by Powell, Lora
“This is a camp, right? Aren’t there beds somewhere?” Bill had wandered over to our table.
“Yeah, but they’re all in cabins spread out around the area. We’ve stayed in this building because it’s bigger and seems more secure.”
Bill seemed to think before nodding in agreement. “It makes sense for us all to stay together. And this place is better than some of the others we’ve stayed in lately.”
“Shawn and I are ok with taking the first watch if you want to try to get some sleep.”
He nodded again, and I could see his frame droop a little with exhaustion. “That would be good, thanks. Would you all be ok with me bringing in my gun? I understand why you wanted it left outside, but I’d feel better if it was back within reach.”
Shawn answered him, “Yeah, go ahead.”
“Alright. I’m gonna go get that, and then if you don’t mind, I think Maya and I will try to get some sleep.”
***
After hearing the rain drum on the roof for so long and hours of talking, the silence of the night seemed somehow ominous. The chirps, croaks, and peeps from the wildlife blended into quiet background noise that I no longer noticed unless I thought about it. Perched on top of my chair once again, I watched through the window for anything that could cause us trouble. So far, the fog that had been slowly building into a white wall was the only thing that had moved out there.
I yawned and stretched before coming down from the chair. It was deep into the night and almost time for us to wake up Fallon and Bill for their turn. Maya, Carrie, and Devon were all going to get an uninterrupted night’s sleep, something that we hadn’t been able to do very often with fewer people.
I wandered over to where Shawn had been watching out a window towards the other end of the cafeteria. “Hey. It’s all quiet out there, but the fog’s starting to get really thick.”
He turned around and leaned against the wall next to me. “Yeah. I hope it doesn’t last too much longer. I don’t like not being able to see out there.”
“First that crazy rain, now this.” I shrugged my shoulders slightly. There wasn’t anything any of us could do about it anyhow. “The new people seem ok.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “They do. I wonder if they will stay. Having a few more people would make a lot of things easier.”
I was a little surprised by his statement. It never occurred to me that the new group might choose not to stay. Where else did they have to go? I didn’t respond as I thought over the possibilities.
We stayed like that, backs against the wall, in companionable silence for a few minutes. When I figured that it had been long enough, I pushed off of the wall and walked back to my window.
Back up on my chair, nothing seemed to have changed. The slow creep of the fog still concealed too much of my view. The moonlight still glinted dully off of the puddles here and there.
I sighed and settled in for more less-than-stimulating looking out the window. Being on watch at night was my least favorite job in this new world.
Suddenly, a deer burst from the hazy underbrush. Running full speed, the animal crossed the open driveway in a few bounds, swerved to miss the jeep and disappeared into the fog.
As the deer bounded out of sight, I rested my hand over my now pounding heart and silently laughed at myself for being startled by a deer. But then I realized that the usual night sounds from bugs and small animals had gone completely silent.
THIRTY
DAY 15
“Bri.” Shawn was already hurrying towards me in the darkened cafeteria.
“I saw it,” I whispered back, clambering off of the chair.
“Go wake everyone up. Make sure they stay quiet.” He took up a position watching out my window.
Careful not to bump into anything, I hurried into the office. The door to the next room was open, and I could see the shapes of sleeping people on the floor. The room was not that large, and floor space was basically nonexistent with so many bodies stretched out in there.
I hissed through the doorway, “Get up!”
It didn’t take much to rouse everyone after living on the edge like we had been. My second whispered hiss had everyone coming to attention.
“What’s wrong?” Fallon shoved her hair from her face as she sat up on the couch.
“I don’t know, but something’s not right.”
They all struggled to their feet, weapons coming out from where they had stashed them. The new group seemed particularly on edge, reminding me that they had been on the road for a lot longer than I had been.
Maya began stuffing her backpack with everything she could get her hands on. It took me a second to realize that she was preparing to have to run. It had happened to them before, and I suddenly felt ill prepared if we did have to leave the camp. Grabbing Shawn’s backpack from where he had left it on the desk, I started stuffing bottles of water and the last of the food in it.
Everyone else had crept from the office by the time Maya and I had filled the two bags. Zipping mine closed, I followed Maya through the door.
The thought of having to leave the camp was terrifying. At first, this place had been creepy, but we had started to settle in here. I knew that being out on the road had to be worse.
Everyone had crowded around a few windows near the door. Tension crackled in the air as they watched outside.
I climbed back on my chair. The night outside was still too silent.
It couldn’t have been much more than a minute, maybe two, since that deer charged from the gloom. Now, as we all watched, something else moved in the darkness.
A lot of something elses.
Zombies emerged from the fog by the dozen. They stumbled over fallen branches, got tangled in thick briar bushes, and limped along on damaged and rotting limbs. A few still moved with the fluid, fast movements that most of the zombies I’d seen before used, but most of them now more closely resembled the zombie that had managed to break into the cafeteria. I shuddered at the sheer number of them.
