigh. “Look at that, she’s got her little teddy bear and everything.”
Steve shot back around, a scolding finger ready, “Quiet there. It’s just one of them and having a Goddamn teddy bear with it doesn’t mean a damn thing and you know it.” He kicked off the ledge and picked his rifle back up, heading back across the roof to the ladder. His dirty, button-down overshirt ruffled in the nighttime breeze as he muttered to himself under his breath. Lex was starting to crack; it was the only explanation. Hell, after three months cooped up in a warehouse store just about anyone would be, especially without any human contact for the last two (and that’s generously counting those things as humans).
Steve plopped himself down in a cheap plastic chair as soon as he hit the break room, leaned his rifle against the table. He doubled over and poured his head in his hands. I’m gettin’ too old for this shit. And it was true, at 53 he should have been barking orders at some kid who just graduated college like he used to. He was built to be a middle manager too, at least physically. Average height, slightly overweight with hollow brown eyes and thinning brown hair, he definitely looked like the boss at your first office job. Then again that didn’t matter in the last three months; since then if you’re heart was beating you just looked like food.
Not that that was even a big problem anymore. Staying alive wasn’t a problem for Steve and Lex, the problem was wanting to stay alive. Maybe that’s all that got into Lex, he just wanted to believe in something, believe that it’s finally all over.
“Hell, maybe I should indulge the kid,” Steve finally announced to the table. Figuring out whether or not that girl was still a girl might be a good thing. Hell, if she was still a girl that’s a great thing, it would mean that those things were gone. But how to let her in safely? Both men were still too leery to venture outside. It didn’t matter that it had been over a month since they’d seen one. Once you’ve seen one you’ll stay just about anywhere for a year before you’d ever consider dealing with them again. He grabbed the radio, “Hey Lexy, come on down here.”
The thinner, younger man soon walked into the room, “What’s up, Steve?”
“You’ve been watching that girl for a few nights now, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I have,” Lex dropped his hat onto the table. “She walks a little slow but I think that’s just because her leg is hurt. I’m tellin’ you, man, she’s still alive. What would a 5 year old girl thing be doing around after the rest of them have died out?” You could see him getting excited as he talked about it, he really thought that this whole mess was over.
Steve put his hands up defensively, calmly, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to argue with you. I just wanted to ask if she ever walks around back. You know, by the loading dock.”
“Yeah, she comes that way every night. I think she walks across the street to the supermarket to get food and water,” he was a little dumbfounded. Steve had never acted like this before, maybe he was cracking too.
“Well, sit down, I got a plan.”
Steve stood to the right of the door and held the chain tight, “Remember, don’t do anything stupid and for the love of God do not put your gun down.” He then patted the revolver on his hip to make sure it was still there.
“Come on, man, would I still be alive this long if I did stupid shit?” Lex pulled the lock open on the loading door.
“Yeah, you would with me around,” Steve started reeling the chain, pulling the door open from the floor up.
Lex held about 10 feet shy of the door while it opened, semi-automatic pistol at the ready. With the door about 5 feet up Steve stopped the chain and wrapped a section of it around his left hand before he pulled out his revolver with his right.
They waited.
In about half an hour Lex spotted her and started inching closer to the edge of the dock, “Hey there! Come on over here! We’re alive!”
They waited.
Finally Steve could see her from his poor vantage point. He stood motionless, squinting, studying her like a man trying to remember which combination of stripes on a snake means it’s poisonous. It had been so long since he’d had this kind of worry that he lost himself in the moment. He didn’t notice that Lex had inched all the way up to the door and was crouching down, his arms stretched out the door and his pistol lying on the concrete. “Lex!” he shouted.
Lex turned and looked up just as the little girl grabbed his right arm and chomped in on it just below the elbow. Instinctively, Lex sprang back but her teeth were in too deeply. The skin peeled down his arm as he fell back onto the floor, flailing his other three limbs vainly and smearing his own blood on the loading dock. The little bloodsucker climbed onto the dock with the skin still in her teeth. When Steve yelled again she turned to face him, ripping the skin clean off up to the poor man’s wrist. He laid on the floor and writhed in agony, grabbed his exposed, loosely connected muscle and cried out. Steve had to turn in disgust at the sight: a sweet 5 year old girl still wearing her PJs, now stained with blood, and that damn teddy bear still hanging from her dead, soulless fingers. Her eyes were sunken and cold as she looked upon her potential meal, a long, ragged pelt hanging from her teeth.
Steve had let go of the chain as he turned away and let the steel door come crashing down to the concrete floor with a raucous clamor. The sound startled the little girl and she turned back to her first target. She descended on Lex and dug her dirty teeth deep into his throat. Blood came gushing out his neck and with his good hand he tried to bat at the little terror to no avail. Steve regained his composure a little too late. He grabbed the girl by the collar and threw her up against the steel door. The walls of the large, empty room rang with the shot as the now faceless girl sank down to the floor.
Steve rubbed his hand over his face and breathed a sigh of relief. Good God that was a bad idea. He heard a gurgle and a moan from behind him. He turned and immediately knew that Lex was gone but couldn’t be forgotten.
Steve lowered his boot onto the man’s throat, blood still gushing from it. He looked down despondently as what used to be Lex started scratching at him, the muscle dangling from his arm. “Well I’ll be damned,” he murmured as he lowered the sights of his revolver to between what used his friend’s eyes. “Hall and Oates were right,” he said as he pulled the trigger, “she’s a maneater.”
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