We Are Still Here

by Jimmy Bird

  My attitude changed, “Look. Don’t worry. Nothing is going to happen to me.”

  She spoke under breath, “I’ve heard that before.”

  I took a deep breath, “Makalyn. Nothings going to happen to me or you. I promise.”

  She frowned, “You can’t make that kind of promise, just look around here.”

  I looked her straight in the eyes, “You’re right. I can’t promise you that. But I can promise you that I’ll TRAIN you to survive.”

  She perked up at the thought, “I guess that’s true. On the bright side, it just means that you’ll have to be around to train me.”

  “See? If you look hard enough, there’s always something positive in every scenario.”

  She looked thoughtful, “I guess you’re right, but it’s hard to find something good nowadays. Especially, after everything that I’ve been through.”

  “What you’ve been through does make it difficult to trust other people, but we’re family. No matter what happens, we stick together.”

  She had a genuine smile on her face, “Family! I like the sound of that. It’s been a long time since I felt like I was around family.”

  Seeing her smile made me realize something, “Look, Makalyn. We are family and no matter what happens, we stick together. Which means, we watch over and protect each other. Got it?”

  Her mood changed for the better, “Yeah, I got it and thank you.”

  I looked at her, “What are you thanking me for?”

  A sad look came over her, “For making me feel like family. For showing me that you care. It’s more then what my parents had done.”

  I frowned at her, “Makalyn, stop that. Look, I don’t know what happened to your parents, but I can tell you that they loved you very much. Something must have happened to them for them not to have come for you. Who knows, maybe they did come for you and Serina turned them away.”

  She didn’t look convinced, “Maybe.”

  I tried to change the subject, “Don’t fret on it. We’ll figure it out. Until then, we still need to get up to the tent.”

  Her concern was noticeable, “Okay. Just be careful.”

  I looked back up at the wire, “That’s the plan.”

  I reached out towards the wire again. I took a deep breath and jumped. The sudden shift in weight caused the ladder to tumble sideways. It made a loud thump when it hit the floor. I could hear the car horn from outside.

  I held onto the wire with both hands. I couldn’t tell if it was grease or layers of dirt, but the wire felt slippery under my fingers. I tried to pull myself up like I was doing a pull-up but found it difficult to concentrate with my daughter honking the horn from outside.

  I glanced downward at Makalyn, “Can you find out what she’s honking the horn about?”

  She frowned, “Are you sure?”

  Without thinking about it, I became testy, “Yes!”

  She responded like a teenager, “Okay. Geez, you don’t have to bite my head off.”

  I began to struggle, “Sorry. I’m just trying to concentrate.”

  She turned around and ran to the front of the store. My body began to shake as I used muscles I hadn’t used in a very long time. I think my shaking body caused the wire to rock back and forth, making it even harder to pull myself up.

  My arms began to get tired, causing me to think about letting go and trying again. I glanced downward and instantly regretted it. I must have been dangling close to twenty feet into the air! If I fell, I would have hurt myself and I promised Makalyn that I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  I didn’t have the upper strength to pull myself up, so I decided to kick my feet out. I was hoping that the momentum from my kicking would help me rise. My biggest fear would be that my momentum would cause me to slip off the wire and fall.

  No! Jimmy, stop thinking like that. You will NOT fall. You WILL accomplish your goal.

  I kicked my legs out and pulled myself. I had enough momentum that I was able to swing my arms over the wire and trap it under my armpits. Well, that was something positive.

  Makalyn returned, “Jimmy? You okay?”

  I struggled to catch my breath, “Yeah. What did JoJo want?”

  Out of breath, she stated, “She heard the banging and wanted to make sure that you were alright.”

  I glanced downward, “What did you tell her?”

  She responded, “I told her not to worry. You were climbing up to a tent suspended 10 feet above the ground and caused a ladder to fall.”