I don’t know who gasped to my right, but I could only imagine that whoever it was, was as terrified as I was. We all froze in place, afraid that the smallest movement would give us away to the horde.
They wandered into the clearing, meandering along, clearly with no destination in mind. The silence was more unnerving than anything else. I had gotten used to the screams and snarls that always seemed to announce their presence. For whatever reason, the zombies outside made none of those noises. A few low growls made it through the walls, but that was all.
I didn’t even want to think of the implications if the zombies became silent predators.
One uncoordinated zombie tripped over her own feet and crashed onto the hood of the jeep. The noise seemed to stir the others up a bit, and their movements collectively became more hurried. One zombie who zipped around the clearing with speed, screeched.
In a domino effect, more growling and screams began to sound. The zombies' movements became frenzied as they milled around, disappearing and reappearing in the thick fog.
“This is bad,” Devon breathed so lowly I wasn’t sure for a second that I’d heard him.
“If they hit that door, they’re going to get in,” Shawn whispered to the group. “It didn’t stop a single zombie when it wasn’t broken.”
“Is there a back door?”
“Yes, but it’s locked,” I answered Maya. The narrow hallway that led past the kitchen and past a pair of bathrooms ended with a door out. A chain and lock kept that door closed, something that originally I had been pleased with because it made me feel safer. I was reevaluating my position on the lock now, though.
“There has to be a key.”
I pulled my gaze away from the window to look at her. “We haven’t found it.”
At that moment, a zombie stumbled its way up onto the tiny front porch. It clattered around out there, gently bumping into the door and causing it to rattle in its broken frame. The resigned expression on Maya’s face was highlig
hted by the moonlight coming in through the window.
“It’s time to go.” She looked away from the chaos outside, towards the big man who had been silently watching next to her.
Bill nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’s time.”
Their group backed away from the windows and melted into the darkness further into the building. Fallon, Shawn, and I were left staring at each other with wide eyes. I was not happy to think about going outside with so many of the undead there. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one.
“Should we go?” I had no idea what was the right decision. Going outside seemed suicidal. But if we became trapped inside by this many zombies, we were as good as dead too.
“I don’t want to go out there.”
“I think we need to go.”
They answered me at the same time. I looked back and forth between them, my head spinning with possibilities. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
A harder thump rattled the door, and the zombie on the porch snarled.
My mind was made up instantly. The zombies seemed intent on hanging around the camp. It was only a matter of time before they got in. Even if they never got inside, with so many of them prowling the area, going out for food and water would be dangerous.
Maya had been right. It was time to go.
I reaffirmed their decision and turned to follow their retreat. Shawn immediately fell into step beside me. A second later, Fallon’s booted steps sounded behind us. Unhappy as she was about going outside, I had no doubt that she was more afraid of being alone again.
It became pitch black as we got further from the windows, slowing us down. I held a hand out in front of me, afraid of running into something in the darkness. By the time we made it down the narrow hallway, I was feeling along the wall to keep oriented.
A whisper of noise ahead of me stood the hair up on the back of my neck, images of just what could be lurking ahead in mind. Suddenly, a bright light turned on directly in my face.
“Thank God, it’s you. I wasn’t sure.” Carrie turned the blinding light away from me and toward where the rest of her group was crowded around the chained door.
“Can you pick it?” Maya whispered to Bill.
He looked at the lock intently for several long seconds before answering, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Maya produced something from her pack that I couldn’t see in the crush of bodies, and he took it and went to work on the lock.
I had no idea what exactly it took to pick a lock, but their group seemed like this was something that they had done before. I kept quiet and worried about what would happen if he couldn’t get the lock open. And I worried about what would happen if he could.
The door was solid, giving no way to look outside before we could open it. What if the zombies had found their way around to the back of the building? We would run outside and straight into them. I gripped my knife a little harder and looked nervously behind me. The glow from the flashlight didn’t reach that far, and I couldn’t see my friends.
A familiar hand reached out to settle lightly on my shoulder, making a little of the anxiety ease up. Shawn must have noticed my building panic.
An excited murmur ahead was followed by the rattle of chains being removed from their place on the door.
They’d done it. The back door was unlocked.
“Is everyone ready?” Bill looked around to each of us. When no one objected, Carrie switched off the flashlight. “Ok.”
The door opened silently, something I would be eternally grateful for, and moonlight spilled into the hallway. At the front, Bill hesitated, peering out into the night cautiously. He had just taken his first step outside when a crash from out in the cafeteria told us that the zombies had made it inside.
“Go!” Fallon hissed from behind me, and we all surged out into the night.
The air was heavy with moisture and the stench of so many rotting corpses was like a slap in the face. I felt like I was too close to hyperventilating as I crept along behind Carrie. The fog made it impossible to see more than a few feet away. I didn’t want to lose sight of anyone, afraid I’d never see them again.
