Revenence: Dead Silence, A Zombie Novel (14 page)

Her childhood had been unusually harsh, at least after her sixth year.  She was the daughter of Irish immigrants, and spent the first years of her life in a Chicago ghetto.  They were the only years of her life she remembered fondly, although the memories were few and indistinct.  She sometimes vaguely speculated on what her life would have been like, what
she
would be like, if she had gotten to grow up with her family...but the speculations never really took a definitive form in her mind, as self-reflection was not one of her strong suits.

A couple weeks after her sixth birthday, both of her parents and her older brother were killed in an wave of gang warfare in the neighborhood.  They had bought a new TV, which had just been delivered, and they were in the process of lugging it into the apartment building when the gunfire erupted around them.  Daphne had been in the apartment, watching cartoons, when she heard the gunshots.  She hid in the closet until the noise died down.  She waited, wondering when her family would come back in to comfort her, to reassure her that everything was okay again, but they never came.  She heard the wail of sirens in the distance, approaching.  She was still in the closet, tears rolling down her frightened face, when their neighbor, an elderly Irish woman named Mrs. Morris, came in and called out to her. 

"Daphne, dear, are you in here?" she called.  "Oh Lord, please let the child be okay."

"I'm here, Mrs. Morris," Daphne said, opening the closet door and stepping out.  She sniffed and wiped the tears from her face.  "Did they hurt my family?"

The elderly woman's expression was one of momentary relief that the young girl was safe, then instantly changed to one of profound sympathy and concern.  She couldn't formulate words...she could only nod in confirmation, tears clouding her pale green eyes.

Daphne had no other living family willing to take her.  She had an uncle in Ireland, but he was hardly the type to come all the way to America to retrieve a niece he didn't really want.  The next seven years of Daphne's life were spent in central Kentucky with a foster family, the Andersons.  They were devout Southern Baptists, with a biological child of their own, Bobby, a boy three years Daphne's senior.  The Andersons attempted to indoctrinate their religious views in Daphne through various forms of physical and psychological abuse and, in some cases, downright torture.  When she was bad, which seemed to be always, they tried to help her see the error of her ways by forcing her to do chores outside, day and night, even in the bitter cold of a January night.  They would have her pull weeds from the lawn, or move piles of heavy logs or bricks across the yard, or pick up after their terrier, Precious.  She didn't need a coat, or a sweater, or shoes,  because the discomfort of the cold, the punishment, would remind her of God's disappointment in her, which she would have to atone for if she wanted to earn His everlasting love and approval.  On very rare occasions, Daphne was allowed to sleep on a bench in the mudroom near the back door, if Mrs. Anderson was feeling merciful.  Those nights that she spent in the backyard, shivering and alone, she also spent hungry.  Daphne's foster mother explained to her one night, while she stuffed her face full of pizza and wings with gargantuan arms and tiny hands, that bad children needed to suffer for their sins before they could be allowed to eat.  Daphne watched in disbelief, her large, sunken eyes filling with tears, as the woman gorged. 

"I've earned this," her foster mother explained to her, speaking through a mouthful of food, "because I've done what God expects of me.  Now go outside.  If you get your chores done, maybe you can have some breakfast tomorrow."

Daphne retreated outside, knowing that when tomorrow came, there would be no breakfast, even if she
did
finish her chores.  Mrs. Anderson stopped just short of starving her, sometimes waiting more than a day at a time to allow her to eat.  There would be some excuse.  It would be something like, "Look at you!  You're filthy!  How could you let yourself get so dirty?", and she would think,
Because I spent the night outside doing chores, you guys never let me shower, and it didn't rain last night
.  Or it would be, "That wood is stacked all wrong, it needs to be straight.  Try it again, and move it to the other side of the yard while you're at it.  You'll do it until you do it right."  And there was always beating, no matter what she did.  She had a constant assortment of welts and bruises, which never had a chance to heal before they were overlapped with new ones.

