Carly wakes up soon after Salem leaves her in the basement, and damn if she doesn't start screaming her head off.

I'm upstairs, with my butt on the hard hallway floor, back to the basement door, and tears flowing down my cheeks. I try covering my ears, but I can still hear the shrill sound of Carly's cries splitting my eardrums. Screams shift into gurgles as bones snap, and then the only sound is that of primal feasting: snarls, rips, large swallows.

When I finally open my eyes, Salem is staring at me. He's as white as a marshmallow and probably just as emotionally soft for the moment. I bet if I touch him, his skin is clammy. His eyes are unfocused. No doubt, the aftershocks of ending a human life is ping-ponging around in his head.

"She bit me," he says, his eyes wild.

For a terrible moment, I think of telling him that's what he deserves and storming off.

I don't.

I'm not only upset at him, I'm upset with myself. Truth is, I'm just as guilty as he is. I didn't think we had a choice, but we did. We could have let her live. We could have let her leave the house. She would have told on us, I know that. And our parents' hardships would be ended right there. But I was selfish. I chose the dead over the living. I deemed my parents' dead lives more important than a breathing, cognitive human being with (possibly) her whole life ahead of her.

"She bit me," he says.

"Do you need medicine?"

"Medicine might not help. From what I've seen...from the experiments, a bite is a sure way to pass on this virus." 

Shock. How can I survive this new life without Salem by my side? How can I heal mom and dad? How would I heal Salem? I'm not smart enough, I'm not strong enough...

"What will we do?" I ask. 

"We wait," he says. "We see if I get sick."

I feel like this must be our karma for the horrible thing we just did. Does it stop there? Or will the bad karma just keep coming? And don't we deserve it? I think we do.

"What have we done, Salem?" Tears are streaming down my face again.

Salem silently joins me on the floor. He pulls me into him and holds me firmly, reminding me a lot of our father, and it tugs at my heart. I haven't been able to hug our father for weeks now, but because of Carly, I may have that chance again. Her flesh will keep him strong just a little longer. Both he and my mother.

"Only what we had to do," he says.

Twenty minutes later, Salem is still healthy. He isn't coughing or running a fever. 

"I think I'm okay," he says. "It must not have had time to fuse in her system. That's a good sign."

I smile, feeling like at least one thing went right, and send up a silent prayer to whoever listens to those things these days. 

Salem goes into the cabinet under the kitchen sink and produces big yellow rubber gloves. We slip on a pair each and get to work. The hallway was clean in no time.

"Now is the hard part," Salem says. "We have to get rid of the remains."

I'd rather not, but I know I'm not going to get out of it. We caused the mess together and I need to do my part now. But it's so sickening. Even at the top of the basement stairs, I can smell the heavy scent of fresh, coppery blood. I can almost taste the stench. It creeps into my nostrils and drips down my throat. I swallow hard, feeling as though I'm swallowing a golf ball.

Salem has brought the trash can from outside, it's a behemoth of a trash can with rollers on the bottom. He stares at me, giving a deep breath, the kind that you take before plunging down into deep waters, only this time, we're just plunging deeper into a damning place. The secret hell in our basement.

I can already see the color changing in mom. She was greenish-grey, a disturbing color that reminded me of a faded bruise, and now she's less green and more of a white-grey hue. I suppose that's an improvement. She notices me and tries to come say hi, in her new way--by trying to rip me into tiny Janis pieces with her teeth. But the chain around her neck won't let her. Salem has it bolted to a beam, so she can't get much further than a few feet before it holds her back.

Dad looks like a nightmare. He's still wearing one of the plain white shirts he wears under his police uniform, but it hasn't had a spot of white on it in a few days now. The front is stained almost black from his drooling and eating habits. He's banged around in our filthy basement enough to cover the back in dust. He doesn't see his daughter when he looks at me, but he does seem better. He isn't groaning as much.

Salem stops near dad, where most of the remains of Carly are laying. Her body is mainly between the two, but there's a tiny mountain of torn flesh and shredded clothing near dad, whereas mangled parts of leg and foot, as well as a discarded arm were mostly on mom's side. The arm had been picked clean of meat, the way one might clean rib bones at an all you can eat barbeque. I try not to focus on it. Dad pulls at his chain and I shift my attention to him.

"Salem...do you think they feel the pain?" I ask as I stare down my father.

"Maybe," Salem says, thinking. "I think it's most likely that they're out of it. Sort of like when you got put to sleep so they could cut out your appendix."

"I don't remember any of that," I say.

"That's my point. I don't think they're coherent during this time. I do, however, think that they can be woke up."

"Like they woke me up after?"

"Sort of. They'll have a lot more healing to do, if we manage to get that far."

"But they already look better, right?"

"Better," he admits, "but not as good as I had hoped."

"What do you mean?"

He bends down to grab a mound of gore and tosses it in the can. I try to ignore the way it smacks the bottom, but it feels like it hits my chest on impact anyway. I breathe deeply.

"I mean," he says, his voice a bit restrained, as if he's fighting nausea. "It's not enough. They need more."

He's scooping up another gob of carnage. I bend down and grab a bone that looks like it could have been a leg at one point. It's as light as a rotten tree branch. I can see the chalk-white ankle and the tiny little teeth marks where the mouse bit her. Below that, I see her metatarsals and some phalanges. Some of them have apparently been bitten off. 

More, I repeat in my head, terrified at the thought.

Most of Carly's face is intact, and she still has one arm. It's her arm that I see come back to life.