WILLA

by Jennifer Reynolds

  Granted, we had no way of knowing it was our last day.

  “Why?” I asked, even though I knew the answer, and the annoyed look he gave me told me to shut up.

  Each of us had eaten one pack of instant oatmeal with water for breakfast, and that was all we’d had. All we had left was three cans of soup, two cans of peas, a can of pineapple, and a three-ounce pack of tuna. That wasn’t enough to feed four people for much longer.

  Uncle Jamie only had to go out one time since we got to Uncle Carson’s, and that was two days after we arrived. He’d come back with a backpack loaded with stuff: toilet paper, stale cereal, Vienna sausages, Ritz, and other things. We’d rationed, but it hadn’t lasted long with what little we’d brought with us.

  “I’m going with you,” Sam said.

  “No, you aren’t. You’re staying here with your brother and Willa. I want the three of you to hide in the back closet and not leave no matter what until I return,” Uncle Jamie said.

  “We aren’t babies. We can take care of ourselves,” Sam argued.

  “I know you can, but I still want you in that closet. All the doors and windows upstairs are closed. I’ve changed the lock on the basement door so that you have to have a key to open it. I’ll lock it when I leave.”

  “What if you don’t come back,” Sam asked.

  Uncle Jamie reached into his pocket and handed Sam a key.

  “This is a spare. Use it only, and I mean only if I don’t return by tomorrow morning. The only time you leave that closet is if you have to use the bathroom. I’m holding you to the honor system on all of this, but please...please do as I say.”

  Sam opened his mouth to say something, looked at the expression on Uncle Jamie’s face, and said, “Okay.”

  I also wanted to argue. If Uncle Jamie was locking us in the basement, then why did we need to hide in the closet? I felt he was overacting, and I wanted to tell him that his request was something Mom would ask, but the sad set of his eyes kept me quiet. I merely nodded my head in agreement.

  Chase said nothing. His face was unreadable, but I thought he was okay with hiding. Of us all, he was the one who was the most willfully blind to the world outside. Sam and I, at least, took our training and watch shifts seriously. Chase mostly acted as if he were in a Star Wars movie when we practiced fighting and slept through his time on guard.

  Sam and I should’ve complained and argued that it wasn’t fair when Uncle Jamie finally decided to take Chase out of the rotation. Still, we’d known we were safer without the boy assuming responsiblity for our safety.

  “When are you leaving?” Chase asked without a bit of concern.

  “In about an hour, so anything you need to do before I go, do it.”

  Chase left the table and went to the bathroom.

  “If I’m not back by tomorrow afternoon,” Uncle Jamie told Sam and me, “leave. Head out of town. Go east. The creatures seem to be moving west. So go east.”

  “Do you have a destination in mind?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, we need a meeting place to wait for you.”

  “If I don’t make it back here, then I’m probably dead. Don’t wait for me any longer than twenty-four hours.”

  “But...” Sam started to say.

  “No buts. You get as far away from here as you can. Stay out of the cities.”

  “What do we do for food?” I asked.

  “You’ll have enough to last a few days if you ration appropriately. After that, you’ll have to start looking for some. Try the stores first. Most will be empty, but you’ll have a better chance of not dying than you would if you broke into someone’s house.”

  “There can’t be a lot of live people left, can there?” Sam asked.

  “We’ve survived. Nearly our entire family was alive until a month ago. If we can hold out this long, then others can too.”

  “I see your point,” Sam said, looking down at the table in resignation.

  “Promise me that the two of you will look out for Chase. I think that once he’s out of this house, he’ll come back to reality. But if he doesn’t, keep him safe. Keep yourselves safe,” Uncle Jamie said.

  “You keep talking like you don’t expect to come back. Are you leaving us?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not leaving, not for good anyway. I’m just going after supplies, but going to the market isn’t as simple as it used to be. Anything could happen to me outside this house. We have to plan for the worst. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it is what it is. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, brushing away a tear. “I’m going to prep the closet.”

  I hurriedly left the table.

  The last time we’d stayed in the closet, we’d slept most of the time, and it had been uncomfortable. The area was large enough for the three of us to lay side-by-side, but what we hadn’t done was bring pillows or blankets or anything else in there with us.

  I had Chase help me drag one of the mattresses into the closet once he was out of the bathroom. After that, we spread blankets, pillows, books, and weapons around the area. We purposefully didn’t put any food or water in there. We didn’t want to eat what was left out of boredom. Nor did we want to drink so much that we had to use the bathroom too often.

  If Uncle Jamie were gone longer than the day, we’d have to sneak out for food. We’d gone long periods without eating or drinking, but not more than about eight or ten hours. We would be all right. In the old world, none of us would have had the self-control to ration, but it didn’t take us long to get used to it.

  As promised, Uncle Jamie left forty-five minutes later. We were already in the closet when we heard the lock click. The three of us fell asleep half an hour later. Between training and guard duty, our closet time would be the longest any of us had slept in a long while. Exercising that much with very little food and water in your system was exhausting.

