by Powell, Lora
“Ok,” he echoed my earlier answer and handed me a bottle.
Logically, I knew that I needed to take it easy. That one bottle was going to be it for me until the morning. But, at that point, I was so thirsty. It only took a few swallows before my bottle was more than half empty. Screwing the cap back on with a resigned sigh, I set the water back on the desk. At least now my mouth didn’t feel like the Sahara.
The rest of the day was spent waiting. As time crawled by, I alternated between pacing and sitting stiffly in the uncomfortable office chair. My gaze inevitably always ended up back on my companion, watching for any sign of the virus. As the sun descended, leaving us surrounded by the darkness, my eyes started to get heavy. But I couldn’t risk going to sleep. What if Shawn got sick while I was unconscious?
Despite my worst fears, he didn’t seem like he was ill although the strain of the day showed in the shadows under his eyes.
Shawn was never a big talker, and now he was even quieter than usual. He was mostly spending his time watching out that window that was too high for me to see from. Occasionally, he would rotate his injured shoulder, as if trying to work out muscle stiffness.
But there was no fever. I was positive that by now, anyone who had gotten the vaccine would have been terribly sick. Every so often, I made him let me take his temperature with a thermometer I found in the nurse’s closet. It remained steadily under 100 degrees. Maybe slightly elevated, but by no means anywhere near as high as the temperatures that had ravaged Evie’s body that first night.
It was then the longest night of my life, sitting in the dark with nothing to do but wait. Even worse than my first night spent huddled in my bathtub, covered in blood and listening to the world go crazy all around me. I hadn’t truly grasped just what was going on then. Now I did.
Right now, there was only one person left alive in the world that I knew, and waiting for that person to either live or die, and being completely helpless to do anything to save him, was a nightmare.
When the first chirping from birds drew my notice to the lightening color of the sky, I almost couldn’t believe it. It was morning.
TWENTY-TWO
DAY 10
I almost couldn’t believe it. The sun was coming up and Shawn still didn’t seem to be sick.
“How do you feel?” I waited with bated breath for his answer.
“I feel ok.” He rotated his shoulder again, and then grinned at me. “It’s a little stiff, but I feel fine otherwise.”
A grin immediately spread across my features. All night long, I had been telling myself that if he made it to the morning without any symptoms, he was probably going to be ok, not daring to really hope that that would actually happen. But now it had. Light was beginning to filter into the room and I felt nearly giddy with optimism.
Impulsively, I bounded the few steps between us and wrapped my arms around him in a hug, my exuberance overriding my usual shyness for a second. I had a tendency to keep to myself, and my unusual display must have caught him off guard because it took a long second before I felt his arms return the hug.
By then my mind had already had plenty of time to regret my impulsiveness. Looking anywhere except at his face, I pulled back a couple of big steps and tried to cover up my blunder. “Um, I’m really glad that you don’t feel sick. I think that you would by now if you were going to.”
“I gathered that much.” He was still smiling at me with humor. I couldn’t blame him. He had just avoided what we had both been sure was a death sentence. He was allowed to be in a good mood.
Breaking eye contact, thankfully, because it was making me a little uncomfortable, he strode to the desk and picked up the bottle of water that we had allocated as his last night. It hadn’t escaped my notice that he had only sipped from it all night, even though I knew that he had to be thirsty. Now, he unscrewed the cap and chugged the rest of the bottle without coming up for air. When he was finished, he wiped the trickle of water that had escaped down his chin with one hand while handing me the remaining one with the other. “Here, you take this.”
Shaking my head was one of the hardest things I could remember having to do. One bottle of water in an entire day was not enough. I had tried to make it last, but I had run out in the middle of the night. Eyeing his outstretched hand, and the liquid relief he held in it, I forced my mouth to form the right words. “No, we agreed that one is for both of us.”
He grabbed my hand and placed the bottle in it. “I’m good… for now. Besides, I’ve been thinking about this situation all night. We are going to have to come up with a better source of water—today. I think I know where we should look for answers.” When I just stared at him for a second, he continued, “There has got to be some sort of wilderness survival guide on these shelves.” His hand swept out to indicate the loaded bookshelf on the far wall.
Swinging my gaze to the books, I felt like giving myself a good kick in the rear. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that the books found in a wilderness summer camp for kids would likely be a treasure trove of information useful to our situation? I began scanning the titles on the spines. In only a matter of seconds, I pulled a likely candidate from its place. Thumbing through the pages, another grin spread across my face. This was exactly what we had been looking for.
***
I grimaced down at the corpse of the camp counselor zombie. Despite neither of us being too excited to come back out here, we had made the walk down the wooded path, back to the last cabin that we checked yesterday. In my haste to get Shawn back to the office and clean up his scratches, I had totally forgotten about the bat that he had dropped in the grass. We were going to have to drive back into that hole in the wall that the locals called a town, and he was going to need it.
Flies buzzed around the crusty wounds that my knife had left on her skull. When I glanced up at the cabin door, still standing open, all I could picture was the moment when she came barreling out of the door and knocked Shawn off of the steps.