  I swung my legs up to my left. I managed to cross them over the wire. When I felt that it was safe enough, I eased down so that I could grab the wire with both hands. Hanging upside down, I slowly pulled myself towards the tent. I tried not to look at the floor.

  When I got within a few feet of the tent platform, I told Makalyn, “Okay. Get the zombie’s attention.”

  She walked to the base of the ladder and began yelling up at the zombie. I was so focused on trying not to fall that I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Now that I think back, I think that she was insulting it.

  I made it to the platform and turned my body so I could pull myself onto the base while I safely kept my legs wrapped around the wire. Whatever Makalyn was doing worked because I made my way onto the platform without getting the zombie’s attention.

  Once I was safely onto the platform, I took a deep breath and crawled towards the chained-up zombie. I slowly pulled my knife out of its holster with my left hand. I switched the knife handle from my left hand to my right. I grabbed the zombie’s nasty head with my left hand and drove the blade tip through its right temple. I pushed until an inch of the blade was sticking out. Since the zombie used to be a religious man, I silently said a prayer for him.

  I looked down at Makalyn, “Good job at distracting him.”

  She beamed with pride, “Thanks. Want me to come up?”

  I shook my head, “No, stay there. The platform doesn’t feel sturdy. I’m going to see what supplies I can find.”

  I began to turn around when I noticed an old dust covered sheet of paper next to his chair. It looked like it had somethinug written on it. I picked it up and wiped it off.

  I spoke outloud, “Hey Makalyn, listen to this.”

  “To whom it may concern, this will be the last words that I will ever write and NO, I will not recite a Bible verse this time. Instead, it will be my own reflection about my mortality. I have always tried to do the right thing, to follow the Lord’s word to help others, but today I find myself questioning if it’s all worth it. After thinking about it, I can say, YES, it’s well worth it. When the dead started coming back alive, I knew that the Book of Revelations had finally come to pass. I knew in my heart that it was my duty to help others. My new life had meaning. You see, I lost my family to a drunk driver years before this all happened, which, severely challenged my faith. It got me thinking, why would God do this to his followers? Was there even a God? If there was, why would he allow such a thing to happen to my family? I kept trying to help others, but not for the Lord. No, I had become a shell of my former self. Believe it or not, this apocalypse renewed my faith in the Lord and when everyone abandoned our town, I stayed to help others. I knew that this was my new calling. It seemed that the Lord approved of my service by keeping the dead and troublemakers away, that was until two days ago. A young teenage girl collapsed in front of my store. I saw her from the window and ran out to help her. I carefully brought her inside and intended to help heal her, just like the Lord would have wanted me to. As I was helping her inside, I noticed that she was missing a finger on her right bloody hand. I carefully sat her down and grabbed a towel to press against her missing digit. She was scared and appeared to be in shock. She was visibly shaking, and to be honest, she looked horrible. Her skin was pale, and she had beads of sweat rolling down her face. She was struggling to breathe. I grabbed a bottle of water and gave her a sip and asked her what happened. She choked out that her family was attacked. One of the Dead h
ad bit her hand. She thought that she was a goner until her dad saved her. He told her to run while he fought back the dead. She was too afraid to look back and ran until she couldn’t run any further. I told her to rest because she was now safe. I jumped up and ran to get the First Aid Kit that I had kept in my tent. When I returned, I noticed that she was standing up with her back to me. The towel was no longer pressed against her dangling hand. I reached out and touched her shoulder with my left hand. I was trying not to scare her. Instead, it was I who jumped when she turned her head towards the left and bit my hand. I screamed as I yank my hand back. Me yanking my hand back must have caught her off guard, causing her to spin and fall. I dropped the kit and cupped my hand. I turned and raced back to the safety of my tent. I scrambled up the ladder, but it was difficult. My left hand kept slipping. I didn’t realize that my hand was bleeding that badly. Once I was up, I grabbed a shirt and wrapped it around my hand to help with the bleeding. Anger began to rise-up in me and I grabbed one of the rifles that I had stockpiled up here. By that time, the girl had made it to her feet and was heading towards me. I had my gun pointed at her. I kept calling out to her to get her attention, but it was no use. I knew at that moment; something was severely wrong with her. She was non-responsive to my yelling and her skin had become ghostly looking. She was sniffing the air like a dog while her mouth opened and shut like she was trying to bite something invisible. The look in her eyes told me everything that I needed to know. She was now one of the Dead. I said a prayer for her as I lifted and fired the gun. The bullet hit her in the head, and she went down. I tried to get up, so I can care to my hand, but I didn’t have the energy. I.....I just wanted to go to sleep. What? My hand hurt, why would I be tired? My hand? I noticed that it was no longer hurting. What was wrong with me? I began to feel hot and unconsciously touched my forehead with my right hand. Without realizing it, I had begun to sweat. I looked down at the girl. Was this how she felt before she died and became one with the dead? I didn’t want to become like her, like one of the Dead. I thought about killing myself to keep from becoming one of them but ended up talking myself out of it. The Bible says that if you commit suicide, you go to Purgatory until God deems you worthy into Heaven. I could not in good faith do that. So, my hope is that my story and actions in this letter will move someone enough to kill me, so I can go to Heaven and be with my family. Maybe, this was God’s Plan for me after all. I chained myself to this spot, so it could make it easier for you. If you’re reading this, I just want to say, Thank You. May God Watch Over and Protect You.”