  The three of us hadn’t been asleep for more than a few hours when we jerked awake at the sound of the front door smashing against the floor above us. Chase and I yelped, but thankfully, not loud enough for our intruders to hear.

  I longed for a time when I could wake up on my own and not to the sounds of gunfire, screams, or breaking wood.

  “What’s happening?” Chase whispered.

  Sam’s only reply was to shake his head and point at the house above us.

  I reached for our guns.

  19.

  Chase stared at me blankly for a long moment when I tried to hand him his weapon. He wasn’t stupid. Chase understood that we were in danger, but I guessed my cousin couldn’t fathom shooting a live person. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to when the time came. That scared me more than the people upstairs did.

  Sam took the gun from me and shoved it into his brother’s hands just as we heard the fifth and last person cross the threshold into the house.

  “Get your shit together,” Sam mouthed.

  Chase’s hands shook, but he took the gun. Somehow he managed to check his weapon with trembling fingers and not shoot himself or us. He then rearranged himself as we had to get into a firing stance.

  I nearly cried in relief at his actions. Maybe he wouldn’t put our lives in danger with his inaction.

  It took everything in me not to shout as the group made their way through the house, knocking things over, breaking glass, and whatever else they were doing to cause so much racket. I guessed they didn’t care if their destruction brought zombies down upon them.

  Judging by their voices, I assumed we were dealing with four men and three women. The group talked loudly amongst themselves about what they’d searched and what they hadn’t, about where the five of them should go next if they didn’t find anything, and about how hungry they were. They said nothing about the zombies. Either they weren’t afraid of them, or they were crazy. I figured a lot of column B.

  The longer the group searched, the angrier they got that they didn’t find anything in the house worth taking. Luckily, the racket they
made drowned out my initial yelp of surprise, and the noises that echoed throughout the house as they ransacked it doused any other sounds that escaped us.

  I did my best not to jump when something crashed to the floor, but that kind of control was hard to have over yourself when you were scared shitless. The only thing that helped calm my nerves was my confusion over why the five of them felt the need to demolish the house just because it was empty and didn’t have what they wanted. I never understood such barbaric behavior when I saw it on television.

  “Fuck,” Sam said when the group reached the basement door.

  I thought Chase was going to piss himself as one of the men first twisted the doorknob before shaking the entire thing nearly off its hinges. Hell, who am I kidding? If we’d had much to drink that day, I probably would’ve peed all over our mattress.

  Once the door stopped shaking, we heard one of the men say stand back, and then we heard someone kicking at the door.

  The three of us hurried further against the wall. I became acutely aware that the closet didn’t have a lock, and Uncle Jamie hadn’t put anything in front of the door to barricade us inside. Not that the group wouldn’t have been able to move whatever he would’ve put in front of the door and knocked down the flimsy door.

  “Get ready,” Sam said in a low voice as we heard the door fly down the steps and crash onto the floor.

  “Hurry up and look around,” a woman said. “We’ve made plenty of noise. The zombies will be here soon.”

  “You heard the woman,” a man said, “spread out and make this quick.”

  “Someone’s been living down here,” another man said.

  “They didn’t leave much in the way of food,” a woman said.

  By the sound of it, she found our meager stash.

  “Someone had locked from the inside,” the first man said. “They’re still down here. Find them.”

  Of course, it didn’t take them thirty-seconds to spot the closet door and jerk it open.

  As the door flew wide, all three of us fired. Sam managed to shoot one of the men in the gut when he opened the door of our closet. Chase shot a woman in the leg. My shot went wild. The rest of their people ducked out of sight, but for whatever reason, the group of intruders didn’t shoot back.

  The man that Sam shot in the stomach flew across the room, screaming. The woman yelped and leaped out of sight.

  The first man, who’d hid behind a pillar, called out, “If you shoot again, we’ll have to open fire inside that closet and kill you all.

  Sam fired another shot at the pillar.

  The man shot into the closet, but his bullet went wide and went into the wall. I stared up at the hole in amazement. Had he purposefully aimed that high?

  “Listen, kids. We aren’t going to hurt...”

  “Bullshit,” Sam called back.

  “No bullshit. We were simply looking for survivors and food.”

  “Then why were you making so much noise up there?”

  “To draw the zombies to the house.”

  “And why the hell would you do that?”

  “To get them out of the city. The stores there have supplies, but we can’t get to them with so many zombies lingering in town. We try to draw them out into the country. That makes them easier to kill, and it empties the city.”

  The man sounded reasonable enough. Though, if he were smarter, he would realize that he should keep the countryside empty so that come spring, we could start planting the land. However, he was a city man who’d probably never set foot on a farm and hadn’t thought about farming. He was most likely still waiting for the government to save him.

  The gut-shot man screamed, making us all jump.

  “We’re coming in to get you and are going to try to help our friend. No more shooting, all right,” the first man said.

  Chase and I looked to Sam for direction.

  He shrugged his shoulders and lowered his weapon. I could see in Sam’s eyes that he didn’t trust the group, but if we had any hope of getting out of the basement alive, we had to do as they said for now.