I couldn’t wait to get away from here.
“Ok, got it. Let’s go.” Straightening up with the bat in hand, Shawn checked to be sure that I had heard him and started back the way we had come. I didn’t hesitate to follow.
Scanning through the survival guide, I’d quickly found exactly what we needed. The chapter on purifying water was simple. We either needed to boil the water for ten minutes or drop four drops of bleach into a quart and wait for half an hour. Either solution would be well within our grasp, provided we could come up with a few basic necessities.
Despite our thorough search in the entire building, we were surprised when we were not able to find a single box of matches or a bottle of bleach. There was a closet full of all sorts of cleaning chemicals, but no bleach.
I guess we’d used up all of our luck earlier when Shawn somehow didn’t turn into a zombie overnight. But luckily—even though it looked like we were a hundred miles from anywhere—we were actually only a short drive from civilization. There had to be someplace there to find what we needed.
The drive back out of the mountains left me feeling edgy. I couldn’t forget the gang of zombies that we had seen before. I knew that they were still out there, along with many more people that had turned in this town. And just because there were less of them than what we had faced in the city, that didn’t mean they were less dangerous.
“There was a little store on the back of that diner, next to the gas pump. I’ll bet we will find everything that we need in there. Won’t take more than a few minutes and we’ll be back in the jeep and out of there.” Shawn tried to cheer me up when he noticed my plummeting mood.
I gave him a weak smile. A few minutes out here was a long time, long enough for the zombies to find us. But I wasn’t going to say that, so I kept my thoughts to myself.
The trees ended and we were back in the open air of the main street. After only a little over a day, my eyes had already adjusted to the dimmer light in the trees. The midday sun felt blinding, making me bli
nk rapidly. By the time my sight had cleared up, we were already pulling into the spacious parking area surrounding our destination.
There was a big truck that had been abandoned in the parking lot, but other than it, the lot stood empty. Shawn pulled right up next to the glass door leading into the store. He seemed to debate with himself for a second, before leaving the engine running. I had been eyeing the store with distrust but scurried to climb out when I realized that I was the only one still in the jeep.
I didn’t like what we were doing at all, but I wasn’t going to let him go out there on his own. Not when I had so recently gotten a vivid idea of how I would feel if I were to lose him.
The sign on the door read open. I could clearly see from outside that calling the room a store from where I was standing, was generous. Certainly, the living room that I had shared with Evie was larger.
When Shawn pulled on the door, it swung open with a cheery sounding jingle. Eyeing the bells hanging from the top with my best death glare, I followed him inside.
My first impression had been spot on. A single shelf ran down the center of the store and was loaded with every kind of snack food and candy known to man. The outer walls of the store were also lined with shelves loaded with everything from cat food to windshield washer fluid. The upside to it, it only took a matter of seconds to find the shelf holding the cleaning stuff. Triumphantly, I pulled several of the pint sized bottles of bleach from the shelf.
Turning around, I found Shawn stuffing packages of beef jerky into the bag that he had brought along. When I stepped up to his side, he looked my way.
“Got them.” I held the bleach in my arms, trying to hold onto all of the bottles and my knife.
“Good. I found matches, and a few other things that we might be able to use.” He glanced behind us, back to the Jeep. “I think that we should get out of here.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. The edgy feeling that I had had since we decided that we would have to come back into town had gotten worse. Now that we had the means to make water from the stream safe to drink, all I really wanted was to go back and hide again. It felt way too exposed out here.
Those infernal bells loudly jangled again on our way out. I jumped at the sound. Muttering under my breath, I dropped the bottles of bleach into the back seat of the jeep before climbing back in the front. Shawn had dropped his bag in the back too and was behind the wheel in seconds, ready to make our escape when a woman came running around the corner of the diner.
Three zombies sprinted after her.
TWENTY-THREE
DAY 10
The woman was probably younger than me, and the look of absolute terror on her face eliminated any thoughts I was having that she was anything but human very quickly.
“Hang on,” Shawn was watching out the window with a look of serious concentration on his face. Guessing at what he was planning, I grabbed for the dash in an attempt to steady myself. I hadn’t had time to put on my seatbelt yet. The tires squealed as the jeep lurched forward, towards the girl. It only took a second before he spun the car sideways, expertly stopping it broadside to the running girl and giving her a clear shot at the back door.
The maneuver left me wondering where he learned to drive like that, but the thought only had a brief chance to flash through my mind before the girl wrenched the door open and dove inside.
The trio of zombies had been right behind her. She didn’t have time to get the door closed before one of them was reaching inside. The girl grappled with the door, trying to pull it shut, but the creature had managed to get its head and shoulders too far in. The smell that rolled off of the zombie instantly filled the interior, making me fight back a gag. Each time I encountered one of them, they seemed to be even more revolting than the last. The ear-splitting shriek that it blasted us with made my blood run cold as I envisioned just how bad being trapped inside of a vehicle with a zombie could get.