  I knelt there speechless. A tear began to run down my face. He selflessly sacrificed himself to save someone else and it ended up costing him, his life.

  I wiped the tear away and turned towards the tent. There it was, right next to the cot, was a pile of medical supplies and weapons. Man, we hit the jackpot. I began to ease myself inside the tent whenever the horn began to sound.

  I began to angrily mumble, “Makalyn? Can you go see what’s the issue now?”

  From below, I heard, “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

  I began digging into the medical supplies and found it, an ankle brace. I found Seth an ankle brace and it was still in the plastic. Maybe our luck was starting to change.

  Makalyn came running up to the base of the ladder, “Jimmy! We gotta go!”

  I stuck my head over the ladder to look down, “Why? What’s up?”

  Wide-eyed, she looked up at me, “A horde of zombies are headed this way.”

  Curious, I asked, “How big of a horde?”

  She spread her arms, “Well, big enough that they are covering the whole street and then some.”

  “The honking must have gotten their attention. How much time do you think we have?”

  She shrugged, “Not sure. Maybe ten minutes?”

  I looked back at the supplies, “Damn. Guess we’ll have to come back for this stuff later.”

  Makalyn yelled up, “Jimmy, are you coming?”

  I sighed, “Yeah. Go on ahead. I’m right behind you.”

  I grabbed the brace and crawled to the ladder. I swung my legs over. I began my decent when something under his cot caught my attention. I’m not sure what it was, but it was long. If I had to guess, I’m going to say that it looked like a coffin shaped box. I thought about checking to see what it was, but the honking brought me out of my thoughts.

  I turned around and could see out the storefront windows. The horde was close and big. Big was an understatement. It was huge. There must have been more them a few hundred of them out there.

  I had no time to climb down. I would just have to slide. I place the brace in my mouth and held onto the sides with both hands. I kicked my feet backwards and dropped. My hands burned on the way down.

  When I reached the bottom, I took a few precious seconds to glance at my hands. They were bleeding. The burning sensation I was feeling must have been when I had cut them. No time to worry about it now, we needed to leave.

  I ran towards the front of the store as fast as I could. On my way, I noticed a small white box lying in the floor. I wondered if it was the First Aid Kit the guy had tried to use on the girl. If it was, it could help a lot.

  I turned and ran towards the box. When I was close enough, I noticed the medical sign on the front. It was good enough for me.

  Without breaking stride, I reached down and grabbed to box with my left hand. I straightened up and proceeded towards the front of the store. The sound of the horn was getting louder, the closer I got.