  “Okay,” Sam said, looking from me to Chase to the open closet door.

  “Thank God,” the man said.

  “Dana, check on Roy and Liz. Wayne, help me with the kids,” the man said, coming from behind the pillar.

  Wayne moved into our line of sight and motioned for us to stand.

  “Set your guns aside,” Wayne said.

  Again, Chase and I looked to Sam.

  Sam nodded and placed his gun on the bed behind him. Chase and I did the same before following Sam out of the closet.

  The man named Wayne ordered us to the sofa, and the first man, no one had said his name yet, came around to stand in front of us. Before he could say anything, the man with the bleeding stomach, Roy, screamed again.

  “Do you have a first aid kit?” the first man asked us.

  “In one of the packs in the corner. It isn’t much of one. I don’t know if it’ll help that man or not,” Sam said.

  “Anything is better than nothing,” Dana said. “I can’t slow the flow of blood.”

  Wayne went to the packs and searched through them until he found the red box. He looked at it dubiously before taking it to Dana. She pulled out a roll of gauze and wrap and told him to bind Liz’s leg. The bullet had exited and not hit any major arteries. She would live.

  As I watched the people, I realized that they were ordinary folks. What they’d done still didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t understand the destruction. I guess the first man saw the look on my face because he turned his attention back to us.

  “We didn’t come here looking for you to hurt you. We came to help anyone who survived,” the man said.

  “How is destroying this house helping us or anyone for that matter,” Sam asked.

  “I told you, we do it to draw the zombies to the house. We want them out of the city.”

  “I get that, but destroying things we’ll need in the future is foolish. I know the trinkets and the like are needless, but houses need doors, windows, dishes, cooking utensils. Someone somewhere down the line could use what you broke.”

  The look on the man’s face said he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “Besides, you don’t want those things in the country where come next year we’ll have to start growing food.”

  Again, the man looked as if he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  Before anyone could say anything else, Roy screamed again.

  20

  Roy died seconds after his last scream. A minute after that, Dana put a blade through his temple.

  “What the...” I screamed.

  “Oh my...” Chase hollered at the same time before turning his head to gag over the sofa.

  Sam didn’t appear fazed by what the woman had done. He merely asked, “Do the dead turn?”

  “We haven’t waited to find out. To be honest. Most people who die do so after an attack. We’ve had very few people die of something else. However, from the start, we’ve damaged the brain to be safe,” the man in charge of the group said.

  “We did the same, though we’ve only had a handful die of other ailments,” Sam said.

  “Did you do that to Uncle Ray?” I asked, looking disgustingly at my cousin.

  “I didn’t. Dad did. But yeah. Kris said in many of the books he’d read that the dead automatically turn whether they were bitten or not, so Dad and Uncle Jamie did it to everyone who died.”

  I could do nothing but gape at him.

  Logically, I understood the sense of doing something so grotesque, but I couldn’t imagine going through with it.

  “What should we do with Roy?” Wayne asked.

  “Take him outside. We don’t have time to bury him. Those creatures will be here soon,” the man said.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Sam asked.

  “What do you want us to do?” the man asked.

  “Leave us. We don’t have anything you want. We barely
have enough food to last us a day, but it won’t last the four of you an hour or so. Leave us here along with our meager supplies.”

  “You can’t stay here. We’ve told you. The zombies are coming. We’ve been doing this long enough now that we can almost time their arrival. It won’t be that long.”

  “Then I suggest you and your people should get a move on,” Uncle Jamie said from the top of the stairs.

  He had a gun in each hand. One pointed at Wayne. The other at Dana. He motioned for the two to go downstairs.

  Relief settled over me. The group didn’t seem to be as dangerous as we initially feared, but I was glad to see my uncle and his guns.

  “Whoa...” the main man said, holding up his hands and stepping away from us. “We didn’t come to hurt anyone?”

  “Then why were your friends carrying a dead body up the stairs, and why does another one of your people have a bloody bandage wrapped around her leg?” Uncle Jamie asked, taking the last step down to the basement.

  “We scared these kids by accident when we opened the door to their closet,” the man said.

  “How did you expect them to act when you ruined their house?” my uncle asked.

  “We didn’t know anyone was here. The house has looked abandoned that few times we scouted it out. As I was telling the kids, we’re trying to lure the zombies out of the city, and we do that by making noises to get their attention.”

  “I’m not even going to explain to you all the ways that that is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Uncle Jamie said, coming to stand behind the sofa. “So how about you and your people go now. If you’ve taken any of our supplies, you can leave it. There’s plenty in town if you know where to find it. Now go.”

  My uncle swung his guns in the direction of the stairs. Dana and Wayne helped Liz off the floor and up the stairs with the first man following behind them. Every few seconds, the man would look back at us. Wayne did the same. His look was highly unpleasant.

  Uncle Jamie didn’t take his guns off them.

  The second they were out of sight, Sam leaped from his seat and went for our weapons. Chase went to our uncle and hugged him. I couldn’t do anything more than stare at the place where the man named Roy had died. I was still in shock over Dana putting a knife in his brain.