Out of the shifting white curtain, to my right, a shuffling zombie materialized. It was already upon us by the time we saw it and I gasped as it set its sights on Devon. The zombie growled as it reached for him. I watched, horrified, sure he was going to be bitten. Then the zombie slumped to the ground in a heap.
Blinking rapidly, I had to stare for a second to be sure that my eyes weren’t playing a cruel trick on me.
Carrie leaned over the zombie, tugging to release a machete from where she had sunk it into the zombie’s skull.
THIRTY-ONE
DAY 17
We were all tired of being soaked to the skin. The trees all around us seemed like they would never end, and they constantly dripped with the light rain that was determined to continually fall from the sky. Huddled together under a particularly thick old tree, we did our best to shield ourselves from the chilling rain.
But it wasn’t really working.
“That was the longest night ever.” Fallon groaned. Shifting slightly, she attempted to stretch her muscles that must have been stiff from spending the night crunched up in the cold. I certainly felt like I’d gone a couple of rounds with a professional fighter, and lost big time.
“Does anyone know how far it is between towns out here? Devon?” Carrie asked as she stretched too.
“Um, I’m not sure exactly how far up the road the next town is. It takes about twenty minutes to get there by car.”
A shred of hope lit in me upon hearing his words. If it took about twenty minutes to drive from Devon’s home to the next town over, it couldn’t have been more than 15 miles between towns. We had walked along the road for hours the day before, and before that, and had been trying to work our way in that direction through the forest. Granted, that first night and day in the trees, we had been hopelessly lost and could have been traveling in a variety of directions. Still, the town couldn’t be that much further up the road.
“We have to be getting close,” Shawn echoed my thoughts.
“I think we are, but I’m not sure. The trees all kinda look the same.”
Devon wasn’t kidding. I had been very relieved when we finally stumbled on the little road the day before. The close trees and the foreboding sky had made me feel trapped. The open road gave us a bit of breathing room, and a sure direction to travel.
Someone started passing around one of our few remaining bottles of water, and I took a few small sips when it was my turn.
In an unspoken agreement, our two groups had merged into one, sharing our limited resources and watching out for each other. I was grateful for the four new people, even if their coming to our camp was probably what had led the horde of zombies to us in the first place. They certainly hadn’t meant to get our hideout overrun, and their skills had been what kept us alive that first night as we desperately tried to avoid the undead in the thick fog. The time that they had spent on the road had taught them more about killing zombies than the rest of us had learned while hiding in the camp.
Not that that meant that we were completely helpless. We had encountered a few zombies wandering in the trees, and all of us had taken out at least one of them by now. The rotting man-zombie in overalls that had been my second ever kill had been just as terrifying as the camp zombie. But I had managed to get the job done.
“We should probably get moving,” Bill interrupted my thoughts.
Everyone climbed to their feet with audibly protesting joints. A long series of cracks from my own spine accompanied my standing up. My sneakers squished uncomfortably and water trickled down my neck from my hair. While a town came with a higher number of zombies, it also had shelter from the rain and food. After a couple of days spent never managing to get dry, having a roof overhead and some dry clothes sounded worth the risk.
The backpack that I had slung over one shoulder was getting lighter. Seven people went
through a lot of food, and there wasn’t much left. Following the rest of the group down the steep bank that led back onto the pavement, I unzipped the bag and pulled out one of the remaining granola bars. While I held the bag out, everyone else took their share. When I put the bag back on my back, it felt completely empty. Maya’s bag was still full, but I was sure that she had mostly packed things like medical supplies, with maybe some food and water filling up the remaining space.
Walking along the road was infinitely easier than traversing the forest, and we were covering a lot more ground. We walked for maybe an hour before a curve in the road appeared ahead.
“This is it. The town is just around that corner,” Devon excitedly told us as he sped up.
“Devon, wait!” I knew—out of all of us—that he had had the hardest time these last couple of days. His leg hadn’t really had time to heal, and he was walking with a more pronounced limp now than he had been when we first met him. Thoughts of finding a dry place where he could rest were probably all that crossed his mind, but we needed to approach the town with caution.
The bend in the road wasn’t far, and before long we were rounding the corner, and a town that was even smaller than the other one came into view. If that was even possible.
The streets were silent.
Cautiously moving forward, our group worked our way into the town.
Someone had been killing zombies here. It was the only explanation for what I saw in the road where zombies with bullet holes to the head slumped where they had fallen. In the driveway to my right, someone had dumped what must have been at least a dozen corpses together in a reeking pile. Ahead, a crow pecked at the remains of someone who had died wearing a single fluffy pink slipper.
Skirting around a rain diluted pool of blood that had come from the zombie nearest to me, I looked around warily and stayed close to the rest of the group. This place had an eerie feeling to it.