  I pushed open the door and gawked at the situation. I realized that my assessment of the sheer numbers making its way towards us had been a tad bit on the light side. There were over a thousand, if not more, making their way towards us.

  I looked over and noticed that the passenger door was wide open. Makalyn was in the driver’s seat with the car idling. I could hear everyone screaming at me to get in.

  I rushed towards the passenger side and jumped in. I slammed the door shut and yelled at Makalyn, “Come on, let’s go.”

  Since the car was facing the horde, Makalyn turned the wheel as far as she could and gave it some gas. The car lurched forward and turned. She had done a perfect one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Her mom and dad would have been proud.

  I turned and asked, “Everyone okay?”

  JoJo spoke up, “Dad, what took you so long?”

  I held up the brace and the medical kit, “Sorry, I tried to grab more, but I ran out of time.”

  Without looking in my direction, Makalyn asked, “More?”

  I absentmindedly shook my head, “Yeah. The guy had stashed medical supplies and weapons in the tent. I was beginning to go through it whenever you started to honk.”

  JoJo stated, “Well, if I didn’t then we would all be dead.”

  I nodded my head, “True enough JoJo, true enough. By the way, can you doctor my hands up? I seemed to have sliced them while sliding down the ladder.”

  I handed the medical kit to JoJo, “Sure dad.”

  While JoJo was working on my hands, I glanced over at Seth, “Seth, I think that this brace will help. It should stabilize your ankle and help with the swelling.”

  He was struggling, “Thanks, Uncle Jimmy.”

  I smiled sadly, “You’re welcome. Now, what do you all say that we leave this town behind us and get to Lake Eufaula?”

  I looked behind us one last time and thought about the guy at the store. Something he wrote stuck in my mind. He had risked his life to save a stranger and it ended up costing him. In church, we were taught to help others. It was what God wanted us to do. We were also told that God had Plans for each of us. Was this truly what they meant? Was the dead coming back to life God’s Plan?

  Chapter 14: I’m Sorry

  We made it to the lake without anymore accidents. Lake Eufaula was a massive man-made lake that covered close to fifty thousand square miles. It wasn’t round like smaller lakes. It had a center that splintered out in multiple direction
s, causing it to cover miles of land. One of those splintered water areas falls directly under the highway we were driving on.

  A few miles past the bridge is a turn off that would take us to my family’s old campsite at Porum Landing. I tried to correctly follow the path from my childhood but kept getting lost. It had been such a long time since I had went camping there as a teenager.

  After several wrong turns, I found the correct winding street that took us to the campsite. I knew that we were on the right road whenever we went through a lakefront community less then a mile from the campsite.

  We approached the small bridge that went over a tree covered cove where we used to set fishing jug lines at. As we went over the bridge, I glanced towards the right. For a split second, you could get an open view of the backside of the campsites. I could visibly see a few campers and tents around. Unfortunately, I didn’t see people around, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. They could easily be hiding somewhere. The most important thing was that there were no zombies in sight and that gave me hope. I smiled and turned back to face the front of our car.

  Without speaking to anyone, I asked, “Did you see that?”

  Makalyn responded, “See what?”

  I nodded to my right, “There were no zombies over at the campsite. It looked like people had the same thought as us.”

  Seth mumbled, “You mean the same idea as YOU?”

  I turned my head to look at him, “Seth, what was that?”

  He turned his head away, “Nothing, Uncle Jimmy. Nothing.”

  I tried to sympathize with him, “Look. I know you want to go look for your dad, but we talked about it.”

  He snapped, “No! You talked about it!”

  I slowly breathed out my frustration, “Seth. We will look for your dad, but first we need to find someplace safe.”

  He added, “There is NO place safe!”

  JoJo spoke up, “Please stop, both of you!”

  Makalyn asked JoJo, “Does this happen a lot?”

  JoJo answered, “No. It just started.”