Cursing, Shawn stomped on the accelerator and the jeep lurched forward. The other two zombies bounced off of the side as they tried in vain to find a way in.
The rotting zombie lost its footing as the car shot forward. Letting go of her death grip on the door, the girl swung around in a move that I wasn’t sure I could have pulled off, and planted both booted feet squarely in the zombie’s face. Kicking hard, she sent it flying the rest of the way out the door.
I had turned around in my seat to watch the struggle, holding up the knife and trying desperately to figure out a way to defend us if the zombie actually made it all of the way into the backseat. Behind us, the zombie rolled and tumbled along the pavement, tripping one of the others who had been chasing us at top speed. Reaching out, the girl grabbed the open door and slammed it shut before slumping back into the seat.
Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing in gasps. Closing her eyes, she visibly tried to get her breathing under control. I took the second her eyes were closed to look her over. I had been right; she probably wasn’t any older than seventeen or eighteen. Shoulder length—nearly black—hair was in a wild tangle all over her head, prompting me to wonder briefly what my longer locks must look like by now. I was guessing that her skin was that beautiful and perpetually tanned olive tone that had always left me a little jealous, though right now, it was hard to tell because of all of the dirt.
I glanced over at Shawn who had been switching between driving us away from this deathtrap of a town and trying to watch the newest member in the mirror. He glanced at me and I noticed the worried crinkle on his forehead.
It didn’t occur to me until that moment that we had just let a complete stranger into the backseat. She didn’t look all that dangerous, but looks could be deceiving. Every zombie show ever created had made it clear that people were your most dangerous enemy during an apocalypse. What if she was crazy? What if she was some sort of a decoy? What if she had been bitten?
A little alarmed now, I looked back at the girl just in time to see her wide brown eyes. She focused on the two of us in the front for the first time. “Thank you.”
Shawn looked in the mirror at her again, a slight frown mostly hidden behind the beard that was starting to grow out of control. “You’re welcome.”
I looked down at my own stained clothes and only slightly less dirty fingers. I hadn’t been anywhere near a mirror in a couple of days, but I was guessing that we weren’t any cleaner than the girl in the backseat.
“I’m Fallon. You two just saved my life.” She pulled herself up a little straighter in her seat. “I don’t think I could have kept running for much longer.” She sounded like she really meant what she said.
“I’m Bri. This is Shawn,” I chimed in. My instincts had always been pretty good about people, and they were saying that Fallon wasn’t anything to be scared of. She was just like us, struggling to stay alive in a world gone mad.
I noticed that Shawn studied me for a second before nodding almost imperceptibly. By then, we had already made several miles back into the mountains.
Suddenly, Shawn stepped on the brake so abruptly that I almost toppled from my backwards perch on the seat. Stopping in the middle of the desolate road, he threw the vehicle into park and turned around to face Fallon. “Are you bitten?”
If the abrupt question caught her off guard, she didn’t let it show. Shaking her head, she said, “No. None of them got close enough.”
I couldn’t find any trace of deceit on her face. Apparently, neither could Shawn. Looking at me again, we shared a moment of silent communication where I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Taking a stranger back to our hideout was a gamble, but could either of us live with ourselves if we left this girl behind? I couldn’t help but think about how Jack and Shawn had found me in that restroom, bloody and exhausted and still a little clueless about exactly how bad things actually were. Neither of them had known a thing about me but they had given me a chance that probably saved my life in the process.
Really, the decision had already been made for us, and
we both knew it.
Turning back around, Shawn put the car back into gear and kept going. I noticed some of the tension leave the stiff set of Fallon’s shoulders as she seemed to realize that we weren’t planning to kick her out of the vehicle. I sat down in my seat, keeping my torso twisted so I could still see the girl in the backseat.
“There’s a place we’ve been staying at. It’s not far.”
She nodded at me and pulled the bag that she had been sitting on top of out from underneath her, dumping it next to her on the seat. I hoped that there hadn’t been anything breakable in there, not that she had had time to move the thing before diving into the jeep.
“Thank you,” she said again. “I’ve been hiding in different places in town for a few days, but none of them lasted for very long. I don’t, um…” She hesitated, a flash of some unhappy memory crossing her face, before finishing the thought. “I don’t have anyone left and after my car ran out of gas up on the highway, I started walking. I ended up here. It seemed like it would be a safe place to stay at first. But I guess no place is safe anymore.”
I nodded at her in understanding. For a brief time, I had dared to hope that the camp would be safe. But that lone zombie had set me straight on that in a hurry. There was no such thing as safe anymore. Only marginally less dangerous.
TWENTY-FOUR
DAY 11
Fallon splashed in the water behind me. My shirt stuck to me, wet from the water still dripping off of my hair. I peeled the material away from my skin. I’d always hated that feeling. But I was willing to put up with it for now because there was no way I was standing on the side of this stream without my clothes. More splashing came from Shawn nearby. He was also taking advantage of the opportunity to try to get some of the dirt off.