As much as it made her blood boil, she didn't dare talk back anymore.  She knew that if she did, they would put her in the basement, and that was the worst punishment of all.  That was when she usually went most of a week without eating anything whatsoever, and where her brother Jason compounded her punishment.  The rapes began when she was about 9, and he was twelve.  He easily overpowered Daphne, outweighing her by over a hundred pounds...he took after his mother when it came to eating habits.  She screamed, and heard Mrs. Anderson yell from upstairs, "
Shut up, I wanna hear my show!"
  She would then turn the TV up louder in an attempt to drown Daphne out.  She screamed all the more loudly, hoping for anybody to hear her, for
God
to hear her and make it stop, but her screams fell on deaf ears.  The closest neighbors were almost a mile away, so she could shriek as loudly as she wanted to, but only the monsters she lived with would hear.  She had tried running away on a handful of occasions, but they had put a GPS pet tracking device around her neck.  They always found her within a handful of minutes, and the punishment was severe, even compared to the usual treatment.  The Andersons claimed to "home school" their children, so Daphne didn't get to leave the house at all since she had first come at age 6.  She daydreamed often of being allowed to go to school with the other children, like she did in kindergarten when she lived with her parents.  A doctor showed up to make house calls when the state demanded that she get a check-up, but he was a friend of the family's.  He looked the other way when he saw how abused and malnourished Daphne was, although she did overhear him on one occasion chastising Mr. and Mrs. Anderson about it.

And so she endured the torture of living, for the most part, outside in the family's backyard, and in the twenty feet of woods directly behind the house that she could wander into without setting off her security collar.  At least when she was outside, she could breathe the fresh air, bask in the sunlight, climb the trees, and dream of the day when she could finally be free of her living hell.  If the weather was dangerously cold, she would retreat into one of the sheds for shelter.  Some nights in that shed, she would take a flashlight out of the cabinet and read from her stepfather's many dusty, neglected military survival guides.  It was how she taught herself to read.  She wasn't a particularly strong reader, but she wasn't illiterate. The subject matter motivated her to build her phonics skills, and she learned a lot of useful survival tips. 
I bet that idiot didn't even bother to read these,
she thought of Mr. Anderson. 
Someone might as well make use of them.

One early spring evening when she was around thirteen, she was quietly stalking around the outside of the house, eavesdropping on her foster parents from outside of the open kitchen window.  They were unaware of her presence, ignorant of how soundlessly, how stealthily, she had learned to move around under their noses.

"You were supposed to get batteries on your way home," Mrs. Anderson was scolding.  "You'll have to go back out."

Mr. Anderson sighed.  "I'm not going back out, dear."  He lowered his voice, but not low enough for Daphne's superb hearing.  "She's not going to know that the receiver's not working, just for this one night.  As far as she knows, the thing's working, same as it always does.  I'll go first thing in the morning.  For tonight, we'll leave Precious out in the yard with her.  You know she'll bark if Daphne tries to leave the yard."

"Whatever you say, Gerald," her Mrs. Anderson said, exasperated.  "I just hope it's not too cold for my puppy out there."

Eyes wide, heart racing, Daphne silently crept back to the opposite side of the yard, behind the garage, where she was supposed to be scrubbing the paving stones.  Had she heard right?  They couldn't track her?  She ran her fingers over the device around her neck. 
Is this nightmare finally over?
she wondered, giddy with excitement.  She would wait until they were asleep, and make a break for it.

That night, she tried hard to hide her elation as her foster mother entered the backyard holding Precious, petting and kissing the dog's head.  The bright glow of the full moon washed the yard in a silver glow.

"Mommy's sorry, Precious."  She eyed Daphne.  "It's just for tonight, we'll wash that flea powder off tomorrow and you can come back in," she lied.  "Yes, you can!  Yes, you can, pretty puppy!"  Her love for the dog made Daphne want to vomit. 
I'll bet she loves that dog more than her husband and son,
she thought.  She watched as her Mrs. Anderson laid down some blankets for the dog in its house.  She turned to look at Daphne, and when she spoke, her tone went at once from warm and loving to flat and cold.  "What are you looking at?  Don't you have chores to do?"

Daphne turned away silently and smiled. 
Whatever,
she thought. 
This is one of the last times you'll ever get to tell me what to do.
 

She waited about an hour after she saw all the lights go out in the house.  Precious had barked at the house in protest for awhile, but was now sound asleep in her doghouse.  Daphne slipped away silently, knowing she wouldn't wake the dog. 
She's a spoiled housepet, not a guard dog,
she thought. 
And they don't know how good I've become at sneaking. 
They had given her no choice but to be good at it
.
  She entered the woods, about twenty-five yards past the house, and then stopped and waited a moment.  Part of her thought for sure, even though she knew better, that the collar would give her away.  When more than a minute went by and she didn't see any lights come on in the house, didn't hear her enraged foster parents, she smiled a cheshire cat's smile and ventured further out.  For the first time in nearly seven years, she felt truly alive.  She wandered the woods, delighted just to be in a different setting than the one that had enslaved her all those years. 

As she was walked, she saw something out of the corner of her eye...a glint of metal caught the moon's rays.  She stepped closer, investigating.  It was a blade, sitting in the hollowed stump of a rotted tree, with a hook at the tip.  The hook beckoned to her, like a finger gesturing...
Come here, child
.  She regarded it with awe, eyes wide, mouth agape.  She picked it up to examine it more closely.  She brought it closer to her face, realizing that there was an engraving running down the length of the blade...
Talon of the Titans.
She ran a finger lightly across its edge.    The wooden handle was deteriorated almost to non-existence, but the blade was pristine, more than she thought it should be, having sat neglected in the woods since God knows when.  As she held the knife in her hands, a thought struck her consciousness like lightning.

I could use this,
she thought. 
Maybe I shouldn't just run away.  Maybe I should make them pay.

As she trudged through the woods back toward the house, she was vaguely aware that something had changed in her when she had picked up the knife.  She was a different person, one who no longer had to be a victim.  The house was within view, and she smiled. 
I'm not afraid anymore.

As she entered the yard, she heard a low growl.  She looked down at Precious at her feet, and knew the dog was only a moment away from barking, which would wake her foster parents up.  Without consciously thinking about what she was doing, she lunged down and slashed the dog's throat with the blade before it could get out more than a growl.  She gasped, unable to believe how easy it had been. 
All the times that damn dog nipped at me, I can't really feel bad
.  The dog bled out for a moment, then died.  She realized suddenly that she'd have to hide the body, and do something about the blood puddle in the grass. 
I want to see them suffer,
she thought,
see that old witch cry, wondering what happened to her precious doggie.
  She glanced at the dumpster that sat off to the side of the garage.  She knew the next morning was garbage day, that the truck would be coming to collect the contents of the dumpster.  She crept over to the shed, where there was a roll of garbage bags.  She grabbed one and walked back over to the dog, picking up its limp body by the scruff of its neck and placing it in the bag. 
They'll never think to look for it in there,
she thought with satisfaction as she walked over and dumped the dog into the receptacle. 
Now what about the blood?
  She walked back to the shed, picking up a large watering can. 
Watering the shrubs is one of my chores tonight, anyway
, she thought. 
They won't think anything of the water running, even if they do hear it. 
After a half-dozen trips with the watering can, she was satisfied that the blood was sufficiently washed away.  She made quick work of watering the shrubs, finished her other chores, and was done within an hour's time.  She wanted everything to seem normal until she was ready to pounce on the Andersons...everything except the missing dog.  She buried the knife in the mulch that surrounded the shrubs, and laid down to sleep in her usual spot beside the garage.  She drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face. She could hardly wait to get her revenge on the family who had made her life a living hell.